I have been busy, just not blogging!

I know it has been a while since I blogged about my summer projects, but I really have been busy on them!! Here is Pieces of the Past with the first pieced border and second solid border. The border is comprised of a block known as either Underground Railroad or Jacob's Ladder. I really like the look of this quilt so far! I am hopeful that before the end of this calendar year, I will have this one and several others to pass along to Chris. (the wonderful quilter I found in Oakland)






You can see that my sewing machine is working hard on flying geese units for the next border! The pattern has a different way of making the geese, I started with a 5.25" square and sewed 2.5" squares to the corners, cut them apart and am now sewing another 2.5" square to the first unit and when finished, I will have 2 flying geese units from this weird triangle unit.









I did get tired of working on the Pieces of the Past quilt and dragged out the book Vince gave me for Christmas. It was patterns for Jelly Rolls. I purchased a Jelly Roll from Connecting Threads because I liked the fabric line. I did find that the pattern I picked needed a few more fabrics, so I added to the roll from my stash (Yay, for reducing the stash again!) and I created this lovely scrappy quilt! I have the border fabric picked out and cut, but not sewed in place yet!




Two years ago, Sherry and I attended a Quiltaways weekend in Pennsylvania. This quilt pattern called out to me every place we stopped to shop or look at quilts on Saturday. So, I purchased the pattern and planned to raid my stash for the fabrics. Well, I settled on a fabric for the borders which has lots of fun colors in it.

What I could not decide on were fabrics for the spinning stars. I wanted the fabrics to start light and get darker as they radiated outward. I had some fabrics in my stash which worked, but I was missing some! Last summer, Cat was here and together we worked my stash and visited 2 quilt shops in the Memphis area to fill in the missing colors.




Finally, this summer, I cut and stitched the strips to create these blocks! These are the big blocks, there are also 4 smaller blocks in each color scheme and 2 strips or each color block. The next step is to cut these apart and sew them together in another way!









Yesterday, my class books arrived! At the end of the year, my students completed a journal assignment entitled "A Lesson my Grandparent Taught Me". I loved the responses so much, that I knew it had to become a book. This company called Nationwide Learning has a program called Student Treasures where teachers can get free book kits for the creation of a class book. The kits are free as are all of the shipping costs. The instructions are easy to follow and my students created this great book. There are two shown because both classes completed a book.

Finally, my garden GROWS!! I have spent several early morning hours weeding the garden! We were away for two days and it seems like the garden just bloomed---plants as well as weeds. I even have two potato plants growing! The weather has finally gotten summery, so the heat and humidity are zapping my energy. But, since I awaken at around 6:00 AM EVERY DAY, I have been getting out to the garden to weed. Every morning I manage to pull weeds for an hour before the heat sucked me dry. Today, I decided the bad weeds are pulled, and I just need to maintain the garden by plucking the new shoots. My soaker hose is set up and working nicely as well. We had green beans and cucumbers growing, and many flowers yet to produce vegetables!
It is our first attempt at a garden, so I am thrilled to have anything growing!

Well, I will work hard at keeping you updated more often!