October Goal Completed!

Whew! I literally put the final stitches in my applique border last night. 

It was so much fun working on the Hospital Sketches BOM.
At first, my plan was to add dark sashings and inner border, but in the end I went with just a simple dark border.
Appliqueing and adding the borders was my October One Monthly Goal.

For the second retreat I attended this month (at my friend Carol's Craft Camp--highly recommended!) I took along lots of blocks to put together. 

In 2013, I participated in a  couple of signature block swaps through Kathleen Tracy's Yahoo chat group. This is the pattern from her book The Civil War Sewing Circle that I planned to use for my block setting.  

Because of the number of blocks I had, I needed to make just 12 Ohio stars for my version. I put together little block kits for the stars so I wouldn't need to haul a lot of fabric to camp. I was able to use every single block from the swap including my own. 

After all that, I worked on my simplest project--the left over pumpkin blocks. This setting used all but one block. I may use the extra block on the back as a label--or perhaps a mug rug? To be determined--!
Then I got a little side-tracked and started playing around with my little scrappy houses, but set them aside to put together my second set of 2013 signature swap blocks. 

As I recall, there were some in the chat group that didn't want to deal with the flying geese in the first block swap. Snowball blocks were offered as an alternative. A lot of us decided to do both swaps. I brought to camp my stash of brown 1.5 inch square scraps and a few pieces of light prints for the sashing. Again, I was determined to use all the blocks, but couldn't fit my own block on the front. It will go on the back for a label. You can probably see that with my sashing, my Snowballs turned into Shoo Fly blocks (an unexpected surprise!), so I will be adding another border to finish off the outside of the quilt into more Shoo Fly's.
Hopefully soon--lol! 

I'm relieved that I managed to finish my One Monthly Goal, but now I have even more unfinished tops that need work. I'm not sure which one will get to be on the top of the pile!

Linking with One Monthly Goal HERE

One Down/One to Go!

I've been back from my first October retreat and after a couple days of recovery, I'm beginning to get ready for my second retreat. 

I put this table runner together before I left for the first quilt camp.
 I have a lot of pumpkin blocks left to use, so I may take them along---if I figure out what to make out of them--lol! 

The first thing I worked on at camp were my Cheddarback blocks.
This was an easy month for this projectl

Panama Pyramids was next on my project list. All 99 blocks are now complete (I'm making a small version). I plan to put these together at home as soon as my design wall gets cleared off. 

And lastly, I made the 84 berries I need for my Hospital Sketches borders.
It was nice to have a few different projects to work on and it feels great that I will now be able to move forward on a few of them. 

 These next photos are just a few of the quilts that others were working on at quilt camp---it's always so inspiring to see what others are doing!

 Enjoy! 

More to come.....! 

October Goal and More!

I've gone down another rabbit hole.
I couldn't stop myself from making some of these 5" pumpkins after seeing them on Instagram. They are a free pattern from Annette Plog at her Petite Quilts blog. I have a plan to make enough of them for a small wall hanging--just for fun! 

I have my final Hospital Sketches block set up and ready to applique. 

This is how it looks on the design wall with the rest of the blocks.
Hospital Sketches is going to be my One Monthly Goal.
 I have two retreats this month, so I don't imagine I will have time to get this one quilted, so my goal is to sew all the blocks together, applique the borders and get them attached to the rest of the quilt. 

I have my applique shapes ready to go---now if I can just stay away from those pumpkins......

Linking with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal HERE