A Quick Trip and Getting Back to Business

DH and I took a quick trip to see that new grandbaby! He is a sweetie! We were only gone three days, it was a pretty quick trip. We got to look around the town we lived in when we were first married. We only lived there just under a year, and we haven't really been back since then. We have driven through, but not stopped. It was fun driving by the first places we lived. 

When we got home I tried to get back into sewing, but sometimes it takes me a couple days to decide which thing I want to make priority. I started sewing on a UFO, which is always a good thing thing to work on. I have over 1,000 flying geese units to make for that quilt, so I'm expecting to work on it off and on as I get sick of sewing the same units. 

I keep reading about the Stashbusters Yahoo group pre-cut challenge going on this year. January is charm squares (usually 5" squares), but for the purpose of the challenge they decided any squares would work. I had a stack of 4.5" squares left from cutting apart a weighted blanket that was deemed "too heavy" I had matched the jeweled toned squares with white squares, and decided to make them all into HSTs. My lines were drawn, it was ready to go, and I started all this in December so it's a UFO too. Sewing on either side of the diagonal lines worked well as leaders/enders for my flying geese units, so I started working on two UFO's at once. 

This was the results of two days of sewing diagonal lines. So much pressing to do, and snipping dog ears. All of that is done now, The big HST's are from those 4.5" reclaimed squares, the rectangular units will be Flying Geese units once I sew the other "wing" on, and the basket has bonus HST's that are cut offs from the Flying Geese. They will end up being yet another quilt. All of these quilts are purple/blue/green, and I've made a lot of quilts in that color combination in the last couple years. I'm getting kind of sick of it to be honest, but I have a lot of requests for that combination or similar. 

I sewed diagonal lines for two days, decided to take a break from that, and did some straight piecing. I am using the weighted blankets tops as my leaders/enders for that. 

Since I was getting two HSTs from each set of jewel/white 4.5" squares, I decided I'd make a herringbone quilt. I only have 12 HST's that are not being used in this layout, so I call that a win. When I'm making a quilt from leftovers like this, I never shoot for a particular size quilt, it is what it is. This is just up an the design wall, I'll start assembling it tomorrow. 

I got the rows sewn for two weighted blankets while sewing pairs of HSTs together. I even started on a third. Since I usually just make weighted blankets with two fabrics on top, they are easy to sew together without thinking too much about it. Once I'm sewing the rows together, I'll probably just work on the weighted blankets. All the weighted blankets I'm working on at this point are new starts. 

I haven't been FMQ anything, because I don't have anything basted. I am going to try to do a basting spree late next week, so I need to start figuring out backings too. I have one queen quilt that I gave in and bought an extra wide backing for, so that one may get basted first. I still do best when varying my activities, which leads to working on a bunch of stuff at once. Thankfully my mind can keep it straight, even if my body can't handle as much repetitive work at once anymore!