It's Been a Very Busy Week!

 Next week I won't be doing any sewing at all. DH's scooter rally starts on Thursday the 9th, and I'll be busy all week getting ready for that. I have rally bags to fill, cookies to bake for said rally bags, plus DH and I are cooking all the food for Saturday evening's dinner. We are borrowing our oldest grandson to help us, plus DD#2 will be making cupcakes for the dinner and helping where she can. Yeah, definitely no sewing next week, and no blogging either, I simply won't have time.

This week I have been prioritizing what needs to be finished before the rally, and what I just wanted done before the rally. 

The table toppers I've been working on I need for the rally, so those came first.

Here are 4 of the 7 I made. The other 3 are duplicates of ones shown here. Two of the table toppers have another block in the center, like the one in the lower left. I only did that because I ran out of the fabrics I used as the setting triangles. 

Mr LJ is getting a quilt for his birthday which is this month, so I needed to get his quilt top done and basted before the rally. I'll have enough time to quilt it after the rally, so the fact I got it to that point is a win. Since I did get that done, I also basted the Christmas quilt for ME!!! Once it's basted, I can work it in pretty easily. No pics of either of those.

I finally got the binding on this 64 patch quilt. If you count the 7 table toppers as one finish, the 64 patch makes my 25th finish of the year, if you count the table toppers separately, it's finish number 31. How do you count smaller projects?

I had been assembling stacks of UFO blocks into rows while I was working on my last few projects. This week I decided it was time to sew those rows to each other and get some finished quilt tops. I thought I had rows for 5 quilts, but it turns out I had rows for 7 quilts! I sewed up the last quilt top yesterday, and pressed the last seams this morning. I was in a hurry so I didn't take time to take photos of all of those. I do, however, have photos of them on my design wall, so here they are before they were sewn together. 

Those three are all the same pattern, but different colors of sashing. I made the 16 patches last year as leader/enders, and these three quilts used 240 of them. The sashing for all three quilts were scraps from widebacks. Those 108" long scraps can really add up!

I made the blocks for this quilt last year as well. I was busting some batiks that were leftover from DD#2's pineapple quilt. 

I could have made a queen/king out of these blocks, but I opted to make two throws for donation instead. They are the same blocks, I just oriented one differently to the other when putting it up on the design wall.

This quilt and the previous two were made from the epic fabric birthday cake my sister gave me last year! Some of my scraps are added in as well. The first two of the bright quilts are Carolina Chain blocks, and the third one is Bonnie Hunter's leader/ender challenge from 2022, Triple Treat. 

Besides getting seven quilt tops sewn together, well eight really, since I sewed together Mr. LJ's quilt this week too, I also got caught up on the temperature quilt, so October's column is done. I also did October's blocks for the murder mystery quilt.

November's blocks come out next week, but they will have to wait until after the rally. 

I only have one more sewing goal for this week.

I need to finish appliqueing these gears onto this vest fo the grandson that's helping with the rally. I've only got the brown ones sewn in place, the others are just lightly fused. Fusible doesn't like sticking to whatever this vest is made from. Once this is done, it's all about the rally until November 12th. The rally will still be going on the 12th, but my part ends the night of the 11th, so aside from putting massive amounts of stuff away, and cleaning up any dishes left from the night before, I can start back to sewing if I'm up for it on the 12th. Come to think about it, it will probably be the 13th, a rest day may be needed!