I’d love to say “the band is back together,” but in reality, it never broke up. We’ve been getting together every month, I just haven’t recorded it. Since I last wrote about S&B, we’ve acquired a new member, Sarah. She’s a brand new quilter and is jumping right in. A friend of Jeanne (Grey Cat Quilts), Sarah began with English paper piecing. She just finished a machine pieced baby quilt to give as a gift, but of course I forgot to get a picture of it.

The pictures I did get include the finished anniversary quilt for my mom’s sister (and fellow S&B-er) Mickey. Here’s a picture of Mom and Mickey doing their version of a “forehead selfie” for another S&B-er, my cousin Sharon. Sharon frequently posts “forehead selfies” on her Facebook page and we all get a kick out of them.

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Mom also finished a top that she made just for the heck of it, a quick and easy Delectable Mountain quilt. I’ll share an EQ file for this one shortly.

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I actually had show & tell for the first time in months, because for the first time in months I actually felt like sewing. I had some brown half square triangles that have been sitting in a plastic tote for a couple of years. I did a quick scan of Pinterest looking for options, and settled on this layout. If I were making this quilt from scratch instead of just using up HSTs, I would NOT make it with HSTs. Instead, I’d sew strip sets of brown – print – brown – print – brown, etc., then cut them at a 45 degree angle. Much easier, faster, and neater.

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Jeanne of Grey Cat Quilts put her latest quilt on our quilting frame and finished it up. Here’s her gorgeous plus quilt, made entirely from her scrap bin. She’s horribly efficient and cuts her scraps into usable pieces before storing them. This is made from 5″ squares. Each plus is a different fabric.

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Jeanne loves vibrant, detailed prints, and fills her quilt front and back with them. Here she is wrapped up in the finished quilt and you can see some of the fun prints on the back. You can also see my cat, Buttercup, who is suspicious of Jeanne but unwilling to leave the room. Silly cat.

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Finally, here’s the quilt Mom is working on now. It’s the same layout as my Coin Toss quilt, but uses a single piece of fabric instead of coins. She’ll sew these together into pairs, then add another black strip on the other side. This is Mom’s first time using batiks.

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The design wall is new – just a couple of big sheets of styrofoam with batting wrapped around and pinned to the back. It’s extremely temporary, but I didn’t have anything else that would fasten it together more securely, and I was too impatient to wait. It’s held against the wall with two large Command hooks, one on the right side of the right panel and one at the top of the left panel. I can easily take them off the wall and set them on top of the quilting frame. There are two reasons I do this – putting it on the frame keeps the cats from climbing onto the quilts loaded on the frame, and it also keeps my sweet but annoying cat Rugen from spraying on it. I love him but he’s a trial.

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