A bit of this and a bit of that

 What have I been doing?  Well since the last post I've worked on a few things.  I made a bunch of name tags for new members to my guild. Pretty fun and quick to do.

 I then pieced a few more of the novelty kits I had put together.  This first one I had seen -n a quilting group on FB.  It worked great with the novelties and was very easy to sew but a little complicated to layout.  My row/column flags really helped keeping things in the right order.

This one is called floating squares, and I've made it several times over the years, but it looks so cool.

And this one is actually left over blocks from another quilt that got too large, so I made it into two quilts.  The border fabric is some very old fabric from my stash of little shoe prints. 

But mostly what I've done for the last several weeks is to finish a 13-year-old UFO.  These are four small quilts made from my father's ties, one for my sister, my niece, my daughter and myself.  I had started it years ago and got discouraged after 9 blocks & packed it away.  In going through boxes in my sewing closet I found it again and decided I was going to finish them.  And promised myself I wouldn't work on anything else until they were done.  I didn't quite keep that commitment.  After all the blocks were pieced, I took a break to piece a nice cotton quilt which was so nice to work with after those slippery ties.  But I did get the four quilts finished right after that.  I still need to add labels then get them mailed.  I do like them much better now that they are all together.  The black sashing really helped it come together and they kind of shimmer.  And it's very nice to have an old project completed.  It is going to feel strange when I don't have all four.  Some friends have suggested I make myself 3 more to keep but NOT right now.  I really did not enjoy foundation piecing those silk & poly fabrics.  But I did keep the left over fabrics, so you never know.  Maybe in another 13 years - haha.

 

I did run across my inspiration in my OneNote file.  Based on the date 2013, looks like the UFO was "only" 12 years old, not 13. LOL

Partly because dealing with the slippery tie fabrics was so frustrating, and partly because I had seen this pattern and wanted to give it a try, I put this quilt together as a break from the ties.  No idea what I'll do with it.  Initially I thought it would be a donation, but I'm sort of attached to it so I might keep it.  I do love secondary patterns.  All these fabrics were either from the donation table or left over from other projects. 

 

Another pattern I had seen in a magazine that I wanted to try.  It was pieced using strip sets which was interesting.  This one will probably be a donation for our guild's comfort quilt program.

And now I'm all out of kits, so I need to spend some time cutting novelties.  But first I have to finish the taxes - ugh!