agilejack

I’m really wanting to start sewing on the Interweave quilt that I cut Brandon Mably fabrics for earlier this week. But I promised myself that I wouldn’t start until I finished the borders on my Flower Baskets quilt. So I dug in tonight and got it done!

I wanted to add borders to make this quilt a rectangle. So I added 2.5 inch borders on the sides and 6 inch borders on the top and bottom.

I didn’t want to wrestle that large top up onto my design wall to photograph it. It won’t fit. So if the weather cooperates I’ll take it outside tomorrow and get a good photo of it.

The plaid fabric isn’t printed perfectly straight. And across a longer length of fabric the wonkiness gets more and more noticeable.

Since the side borders are relatively narrow, that wonkiness wouldn’t be very noticeable. But on the wider top and bottom borders I was worried it would be really disturbing. So I decided to piece the top and bottom borders with 6×10 inch pieces. It has the same feeling gas the sashing that is all cut differently. And it seems to have alleviated the issue I was afraid of.

Here’s one length of the wider pieced border.

It will be interesting to see it in one piece tomorrow.

I was really missing my friend Linda as I was pressing all these borders.

But I managed to get it all done.

Ha! You can see the crooked plaid in that length of narrow border! Oh well… too late to fix it now!

Here’s a corner to show the difference in the width of the top and side borders.

I’m really glad this is done and I can start working on my new quilt tomorrow!

We’ve had so much rain the last few weeks. I’m pretty sure we’ve had close to 8 inches since my brother and SIL were here a few weeks ago. It rained most of the day today but cleared up around 3:00. So we got out for our first walk in a few days. We were all glad to have an opportunity to stretch our legs and get some air. We walked almost three miles!

Even though it still feels like winter, I’m starting to see signs of spring as we walk around the neighborhood.

I was so surprised when we walked around a corner and I saw that pink rhododendron in full bloom. It’s the first one I’ve seen and it seems so early!

All these blooms are making me feel hopeful that winter is on its way out. And next weekend we welcome Daylight Saving Time. The day the time changes in the spring is my favorite day of the year!

All our winter rain does make for wonderful spring blooms.

I keep forgetting to share this video I took of the sun setting at the Oregon Coast a week ago. It was such a great ending to a wonderful day.

I’m scheduled to play pickleball in the morning, followed by a trip down to Molalla for Rico’s weekly sheep herding lesson.

If we get rained out in pickleball, I have been invited to play with a group in a local school. So I’m covered regardless of what the weather decides to do. There are actually some snowflakes in the overnight forecast.

NOTE: Copyright Anne Ibach 2024. 

PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS TUTORIAL FOR COMMERCIAL REASONS WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. CONTACT ME AT anne@agilejack1.com FOR PERMISSION.

This tutorial is for making this 8.5 inch block that is repeated across the quilt top. This is my variation of a quilt block that’s been around for ages. The quilt design is mine. 

I made my quilt a throw size with 8 blocks by 10 blocks. A total of 80 blocks. The top measures approximately 64 x 80 inches. To make your quilt bigger, make more blocks, over and over and over.

Fabrics needed for 80 quilt blocks: 

Block centers: 1/2 yard cuts of 10 different color coordinated fabrics

Sashing strips (Roman Glass): 2 yards

Corner triangles (Sharks Teeth): 2 yards

Here’s a list of the blue fabrics I used. They are all Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics 

Center Strips

Philip Jacobs Glory in Cool – maybe out of print or hard to find

Philip Jacobs Curly Kale in blue

Philip Jacobs Caladiums in blue

Philip Jacobs Dorothy in blue

Philip Jacobs Lucy in blue

Philip Jacobs Feathers in Cool

Philip Jacobs Curly Baskets in Delft – Out of print. Could sub Philip’s spiral shells

Kaffe Fassett Paisley Jungle in blue – likely out of print and hard to find. Very expensive on Etsy

Sashing strips — Kaffe’s Roman Glass in blue

Corner Squares/triangles — Brandon Mably Sharks Teeth in Cobalt

Cutting Instructions

Cut eighty 4 X 12.5 inch center strips from the 10-1/2 yard cuts. Eight from each fabric 

Cut 160 Sashing strips: 1.5 inches by 10 inches

Cut 80 corner squares: 5.5 X 5.5 inches

Cutting corner squares into triangles: Critical to maintaining swirling effect where blocks meet. 

Stack up your 5.5 inch squares with the right side of the fabric facing up and with all the sharks teeth pointing up.

I stack up five or six and then cut these squares along the diagonal with the cutting line going from the lower left to the upper right. STACK AND CUT ALL 80 BLOCKS THE SAME WAY TO MAINTAIN SWIRLING EFFECT in the corners where four blocks meet.

Sashing strip cutting notes: 

I cut a 10 inch width of fabric strip and sub cut the 1.5 inch strips from that piece. 

Constructing the blocks

Center sashing strips on each side of the the block centers and sew. Press seam allowances toward the sashing strip. I make a lot of these units at one time.

Center sharks teeth triangles on each side of the center strips with sashing. Pin and sew being careful to not stretch the cut bias edge of the triangle. Press seam allowances toward the sharks teeth.  

Square up each block to 8.5 inches, being careful to maintain the diagonal center line of the block. 

Make many more blocks and lay them out on your design wall. Alternate orientation of the diagonal of each block to create the criss cross pattern. Sew it all together. 

Variations on this block:

I’m putting together fabrics for a red/orange version

Since color ways of sharks teeth are limited, try different fabric patterns for the corners that will give interesting swirly effects.

Maybe colored stripes….

Or black and white stripes…

You can see a quilt top made from a variation of this quilt block here.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Today was quite a day at work. Anytime I come back from vacation I can count on a good number of people needing my attention that first day. So today was chock full of meetings. I was in meetings from 9 am to 5:00 with a half hour break about mid way! I was exhausted by the time my day ended. I stepped away from my desk at about 5:30 and headed out for a 2.5 mile walk with my boys. We all needed it and it felt good to move my body and get some fresh air.

I wanted to get the fabrics for my new Brandon Mably Interweave quilt all cut tonight so I started pressing all those jumble fabrics…

…and then got to cutting. It’s a lot of strips and a lot of sub-cutting the strips. Oh, and counting. A lot of counting. But I got them done… all the accent strips and background pieces.

So now all I have to do it make sure I know what I’m doing and then start sewing.

I was glad that I didn’t have plans so accomplish a ton of stuff tonight as I have a bit of a headache after my hectic day. I’ve already taken some Tylenol PM and hope to be in bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

But before I left my sewing room I took a photo of the fabrics I put together Sunday before Linda left. This quilt will be a replicate of my recent blue quilt.

The polka dot fabric will be the strips along the side of each center piece.

I dummied up a few blocks to see how this will look.

If you’re looking at these photos on your phone or in email it will likely be a bit messy and they will be out of order. So here’s a screen capture that shows what I’m seeing as I type this post.

It’s definitely a different feel from the blue version. This is so saturated. So much color. It lacks the airiness of the blue quilt. Where the blue quilt feels summery and light, this version will feel dark and moody. It will be fun to see it come together.

That’s it for tonight. My boys have settled in for the night and it’s time to rest my poor head and unwind in preparation of a good night’s sleep.

I drove my friend Linda to the airport this morning. It was snowing when we left my house. When I got home the sun was actually shining.

Good grief… my street sort of look abandoned!

I’m really glad I took all day today off. It was nice to unwind, do some laundry, tidy some things up, and generally settle in after my vacation.

The house in incredibly quiet. I really enjoyed my visit with Linda. We were so lucky to get a few days of good weather. We were very productive. We bought a lot of fabric. We ate a lot of tacos. And we laughed.

When Linda was packing last night she was working on finding places in her suit case for all the fabric she bought on her visit. While doing this she counted up everything she bought — over 60 half yards of fabric, plus one five yard piece for a backing!!! That’s a total of 35 yards of fabric!!! More than enough for seven quilts!

I’m happy to say that I didn’t buy that much fabric, but I did pretty well. I think I ended up at around 15 yards of fabric purchased while she was here.

It’s a good thing I already have my next quilt in the works. Here’s an idea of what it will look like. My house is quiet, but this quilt is not!

I’ll still need to arrange how all those fabrics appear in the quilt.

Those area all Brandon Mably fabrics and are part of the Kaffe Fasssett Collective. They’re pretty crazy! In a good way! I’ve wanted to make a quilt from all Brandon fabrics for some time. And this idea just came to me the other night.

Here’s the pattern I’m making.

I’ve seen several of these made up in the last few days and there are really fun. I want to make one out of black and white fabrics with a little color soon.

I started cutting fabric for this new quilt tonight. I got all the fabric for the horizontal strips cut.

I was too tired to start cutting all the accent and background fabrics. I’ll take a couple days to get all of that done.

I still need to add the plaid borders to my Flower Baskets quilt top. I’ll get that done before I start sewing on this new quilt.

Back to work tomorrow. I’m glad it will be a short week.

Bender is helping me celebrate the ridiculous amount of fabric in this house!

We got up this morning and headed down to Molalla for Rico’s weekly sheep herding lesson. It was so gorgeous! Such a luxury to have another amazing spring day. And Rico did a lovely job working his sheep. He was in his happy place.

I took this picture of Rico a year ago today!

When we got home we grabbed some lunch and then hit my sewing room to finish up my Flower Basket quilt. It didn’t take very long but it took a little brain power to finish it.

I still have to trim those cornerstones from the edge and then add borders. But my brain hurt so much by the time we had this done I didn’t have anything left to give and didn’t want to mess it up at this late stage.

I love this corner of the quilt. I hope it’s square!

I really hate to admit this, but after two on-point quilts with sashing, doing the sashing with cornerstones in one long strip is probably the way to go. It would solve all the brain activity this quilt required… and would solve the issues I had with the Jumble Quarter Log Cabin quilt that nearly did me in.

If I ever do another on point quilt with sashing and cornerstones, I will try that method. If I ever do another on point quilt with sashing and cornerstones. If.

I want to use wider borders on the top and bottom of this quilt to make it stop being square. Just stop it! So I tossed some fabric up and I think it will work. I will probably add the width in several different cuts of the plaid so that the wonkiness of the print is minimized. I’ll give it a little thought. We may finish this up tomorrow.

After this bit of work we dug in and made the backing for Linda’s Australian Aboriginal quilt. And you know how much I LOVE making backings!

And Linda loves backings as much as I do!!! There was a little bit of swearing in that room today.

But I do love that yellow fabric. We added a strip of a lovely black print to give my long arm quilter enough fabric.

The quilt top, backing and binding fabric are all folded and packaged and will be taken to my long arm quilter tomorrow.

I had thought I would take my Aboriginal Libby quilt to have her finish, but I’m thinking I still want to trim it down. It’s just too damned big for a sofa quilt. We will look at it tomorrow and see how would look with some inches removed from the perimeter. I can just picture myself wrestling with it as I try to get off my sofa. Too much fabric!!!

It’s raining a little tonight. We’re thinking we will have take out tacos one more time for dinner tomorrow as our swan song. Linda heads home on Monday.

We are so happy we had two gorgeous days this weekend.

We did it! We made it to the coast today and it was the most perfect day. And tonight we’re both exhausted. So tonight’s mostly photos.

We left my house around 10:30. That put in Cannon Beach, Oregon, around 12:15. The first thing we did was stop at the public restrooms, because, well…

Then we stopped at Center Diamond quilt store where we were warmly welcomed by Julie and her crew. I always stop at this shop when I spend a day at the coast. They’ve always had a really wonderful selection of batiks.

And over the last few years they’ve been growing their selection of both Kaffe Fassett Fabrics…

… and Australian Aboriginal fabrics.

Plus, they have a ton of other fabric too! It’s a great little shop and if you’re ever on the northern Oregon coast you should definitely stop in.

I did buy some Aboriginal fabrics that are new and not in my stash, plus a few gray batiks and one piece of pickleball fabric. And… one really gorgeous green batik.

I used to buy a lot of batiks but haven’t purchased many since the pandemic started. This green piece just spoke to me!

Then it was time to hit the beach!

Julie had mentioned on a previous visit that her neighborhood is a great place to park and access the southern part of the beach. So I asked her about it today and she gave me great directions that put us almost right on the beach. This was great today because we arrived just a little after high tide and my regular beach is not a good place to be at high tide.

So we got the boys and ourselves onto the beach and it felt so good… for all of us!

The weather was absolutely perfect. It can always be cold and blustery on the Oregon coast, but it was almost shirt sleeve weather today and the sun was so gorgeous after all the rain and clouds we’ve had.

In the center of that photo is Haystack Rock. It’s pretty iconic and you’ve probably seen images of it many times.

My boys were so happy to be on the beach. If I walk a mile, I’m sure they must run six or seven miles!

They’re great because they go into the water but they’re pretty smart about it. They never go in too deep. I don’t have to worry about them riding the currents to Hawaii!

OMG! They love the beach so much!!!

After about an hour on the beach we headed back to the car and made our way south to wheeler, Oregon.

On the way we parked by the beach in Manzanita to eat the lunch brought along. Nothing like lunch in the car with a view!

There used to be a lovely little fabric store in Wheeler but it closed a few years ago. The staff at Center Diamond recommended a little art/gift shop there so we decided to take the 15 mile drive to check it out. It was a nice side trip. And on the way back we stopped in Nehalem and bought some ice cream, then headed back to Manzanita to eat it at the same spot.

Then we were headed back north to my old faithful Arcadia Beach, just south of Cannon Beach. We hit the beach around 4:00.

Here’s way too many photos of that 1.5 hours on the beach…

Bender is an expert poser. He would sit on that rock all day long and let me take his photo.

Rico is not as happy to have his photo taken. In fact, it’s difficult to get a photo of him on the beach where he isn’t looking away from he camera wanting to run! I was a little surprised I was able to get this one!

And this one.

The sunlight on the water was magical!

Here’s my friend Linda in the only photo of her she will allow me to post here.

Waiting for me to tell them to run.

Becoming an expert level poser in his own right.

We lingered in the parking lot and watched the sun set.

Then the 1.5 hour drive home in the dark through the coast mountain range. We’re exhausted and so happy we had such a perfect day!

Tomorrow we’ll head down to Molalla for Rico’s sheep herding lesson. Then home to finish my Flower Baskets quilt and make a backing for Linda’s Aboriginal quilt. We’re meeting my long arm quilter on Sunday! I might also try to get the backing for my Aboriginal Libby quilt done and drop it off as well.

Our weather forecast a week ago said we were supposed to have all kinds of nice weather while my friend was here. But it’s been pretty wet and completely cloudy. Until today.

The sun came out today. It was glorious! I played pickleball in the sun this morning. And I did this to my finger…

It’s even bluer now than when I took that photo. It’s no heroic pickleball injury. I got it stuck in the gate as I was trying to walk through! I got my freaking finger stuck in the damned gate!!!

When I got back from pickleball my friend convinced me that I needed to call the local quilt store up in Battle Ground that carries a good selection of KFC fabrics to see if they had the dark border fabric I needed to finish my quilt top. She shared my concern that if we didn’t finish it while she was here it would languish in my sewing room for many months. So I called and she had the fabric in stock. (Sorry, they don’t have a website.)

So we were quickly on our way to get the fabric that would insure a finish. And, of course, I didn’t just buy the fabric I needed. I bought some fabric to feed an idea I’ve been having.

Hmmm… I’m liking where this idea is going. Maybe a reddish version of my recent blue quilt.

Visiting this fabric store put us very close to a nice field that ‘s perfect for a dog run so we stopped by and let Bender and Rico stretch their legs. It was so glorious!

It seems like forever since we’ve seen the sun! Bender approved!

And so did Rico.

When my dogs were completely exhausted it felt like time for tacos and I remembered a great taco place in Vancouver, WA, just down the road from this field. So we made our way to Little Conejo and ate some of the best tacos I’ve had in a long time, accompanied by some chips, salsa and guacamole.

So much porky goodness! I can’t stop thinking about how good these tacos were! And now I’m thinking about it again…so yummy! Tacos are really the perfect food!

Then we started out the long, rush hour drive back home. It was quite a huff. Once we got home we took some time to unwind then headed back into my sewing room to start putting all those blocks together to get that quilt top done.

If you remember the last time I made an on point quilt that had sashed blocks, I made quite a mess for myself to dig my way out of. It was my starburst jumble quilt. Here’s one of the last blog posts about how I had to construct that quilt. The problems were all caused because I just started sewing sashing to blocks without consideration for how the rows of blocks would go together.

As we worked on my new quilt top today I could see so clearly what I had done wrong with my Starburst Jumble quilt. And I saw clearly how to avoid the same issues.

It meant figuring out diagonal row by diagonal row how to apply the sashing to the block, or to the setting triangle… all to make each row go together nicely.

I had to add borders and sashing with cornerstones to some of the setting triangles… but not to all of them!

And then we just added piece by piece to get each row put together…

And now I’m looking at that photo and thinking something’s definitely wrong. I’ll have to fix it tomorrow. Dammit! See that blue polka dot cornerstone sticking out on the left side? Yeah. That’s gonna be a problem.

I did the pinning, pressing and organizing… and maybe not quite enough organizing!

… and Linda did the sewing…

We managed to get all but the last three, small, diagonal rows un-puzzled and sewn together. I was so tired at that point that I told Linda we needed to stop before we made a huge mess! Thank goodness the mess I made was only a small one!

It went really smoothly this evening. It’s so nice to have help! I was able to concentrate on keeping everything straight and verifying that what we were doing was correct. We didn’t make one mistake! If we’re not completely exhausted, we’ll finish this up tomorrow evening.

When we were done for the evening I turned my LED desk lamp onto the quilt top and was amazed at how some of the fabrics glowed under it.

OMG! that crazy plaid!!! It’s so good!

Oh… we are definitely heading to the coast tomorrow! It looks like an absolutely gorgeous day. Low tide could be at a more convenient time, but we’ll make due.

While we’re at the coast we’ll stop at Center Diamond, a great little quilt shop in Cannon Beach. I never make the trip to the coast and skip a visit.

My boys are going to be so excited when the realize where we are tomorrow!

It poured a lot of the day today. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got an inch of rain. My friend commented that this is the first time she’s visited when it’s rained this much. And then we remembered that she was here last year during a snow storm that shut Portland down for four days!

So, what did we do today? After breakfast we hit my sewing room and made the sashing and cornerstones for the dark Flower Baskets quilt we started yesterday.

That plaid is crazy fantastic!!! When I first saw it I had a hard time imagining how you would use it. And now I want to use it in everything!

We got the sashing and cornerstones put on these blocks, got them all pressed and up on the design wall pretty quickly.

As we were going to start adding the setting triangles it was obvious that I wasn’t going to have enough of the dark border fabric to finish this quilt. So we have almost reached a stopping point.

Each setting triangle is bordered in the dark fabric.

I’ve ordered more fabric but it won’t be here until next week. We have enough to finish about half the setting triangles so we have a little more work we can get done but we won’t be finishing this quilt top while my friend is here.

When we reached this point in this quilt the rain had stopped so we hurried up and took my boys and ourselves for a nice 1.7 mile walk. We lucked out and stayed dry the entire time.

My friend decided to go ahead and make the backing for her Australian Aboriginal quilt we finished yesterday. So we took another trip to Pioneer Quilts in Milwaukie, Oregon, this afternoon and she picked out this lovely yellow Aboriginal fabric for the backing and the black and white for the binding.

We’re going to head over to my long arm quilter on Sunday to deliver this quilt. I guess I’ll go ahead and make the backing for my Aboriginal Libby quilt that we finished when my friend got here on Friday and have that quilted too. So we have a couple of backings to make in the next few days. Oh goody. Backings…

After we hit the fabric store we high tailed it over to my hairdresser for haircuts. Linda went first and she threatened me with my life if I shared a photo of her here. So you’ll just have to imagine what she looks like with five inches less length to her pony tail.

I am not afraid to share a photo of myself. I actually went a lot shorter this time. I probably lost five or six inches but I gained a lot of curl! It feels great to have my hair a little more under control.

It was 7:00 when we got home so I hurried and got our salmon on the grill, whipped up a salad and were sitting down to dinner in about 20 minutes. It was a simple dinner but really good.

We decided not to go to the coast tomorrow. The weather looks like it will be sunny on Friday so a really good day to be on the beach. So our plan is to get cracking on these backings tomorrow and take a leisurely day to the coast Friday.

I’m thinking we might be able to whip up another quilt quilt this weekend. Maybe a KFC disappearing four patch. Stay tuned!

We checked the weather this morning and decided to wait for a better day to head to the coast.

So instead we sat in traffic as we did a few different things. First, I wanted to get a new headlamp for my car. My left light has been out for a couple weeks. This is a bad time to be without light and I really dreaded the drive back from the coast in the dark with only one headlight.

Traffic was a mess. There is construction literally EVERYWHERE around here. There were a couple spots where we sat for ten minutes waiting for the flagger to flip that sign from STOP to SLOW.

And while we were out and about in terrible traffic we decided to make a trip to Costco to grab some salmon to cook tomorrow night. Costco was a madhouse too.

What were we thinking??? But we got done!

Once we got home we grabbed some lunch then dug in to finish my friend’s Australian Aboriginal quilt, We only had four rows to sew together and we had it done lickity split. And we were done soon enough to get a photo outside before it got dark.

And, of course, this obligatory photo…

There was a nice breeze and it was fun to see the flimsy blowing in the wind.

I’m loving our tag team quilting. Again today I did all the pinning and my friend did all the sewing. We switched off on the pressing.

This really went together beautifully.

Several people have asked me about the “gray” fabric for the sashing. It’s actually a black and white fabric that reads gray.

It’s an M&S Textiles design called Water Hole. it’s a really fantastic fabric!

We treated ourselves to a take out dinner of tacos again tonight — after all, it is taco Tuesday! It’s so nice to not have to prepare a meal. I wonder if we’ll be able to force ourselves to actually cook some salmon and prepare a salad tomorrow night.

After our taco dinner we went back into my sewing room to start working on the blocks for my next quilt. It’s called Flower Baskets from Kaffe’s Quilts By the Sea book. I had cut the blocks for this several weeks ago. Check out this blog post for a refresher on this new project.

The first thing to be done was to cut the border strips for the blocks. Once that was done I sat down at the machine and started chain piecing.

This goes really fast when your work area and materials are all set up efficiently. It didn’t take long for us to have the border strips attached to all the blocks for this quilt.

That dark border fabric really does some magic things to this big blocks of prints. I mean, look at this!

And it really makes the bright colors in the blocks pop!

Then the blocks went upon the design wall. They still need the sashing and cornerstones but I wanted to get a glimpse of what this will look like.

The pattern for this quilt makes a queen size quilt. I’m making a throw size so have had to adjust and wing it a bit. This will end up being around 72 inches square so I’ll add some larger borders on the top and bottom to make it a rectangle. I don’t like square quilts unless it’s for a queen bed.

Here’s the blocks with the sashing and cornerstone fabric on the design wall.

This will look a lot different when the bright colors of the sashing and cornerstones are in place.

I’m running a little low on the dark border fabric. I’m being very efficient and careful hoping we can finish this top this week. It’s going to be close but I’m feeling optimistic that I’ll have just enough!

Here’s a little eye candy.

And more…

and a couple more…

We’re going to try to finish this tomorrow. We may just be able to do it! It’s supposed to be a wet day so it’s a good time to hunker down and get some stuff done.

We’re both going to go and get hair cuts tomorrow afternoon. I REALLY need a good hair cut. it’s been driving me crazy a little. I’m sure it’s going to feel really good to have it done.

We’re thinking Thursday might be the day to head for the coast. We’ll play it by ear and be ready to adjust if necessary.

My friend and I decided to head out to McMinnville, Oregon, today to visit Boersma’s Sewing Center. They sell and service sewing machines and have a lovely quilt shop. I wish I had taken photos because they have a TON of quilts displayed in the store and in their windows that provide all kinds of ideas for upcoming projects. I love quilt stores that are pretty and give you all kinds of ideas and inspiration.

I only bought a few light gray batiks and a couple of Australian Aboriginal prints to replace some that I used recently. My friend bought a lot more fabric than I did! She’s been out-pacing me in the fabric buying frenzy this visit.

I did buy a pattern for a leaf quilt.

I had seen one very similar to this recently that was made from bright Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics on an indigo background and I just loved it. But that pattern requires a $30 special ruler to make the blocks. The pattern I bought today has paper piecing templates and doesn’t require a ruler. I will probably use the paper piecing method to make blocks but will arrange them in a looser manner than in this pattern. This feels a little tight and restricted. The other one feels more airy and has more movement. So if I ever actually do make this quilt I will mix it up and not follow the pattern exactly to get the look and feel that I like.

As we were leaving town to head back to Portland we stopped at a convenience store and bought some potato chips like we always do. Then we hit the back roads and wandered our way back home through beautiful rolling hills dotted with farms, wineries and small towns.

Once we got home we set a timer for 30 minutes to be lazy and then we forced ourselves to get our butts moving and took my boys out for a nice walk. They had been in the car during our trip to McMinnville so were very happy to stretch their legs and get some fresh air.

After a dinner of some home made chili verde we dug in and started sewing the rows of my friend’s quilt together.

The first thing we had to do was put the sashing onto the bottom row blocks. You can check out this blog post to see how we did that.

We sort of switched rolls this evening and I did all the pinning and most of the pressing and my friend sewed.

I tried to keep everything in the right order as I pinned.

Here’s Linda pressing two completed rows.

Once we got the sashing pieces sewn onto the bottom row this went really fast. And in no time we had four rows of blocks all sewn together and pressed.

Once this completed section was back up on the design wall we felt pretty good with finishing half the top and stopped there for the evening.

I just love the way blocks look when they’re sewn together. So orderly, so crisp, just lovely!

So that leaves just four rows for us to finish tomorrow. I’m thinking we might dig in and finish this quilt top first thing tomorrow. Then maybe we’ll find an adventure for the day.

Or…

We were just looking at the weather and the tides and think we might actually head to the coast tomorrow. We had decided to go later this week because of the weather, but now the weather tomorrow looks like it’s going to be good… so much indecision. We will decide tomorrow morning if we’re going to the coast or if we’ll go later this week.

Bender and Rico are going to be so excited to have a visit to the beach!!! Don’t tell them because they will be so hard to live with if. we end up not going!