My customer Charmaine regularly brings me baby quilts to complete, usually 2-3 at a time.  This time it was 2 simple Simple Irish Chain/Nine Patch quilts in Pink and Gray.

The first one was a lighter Pink.

 And the 2nd one was much more of a Hot Pink.

 She brought me one long backing and batting  for both so I was able to load the 2nd one right after the first.

 The outside lighting was a bit off that day so these pictures don't show their true colors but they turned out adorable.

 The quilting just finishes off the simple pattern so well.

 The Fantastico variegated Pink thread that I used on both was just right.

 Ahhh...the pretty texture the quilting creates.

 I had recently purchased a couple of new hearth themed pantos and she chose the Hearts Fancy one for both of these quilts. 

The backing is this adorable Pink and Gray Elephant print.  I used Glide Pink Lemonade thread in the bobbin.

Quilting both of these adorable baby quilts was fun.

Life is always unpredictable.  Who knew when I wrote my last post 6 weeks ago that we'd be where we are now.  Certainly not me. As you might imagine, when this all started I wrote a list of house projects to work on and of course most of them are still on the list.  They'll get done, in time.

Homeschooling has been the biggest time suck of all.  DD's teacher started the remote learning by assigning a week's worth of work every single day.  Thankfully that problem was dealt with around the beginning of week 3 but it took tons of extra time to get the missed assignments caught up.

Like hundreds of other quilters around the country, I've been making masks.  I started making the rectangular type but I've found that I much prefer the style shown on the right.  They do take  a little more time to cut out the pieces but the fit is so much better.  FYI....in case you aren't aware, Candice West of Barn Catz Studio and Deborah Levy Art teamed up and created a template for this style.  They are really inexpensive and make the process go that much quicker.  If you are making the contour style and don't have a set of the templates, head on over to order yours today.

 I've been keeping pretty busy with lots of other activities too like spearheading and collecting over 350 cards made by local Girl Scout troops for one of the senior residences.

 I made more masks.

 I painted dear daughter's room.  She's been wanting an update for a while and this was as good as a time as any to get it done.  We've added 3 new pieces of furniture and are now waiting on a few accessories to arrive to finish it.  I'll share the before and after pictures once it's all done.

 At the end of last week I made the final blocks needed for the last pieced border for my Choose Your Own Adventure Quilt from Moda's summer 2018 quilt along.  I'll start piecing the blocks together this week, depending on how my back feels.  With all the mask making I've been having problems with my upper back, between my shoulder blades, so sewing time is carefully limited.

 I helped dear daughter finish her Giant Paper Dahlia which was an activity for the Girl Scout Flowers badge that my troop is working on.

 I made even more masks, these are kids size for a local shelter's day care program.  I haven't taken pictures of all the masks I've made but I've completed 130 so far.  If my back wasn't being such a pain (literally) I would have completed more. Last fall I received a lot of fabric from a fellow Girl Scout leader who's mom passed away last year and that's what I've been utilizing for the masks.  I can't think of a more perfect way to honor her mother than by using her fabric to do good.

Of course I'm also finding ways to keep the girls in my troop engaged during this time and we've started weekly Zoom meetings to check in, chat, play games and have some good laughs, which we all certainly can use right now.  Our cookie season is on hold as we were due to pick up our initial order the weekend after this all began.  We will have a much briefer cookie season at some point as they are sitting in the warehouse and they do have to get delivered and sold, but right now no one knows when that time will come.  

I still have some customer quilts which were completed in recent months to share and I have a few new ones here to get quilted so stay tuned.

I don't think that most blogger who finds that it's been multiple months since they last posted really intended that.  I certainly didn't.  In my case, life just got crazy busy and I didn't have the motivation to sew much.

There were some customer quilts that were completed in recent months and I'll be sharing photos of those in upcoming posts.  The biggest thing for me is that my other commitments have eased up a bit so I've gotten back into my studio.  After a day cleaning, reorganizing a little and generally sorting through the stuff that just got dumped in there over the past months, I felt a renewed energy to get back to the craft that brings me so much joy.

The itch to start a new project was strong but I resisted and instead decided to get back to another special quilt and get it finished.  This is where I left off at the end of July 2018 with Moda's Choose Your Own Adventure Quilt Along.

My good friend Susan's 2nd daughter Samantha get married recently (the 1st daughter Liz was  married a year ago) and of course another wedding quilt was created.  Sam's style is more subdued than her older sister's and she requested an all gray and white quilt.  This is the result.

All that pretty texture just danced across the top.

Susan again chose the Hubby Love panto but she wanted the quilting to show a bit so she requested Glide Medium Gray thread for the top.  So Fine 408 Silver was used on the back.

It's tough to tell from this picture but the backing is a white tone on tone print.

Given that this wedding was a mere 9 months after her sister's wedding, Susan had to work fast to get this done on time and she did a fabulous job.  I know that Sam and her new husband will cherish it for many years to come.

Susan is busy working on another quilt that will be ready to be quilted soon..... her oldest daughter Liz recently made her a grandma by giving birth to a baby boy.  I know that Susan is over the moon thrilled and I can't wait to see what she created for the precious little one.

When someone a quilter knows is diagnosed with a serious illness, that quilter gets to work immediately to make a quilt to comfort them over the coming days, weeks, months and hopefully years.  That's exactly what I did for my husband's friend, fellow firefighter and coworker Pete when we heard the news early this year of his cancer diagnoses.  This is:

Courage Under Fire