Productive weekend :-)

WOW - what a crafting weekend I had! :-) And most of it quilting. How about that for a change. I made it a goal last week that I would find some time to work on a couple of outstanding quilting projects - namely, my dog bed quilt and it's matching bed throw for me. Well I managed to complete the dog bed top! And complete the insert for the bed. I made the insert out of pillow ticking because the plan is to stuff it with down and feathers. :-) Nothing is too good for my pugs. :-) It's larger than I first planned coming in at 42 inches. Oh and it's square! At first the plan had been to make a round bed but the quilt pattern I used looked better square. I also was thinking to send it out to be quilted so it would match the throw but I want it done fast and right now my favorite quilter has an eight week waiting list for quilting so I'll do it myself. It won't be as pretty but at least it will be done - at least some time this year. ;-)

Part two of the weekend goal had been to finish the matching bed throw but I found when I was done with the dog bed, I was too crabby to take the time and care to do a good job in joining the blocks into rows so I just pinned everything together (mostly because I had it all laying out to select the block placement) in preparation of joining the blocks into rows. One good Saturday and it will be finished also. I'm a little disappointed in the overall color with the bed quilt - it's really reading RED. I was hoping it would be a little more on the tan/cream/brown side but the red really just took over. I love red but I'm not really a red person. I'll have to tone it down by matching it with a lots of tan and cream accessories.

On Sunday I wanted to continue piecing but I didn't really want to work on my new quilt so I took a look through my stash of unfinished projects. What good quilter doesn't have a stash of unfinished projects?? lol! To my amazement what caught my eye was the very first quilt I learned to rotary cut and piece on back in 1992. I did the twelve blocks to learn what was for me, a new technique. You can tell from looking at the colors that I had no clue about color and patterns. It's all lights and dark with no patterns. And the colors are so 90's. But I still love it and hung onto it because I felt that I should finish my very first rotary quilt project. Every so often over the years, I would pull it out and look at the blocks. Yesterday I pulled it out of it's box and was just driven to complete the top. It took all day but it's finally finished. I think I'll quilt this one myself also. It's very basic and all straight line quilting will look great after it's finished - newbie mistakes and all - boy are some of my points off! lol! But I think it's important to show how far I've come in the past 15 years. :-)

I also found time to work on my Village - block three. I'm about a third of the way with the last block. My Village goal for the weekend was to finish up the sign and everything above it. Tonight I'll start work on the building itself.

Here is my progress on Awake the Dawning Day. I'm tempted to just finish it up by working on it at night but the month is half over and I still have a ton to go on the Village and no matter what I want to finish that this month. So it will stay my train project until it's finished - hopefully this week.