City Sampler Quilt Top

The last two sides of the City Sampler got their borders. So now it is an official Quilt Top, instead of a Quilt Top In Progress. Woot!

It took quite a bit of pinning along those long sides, but it was worth it and I got it done.

This may be the biggest quilt I've ever made! It measures: 110" x  110"!  I hope that the long-armer will be up for it and it'll fit on their machine.

Now I really have to think about how I want this quilted...Oh, and I have to make a back and binding for it too.
 

Stars & Flowers

 

Here are all the blocks I've been making lately. All 12.5" square.

The solids really work in this one well.

This is an older print, but it's A) The Right Color B) Not Too Contrasty. I think it works just fine. You can really see that the outside light color is a pale peach in this photo. Not white or off-white.

This might be my favorite print I used in this block, a little more current.

This one is cool too, although the directionality maybe doesn't work out too well when doing the 2 at a time HSTs.

Of course this picture has them in the wrong placement, but oh well, you probably get the idea. 

City Borders

The City Sampler was hanging up on the design wall and I decided it was time to actually put on the borders. All the grey pieces were cut out and the print rectangle borders were ready too.

It is a really huge quilt, a bit hard to manage. It made me clean up the sewing table area so I had enough space and wasn't knocking everything onto the floor.

I really like how this is looking! 

Each corner is going to have one of these long rectangles of the black and white polka dot fabric going out to the edge of the quilt top.

I think it looks good, and it's making the quilt into a size big enough to work well on our bed.

So that's the top and left side border done, now to get the other two on to complete the quilt top.

Un-Mixed Friendship

 

I was laying out possibilities for the Friendship Stars that I'm making and think that I like them better un-mixed up. This one of all solids is quite nice, very clear.

Little paws are staying away as I'm sewing all the blocks strips together. He does like to observe though, especially when I'm using the steam iron. All that hissing is rather provocative I suppose. That was a whole lot of pressing seams open happening for this project.

After the pressing and sorting comes the pinning.

Ready to assemble now.

Wandering Wednesday: Sacramento Family

 

We had a long day of driving on Saturday, over bridges, through several cities to get to my Uncle Bill's 80th birthday party. This is the Carquinez Bridge and some very nice cloud cover. We were glad the party wasn't held a couple weeks ago when it was so hot. We haven't seen the Sacramento branch of the family in a while so it was a greatly anticipated event.

We pulled up a bit late as the highway construction delayed it. Thankfully I happened to see my Uncle getting out of his car in front of my cousin's house so we went around the block and waited. We were glad we didn't' ruin the surprise. Right when we got there, my cousin Angel wrangled almost all of us for a group picture, there were several normal ones and then the regulation silly one too of course. 

Here's why I noticed Uncle Bill, check out those colorful pony tales! He and my aunt have been using temporary hair dye of various colors for a while now and they both love all the smiles and comments they get from people. They are truly fun and unique people that have always been wonderful to spend time with.

Bill has always been into trains, so he got a train cake that he was very excited about. That's my aunt Vincie in the foreground, Uncle Bill, and my Dad watching the cake action, with my daughter Zoe next to him.

The napkins were super cute! And thankfully not related to that particular current political message.

As night fell the cool backyard lights came on. There's my cousin Dana on the left, cousin Maya, aunt Vincie, my mom, and Maya's husband Lee. I liked Lee's PeeChee shirt a whole lot! We decide he needed a Blue Book one, or maybe even a ScanTron one to fill out the set.

Then things got wild, no just bad camera handling.

The younger cousin generation got wrangled to varying degrees of displeasure for a picture with the birthday dude (so said his sash!). My two kids are on the right hand side.

Then it was all the way to Oakland where we dropped off our DD at her place. This is a picture of some interesting graffiti, lights and underpass. What a fun day, mostly spent in the car, but even that was fun because we got to spend time with DD. Totally worth the drive, I'm really glad we have such good, interesting people in our extended family to spend time with.

Squaring and Scaring

Pressing opening all those seams from the HSTs I made yesterday.

And then it was time to square them all up and also time for Scare Up The Vote, a horror community fundraising call for Harris/Waltz. Amazing stuff.  I really enjoyed watching the whole thing.

Getting to hear my fave, Stephen King discuss horror movies and books and the importance of the election with his son, Joe Hill was a great way to get all the trimming done. I'm now looking at the Go Kamala Harris website to see what else I can do.

 

More Friendship

 

Cut out some more fabric in different cheery colors for more Friendship Stars.

Woo, those need ironing.

Ironed, marked, pinned, ready to sew into HST's.

And that's where I'm stopping before I make any mistakes.