Assorted deadlines on Slow Sunday Stitching...

Hello all ... Fall is here... we've had warm afternoons and cold mornings and sunshine and rain... and I'm okay with all of that... the leaves are turning all my favorite colors... yellow, gold, orange, red... such a feast for the eyes... and since I don't have to rake the leaves (I have a great lawn care guy that will take care of them) I am enjoying the change of the season immensely...

Now I've talked about deadlines I've given myself for certain projects... have a Christmas quilt top that needs to be off to the long arm quilter the beginning of November... have the Year of Celebrations  monthly cross stitch design I want finished before November 1... and I have 300+ daffodil/hyacinth/allium bulbs to get into the ground along with cleaning out the flower beds... well I made significant progress on several of these projects...

First, my Christmas Quilty Stars is complete except for the borders... had a bit of a problem... when I went to do the sashings I whacked off a 16" piece ... which then made the resulting yardage too short to do continuous borders....arghhh!!!  I was about 20 minutes into putting the sashing on when this occurred to me... and then I promptly put a hole in one of the blocks... things weren't looking good... so I dug down deep and fixed the rip and boldly moved forward....No I didn't ... I threw the block on the ironing board, unplugged the iron, turned the lights off and went out to dinner... I came to my senses the next day and returned to the scene of the accident... okay... gonna need more fabric... and the store I purchased it from had no more... a search of the internet found me yardage at a shop in Maine... free shipping... and a plea to the owner had the fabric in the mail the next morning... it arrived at my house yesterday afternoon so I'm back in business... in the meantime I fixed the block with the hole, cut out a bajillion, okay perhaps it was more like 80 1.5" squares for the star points and assembled the top. Ta dah!!!

I LOVE how the little star cornerstones look... but they take quite a while to sew together... but I think they are worth it... here are close ups...

I'm hoping that Monday will give me time to get the borders on and sew the back together and get this to the post office... my self- imposed deadline for this project was the first week of November so I should beat it by several days... yeah me!!

And the cross stitch project ...November from the Hands on Designs A Year of Celebrations is stitched...

 32 ct linen... my pick of DMC flosses... left over painted linen from something I did last year... glad I saved it... now to get it FFO'd before Friday... I think that is very doable...yeah me again!!

I also finished the Prairie Schooler for November...

it needs to be FFO'd too... along with a couple of other pieces... like this Prairie Schooler turkey...

 He still needs legs and a border and there's another leaf too... I want to get the Halloween stuff put away next weekend and the Thanksgiving/Fall stuff rearranged... more self imposed deadlines...

As for all those flower bulbs... they are still in bags in the garage... it rained yesterday... A LOT ... so the ground should be softer... and I bought an auger that attaches to a drill to facilitate the process... I've pencilled this job in for Wednesday... maybe... depends on the weather ... it may rain some more... too early to know for sure... I'm thinking this project has a flexible deadline... you can plant bulbs late... as long as you can get them in the ground... I feel like I'm waaay behind on the yard work but I still have marigolds/zinnias/dahlias blooming ... and I just can't bring myself to yank them out of the ground yet...

And the yard work has taken a back seat to sewing at the moment...not sure what has gotten into me but I've spent a ton of time with my Juki... I finished Fall Fizz, got a  pretty back for it at my local quilt shop and put it in the mail...

I just took a quick pic of this before I boxed it up... not a great photo but you get the idea...

And I spend waaaayyy too much time looking at Instagram... but I find such cool projects... this one is called Enchanted Stars ...you can find the pattern here... and some versions of the pattern here... and it  just enchanted me... and I had a layer cake and a charm pack of Crystal Manning's Nova that has been waiting for the perfect pattern ...and I think this is it...

those stars went together quickly...  the grunge is Ginger Ale...  here's a better pic of the true color of this grunge which my current favorite yellow/gold background... it won't take much time to get this off the design wall and sewn together...

And if that wasn't enough I stumbled upon this project... its called Meet in the Middle and you can see it here...

 it is a free pattern which you can find here...  well you can do this with either a jelly roll or a layer cake... I have plenty of both... but I got to thinking that if a collection had a directional print, it would be sideways in this pattern if you used a jelly roll, but it it would be vertical if you used a layer cake... and my OCD wouldn't like little Christmas trees or Santas or ornaments on their sides... so I'm using a layer cake... Kringle & Claus from Basic Grey... which you can see here...

I've got the half the strips sewn...

and I think I have enough of a white-ish Grunge with a light green splotch in my stash...I do LOVE the Christmas collections from Basic Grey... this will make the 3rd Christmas quilt I've made using their fabrics and I have several more  vintage layer cakes and jelly rolls from Basic Grey that are waiting for their turn to escape from their plastic bins... I'm just looking for more easy patterns...

So all in all another very productive week that I hadn't anticipated... seems like when I think the week will be too busy to sew, I do find the time... and when I think a week will have a lot of sewing time it doesn't work out that way...oh well... I do know that when I spend less time online there is more time to do lots of other things... but the lure of blogs and Instagram is strong... very strong...

Okay - I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... and allow myself  a lttle screen time to see what everyone else is up to... and after that a little time with my sewing machine... already did a family brunch so there is no big dinner to fix... want to go for a walk... the sun is shining and the temperature is 60 degrees... perfect weather in my world.

Hope you all have a great week ahead... and a Happy Halloween... at this time they are forecasting miserable weather for us... darn it... rain and cold...yuck... I haven't bought any candy yet as I purchase based on the weather... with good weather I'll get tons of kids... last year it rained too... I ended up taking one of the giant bags of candy back to Costco as I knew I'd eat the whole thing if it stayed in the house... don't need that kind of temptation...

take care -
happy stitching-
carol fun