A Few Finishes

I haven't posted in a long time - I missed the entire month of May!  I have a good excuse....binding.  I spent almost all of my sewing time over the past month binding two queen-sized quilts for the show. The quilt that was supposed to be my fourth entry didn't make it back from the quilter in time (I think it should be here this week). While I was a little disappointed, I have to admit that by the time I finished binding quilt number three and got sleeves on all of them I was actually relieved that the other one didn't make it!  So far this year I have sewn a little over 96 ft of binding.

All three of these quilts were on my UFO list for this year. First up is Easy Street, the Bonnie Hunter mystery from 2012:

It's so hard to get decent pictures of these monster-sized quilts!  Even with them hanging at the show I had to take them at odd angles. I think I need to invest in a quilt display rack just for pictures!  My second quilt in the show was my Hunter's Star. My daughter has claimed this quilt so it will be heading to Kansas City in a week or so.

Last but not least is my LeMoyne Star quilt. This one is my favorite of the three. It was quilted by Jane Hair - she did a wonderful job.  The blocks in this quilt are all hand-pieced.  

I did manage to spend a little time at my machine last month in between binding sessions and finished piecing the spool quilt I started in one of my classes with Edyta.  

The center went together very quickly, but the applique border will take forever to finish. There are a lot of pieces!  Edyta's finishing kit for the border is almost too pretty to disturb.

Sorry about the glare from the plastic bag - but this is one side of the roll. There are beautiful blues and reds on the other side. We had the option of choosing her Silhouettes (laser cut pre-fused applique shapes) for the border and while that would certainly be much faster, I much prefer needle-turning to machine stitching so this top is destined to be a UFO for a long time. 

It's a relief to have the show over and not have any deadlines hanging over my head (quilt-related, anyway).  I am not sure what I machine project I am going to work on next. I am thinking that I need to focus on doing smaller quilts for the next show - having to sew on sleeves after all that binding adds insult to injury!

As far as other new projects are concerned, I did agree to do another BOM for the guild. This year's project is a Nancy Page pattern that I have wanted to do for a long time. It's called Laurel Wreath and we will be doing the five birds and four of the flowers. We're going to stick with just the motifs for guild as the laurel wreath part of the pattern isn't supposed to be added until the blocks are sewn together.  Actually, looking at the original pattern, I'm not convinced that the designer ever actually made the quilt.  The pattern calls for vines to trail off the top and bottom of each block and then supposedly line up to make a continuous curve when the blocks are sewn together. Talk about difficult!  Here's the first block:

I am also really hoping that my Primitive Gatherings Summer BOW shows up today. The wait is killing me!  I am considering taking a half day of vacation today if it shows up. I can't wait to get started!