A Month of New Starts

I am late on my June UFO updates mainly because I had nothing to share - at least not for the APQ and Patchwork Times UFOs.  I spent most of my sewing time in May binding quilts and putting sleeves on them for our guild's quilt show.  I finally finished and returned to "fun" stitching last weekend. One of these years I am going to learn not to leave binding until the last minute!

I spent the first weekend of June in my very favorite place - Wooly Woolens (Janice Johnson's).  A group of ladies from Arkansas joined us this year and we had a fantastic time.  The food was incredible as always and I am definitely going to use one of the dessert recipes the next time I host bee.

Here's Leah hard at work on her rug.  See the cabinet of wool behind her? Janice said she found it on a recent trip. It looks so good filled with wool!

Another picture of the studio with Janice busy teaching.

And a few pictures of my new rug - another one that is a little too long to photograph easily:

I love my little sheep so much that I might have to replace the cow in the pattern with another sheep. It's a fun pattern with a lot of different things to hook.  I've made a little more progress on it since I returned home, mostly hooking background since I hate to leave it until the end.

Below is my Celtic Solstace quilt, finally finished, hanging in our quilt show.

And Winter Stars - not counting this one finished yet, though.  As I was binding it for the show I noticed that the end design on about three rows of quilting had tension issues so I plan to take them out and try to re-quilt in those spaces before crossing it off my list and giving it to my daughter.

I had two other quilts in the show, my Farmhouse and My Garden Album quilts. I was really surprised that one of them won a ribbon - I definitely didn't expect that!

June 7th was like Christmas at my house - my first shipment of the Primitive Gatherings Summer Block of the Week arrived in the mail.

I couldn't wait to get started!  There's tons of piecing in this one, both in the wool and the pieced projects. Lisa calls for starching all of your fabrics before you begin and I am starting to believe that it helps with piecing accuracy (still a little reluctant to completely but in as it is a lot of extra work!). I came up with a better system for starching - I was previously laying my charm squares on a towel on the floor and spraying them. An old coated wire shelf balanced over the tub works really well - they dry super fast and the overspray can be rinsed down the drain.

I filled the rack four times just to starch the fabrics for the first week. There is a lot of fabric in these kits!

I made a decent start on week one. Neither of the wool blocks are stitched yet.  The nine patches are part of the pieced version. I also prepped a bunch of hexies for the EPP project. I am only about half way done with the week one prep and already went through a whole glue pen.  I definitely need to pick up more refills at the KC show next weekend.

I have also managed to keep up fairly well with the Triangle Gatherings blocks. The last bunch of HSTs I prepped were from a Miniature Gatherings charm pack and are all blacks and browns so not all that exciting.

I have one more block to make to catch up completely but have to prep more squares.  I starched up a bunch of reds, greens and blues this weekend to add more color.

I'm off to the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival this weekend.  My goal is to avoid picking up any more new projects!