Whirlwind Week!

The past week has been a whirlwind of stitching and quilt guild events. 

I finished both of my Tinkerbell paper pieced blocks on Friday.  Can you see my 'Oops!' in each block?  I didn't see it until I took the picture.  Guess what, the 'Oops!' are staying.  That is piece 26 of 35 in just that part of the pattern.  Too much trouble to fix, especially on two blocks. 

paper pieced Tinkerbell blocks

Next, I needed to make a gift for a friend's birthday.  Since I was already planning on making a pincushion for an exchange, I went ahead and made one for Marilyn, first.  I made 5 of these blocks.  You will see the rest of the blocks, when they are finished, and turned into special gifts for some other special people.

made 5 of these blocks

Here is Marilyn's finished pincushion.

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finished pincushion

My large guild has a holiday party every January, instead of trying to have a party in December.  Much easier and more relaxed that way.  This year was the largest turnout since I joined the guild, several years ago.  We had 75 ladies. 

Pride of the Prairie Holiday Party (my table is the one missing the table cloth, you'll find out why later in this post)

At each table was a special treat, made by the party committee.

front of yo-yo key chain

back of yo-yo key chain

They also had another gift for everyone.  They called birthday months, and, when your month was called, you got to come up and pick a bag.  Each bag had different items the committee members had made.  I got a cute zipper bag.

large zipper bag, next to Mason jar candle table decoration I won

We also played some fun games.  The last game was for each table to design a quilt or quilt collage. 

first 3 quilts

next 2 quilts, the one on the left is a signature quilt and won 2nd place

more quilt designs

more quilt designs

My table WON!!!!  See the blue ribbon??? now you know what happened to our table cloth, we used it in our design. 

On Monday, my little guild met.  We'd had to move our meeting, since it was just too cold the Monday before (-20 degrees in the daytime).  Brrr!!!!  We had a fun meeting.

On Thursday, instead of meeting at the local quilt shop's classroom, some of us met at my house instead.  The LQS didn't turn on the heat in the classroom (it's around the corner from the shop, not in the shop) during the cold snap, and the pipes froze and burst.  There were 4 of us, stitching away at my house, and having a nice time.  4 is easy to fit, without having to set up extra tables.  We had sandwiches for lunch, and one brought doughnuts, while another brought chocolate chip brownies with peanut butter frosting.  YUM!

Last night was my large guilds regular meeting.  We were all getting ready for our quilt show this March 8-9.  If you are near Chicago then, come.  It's a great show, and, I'll have a booth with some of my vintage sewing machines.  You are welcome to come stitch on them.  I don't have any quilts in the show this time, since everything I've made over the last 2 years is either unfinished (normal condition for most my projects) or else they have 'flown off' to new homes. 

This morning, I finished the 3 blocks I started yesterday, while the ladies were here.  Yep, more sewing machine blocks, but, these 3 are smaller than the first ones.

3 blocks I started on Thursday

7 blocks I have left, see the size difference? 

The 3 small blocks will be made into pin cushions, while the larger blocks will be turned into mini quilts for some special people.  I'll show them again when they are all done, and mailed off. 

I will be teaching a beginning quilting class at my church, starting tomorrow (if the weather doesn't get in the way).  These are the blocks I made as examples for the class. 

20 blocks for beginning quilting class

I made these blocks last weekend from a fat quarter bundle I had.  I wanted to see how many blocks I could get out of the 5 fat quarters and some yardage of white.  I still have some material left over. 

Not bad for one quilting week.  I think it may be nap time, now.