String Pieced Quilt Top and Tea

I am having some tea right now, in my smancy mug.  I made the border and finished up my string-pieced quilt top.  I have delivered it to be long-arm quilted.  

See, I did have an idea for the borders.  I think it looks so much sharper, now that it is completely pieced together.  I made the backing out of one ginormous piece of granny fabric.  Granny fabric is what this top screams for.

I, also, got my "I Spy" quilt top finished and delivered for quilting.  My amazing long-arm quilter, Virginia, had the quilt quilted in quite the quick fashion.  I had to go get it, even though the snow was piling up.  I drove the big pick-up and went and fetched it.  

The strip quilt that was laying on my table, earlier this month, is all pieced and just needs me to make a backing for it, then I am going to quilt it myself.  Sometimes I just do that.

I bought, before the big snow-storms, a package of lose tea, of the lavender-vanilla chai type.  Last week I sat down and sewed twenty-four tea bags and filled them with tea.  

Here they are; all done.  I folded over little scraps of fabric to use as the handles on the ends of the strings.  They will eventually all make it to the landfill anyway.  I will be sharing them with the CLS, at our meeting in February.  Plus, there are a few extra, so I have been using them.  The tea is delicious and soul warming.

Round Robin Row Quilt

The project of my quilt group, for 2023, is a "Round Robin Row Quilt."  We each make one row and put it in a box with instructions, and maybe some fabrics to go with.  Then it gets passed to several other quilters, in this case, eight others.  Our rows are 36" long.  Each month it went to someone else, then we had a big reveal at our August meeting.  I photographed each quilt that I received, with whatever number of rows it had at the time.  I am going to share them. 

This is the row I put in my box.  It is just springy fabrics.  My blocks are 6" X 6" square.  It has a 50's feel.

This is the first one I got to work on.  The big flowers are Monicas.  I added the bird house row.

The second one, I got to work on, was Annita's.  Her's is the one I posted about last spring.  It is in "rainbow order", so I made the third row down, with alternating shoo fly and churn dash blocks in green and yellow.

#3 was Jan's.  I added the nine-patch row at the bottom.  I got it done the second night I had it.  So, I was feeling fairly accomplished.  I also brought home Marsha's.  She had fallen and REALLY hurt herself, so she could not do any sewing.  She dropped out of the project, but we wanted to finish her quilt top for her, so I took it and added my row in April prior to our monthly meeting.

#4 Marsha's was about neighborhoods.  I added the top row, in this photo.  I put a yellow sun and a yellow tree to help balance the yellow that was in the lower row.

#5 was Tessa's.  I did the liberated churn-dash blocks at the top.  I was bad and used that lovely floral for the background.  Her instructions said to use the white, but no one was using that lovely floral, so . . . I did.

#6 was Lizzy's.  Her's was a farm theme, so I added the chicks on the bottom row.  I embroidered their little legs on.

#7 was Donna's, called "Who Let the Dogs Out?"  I liked what everyone had done before me, and I wanted to be different, so I made little dog houses with dogs in them.  This doggy neighborhood has lots of trees.

#8 was Judy's and it had trees.  I used the same fabrics as that second row from the bottom, so I balanced it off by making the row pictured at the top.  The trees are pale and have sunflowers on them, and the background is the blue and green tree fabric.

This is what my quilt top looked like, when I got it back in August.  I realized the Donna did not get to do a row on my quilt, so I called her up.  Because the top was long and narrow, she agreed to make me four corner blocks for the borders.  We are supposed to have our quilts done, for sharing/showing off at our meeting later this month.  I only started working on mine on September 28, but I have got it finished.  I need to photograph it, then I will post it on this blog of mine.  Thanks for reading my blog.