One hour of Quilting Time

Yesterday afternoon everything came together for me to get one hour of quilting time. The baby napped and Joseph took the other two kids to the library for a craft. I was left home alone. At first I panicked trying to decide what I should work on. I eventually decided to do some quilting.

Wednesday night I had done myself a favour by staying up late to clean off my desk. And yes, that is clean. I even set out a project with the mini-charm pack I bought at the quilt show a couple weeks ago so I had something to start with.

I started my hour with sewing the mini-charm pack together. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it. I bought it to make a gift but I don't know whether I should give it borders and make it a table runner/placemat or use insul-bright so it can be used as a hot pad.

Another evening last week, I took these 4 border strips and started taking them apart into half-square triangle blocks. The quilt they were supposed to go on didn't end up very square since I had made the blocks over several years but kept them knowing I would use them eventually. 

I decided over a year ago to use the blocks as part of a Rebel Flock quilt. I've wanted to make this quilt for several years now. I picked the green and purple to be used in the middle but that might change.

4 rows done. I have enough of the blue/yellow blocks made up from the border to finish the quilt. Just need to finalize the fabric for the middle blocks.

The rest of the hour was spent sewing squares together for a charity quilt. I started this quilt as part of the Graph Paper QAL but the host decided to stop the QAL so she could spend more time with her kids this summer since she didn't have a lot of people participating. I am continuing on as the QAL was the motivation I needed to start making some charity quilts from all my scraps.

Close up of the bin of pairs. If I was a good quilter I'd iron all of these before sewing the pairs together into 4 patches but I don't think I will. Deciding whether I want to make 8 x8 or 16 x 16 blocks. 

The family and I went to the Botanical Gardens yesterday evening and I thought other quilters might enjoy the name of this cactus as much as I did. I don't think I'd want it on my desk though.