Another Random Post, I'm Afraid

First I want to say "Thank You" to everyone who left me birthday wishes!  I had a great day and it turned into a great week!  Lots of phone conversations with family and friends, and a few birthday lunches as well. I had loads of fun!

I've been busy with all kinds of things lately, including getting some sewing done.

Today I finished two new place mats.  I still have two more that I need to sew the binding down on.  I went to my LQS for the Tuesday Sew-in and got to visit with other quilters while I worked, which made it lots more fun.  This was a free pattern for Amy Ellis' Graphic Patchwork Table runner that I got from Quilting Daily here.  I got started on it and then thought "But I don't have a table that long!".  So I made the runner into the place mats, which I needed.  I like them!  The tan fabrics in there show up a lot more in the photo than they do in Real Life.

Last Friday my quilt guild had a workshop and Donna taught us how to do Seminole Piecing.  It's been many years since I did that technique!  She gave us directions for making the strata ahead of time, and no idea of how we would use them.  I would have made some different color choices had I known.  Oh well, it's all good.

my first three pieces, in order from the top

my next two pieces, with my color inspiration fabric at the top

All of the pieces with the fabric.

Now that they are done (I still have one more to finish), I don't like them with the fabric I used to decide colors.  The Seminole Piecing colors are so bright and strong that they overwhelm the fabric.  So, now I need Plan B!  It was fun to re-discover Seminole Piecing.  Back when I first did it, I did it all with scissors - no rotary cutters then!  This is muuuch easier.

Went to Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago and did a little damage.  But only a little!  I got 6 yards of fabric for only $30!  Everything I got was on sale for $5 a yard.  Whoo hoo!  No plans for this, except the two pieces on the left will become a pillowcase for me.

Recently, I went to see P., the lady that is the keeper of the fabric for my guild's charity quilts.  She was going to get rid of a lot of fabric that she didn't like for one reason or another.  I opened my big mouth and ended up with a pretty good haul.  Above are two pieces of older tropical prints.  The red one is an Alexander Henry print.

And here are 3 pieces of vintage fabrics.  I don't know yet what I will do with these, but I couldn't pass them up.  The bottom piece is feedsack.

I said to her "Oooo, you have pindots!", so now I have pindots!  Those orange-y ones at the bottom of the stack are really true red.  The camera just insisted on seeing them as orange.

And here is a big pile of men's shirt-type fabrics.  P. didn't want them, and I have a quilt on my Wish List to do that uses that kind of fabric.  You can see it on my Pinterest page here.  I'll bet I have enough here to do almost that whole quilt!

Lastly, here is a String X quilt that I got put together lately.  I was tired of working on these string blocks, and tired of the fabrics I was using.  I've used them quite a bit in other string blocks the last few years.  And I figured out that I had enough blocks to make a charity quilt the size that my guild uses.  Well, it needs a little more to be the exactly the right size, and to me it seems to need a border.  But everything I tried with it didn't really work.  There are so many colors in the blocks that no one color is the right one.  And, hard to tell from the photo, but most of the fabrics are bright.  It's hard to get a good photo when it's dark and gloomy here.  Now I'm considering a pieced border, as I have more squares of the blue print background fabric.  But I'm not sure.  I'm open to suggestions!

Have a quilty week!