July 2016 Accomplishments

We started July by wrapping up our Michigan vacation, and boy, was it great to have some time at Houghton Lake with one of my best friends. We enjoyed swimming, kayaking, fishing, some awesome pulled pork from her new smoker, and fireworks on the lake. I was also able to get in some good stitching time, so let's start with that.  

I had two stitching finishes in July - Stars and Stripes, a Country Cottage Needlework design. It turned out larger than I had anticipated, so I will have to decide if I want to frame it.  It is nice to have another patriotic item stitched that I can put out from Memorial Day through Labor Day. 

Next up was an ornament for July. I didn't like the one the group had chosen, so I decided to use one of my two wild cards and stitched this simple ornament. I think I finished it in two stitching sessions, and I hope to get it made into an ornament pretty quickly. It is stitched on some leftover Aida that I've had forever and is called Peace 2015 by Glory Bee (I adjusted the year to represent when I stitched it) from the 2015 Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornaments. I had trouble getting good light for this picture - it is not quite so obnoxious in person. 

In my sewing studio, I realized I needed to recommit myself to my theme "First a Finish" if I was going to end this year with fewer projects in progress but not quite complete. Over the course of a couple hours in one weekend, I finished up several projects and it sure felt great! 

I did the final finishing work on Dream Big by adding the ribbon. It is ready for gifting now.

I added the cording to Plenty and made the hanger. It is ready for the tree now and this one will stay with me, given my love for reindeer. 

 After I got done with the stitching finishes, I turned to the quilting one. I made the binding and hanging sleeve for my old neighbor's quilt that her mom made her. I also stitched down the binding during the month so that it would be ready for her to pick up at the end of the month and take with her to her new  home in Orlando. 

Finished and bound, ready for its new home

Quilt back made with scraps from the front

Last up in my finish-a-thon was my Quilting in Layers from the workshop I took earlier this year with Terry Kramzar.  I did a faced binding on this one too, my second ever! Terry recommend these instructions for facing a quilt and I loved them - it was so much easier than what I tried first, and now I am looking at all my small quilts to see which ones I can face instead of bind!  

Last up in the sewing studio was the UFO for this month's APQ Challenge.  #4 was pulled and that's one of my patterns that I have had a long time, but never started. It called for cutting around 300 squares/rectangles, and that's all I got done by the end of the month. I decided to kit it up and take it to retreat with me this fall. The original pattern was done with Civil War Reproduction fabrics, but I saw a sample in batiks and really liked it, so I bought the pattern...probably 10 years ago!  

The last thing I will leave you with from July is a picture from the Indy Modern Quilt Guild show last weekend.  I am not a member of the IMQG, but always enjoy supporting a local show and this was no different. They rented a pavilion at a local park and hung quilts all around.  It was a small but nice show.  

 Hope you had a great July and are enjoying the start of August!