Leader & Ender Addict!

How is your Leader & Ender project coming along?

Mine is slow and steady.

Generally I am fighting to finish any designated Leader & Ender project way past the July release of the NEXT one.

I do what I can through the year to legitimately work on these as “real” Leader & Ender projects until it just gets to the point where I have got to push it forward for a finish, and end up using a second Leader & Ender to finish the first!

That was the case with this year’s Checkerboard Rails release.  My Hourglass Leader & Ender Challenge was not complete yet, so I pushed it into hyper-drive and finished it using the 4-patches from this year’s challenge as Leaders & Enders for the process.

Now that some other irons are out of the fire, I’m moving ahead some other projects-in-progress to now get the Checkerboard Rails closer to a finish. ( I shared the Scrap Basket blocks in yesterday’s post.  Did you see it?)

We’ve got time.  It's not a race. This challenge doesn’t end until the first week of July.

4-patches at the ready!

I made a lot of progress on these 4-patches during the making of On Ringo Lake.  SHORT chains while chain piecing helped make hundreds of these 4-patches, and then helped them further along with stitching them into sets of 3. (Remember to pay attention to which way your 4-patches turn when making these blocks!)

Strips in baskets, and 4-patches in 3s!

This is going to be a long process – but just keeping these on the side while I work on other things will turn this quickly into a quilt I am already loving.

Oh, the scraps this is using!  Some of these fabrics are so ugly they make me laugh!  But when you cut something 1 1/2’’ x 6 1/2’’ – by the time it finishes in the quilt all you see is COLOR. 

And it’s a good thing that the scraps are unending – because The Hubster has asked that this quilt go on the king-sized master bed at home.

KING-SIZE?!  Yes, king-size.

The double 9 patch quilt that is on the bed now was made in 1999-2000, with the blocks coming from a block swap with ladies I met after just moving to Sulphur Springs, Texas.  It’s hard to believe that quilt has been on our bed for coming on 18 years.  There are holes where fabric has torn and the batting is showing through.  It has faded and gone fairly flat after almost 2 decades of constant use.

“We need a new quilt for that bed” he said.  Who am I to disagree?

Last night I counted the number of blocks I have to date.  I’m not even 25% there.

I counted the number of 4-patches still required.  I need 738 more.  (!!!)  But I rarely count, I just sew. Pin units into sets of 10, bagging them up by 100s….I’ll get there.

And one at a time, these units will be completed in between the chains of working on other projects.  And if I keep my chains fairly short, I’ll be able to sew more of them.

There is no shortage of scraps, and I’m happy to make a quilt that can be used, that has a purpose – perhaps we’ll sleep under it for the NEXT 2 decades before I need to make another king-sized quilt.

The mirror was hung above the dresser in the master bedroom at the cabin!

They look as if they were meant to go together all along.  I’m sad to leave the cabin this morning, but I’ll be back up mid-December and I’ll pick up where I left off.

And that includes evenings of stitching on this:

Moving the hoop, one section at a time!

Saying hello to each block as I quilt!

Is this block my favorite?

Or maybe it’s this one?

We finished up Stranger Things, season 2 on Netflix.  Such a fun show!  And they left it fairly open ended so there HAS to be a season 3.  It’s just going to be hard to wait all the way until next Halloween for it to be released.  That’s the downside of binging, isn’t it?

For those who are new (and there are many of you! Thank you for following along!) I currently have two hand quilting projects in progress.  One at home, and one up here at the cabin.  This pink & brown Jane Stickle variation has been on-going for more than 10 years.  Hopefully THIS is the year that sees the hand quilting finished. 

As far as off-and-on projects go, this one has been mostly OFF.  I just quilt on it while at the cabin.

The sunrises have been magnificent -

I miss the green of leaves.  I’m not a fan of winter and bare trees.  But there is a beauty to each season, and the sunrises make it all worth it.  I think there is another life lesson in that, don’t you?  In the various seasons of our lives we long for the “earlier days” but there are so many things to be grateful for in the older seasons, too.

I’m packing it up here – I’ll hopefully be home somewhere around noon.  There are two more mystery clues to write before I leave for Arizona/Oregon on Tuesday.  I need to get the trunk show re-packed and prepare for that trip.

Tomorrow is our first Mystery Monday Link-Up for On Ringo Lake.  I’m so looking forward to seeing what you have to share!

Quiltville Quote of the Day!

Exactly! And don't you love the way things turned out for this very fun album block quilt and the meager scrap bag it came from?

Such a great example! None of these blocks are perfect, but the whole couldn't be more perfect!

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!