Like Sands Through the Hour Glass

...so are the days of our lives.  Although I really hope my life is not nearly as messed up as the ones on the soap operas.
Here's what I've accomplished lately with the sewing days of my life.

First, the little quilt I couldn't show you last week.  It was a gift for a friend at our quilt group.  We exchanged our Christmas gifts at our January meeting on Wednesday.

It's a scrap quilt (of course!).  The white spaces in each block are for signatures of friends or family, etc.  I also included a permanent ink pen for the signatures.  I put a label on the back, but forgot to take a picture of it.
We call this project our Brown Bag Exchange.  Every year, usually at the June meeting, anybody who wants to participate puts a fat quarter and a paper with their name on it in a paper bag.  We trade bags anonymously, and then we make something from the fat quarter as a gift for the person who brought it.

Here's a picture I took when I was binding it.  The outer border was the fabric in the bag, and the recipient was Sherry L. 

 Strangely enough, she got my bag!  She made me this wonderful pillow.  My fabric was the prairie points.  She really did a great job with the colors, and it fits well in my house.  Thanks, Sherry!

Nothing makes me want to finish a quilt more than finishing a quilt.  So I finished this one.

I made these Double Hour Glass blocks last April as leaders and enders, and set them with a subtle print from the stash.  Thursday I finally quilted and bound this little quilt.

The blocks are 6 in. finished, so everything came from the 2.5 in. squares box or strips bin.  I scrounged around for the white fabric, and I have several slightly different shades.

After I quilted in the ditch around the blocks, I marked the lines I wanted to quilt across the plain blocks.  Here it is, old school again.  I'm marking with a yardstick and soap.  The lines were wide, but that didn't matter.  It smells good, and the lines didn't disappear until after they were quilted.

I'm not sure you can see it, but I did the visible quilting with the serpentine stitch on my Pfaff electric.  Fast and fun.

You can see the back here, a hearts print in rainbow colors.

When I finished the quilting and trimmed the edges, I had some uneven pieces of backing.  I trimmed them up to the largest size possible.  I ended up with one each at 2 in., 2.5 in., 3.5 in. and 4.5 in. wide.  These will feed the bins.

It would have been better to make a narrower binding.  This one cuts off the points on the outer blocks.  I'm not used to making quilts without outer borders.

Oh, well.  This will be warm and bright, and donated to someone who needs it.

I always think of this quote on Martin Luther King day.  

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?"

 

I'm going to try to think about this all year long, and find more things I can do.

Yours in stitches,

Sylvia

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martin_luther_king_jr.htmlLI

P.S.  I'm linking up with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts (check out her cool new pattern!) and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts this week.