Virtual Quilting Retreat - Saturday

Saturday I slept in for a change! Paul fixed me breakfast and I relaxed. We did our shopping and were home by noon. I made 2 batches of pizza dough and then got to sewing. I quilted fabric together to make this binder cover. I used the Winding Ways fabric on the top and a light cream/tan on the inside since it wouldn't really be seen. I thought I had a green for binding, but Paul said no, and I didn't really like it, so I found a dark brown for the binding.

It's a super thick binder, so I cut my quilted piece to 12 1/2"x 23 1/2" and then used the rest of my quilted fabric for the insides. I started with 17"x WOF and quilted it all. I used Thermore batting.

The inside was bound and I put a little pocket in for pens and highlighters. The inside pieces were cut 7.5"x 12.5". I bound it with 2" strips.

Then I started working on my big project of the weekend. My friend recently had a baby and I wanted to make her a purple quilt. I have tons of purple fabric left from the wedding, so I wanted something scrappy. Regina had a Jewel Box quilt on her blog recently and I fell in love. I've loved them for a long time, but my hatred of HST's has always stopped me from making one. I had planned to do a snowball/9 patch similar to the pink and white one I did for Colleen's baby, but decided the jewel box would work great for this quilt.
I searched on the internet and found 2 simple patterns. My biggest problem was combining the techniques and sizes used in each and I didn't figure correctly. One said the block finished 16", so I planned to make the quilt 3x4 blocks. Saturday afternoon I set to cutting this out. I cut and cut and cut. Finally I stopped and made individual stromboli for supper. MMM! I love to cook when I have time.
After supper I went back to work and started sewing together the 4 patches. I was working with scraps, not yardage, so I made a bunch and stopped. Then I made a few of the HST's. I got bored with those real fast and then I had to square them all up. It took me forever and I only did 12 of the 48 HST's I needed! By this time it was after 10PM and I was chatting with Regina and Jen again. I couldn't stand it any more I took what I had made and made 1 block. Then I made 2 more, but that's all I had enough pieces for! Three blocks took me about 7 hours. I do have a lot more cut out, but I'm not going to rush getting this done, so I gave it up for the night. It was midnight. I thought the blocks were awefully small, so I looked at the patterns I had. I had cut for the 8" finished blocks, not the 16" finished block pattern! No wonder each piece is 2.5"! That's when I couldn't do anymore on the Jewel Box quilt.

So I moved on to my Thangles BOM. I finished blocks 5 & 6 which were the ones I planned to do for April. I was listening to Breaking Dawn the 4th book in the Twighlight series and I only had 1 part left, so I wanted to finish.
Block 5

Block 6

At 1:15AM I was finished with both and headed to bed. It was a long day of sewing, but oh so much fun!