Sneaux Day Quilting

You may have heard that parts of the Deep South experienced a little snowfall yesterday.  

At our house, all we had was cold rain and sleet, although a few places around town reported seeing fat, wet flakes falling from the sky.  Just north of the city there was enough snow to accumulate, which caused snowman building and snowball fights, not to mention vehicles slipping and sliding all over the roads.  Apparently Mike the Tiger, LSU's mascot, enjoyed his sneaux day, too!

You'd think the inclement weather would be a perfect excuse to stay home and quilt, but it didn't really work out that way.  Dear Hubby and I had planned on taking vacation days in honor of his birthday, so neither of us had to work.  Since the weather wasn't great for driving, our plans to go to the camp and/or do some antiquing got scrapped, and we wound up baking (bread and cookies) and doing Christmas decorating.   I tried to sneak in a little quilt-related activity, but didn't get far.

I started to trim the excess backing and batting from my Carpenter's Wheel quilt, but only finished one side.  I made the binding (all 300+ inches of it) last weekend, so once the quilt is trimmed and squared up, I will stitch the binding in place.  This quilt was a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project in 2014; it's been hanging around, waiting for binding for over a year, so I'd really like to put in the finishing stitches before the end of 2017!

I made this mini 9-patch several years ago, using up scraps from Bento Box quilts I had made for my nieces.  

Bento Box quilt under construction, circa 2009.  Pattern by Tracey Brookshier.

The mini 9-patch sat around for a long time, waiting to be quilted.  Last week I decided this quilt needed to be DONE and set to work layering and pinning.  I found the just the right shade of orange thread in my stash and started by quilting in the ditch, because that was the easiest thing to do.  Next I did some quilting a quarter inch from the seams in the setting triangles.  I decided I liked the quarter inch quilting much better than quilting in the ditch and vowed never to use ditch quilting again unless absolutely necessary!  I finished up with more quarter inch quilting around the center of each 9-patch.  

I've almost finished hand-stitching the binding to the back of the quilt.  I love this orange bandana print backing!  

One more Finish 'Er Up project has been on the front burner over the past few weeks.  This quilt was inspired by a month of blue scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I've been working on it in fits and starts since the end of 2013, so I think it's time for this one to be DONE, too!

The quilt measures about 80 inches square right now, but I want it to fit on a queen-sized bed, so it needs to be at least 10 inches larger all around.  I want a blue and white fabric for an outer border, but haven't found The Right Thing at my local quilt shops.  I think I found a couple of candidates online, so I'm waiting for samples to arrive before I order yardage.  

Those are the projects I hope to wrap up for the end of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year.  I still have plenty of RSC UFOs, but they will have to wait a bit longer to get finished.  In the meantime, I will be checking out how other RSC quilters are wrapping up their projects for the year!