Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

Busy, busy, busy! Even though I no longer am going back to school at the start of September, life really ramped up for awhile. How about for you?

Let’s check on a few things. How are you coming on the gift-a-long challenge? Remember? The challenge was to make/finish a gift each month this year so when the holidays roll around, you have quite a few gifts ready to go. I’ve gotten a few more things finished since my last update but I’m not at #9 for September! I think I’ll look around for a few UFO’s which are very close to completion to see if I can get back on track.

Awhile back I talked about a selvage project I am working on which uses a 60 degree triangle ruler as well. That project is in pretty good shape. The 48 triangles covered in selvages are complete and the center of the quilt top is assembled. I just got the remainder of the background fabric for the top prewashed (It’s bright red and I’m hoping for no calamities with bleeding the first time the quilt gets washed) and ironed and now will puzzle around on how to best surround the selvage star. This is a make it up as I go along project. I have a lot of graph paper sketches; now it’s time to do the math. (BTW a great source for free customizable graph paper is incompetech.com.  I always go there for my equilateral triangle paper. They also have hexagonal papers for those of you who are English paper piecers.) I do have the scrappy binding all set. A long time ago I read a hint somewhere about saving the ends of your bindings from all of your projects and sewing them end to end after you have a few put aside. I’ve done that ever since and have always love the scrappy bindings that I’ve been able to pull out of the box whenever I do a scrappy project. I think a scrappy binding will be just the ticket for this selvage project.

Soon I’ll be getting out my fall/Halloween quilts. I can’t believe we are halfway through September already!

So tell us, what are you up to, quilting buds?