My parents visited last week and Mom and I squeezed in a little bit of time for sewing.  It's hard when we have so many other things planned and only a few days to do it all! In addition to sewing, we hit Goodwill (where, yes, we managed to spend a full 3 hours!), DSW, Christopher & Banks, a baby clothing resale shop, the quilt store, Bigsby's, the farmer's market, a craft show in Menomonee Falls, etc., while also canning up 42 quarts of apple-pie-in-a-jar and just having time to chat, play cards, fix meals, etc.  

We went to Patched Works on Saturday and picked out some fabrics so Mom could make a new tree skirt.  She decided to go with a beautiful range of blues and use Linda Marcou's pattern based on Marilyn Doheny's 9-degree circle wedge.  Let's just say that it probably would have been easier if I'd had the correct length version of the circle wedge. I had the three smaller versions, but not quite the right one.  Ever the creative bunch, we just added an extension onto the wedge using another ruler and followed the same cutting line.  Mom got the entire top pieced in the afternoon!  Doesn't it look great?  Perhaps I can help her with quilting it at Thanksgiving time.

I chose to work on yet another new project (it's no wonder I haven't gotten anything finished lately - I keep starting new things!): this batik table runner kit featuring some drunkard's path variation (anyone know the actual name of this block?).

 Now I know the layout doesn't look like a runner, but I ran out of room on the design wall (the top three rows represent exactly half of the runner) ... and I'm kinda liking the possibility of making it into a wall hanging rather than a runner.  We'll see, however.  I bought this as a kit from Keepsake Quilting. I ordered it in May and it just arrived about three weeks ago! (Not sure what the delay was, but I had to confirm once or twice that I did in fact still want it.  At least they threw in for free the backing fabric to make up for the delay.)  I'd also purchased one for Mom as a Mother's Day present and thought I'd work on it so I'd be able to help her out with suggestions when she gets to working on hers. 

More quilting posts in the near future; I guarantee!