Is that a finish I see?

Back at the end of June I set my goals for July – then I was diagnosed with shingles and didn’t sew (by machine) for the entire month.
So my July goals became my August goals.
Half of August passed before I was able to use my sewing machine again but by then, I has lost any interest in quilt-making. My re-awakened interest in family history had pushed aside any thoughts of crafting.
Then last weekend WM made good on a passing comment he had made two weeks before: “the next weekend we have free, we’re going to tackle your sewing room”!
Well, I'm still looking at small piles of mess but, for the most part, my sewing room is much better organised and a much more pleasant place to be. And it’s amazing how handling so much fabric as it is moved from one place to another can inspire all sorts of ideas (and challenges, like “what am I going to do with this?”)
And sew (yes, I wrote that intentionally) on Thursday, after sorting yet more fabric (more on that in a later post), I worked on some of my August goals.
I’ll leave the story of the Scrappy Log Cabin quilt for another post (looks like I’m back blogging too! LOL) and move on to my second (or is it my third?) project of the day.
I planned to finish my Gift of Hope quilt #2 before the end of the month. But, after sorting all that fabric, I couldn’t find a backing fabric that I was happy with. In the end I was left with a choice of solid white (boring!) or a print which had been folded for a long time and was dirty and possibly faded on the fold lines. I put that in a bucket to soak with some nappy (diaper) soaker – can’t make it any worse.
Frustrated, I turned to the block that was to have been Gift of Hope quilt #3. An abandoned (not-made-by-me) Dresden plate block measuring 22” square. Whilst searching through “that tub”, I came across some pink binding. “Perfect for that block”, thinks I. It was more than perfect, it was exactly the same fabric that had already been used to make an inner border on the block!

But when I measured it, I found that there was only 90” and I needed at least 98” of binding for the finished quilt. But, unfolded and pressed, 90” was enough to turn the 22” block into a 24” block – the recommended size from Yasminah’s Gifts of Hope.
So I pressed the fabric and attached it to the block. Now for the sandwich…
I had the “wadding” (cream flannelette); I just needed a backing fabric. But do you think I could find some? In the end I settled for a very pale lemon homespun (or is it lawn?).
I cut my backing and wadding then cleared off my cutting table to make a basting table.
In not much time at all, I had a sandwich.
Full of enthusiasm, I started quilting at around 9pm! I quilted “in the ditch” around the inner circle, the outside points of the plates and around the border fabrics.
I found some fabric that was suitable for binding (everything is a compromise when one is working with donated fabrics), cut and joined three strips that were two-and-one-sixteen-inches wide (I didn’t have enough fabric for a conventional 2.5”!) and pressed the binding in half. I attached the binding to the quilt and planned to leave it there.
But, at 1:00am I had to force myself to abandon the hand-stitching of the binding. (Too much enthusiasm here!)
I finished it last night and here is my first quilting-related finish in two months:
 
Blanket of Hope #2 will go to a family experiencing loss of a baby at birth or soon after. As I sewed, I sang a song (given to me in my private worship time that caused me to weep) “Somebody loves you, Somebody cares” over and over -- I pray that the parents will experience the love of God as they hold their little one wrapped in this quilt.
Linking up with TGIFF (Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday), which is being hosted at Pippa’s Patch this week.