This Is June?

It’s been so cold here in Northeast Wisconsin I can hardly believe it’s June. The thermometer said 38 degrees this morning around 6:00 AM. I love hot weather and was so jealous when the Weather Channel reported that the temperature in Atlanta reached 90 degrees yesterday. I wish they could send some of that our way.

Last weekend we went camping at Point Beach State Park. It’s a beautiful park right on Lake Michigan. One of the best features of the park is the bike paths. On Saturday we took a ride into Two Rivers where I visited Sew Much Wool Quilt Shop. It’s a very nice shop right on the main drag through town (Washington St.). In an effort to reduce my UFOs and stash I’ve stayed away from quilt shops since closing mine last fall so it was fun to look at the new stuff. I was pretty good about buying but I did pick up a new book called Scrap Basket Surprises by Kim Brackett. I LOVE this book. I’ve been looking at the pictures since I bought it. There are 18 projects that all use 2-1/2″ strips of fabric. Since I’ve been collecting these strips for about 10 years I can’t wait to make some of these great quilts. As a bonus, the quilting shows up nicely in all the book photos so it should be east to come up with similar quilting designs for the quilts. Now I just have to finish a couple of other projects before I start another one.

I managed to finish the Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt from Quiltville.com (shown below). I love having scraps precut. This quilt used 3-1/2″ strips and I was able to make a little tiny dent in that drawer!! I used stash yardage for the four patches and more stash fabric for the borders and binding. I didn’t need to buy any fabric for this quilt even though I made it bigger than the pattern! It ended up about 88″ x 100″ so it’s a nice queen sized quilt. I also used a Hobbs Heirloom Wool batt that I’ve had for about 15 years (I ordered a case and had used only one). I really like the way it turned out. It has a wide variety of prints and I was able to use up a few pieces of really old, really ugly fabric. They blend right in with everything else. Just one more reason to love scrap quilts.