Productivity!

i've had a shockingly productive weekend! friday i saw a picture of a pouch someone made for the pretty little pouch swap that had a herringbone desing. i've seen this before and had wanted to try it. so i googled and found this tutorial. i modified it, and made a block for alison in the fresh modern bee 2. then i made a second block for her, with wonky pinwheels.

yesterday i used some tiny scraps of alison's fabric, plus some of my own, to make a tiny herrinbgbone mug rug for myself. i rarely make anything for myself, but i'm still using a christmas mug rug on my desk at work, and i needed a non-seasonal one. i used the opportunity to practice my free motion quilting, too.

on saturday morning, M had asked me if i would make something for a woman we will be seeing next weekend at his BBQ cookoff in Moulton, Texas. she's the mother of his best friend, and a long-time quilter who quilts everything by hand! so after i finished my mug rug, i decided to make her a wallhanging using the herringbone design. i dug through my pile o' scraps, and pulled out all my solid scraps and came up with enough to use. the herringbone part is about 9" square, and i bordered it with a lovely neutral linen, backed it with a stripe, and bound it with another solid. i free motion quilted in the border and stitched in the ditch around the herringbone piece. all that's left is to stitch the binding down by hand, and i'm saving that for some tv time later. M loves it and is certain that Ollie will, too.

saturday i also gathered up everything for my partner's A Little Fabric A Little Chocolate swap package and have that packaged and ready to mail on monday.

in between all of this quilting productivity, we also whipped up a huge vat of spaghetti sauce made with 3 lbs of ground deer and 1 lb of ground turkey. then we bagged it up for 10 meals, with leftovers. i also made up a double batch of stuffing and we sliced up a 9 lb pork loin into fat chops and stuffed and seasoned them, then bagged those up individually for later cooking. with each meal comprised of an 8 oz chop and a 6 oz chop, that's 10 meals there, too, though we'll be sharing those with my freezer-cooking friend.

all in all, this is the most productive weekend i've had in ages and it feels good!