Rainy Morning Pleasures

Yesterday I met my sister Jean for breakfast and then we went to the local fabric shop to select fabrics for a table runner I'm making for her dining room table.   I want to finish two other projects before I start this one, but meanwhile I'm enjoying looking at the pretty fabrics Jean and I choose. 

This morning it was raining which seemed like a good excuse to stay home for awhile.  Paul was at golf camp --they play rain or shine --so I took an hour or so to work on one of the projects already underway, sewing up some string stripped blocks, using the "stitch and flip" method on foundation tissue.  

I had put some of the blocks together, but hadn't yet figured out what I wanted to make with them.  I was stuck at this point until I made that decision.  I knew I didn't need a big quilt, a wall hanging, or another coffee table runner.   

As I worked it dawned on me that what I'd like to have was a bigger mat to sit my iron on. The little mat I use was a sample piece I made before making a bigger piece.  I wanted a large quilted mat that I could actually iron on, one just the right size to cover my cutting board.    

That meant sewing some more blocks, adding them to the runner, and finding a border to finish the piece off to exact measurements of the cutting table where it would sit.  

Thinking that a large scale print would be a nice contrast to the scrap piecing, I looked on my fabric shelves and found a box labeled "Novelty fabrics--Adult."  It was filled with fabrics featuring travel scenes; I guess that's what passes for "adult" in my life!  As I looked through them I remembered that at one point I was collecting fabrics to make a travel quilt for Jean's retirement gift.  Well, that milestone has come and gone, but who knows, maybe a quilt will emerge one day from all the interesting fabrics I collected.   Anyway, there were also three fat quarters relating to friendship and quilting, and one was just perfect for the border of my little ironing runner. 

I actually got the top finished this morning, which just goes to show that you can get a lot done when you are excited about your project and no one else is home!