getting reacquainted with my sewing machine...

...and, of course, I picked a hot weekend to quilt! At least my sewing room is one of the cooler rooms in the house.

I spent most of Saturday sewing blocks for the teal quilt. The pattern uses 12 different fat quarters from which you cut a series of strips, some 6.5 x21" and and some  3.5x21". You cut and sew the strips into various units from which you create 3 styles of blocks. Then you arrange the blocks, trying not to let any of the same fabric touch and keeping a good balance of light and dark.

The first quilt layout is always wrong in one way or another, but you have to start somewhere! Here is my first attempt:

I really need to work on the balance of light and dark! One nice thing is that this layout does not use all of the quilt blocks. I have 5 left over. I'll cycle these in as necessary until I get a good balance. Yes, I could use them to make the quilt longer, but that would make it too long and once I add the 4-inch borders, it's a good size quilt. When I have a layout I like, I'll use 4 of the extra squares to make a cover for the quilt. (You can see a sample cover on my website,)

Speaking of quilt covers, I did manage to quilt the one for Flower Power. However, that's as far as I got with that quilt. It was just too hot to wrestle the quilt through the sewing machine!

I did work a little on the Reflection Shawl, but I have to frog back a couple of rows because something is off on the center lace panel. I'm having a lot pf trouble with this section because the are yarn-overs right before a marker and right after the next marker. These yarn overs keep slipping...some where back about 3 rows, I accidentally included one in the center panel and through the lace off by one stitch. Rats!

(Also, I really shouldn't knit this project while watching True Blood. It's too exciting and too easy to lose my place!)