Two Easy Finishes

We had another surprisingly warm day here in Maine, as it seems to be all up and down the East Coast. We were in a drought all summer but had so much rain this fall that the drought was overcome. Now the lawns look the best they've looked all year--just in time for some very frosty weather next week. 

The Christmas cactus is beginning to bloom. This crazy plant usually starts blooming before Thanksgiving and often continues to bloom until February or March. My granddaughter has broken segments off of it, I forget to water it half the time, and I don't know how many times it's been knocked off onto the floor. Yet it continues to reward me with beautiful blossoms every year. My summer cactus thrives equally well with the abuse I heap on it--had a ton of lovely white blossoms this past summer.  

I finished the Scrappy Mini yesterday. I didn't do the best job adding the borders, probably because I deviated from my usual method of border application and followed the paper pieced method from the book instead. Disappointing, but I wasn't about to take it apart a fourth time. 

Instead, I decided to try washing and blocking the quilt, which proved to be effective, as the borders are now straight enough to suit me. A small amount of bleeding occurred around two of the red strips however, but it's just for me and will hang in a dark hallway, so I decided to leave well enough alone. 

I finished the Construction Zone quilt this afternoon. This small quilt is going to a little boy in the family and will probably see some hard use, so I bound it all by machine. I find it difficult working with black fabric, and I had an awful time seeing the stitching for the binding, but I liked the black binding.
 

I quilted it with a design called Hot Rod by Lorien Quilting. Quick and easy, which I needed because I haven't been on my longarm for months. 

My next project is on the worktable. Scary Faces is a pattern for a small quilt included in my Spooky Box, an October special  from Fat Quarter Shop. The Spooky Box is like Quilty Box, a box full of surprises that comes once a month. I was always tempted to try that but never did. 

This year I decided to give the surprise box a try, and I wasn't disappointed. Besides the pattern, there was a small bundle of fabrics to make the quilt, and some different notions. One of the notions was a thread conditioner called The Thread Potion in a lip balm tube. I coat my thread with beeswax before hand sewing, but the beeswax cake tends to crumble after a while as the thread slices into it. Thread Potion is softer, and I was impressed with how well it worked--no tangling, no fraying, and no breakage. I would purchase this again, but I'm not sure if it was a one-time special for the Spooky Box since I can't seem to find it now on their website. 

So far I've made the four pumpkin blocks, but only this one has the stem and leaf added. And I've made 1 of 8 chain blocks. Haven't done any of the ghost blocks yet. The fabrics are adorable--spiderwebs, skeletons, bats, Halloween words, and some plaids and dots.

The millenium charm quilt is also back in play. I finished piecing all of the triangles, 1998 of them, last August. I couldn't figure out what to do for a border, so I waited for an idea to percolate. I thought it would look unfinished with just binding, so I decided to add a narrow inner border, maybe 1/2" to 3/4".

Next I wanted to add a neutral border, but it added nothing to the quilt, in fact it washed it out. A 1-1/2" border in a brighter off-white tone on tone fabric with a wider brown outer border improved the look, but the white looked too plain.

Yesterday I found this multicolored confetti print in my stash and decided that would do the trick. My quilt consultant (hubby) enthusiastically concurred, so that's what it's going to be. 

On the back of the quilt, I plan to add the last two triangles to make 2000, plus 22 more, one for each year past the millenium. I'll continue to add one every year in January--until I can't, lol.