Prickly Pear Quilt Center Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone has been keeping cool and safe! It sounds like things are pretty bad around the country. We've been really lucky up at my house. The weather has been really pleasant. The mornings have been in the 40s, with several mornings starting out at 41F. The highs have been in the 70s, with it being 79F right now in the early afternoon. We've had a little bit of rain to keep things green. We could always use more to keep the fires at bay, but there's not much worry about fires here yet. It's just so beautiful! 

It's been a really productive week for me. I finished piecing the center of the Prickly Pear quilt designed by Georgette Del Orco:

Prickly Pear

It's amazing how much faster sewing is than knitting!! I'm making the twin size version of the quilt. As you can see, the center is finished and I just need to trim the edges and add the three borders.  I think it's turning out beautiful!

While piecing my Prickly Pear quilt, I also picked up my old leaders and enders project. When piecing a quilt, you get a better start to the seam if you sew something else in front of it and you get a better end to the seam if you sew something after it. This lead Bonnie Hunter to come up with the idea of "leaders and enders" where you have some simple piecing that you run through the sewing machine at the beginning and end of your piecing and you end up with units for another quilt while you are working on your current one. My current leaders and enders project is the Sisters Nine Patch designed by Bonnie Hunter. The queen size version of this quilt requires 169 9-patch units made out of 2 inch squares of fabric. Here are the new units that I finished while working on my Prickly Pear quit:

Sisters Nine Patch units

It's a lot of new units, but a small fraction of what I need for the entire quilt.

I've also continue with my knitting. I finished the body of my Verba Top designed by Victoria Chaplina:

Verba Top

I still have to pick up the stitches around the neck and arms and add an I-cord edging, but I'm taking a break from this project for a few days. This yarn, which is made of paper and cotton, has no stretch and so is a bit hard to knit with.

On that break from my Verba Top, I've made some progress on my Festival of Stitches designed by Lisa Hannes:

Festival of Stitches

It is SO much easier to knit with this wool yarn! I'm really enjoying this!! I finished the mosaic section on the left side of the shawl:

Festival of Stitches left side detail

Then I knit the caramel lace portion of the right side of the shawl and started on that mosaic section:

Festival of Stitches right side detail

The mosaic section on the right side reverses the colors from the left side, making an interesting contrast. Because this is so comfortable to knit, I'll probably work on this some more before getting back to my Verba Top.

Nancy