Saturday Bits And Pieces

Yesterday, wanting very much to get back into quilting after being in withdrawal for two weeks, I made a backing and loaded the New Year's Eve Mystery quilt top on the LA.
A few months ago I invested in the Loricles Circle Lord so I thought I would put the Swirls boards to work and this is the result.

This is how a quilt looks when it comes off the longarm before trimming and binding, a bit messy! I will get a better picture later in the week, but I can see I like the Swirls design, it seems to be a good choice for a lot of quilts where there is no real theme and no necessity for custom.

 Today the mail delivered more orphan blocks this time from my friend Meredith.

Quite an assortment, this will be a very interesting car quilt!

This evening DH helped me to place the car cover I bought for a base for the quilt onto my vehicle-it isn't a wonderful fit and I will need to make some adjustments, but I chalked in rough outlines of the windows for the clear vinyl and also the front doors thinking I may need to make a velcro opening so I can get in and out of the car since I plan to drive it in a parade. Perhaps I may even begin appliqueing blocks this week.

Remember this kit, purchased  few weeks ago at 35th. Ave store? There are a couple of patterns expanding the design from the simple panel, adding a border of stars. 

This one was my choice but the instructions are for the green collection so I had to sit down and choose fabrics from what were available in the blue.

The pale blue is for sashing the panel and the center of the star blocks, the points will be in the silver on white fabric on the far right. The squares between will be made from the snowflake fabric and the swirls and stars will be the background of the star blocks.
Next weekend we are heading north for a week at the Colorado house-my BFF up there had a big surgery last week so I will go keep her company and we can sit and sew and chat in cooler weather, it will be fun! I plan to take this Christmas project to work on, I think it will go together fast and will be an easy piece to work on while we visit.