Snowball Fight Finish

 I am teaching a BOM this year using Lori Holt's Quilty Fun book. Our row this month is mittens. This is a table runner also featured in the book called Snowball Fight which is a combination  of mittens and snowball blocks. 

 I was able to find a big enough area of snow in my front yard for some pictures. We are finally having warmer weather, so the snow is melting quickly! I just quilted it with a cross hatch design. I really like the little flying geese border and the scrappy binding. I hope this will give my students some other ideas for their own projects.

 For January, everyone was making the cocoa cups. I promised a prize for anyone who got the cocoa mugs row done, so I made some small design boards using Lori Holt's tutorial 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nSZtoionpA

I made these design boards 10 x 10 inches. They each only took one 2.5 inch fabric strip, a scrap of Warm and White batting, and glue gun sticks. I bought foam core board at the dollar store and was able to make six this size from each board--very inexpensive, but a little time consuming. I wonder how many I will get to give away... When we met in January, we had eight in the class, but several more have enrolled since then. I made a dozen just in case everyone got their homework done.

 My sister sent me more blocks from Moda's Sample Block Shuffle. They arrived on Monday and I worked a little bit on them each evening this week. 

There are only two more blocks left! The blocks are going to be set on point with flying geese in the border. All the blocks have been made with Hello Darling fabrics and are six inches finished.

 One of our night custodians stopped me on Thursday and asked if I was a quilter. Usually, I only get asked that question if someone wants me to sew or make something for them, but this time was different. He told me that his mom has a quilting business and he had done some experimenting on one of her machines. He went and grabbed this! His mother's machine is not your typical long arm, but a custom made machine that is fully computerized and was well over $30,000. He made this large  thousand dollar bill quilt. It is amazing! He said it took over eight hours for the machine to quilt it. He used four different colors of thread and the machine works its way from the outside in.

It was over six feet long and about three feet wide.  He said the machine can convert just about any design into a quilting pattern. I might just have to go check it out!