1930's Block of the Month

My local quilt shop has two patterns-a block and applique- available each month for $3-pattern and fabric! Each block is 6 1/2 inches. These are the last 6 blocks I have made. I love the fabric. I am involved with two different block-of-the-month projects there. This one ends in May of next year. I have a lot of patterns from previous months I still need to pick up and I need to learn how to applique! (you can click on the picture to make it bigger)

I need to make a to do list. I have so many projects that are in some stage of completion...

Craftster Lap Quilt Swap: Finished!

I finished my swap squares today. The one above is another one for me with my fabrics. I may make more to make my quilt bigger because I still have some fabric left over.

The one above is a bonus block for Jenicat because I had just enough of her fabric left to make another block. I ran out of the light purple, so I added some purple polka dot from my stash. I think it blends nicely.

Here is a mosaic of all the blocks I have made since July for this swap. Twenty-one of the squares are all from the same pattern, and the top five are from this pattern. Now I need to go to the post office tomorrow, and mail these squares out!

Craftster Lap Quilt Swap: Almost Finished!

I have finished a few more blocks over the last several days and only need to make one more for me!

This one is for ajanderson78; This is the second one for her.

Miss Disney's Christmas themed block is above. This is the second one for her, as well.



I have one more block for ritapizza too! I love the owls on the brown fabric. This makes 24 blocks that I have made for this swap since July. That is a lot of blocks! :) It has been really fun to play with so many diverse groupings of fabrics.

Craftster Lap Quilt Swap Progress

I finished three more blocks for the Craftster Lap Quilt Swap this weekend. These are for lourapalmr, critterpants, and jenicat.

I have a few more to go!

Free Books!

Barnes and Noble has a book club called First Look where you can sign up to get an advanced reading copy of a new book that is coming out in the next several months. I love free books and have received two really good books in the past year from this club: The House at Riverton by Kate Morton and The Sister by Poppy Adams.

They have two different books that you can currently sign up for a free copy: The Believers by Zoe Heller or The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson. I signed up for The Believers.







Here are two links that take you to the sign up page:
The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson
The Believers by Zoe Heller

Let's read together!:)

Scrappy Disappearing Nine Patch wip

Over the last several months, I have been collecting and swapping 2.5 inch squares from numerous quilters. I started assembling these squares into 12" blocks about 2 weeks ago. So far I have 24 12" blocks completed. Here is where I think out loud due to my lacking mathematical ability: Each 12" block contains 4 -9 patchwork squares that are 2.5", so I have 36- 2.5" blocks per 12" square. Therefore, 36 times 24 equals equals 864-2.5" squares. I think that is correct. I think I need at least half that again before this will be big enough but here is where it is at so far.
I really like how scrappy it is! You can click on the pictures for a closer look.

Did you notice that I now have three columns? Thanks to the houseofkrom, I figured out how to adapt the layout. I feel really cool since I edited html code but only because I used this tutorial.

I hope everyone is having a happy Tuesday! Thanks to everyone who suggested ideas on my postage stamp layout. I am currently making a few more squares and may put up a couple more layouts due to some great suggestions.

Lap Quilt Swap Progress Sept 15

This past weekend I finished two more blocks for the Craftster Lap Quilt Swap I have been involved with. The block above is for MissDisney which will turn into a Christmas quilt.

This block is for ajanderson78. I love the purples.

Here is a montage of all the blocks (minus one) I have made for the swap so far. They are all from the same pattern. Isn't it neat how different they all look just based on fabric choices and placement?

Today...

First, I found this cool tool that does this:

(I am having trouble making it turn into an image, so if it doesn't just click on it-then it will be bigger. :)

It shows all the words you most frequently use in your blog. I love the fact that in really big font quilt, think, border, squares, and fabric show up. I also like that in little, tiny font that my dog's name, Gigi, also shows up. Pretty cool, huh?

I have also been inspired with all the posts today about 9/11. I don't really know what to say except that I remember where I was that morning. I was leaving my apartment at 15 minutes before 8 to be at work at the Children's Theatre downtown in Birmingham, AL. My husband now/boyfriend then had to go to work at the same time. We left right after each other. He turned right and I turned left so we were both in the turn lanes and listening to NPR news where we heard a plane had crashed into World Trade Center in New York. We both rolled down our windows, and shouted to each other, "Did you hear that? What is going on?". Then we went on to work, because at this point they weren't sure what happened. I couldn't figure out what to do. I was worried about my college roommate because she worked in downtown New York. I remember trying to contact her via her cell phone and not hearing from her for 24 hours? This completely freaked me out, but she didn't travel through the Trade Center on her way from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to her job in NYC. My friend, Jenny, was fine-thank goodness. My husband, Scott, and I sat and watched news footage all night and we were in shock-I think now.

I think it is important that we remember what happened. I have read several blogs today that inspired me to reflect and I think we need to make a concerted effort to reflect everyday on what we have to be grateful for.

Other bloggers who noticed today in some fashion:
Tallgrassprairiestudio
Dear Andy by MetroDad
Never forget...
ShortStoryLong

Postage Stamp Quilt Possible Layouts

I am playing around with how I want to arrange my postage stamp quilt squares. I am calling the one above the diagonal rainbow. I think I would either use 1-2" sashing between the squares and a white border-maybe with another square border with the colors all mixed up together.

This would be set as a diamond on white, again with maybe a 2" border of white mimicing the diamond and then mix border of 2 deep 1.5 inch squares that are random.


Here is an idea of alternating lengths of color strips set on white with no sashing between each of the squares.
I was attempting a braid here, but couldn't quite get it to work. I did like that it was sort of random though.
My original plan was to have either long strips with a white border or have white sashing between each of the squares and a white border. It is going to take me forever to decide, I think and each option requires me to make a few more squares of differing colors. If you have any suggestions on what you think looks good, please, please let me know. I am stuck.

Lap Quilt Swap and Blanket for Gigi...

Today, I finished a square for the lap quilt swap I am in. This one is for ritapizza. I love the orange and blue combination, of course this has nothing to do with the fact that my favorite team's colors are orange and blue. :)


I also spent some time on my scrappy nine patch. The blocks on the left are finished squares the blocks on the right are waiting to be cut up.
Here are a couple more in progress pictures.

I made Gigi a little pad to lay on while she is sleeping in my sewing room. She now has a blanket in every room almost.

Lately, she has been sitting with me while I am sewing, now on her new little pad. It has green minky like fabric on the back and batting between the layers. I think she likes it.

Happy Mail!

I have had some great mail over the last couple of weeks. A couple weeks ago I received my square fro j_q_adams aka. quiltdad. Isn't it great? He used the wonky log cabin tutorial by Jacquie. It is one of my favorite things.

He also knew that I needed some oranges and purples to finish off my postage stamp quilt so he sent this great array of fabric. The oranges in the top right corner are full fat quarters! I am so excited about these and have already been cutting them up and using them in the quilt. Thank you so much John! Progress pictures to come soon on that quilt. I have 35 10" squares now- can you believe that is 3,500 1.5" squares that are sewn together? I will be asking for advice soon on what looks good as a layout.I came home from work today and found this 12x16 box packed full from whoopdedoo_5 who is in the Craftster Lap Quilt Swap with me. She had been looking for 1.5 inch squares for her postage stamp quilt and I pm'd her to see if she wanted to trade. She already had plenty of squares for her quilt but was still willing to trade fabric for my scrappy disappearing nine patch.

Earlier this week, she told me she was shipping me a box and I could just send what I thought would be an adequate amount back to her. When she told me that she had a 12x16 box full of fabric, I realized that my stash would probably not be big enough.

So I told her I would craft her something in return with some fabric. Of course, now I see that she sent me a huge amount of awesome novelty fabrics. Yes, dear readers, all of this fabric piled on the floor is from her. The last two are close ups so you can see some of the great patterns piled in here.


I think I am going to have to send her something extremely cool in return for all of this. Don't you think? Any ideas for cool items let me know. She likes dogs and cookbooks and fabric- obviously.

I am continuously struck by people's generosity on blogs and on craftster. It is amazing how much people will do for other people they have only spoken to virtually. I find it equally amazing that I have people who I call friends and who inspire me artistically across the United States and the world-most of whom I have never met face-to-face.

Fresh Squeezed Disappearing Nine Patch: Finished!!!

Look at what is finally finished! I first blogged about this quilt here. That was on May 28th. It only took me three months to finish. I decided that I could not let a summery quilt not be finished before summer ended so this past Labor Day I leaped to the challenge.


I love how pieced backs look so I decided to try it on a larger scale than I have ever before with this backing. It was actually quite fun. I had two disappearing nine patch blocks left over from the front that I didn't want to go to waste. I also had a friendship star block that matched and a friendship star block that somehow went wrong and became a bearclaw instead. I guess it was tired of just being a star. I then just found more fabrics that matched the overall color scheme and threw it together. It really is my first improvisational attempt. There are a few puckers on the back, but I still love it.
This is also my first attempt at machine quilting and I really had fun with it. These pictures are also a much better representation of the actual orange border color than the first one.

I almost broke my machine-or at least I thought I did. My husband took it in today to get serviced while I was at work, and it is awesome now! It would start this knocking sound and then the needle would stop as if it was jammed; I would have to manually push the shuttle? knob past the point where it was stuck and then hit the gas to get it going again. Now I can sew slowly. That is pretty cool too. I cheat on my binding and sew it all on at one time. On the next quilt, I think I will try the "real" way and handsew part of it. I am not very good at that kind of hand sewing-so we shall see if that really happens. I love it! It is the first quilt I have made that I am keeping for me.

Disappearing Nine Patch

Over the last several months, I have been swapping squares of fabric with people all over the United States-which is pretty cool. Some have been 2.5" squares.
Other squares were 5" originally and I chopped them down to 2.5".


Over the last three weeks, I have been slowly assembling the squares into 9 patches with a black in the center. Actually, they go pretty quickly when everything is already cut up!

I have some pretty neat fabric that people have sent me. Athenamat has sent some really cute squares including some that you see here. :)

I still need to make many more 9 patches.

Isn't that cute summer fabric! I love the umbrellas.

I am then going to cut these in half vertically and horizontally so I have four smaller squares like this!

These squares will get flipped around.

Then juxtaposed with other cute small squares.

Eventually, I will have a scrappy disappearing nine patch similar to the one above. These are not pieced together yet, still waiting to cut all those 9 patch squares that you see up top.

My fresh squeezed disappearing nine patch is almost done! I have a small piece of binding left, and then need to throw it in the wash so it gets all wrinkly and pretty. I should have pictures of the finished product tonight or tomorrow.