Disappearing Nine-Patch

I'm back in the swing of things sewing-wise. After goofing around with the string blocks, crumbs and paper-pieced little girls, I settled down to the most important project at hand. A baby quilt for a my friend's baby that's close to 4 months old. I started this in January, with plenty of time to finish it prior to her due date. I even picked a simple pattern that I could "whip together quickly" (Disappearing Nine-Patch). Well, other projects took precedence and then summer got underway and the poor quilt has been neglected.



This week I finished enough blocks to make it 50 x 60 inches. I'm not sure if I'm going to put a border on it. I'll definitely add sashing to the 2 edges (top and right in this picture), so it looks balanced. I like the simplicity of the pattern without borders and it's definitely big enough, but I worry that it will be too stretchy with all of those seams on the sides. Maybe I'll do a narrow (1"-2") light pink? just to stabilize it.

Addiction!

Last night I found out how addicting crumb piecing can be. I kept saying I would stop "after the next one". Hours later I finally stopped. This picture shows 12 blocks, but today I did 3 more. They are very, very fun. I had wanted to try these for a while, ever since I read about them on Bonnie's Quiltville site. She has instructions on how to do them there.



In addition to the crumb piecing, I made 2 more little girls.

Sewing Trend...

My summer sewing sabbatical has officially come to an end this past week. I started off by cleaning up my sewing room. It had turned into the pit of dispair over the summer. It's not perfect right now, but at least it's functional again.

With the room clean, I used Judy's Star Block of the Month to motivate me to get stitching. After picking my color scheme/fabrics and sewing the first 2 blocks, I was ready to start some other new things and hopefully get going on some other things that need finishing.

Last Wednesday was the monthly meeting of the UFO Club at Millhouse Quilts in Waunakee. I registered my new stars as a UFO. Unfortunately I wasn't able to check anything off as completed, even though I have 2 projects done, they are out of town. They are changing the rules and adding another gift card drawing. Before, they would draw a name from the jar of completed projects in June, but now it will be December and June. I need to get those 2 projects here! This is a photo of some of the members:

The highlight of the morning was the homemade raspberry almond bars. Yummy!

Thursday I was at the American Family Children's Hospital to volunteer. A small group of us from Mad City Quilters sew with the children twice a month. This week was a little frantic. I was late and 2 women weren't able to come and a 4th had to leave early. The activity coordinators made it easy on us and only brought a few kids to the room. In this picture, Beth, Debbie and I wore red, white and blue on the Fourth of July and WE DIDN'T PLAN IT!

Early this week, I should have been working on the pink/brown baby quilt for Baby Emilie (who is 3+ months old), but instead, I diddled with my scraps and made these things:

The first picture is 4 Heartstring blocks. The second two pictures are from a pattern I picked up last spring at the big Chicago quilt expo.

Star BOM #2

Block #2 was a little trickier than #1. I chalk that up to the mitering. I toyed with putting the middle section on with the regular border method, but this is a good opportunity for me to push myself to do things I normally wouldn't. My mitering turned out ok, but there is room for improvement.

Other than that, the rest of it was easy. I'm using a new tool that I received from Quiltmaker Magazine. It's a Marti Michell triangle corner thingy and I think it made all the difference in the world. I used it on block #1, but I didn't get the hang of it until I was halfway through it. It's definitely something I will keep using.

I love, love, love the swirly orange that I used for the large star points. I've owned it for a few years and never felt like I had something that was worth cutting into.

Tomorrow I hope to shop for a few more smoky blacks. Those are hard to find and I know that I don't have enough yardage from my stash.

Star BOM #1

The first block of the series went together quite well. Easy would be too understated, but it wasn't too difficult. After one or two cuts, I'm able to cut 1/16ths with confidence. The hardest part for me is committing to the placement of the colors. I deliberate forever!

Star Block of the Month

Fashionably late, I'm joining a block of the month hosted by Judy at Patchwork Times.

The instructions for first block were posted on August 1st and a new block will be added every two weeks. One reason I got a late start, was picking my colors/fabrics. It was tough and I'm still not 100% set. The instructions call for 8 fabrics. Most everybody has posted nice layouts of their fabrics, with everything neatly folded and numbered. My approach is a little different:


More of a jumble! I knew that I wanted the multi-colored oval fabric to be featured and was drawing coordinating colored fabrics to go with it. Because I had a hard time picking 'just one' orange I'm going to do this semi-scrappy. I'll be using different medium oranges, blacks and golds throughout the blocks.

When all the blocks are done, I'll decide which colors are asking to be the featured color and will be used in the ribbon border and sashing.

Everything I picked is from my stash and I'm pushing myself with this, because I'm going to be using some fabrics that I've considered too nice to cut!