elephants!

I've been missing from the party for some time now, but had to jump back in for this block! In fact I've signed up to use it as my birthday block in a little exchange group, so next month I should have cool dozen to put together. I can't wait!

catching up in Paradise

I'm in Hawaii, waiting for my husband to finish a sailing race -- he should be here on Thursday morning. When we made the arrangements, we thought he would be here last Saturday or so... but you never know with sailing! I brought along my featherweight and a few little projects to work on. It's a good thing, too, because the weather has been pretty rainy and not conducive to hanging out at the pool or walking much.

Anyway, I've been thinking about playing with solid fabrics for a while -- something I've never done before. I bought a handful recently: a bunch of different teals, some gold for accent, and a deep grape/burgundy for background. Here you see the first results. I've decided to catch up on the 12" blocks with this palette. The blocks haven't been trimmed yet (nor pressed very well!) but I'm liking them...

Julie

progress report

I'm sort of caught up now -- at least until this weeks block! Here are the three latest:Wandering Star -- the 9" blocks are following an Asian theme
Mystery Block -- the 12" blocks are currently in a green and gold mood
Nine O'clock -- and the 10" blocks are in random batiks!

what's wrong with this picture?

You know how they say it's hard to see your mistakes until you take a picture of them? It's true.
But it was easy to fix! I'm not thrilled with my fabric choices on this one, though...This one is better -- very cheerful!

nice block --

I like this one a lot! The gold fabric is one of the very first quilt fabrics I bought, and it's appeared in numerous blocks over the years -- now dwindling...

finished just in time...

Got last week's block finished just in time for this week's to be announced! This one is actually more blue and less black than it looks in the picture...

gosh -- it's a star!

I love this block!

the green party

Here I go, playing catch-up again!

First up is "Mother's Nightmare" -- I set out to do the simplified version of this but got into trouble with the side triangles... cut 2 small ones instead of 1 large one... so then there was no way to put in a solid center block... so it ended up being 4 "square in a square" components and the interesting design in the middle!
The sickle variation leaves me cold -- too many disparate parts to this block!
This Odds & Ends block was fun, and went together easily

Here's my quatrefoil -- this was a fun one!
Another Star was sort of ho-hum... I put it together a bit differently than Quilter's Cache prescribed, with the flying geese on the outside and a square-in-square in the middle. (and did a bit of a sloppy job with it!)

And here are my "green" blocks so far:

wheeling along

Here's my first block for 2010 -- I think I'll do the 12" blocks in greens & golds for a while...

signs of life!

I'm finally getting ready to catch up again... here are the two blocks I managed this week:

Here is Indian Star -- simple and sweet
And here is Carolyn's Star -- which involved a little bit of ripping out when I used the wrong fabric for those two flying geese...
More to follow!

strange combinations...

Every time I think I'm catching up, it's Friday again! This is last weeks' block -- Cross in a Cross

And here is Album Star, in a very odd set of fabrics. I really should get in the habit of photographing my combinations before I cut into them! I thought the two lighter fabrics would be interesting in a subtle way, but... yech!

fancy pants

I was hoping to get a little further ahead -- and I might still! -- but here is Blindman's Fancy from a couple of weeks ago. This may have cured me of any desire to do a feathered star quilt...

I drafted this in EQ6 which made everything much easier. I'm happy to send the file to anyone who has the program, or maybe I can convert it to some other kind of document.

still catching up...

Here are three more blocks for the collection:Flight of Swallows -- sort of boring! I thought about using 4 different dark fabrics but then got too lazy to choose more than one.
Double Quartet -- I do like this one despite the slightly odd combination of fabrics.
Baton Rouge Square -- sort of an odd design, I think!

Major Catch-up!

September was a busy month, with an out-of-town visitor and two weeks of travel -- so I fell woefully behind. But I'm happy to say that I'm now almost caught up! Here they are in order:

Northumberland Star -- week 33: I hated making this block, and I don't think there's enough value contrast between the red and the brown.
Rally Round -- week 34: I decided that the 9" blocks are now going to be made with Asian fabrics. This one was a pain to make, too, mostly because I did the little triangles wrong the first time -- but I really love the way it came out!
Castle in the Air -- week 35: One of my favorite blocks. Maybe it's the name?
Hope of Hartford -- week 37: I LOVE this block!
Nelson's (spotty) Victory -- week 38: easy to make, but I don't see much potential for it in a scrappy quilt.
Fool's Square -- week 39: I sort of like the "transparency" effect in this one but other than that I think it's sort of clunky...
Now I'm just missing weeks 29 and 36 -- maybe by next weekend I'll be done with all of them.

two more...

Finally almost caught up again -- this is Envelope Motif
And this week's Mosaic 3. Not too excited about either of these...

The only one I have left to do is Mrs. Morgan's Choice -- those funny windmill blades. I really don't like that one at all and it might be the one that gets omitted from the otherwise full set!

more batiks

I'm several weeks behind but trying to catch up again! I really like the way these two came out -- Hearth and Home
and Queen Charlotte's Crown. I have fabrics picked out for the other two blocks I'm missing, but probably won't get them sewn up 'til the weekend.

my windmill

I enlarged this pattern to 12" and then decided to construct it a bit differently -- I made the pinwheel in the middle and then added the four "saltbox" corners. It's just a smidge smaller than 12.5" but I think it will work, but I don't find it too exciting...

back to batiks

You would not believe how many pieces I sewed together in the wrong places on these two blocks. Honestly, I only had one (pint) of beer beforehand! And I didn't realize that the first one was going to come out at 9" (rather than 10") so I got totally confused halfway through when I went to square up one of the sections.

Anyway, aside from that I like the triangle chain a lot. This week's "z", not so much...

I like it!

I like this block a lot -- that sort of off-kilter arrangement of the checkerboard squares is pretty interesting! I didn't like the Quilter's Cache setting with sashing and cornerstones too much, but I think it might be worth playing around with other settings in EQ one of thee days...

Here's what my design wall looked like with most of my 12" blocks on it...