Applique, Friends, Y-Seams, and Spring

Spring around my yard:

It's a good thing these plants know how to take care of themselves, because I'm too busy quilting to do any gardening.

Development of the three 9-patch setting:


Oh, woe. At first had three white-on-white patches in the fans that of course ended up looking like glaring holes to which your eye went first and stayed, so had to un-sew them and their little gold patchy friends:


Here's Marcie's Scrappy Williamsburg on display at Little Quilts!


Look at this perfect-for-spring antique Grandmother's Flower Garden from Stars class this past week:



And this is the central applique medallion done by some demented over-achiever for the Stars Across the Garden quilt I've been talking about (Little Quilts class). The rest of us are so jealous we could just scream:

Oh, and to my surprise, I punctured my finger this morning under the sewing machine needle. I always wondered how anybody could manage to do that. Now I know. So be careful out there.

Monday

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Thank you to those who emailed to ask about Atlanta's tornado over the week-end. I'm only a few miles from downtown but knew nothing about it until later during the night. How unusual to have a tornado in a downtown area.

We are doing a 6" block swap in our Jo Morton Little Women class at Little Quilts. We are all getting pretty interested in this event. On the left is my first idea, which has become an orphan block; on the right is the one I think I will do.

Much suffering on paper and in EQ6 preceded the sewing:

EQ6 finally came to my rescue as I discovered yet another feature of it that helped me draft the design. EQ has a block that is similar to this but the "greenery" diamonds vary in size and naturally I just had to have them all the same size.

I've been working on the setting for those three leftover blocks from Block Swappers (Little Quilts):


And I just finished a new pattern! Pollys in the Posies. It combines my Girlies with a Hexagon Garden (available at quilt pattern blog) and I find myself once again hideously late for the Day Job. See you later!

final note: You all totally understand that when I have posted Show and Tell photos that I am posting other people's work not mine, right? Once or twice a person has commented that they love "my" quilt and I have emailed them right away to say that it is another's work. I haven't mentioned the fellow classmates' names who created these quilts and blocks since I didn't want to start scattering people's names on the internet. There was certainly no intention to mislead. I'm confused enough by my own quilt output to try to take on others' as well :-). Please comment on this because I always assumed you all knew Show and Tell was others' work and that the once-or-twice comment happened because people were skimming fast which we all have to do with so many blogs, eh?!

Here is another Show and Tell from Jo class. Is it not the cutest thing ever? Note bunny.

These are three blocks leftover from the Blockswappers group that went into that nine patch quilt. I want to make them into a table runner. Love the sharp colors. But no setting ideas are coming to mind. Anybody have a notion?

Show and Tells - Jo's and Nine Patch

Late for work, so no time to caption-ize:







Oh, except I must say that the above is from Bonnie's class in Georgia, think this class was called Starstruck Stars...? Absolutely marvelous how her very old and dated fabrics look fantastic in this scrappy setting.

Unsew

Oh, woe. Thought the color placement looked just fine but after all was assembled, it looked absolutely bizarre, so I unsewed the central section and redid:

Stash Used

I didn't expect to start this particular quilt project today, much less finish it, but what fun to have a rather spontaneously-done quilt suddenly done. And I used stash for the inner and outer borders, and will use a very large (to me) length of stash for the backing. These blocks are from the fall Block Swapper at Little Quilts, where we did various combinations of pink, brown, cream each month and got a variety back. The stars were ones with pink points that I did at first for Marcie's Williamsburg Medallion that had to be bumped.

a gift and an errata

Look at this dear needle keeper that Gypsy Quilter sent me! Thank you, San!

I have a correction to send anybody who may have purchased a "Dorothy" pattern at Little Quilts this past week or so, so do email me:

Marcie's Williamsburg Medallion

It was very enjoyable to put together Marcie's Williamsburg Medallion quilt! Marcie's directions are really clear and accurate.

Smiling From Ear to Ear

Shop Hop has been going on this week-end at the Greater Atlanta quilt shops, which appears to have been extremely enjoyable for all concerned. My first two quilt patterns (see link to the right to see patterns for sale), House Party Setting and Tornado (using Wizard of Oz fabrics) were on display along with my samples. And, I might add, this was all happening right next to Lori Smith's patterns :-). This was all pretty thrilling.


I believe some House Party Setting patterns have sold and all of the Tornado patterns have sold, so will bring more over today for the last day of Shop Hop. I heard (and overheard) some marvelously gratifying comments on the patterns while working at Little Quilts yesterday and I can tell you, I could hardly keep back the tears.

Well! Yesterday, amidst all the frivolity of Shop Hop at Little Quilts, I noticed some promising fabrics to make an interesting (I hope) rendition of Marcie Patch's hugely successful Williamsburg Medallion pattern. Fabrics are here:

Do you think they will work, or will it come out looking Merely Odd? At this point, I still feel it could go either way.

I have been weeding thousands of ancient books at my despised day job. You know, the one that is keeping me from the Creative Life. That school library has been criminally neglected by previous so-called librarians for decades. I've always admired some of the rebound patterns that you see on old books, however, like the ones below. Don't they look quilt-like?




Don't miss the lastest Email from College, previous post.

Emails from College

[son makes rare phone call to adoring mother - highlight]: "Mom, you know how you have been worrying that I am not washing my clothes ever since my foot started to rot last semester?"

Mother: "I remember."

Son: "Well, I've been washing my clothes, I have, Mom [mother snorts], but I learned something yesterday. This girl at the laundromat asked me if I didn't ever use detergent. I said, well of course I do it's right here, and I showed her my bottle of Downy. She looked like she felt sorry for me and told me it wasn't detergent. It's all I've been using since school started."

Mother: "So let me get this straight. For seven months, you've been washing your perfectly revolting clothes in fabric softener and they've only been getting..."

Son: "...really soft."