Unscripted Bee Blocks

gosh, i'm awfully behind with posting!

the majority of these blocks were made or completed in august, after the map was finished. i'd gotten a bit behind for july blocks, but in addition to that, several folks from the Unscripted Bee sent out their fabric at the same time, so i had a nice little stack of projects waiting for me.



Cynthia's block was finished it earlier in the summer, but of course, i haven't blogged it yet.

Cynthia's a huge fan of Paris (she's even designed fabric inspired by it!), so she asked us to use Elizabeth Hartman's Mod Mosaic tutorial to make blocks that looked like a map of Paris, with the white strips standing in as "streets", jutting out in all directions. She'd been collecting Paris themed fabric for awhile, so she sent us all some scraps of it, along with coordinating prints.



aren't the fabrics she chose fun? i LOVE the buttons piece on the upper right! my block ended up fairly straight, without many angles in it - so i guess it doesn't look that much like a map of Paris, the streets there look like a nightmare! unsurprisingly, i was worried about running out of fabric, and i didn't want to waste fabric by cutting it wonky.

Cynthia also asked us to make a small improv block for the back of her quilt, so i used my last little pieces for the following -



see that eensy bit of white in the top right corner? that was ALL i had left!



Jody's block was a fairly simple improv block, perfect for getting back into the swing of things after the map quilt! Jody sent out a selection of solids in blues, greens, greys and white, and asked us to make a block using Bumble Beans Inc (Victoria Findlay Wolfe)'s "Waverunner Quilt" tutorial.



as usual, i ran out of fabric. i was supposed to make a block 10"x20", and i ALMOST made it! i think it ended up being 19" long or so. i really really love how the block turned out, and i think it's going to be a stunning quilt, but i totally didn't find it as easy as the tutorial led me to believe!

the tutorial tells you to cut your strips with wavy edges, then line them up to sew them regardless of matching curves. you're supposed to be able to press them flat if you use steam. i don't know if my curves weren't slight enough or what, but there were several spots where it didn't matter how much i steamed the block, it just wasn't going to flatten. i worked it out by going back in and sewing along the fold line, where the fabric wanted the seam to be, so it wasn't a big deal, but it was interesting. i also really love the little bits of scraps that i used to bring the block closer to size, similar to what the original quilt uses.



and finally, Nicole's blocks! i started these so long ago... i ran out of background fabric for these, and then i totally lost steam while waiting for more to arrive. i eventually finished up the words, but i was so stalled on the additional improv blocks to go along with them, it took me forever to get everything finished up and sent out.

Nicole asked everyone to make a block with their favourite word in it. she sent us all different bundles of fabric, but we all had the same background fabric, and a small piece of the Kaffe Fassett fabric that inspired her overall colour scheme for the quilt. she told us to make the blocks any size we wanted, but to please include the Kaffe Fassett fabric in our word somewhere.

i was super excited about her blocks, because i'd been doing a lot of pieced lettering at the time (no, of course i haven't blogged that yet...). i gave Nicole a list of favourite words, including some 20s slang that i adore, and she chose the word kerfuffle.

i started working on the block, but fairly early on i realized that a) i didn't like the K that i'd made, especially with the other letters, and b) the orange fabrics weren't melding with the pinks and creams very well, and since i was using one print per letter, it was VERY obvious!

so then that led to me making two word blocks....






(final size of the block - 38" x 10.5")


and then in the orange fabrics,


(final size of the block - 21" x 9")

it actually worked out perfectly, because we've been using the word "keen" a lot in the bee - some members of the bee are total keeners, getting their blocks done super quick!

and as for the improv blocks that messed me up - i made three, one of which i turned into a signature block. i love the fabric combination on the largest block, but i like the technique i used on the orange one, it was fun to do. i also had the improv block that Lysa made, because she didn't like how it turned out, but i wasn't inspired by it either. i ended up sending it to Nicole as-is, i'm sorry Lysa!




and that is the end of the Unscripted Bee blocks!


except, of course, my blocks.... which is a whole other post!

WIP Wednesday

i have very little to report for WIP Wednesday.

i haven't gotten much accomplished the last few weeks, fatigue has been seriously kicking my ass. if i'm not sleeping, i'm wishing i was sleeping! i'm trying to keep myself on a regular sleep schedule, which means that i'm often awake when my body/mind want to sleep, and i'm pretty useless in that state. i've been doing a lot of mindless pinning.....



i do have lots of WIPs at the moment, as usual. in fact, i have so many WIPs that i'm kind of scared to list them!


my big WIP at the moment is that i decided to join in on Katy of Monkey Do's Spinning Stars
(pdf) quilt-a-long. i know, i know, don't i already have enough projects on my plate? but it's so pretty!

there are some amazing fabric combinations in the flickr group, and Katy's quilt is going to be oh-so-fabulous in Field Study (with leopard print rings!), but i decided that the web like centre of the blocks obviously made this the perfect halloween quilt... right? i'm so excited!

i hauled out my halloween fabric stash, and so far i've cut all of the A and B pieces for 9 blocks. (sadly, it barely made a dent in my stash...) i'm hemming and hawing on the C pieces, because i'm using the same fabric for all of them, so it seems silly to cut 8 pieces for each star. doesn't it? it just seems like a lot of unnecessary seams! i'm trying to decide what i'm going to do instead.

i've only sewn together one block, so i need to get going on the rest of them. however, i HAVE been sewing with the scraps leftover after i did all of that cutting!



remember last year's halloween blocks? or what about the year before? yes, once again, we're doing a halloween block lotto at VMQG. yay! can you believe that this will be our 3rd year doing this? (our guild is growing up!)

today i sewed my scraps together and made blocks for this year's block lotto. the last two years i've had mine done really early to use as examples/demos at our September guild meeting, but this year i couldn't get it together in time for the meeting (blegh, fatigue). however, Felicity had an awesome example, a mini quilt top she made using the blocks she won last year!

this year's guidelines are the same as last year - make halloween themed blocks that are multiples of six inches finished. so that could be 6.5"x6.5", 12.5"x12.5", 6.5"x18.5", etc. two of my blocks are 12.5"x12.5" and four are 6.5"x6.5", but i think i'm going to keep one of them for myself, so that'll be 5 blocks for the lotto.


(those aren't two nearly identical fabrics, one of them is purple)




(again, the bottom two are actually using purple fabric)



i've also been obsessed with pincushions, and have about 10 in varying stages of completion. i'm making halloween pincushions just for the hell of it, as well as sewing themed ones for a craft fair that VMQG is participating in later this year. i work on them assembly line, which works well, but means that i don't feel very accomplished until they're all finished, and then i feel REALLY accomplished!

i did finish one of the halloween pincushions, because i wanted to test the pattern. i can't decide if i like it, i might change the dimensions a bit for the rest of them. it was unexpectedly really hard to sew the circle perfectly, not sure what that was about.


(halloween pompom trim!!! that's purple too, by the way)





in addition to that, VMQG is participating in a pincushion swap that the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild is coordinating, so i spent one fatigue-addled day searching around the internet for pincushion tutorials and pinning them. if you're looking for a pincushion tutorial - here you go! there are 271 pins in that board, and the majority of them are linked to tutorials. i think i can safely say that i've seen all of the pincushions on all of the internet!




what about you? are you getting anything accomplished this month? do you have a favourite pincushion pattern or tutorial?



linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and at The Needle And Thread Network!

Grey Grey Grey.

i've been obsessed with grey lately, which is killing me, really, because i can't use the term "shades of grey" without thinking of craptastic mommy porn.


it's funny because i've never been a big fan of grey, i actually refused to use kona medium grey for ages because i felt like it was sooo overdone within modern quilting.


but then i worked with grey fabric for Lysa's scrappy circle bee blocks, and then again for Cynthia's heart bee blocks, and i fell in love.


in the late spring i picked up a bunch of grey prints to use for my map quilt. i ended up not using them, but it was a great start to my grey stash. meanwhile, i went out and got a bunch of grey solids, which i did use for my map, and also used for the Age Not Attitude tote, for a pouch, for my Barb Mortell class, and for at least two other projects that i haven't gotten around to blogging yet. it's gotten to the point that everytime i go to the fabric store, i get made fun of for my constant grey search.


i've been dreaming about grey linen, which i haven't been able to find in the shade that i'm picturing... and i've been obsessing over the sad fact that i'd used every single scrap of Sherbet Pips in my strip quilts, and hadn't left myself any of the grey with white square/dots for my stash. i was seriously considering ripping some out of the baby strip quilt that i haven't quilted yet, i wanted some so bad! luckily, i found some on etsy, so now i'm just waiting impatiently for it to arrive.


random note - i think different spellings of grey signify different colours. is that weird? when i see the spelling "gray", i picture a warm gray, with a bit of a brown undertone, and when i see the spelling "grey", i picture a cool grey, sometimes with a bit of a silverish or blue undertone. can you guess which shade i prefer? i've never been a big brown fan!


so, given my new-found love of grey, i was super excited when i opened up my package for Cheryl's Unscripted Bee Block and found grey! Cheryl sent out bundles of fabric and a large paper hexagon and asked us to piece together the scraps to make a block the size of the template. she left it up to us how we wanted to sew the block, and i got it in my head to try something i'd been thinking of for ages, a hexagon made up of triangular log cabins. i folded her template up and made myself a pattern for the triangles, and they actually went together much easier than i'd expected.



as usual, i ran out of fabric. it's happened pretty much every month! apparently i use up more fabric with my propensity for complicated blocks. i messaged Cheryl and got her go-ahead to add my own fabric, since i had some grey in my stash already. of course, i still needed to go shopping for more....



within the package Cheryl sent, there were a few different shades of grey (and gray!). i really loved the stripes, but i was having a hard time pulling the warm shades in with all the other cooler greys. luckily i found this herringbone fabric when i went shopping, along with a few others, and that really fit them together. this block made me appreciate the warmer grays more, though i'm still loyal to the grey-grey that i love!



for my signature block, i wanted to echo the hexagons that will make up the front of the quilt, so i started with a hexie and added strips around it. i embroidered my name, again using the FriXion pen to write my name first. the white marks will wash out, but they're still annoying.


in addition to all of the bee blocks that i've been working on, i really wanted to sew up a few blocks for the VMQG july challenge, because i was too busy to do some of the challenges in may and june. and since the challenge was to make improv blocks with grey and black solids, it wasn't particularly a hardship!



i just used scraps for these, because as usual, i couldn't find my yardage of black kona (there's a black pit in my house that eats it, i think), so they ended up with more grey than black, but i think that's cool. the inspiration quilt has a good variety of darker and lighter blocks, so it works.




i have yet more bee blocks to post, but i'll do those another day. i told you i had a backlog of things to post!



in other news, cross your fingers for me that i'll get into the classes i want for QuiltCon!

due to a giant clusterf*ck (aka some sort of system error), their website refused my registration at least 4 or 5 times, but told me that it was my credit card's fault, and by the time i finally got off the phone with my bank and realized that the problem was the site, not my credit card, i was practically hysterical. (i was also super sleep deprived because i got up HELLA EARLY to register, and i'd been up late stressing about registering, so i was a bit over-emotional!) through my tears i discovered that two of the three workshops i wanted were waitlisted - though they'd still been available when i tried to register at 7:03am.

i e-mailed quiltcon, there were some tweets back and forth, and then i got an e-mail that they're looking into it, but of course, we just had the long weekend, so i won't hear anything more until tomorrow at the latest. i saw other folks tweeting about problems as well, so i'm not sure what they're gonna do!

it would really suck to have registered for a class, and then be told that they're removing you because of a system glitch, but it also really sucks to not get the classes you wanted, even though they were available when you tried to register! i'm hoping that they'll put the people who got the system errors at the top of the waitlists or something, that seems like the fairest option.

are you going to Quiltcon? did you get the workshops you were hoping for?

Fab Bee Blocks

thanks for all the love for my map quilt guys!


i'm really happy that i finally blogged it, cause i got to show you all the awesome photos, but also because i have SO MANY THINGS to blog, i need to start getting caught up!


such as bee blocks! i have so many to blog about!


first up, the Fab Bee, which is mostly made up of local people that i knew before the bee started, but also includes a few further away who i've gotten to know since.


Holly was the queen bee for May, and she stuck with neutrals for her block, which i surprised myself by loving! she sent us each a bundle of seven neutral fabrics, along with a teensy bit of solid coloured fabric, one colour for each of us. she also made a pinterest board of neutral quilts that inspired her - i'm sure they'll inspire you too!

remember the "It's Not About Age, It's About Attitude" tote that i made awhile ago? i made it right after i made Holly's block, you can totally see the similarities.





Holly even sent along embroidery floss that matched the accent colour in each of her blocks! she's so amazingly organized! i am less organized though, and didn't manage to get a picture of my signature block after i finished the embroidery...


Barb and Holly were apparently thinking alike, because she planned to do neutrals in June as well! for her block she wanted us to work with stripes, and asked us not to use a ruler for cutting, to just use our scissors. i think some of us were scared!



though most of the fabric that Barb sent were dyed solids, one of them was a neutral print, and i reversed some pieces of it to add a little bit more visual interest to my blocks.



after i finished the one big block, i sewed together all of my leftovers to make her a few littler blocks as well.


Darlene went back and forth, but eventually decided to have us make Stacked Book Blocks, cause they're her favourite. she made a pinterest board full of blocks that she loved (along with a few of her other options), and sent us a big bundle of fabrics that just screamed DARLENE as soon as you opened them!



can you guess which fabrics i added? there were two!

her block felt so simple compared to the others i've done for this bee (such as Cynthia's heart blocks!), so i decided to add a little bit of embroidery as a secret little message for her. i put it on the very top piece of the block, so that she could remove it and put it somewhere else if she liked.



it's very tiny! i used two strands of 50wt(ish) sewing thread to embroider it.



i used a Pilot FriXion pen to draw on my letters, so you can kind of see the white marks it left under my embroidery, hopefully that'll wash out after Darlene finishes the quilt.



Ellen (who doesn't have a blog, amazingly) left her month super open, just asking us to make blocks with an owl, however we wanted. she sent us a bundle of prints along with a navy blue solid for the background, and let us do our own thing. i was originally thinking that i'd paperpiece an owl, perhaps using Sonja's Easy Peeping Owl pattern that i sewed a long time ago, but then Sonja went and did a talk at the August FVMQG meeting, along with her patterns, and a few other people dibsed her owls first!

after i learned that, i thought about drafting my owl paperpiecing pattern, but i let it mull around in my brain for a little bit. then i had a brainstorm! i made up a sample to test my idea (which i'll blog separately, cause i LOVE it!) and then went full force into owl-mania.



after i made the first one, i couldn't stop, and i still had fabric that i hadn't used, so i made two smaller owls as well.


(i used a ton of starch on the eyes, but that'll wash out! that's why they look like they have marks on them, etc)

the owls use a whole list of techniques, which makes me super happy for some reason. they've got half square triangles (HSTs), 3D flying geese, improv curves, a prairie point (also known as a burr or a pinecone), and applique circles. i'm already planning more!



i'm all caught up with this bee, thank goodness, and i received the fabric for the September block from Berene last week. i'm very excited to get going on it!

Bee Blocks, part 2!

more bee blocks!
these two months were so much fun, really getting into improv!


first up was Holly's Echino block, inspired by Elizabeth Hartman's "Put A Bird on It" quilt.

honestly, this was the block that threw me for a loop in the first place, back in the fall. at the time, i hadn't done much improv, so i was nervous, and i knew from the super quick members of the bee that there wasn't much fabric if i screwed it up. i actually did up a sample back then, but never brought myself to cut into Holly's precious fabrics. but no more! i opened them up and dove in!

Holly had earmarked a focus fabric for each block, and had cut other smaller pieces of Echino for us to incorporate. she also sent along chunks of several solids, and asked us to use the white primarily in smaller, narrower strips.

detail!


after all of my stress, i had so much fun making this block! i changed my mind about the positioning of elements multiple times as i went along, but i love the composition that i ended up with. this block is too small as well, because i ran out of fabric. we were asked to make a 15.5" square block, and i managed to get the height, but i could only eke out 14" in width. if i'd had enough fabric, i would've added at least two more narrow solid strips on the left side, of varying widths, each with a small chunk of white. i think it would have made the single strip look more intentional. but it won't be up to me! i can't wait to see how Holly puts them all together.

full block!


we were also asked to make a 4"x4" signature block if we had enough extra, but obviously, i didn't! i pieced together the three little scraps that i did have (this is seriously all i had, i didn't waste a thread on this block!) and hand embroidered my name on it. my signature block ended up being 4.5" x 1.5".



i didn't really think about the colour combination of this block, but it feels very flag-like to me now! once it's sewn together with other pieces, it'll be less obvious, thankfully. and speaking of sewing it together, if you look closely, you can see where i marked the 1/4" line around the edges to ensure that my embroidery didn't end up in the seam allowance. i used a pilot friction pen, which i quite like for some things, but it unfortunately left a light line around the edges. from everything i've read, it sounds like that'll wash out, luckily.



and then i moved on to Christine's blocks! her instructions were "fun"! she asked us to improvise, make our blocks any size or shape that we wanted, and to try to use up all of the fabric that she sent, whether that ended up being a few blocks, one large one, a bunch of tiny ones - whatever. she also asked us to add at least a bit of fabric from our own stash, even just a teensy bit, and she provided us with some visual inspiration, all of which were quilts and blocks made by Malka Dubrawsky.

when i opened up the envelope, i didn't know where to start! the fabrics that she sent were nearly all very bright, with quite busy prints. i don't think i'd realized how much i'd come to rely on solids! quite a few of her prints were Kaffe Fassett designs, which i usually admire in the store, but don't buy because i never know what i'd do with them. she forced me to figure it out, and they grew on me super fast.

i started out spending some time going through Malka Dubrawsky's etsy shop and flipping through both of her books, her older book Color Your Cloth and her more well known book, Fresh Quilting. this was one of the times that my ridiculously extensive library came in handy!

a lot of Malka's designs are recognizable because of her dyeing, or because of her quilting, neither of which are relevant for a bee block, so i tried to pick out distinctive shapes and go from there. quite a few bee members had incorporated curves into their blocks, especially since the Half Moon Rising pillow was one of Christine's examples.

i decided to keep with the curve trend and create improvisational drunkard's path blocks. the blocks are made by stacking the fabric and cutting it, and they are usually trimmed down after they're sewn to make them into proper squares, but i decided to add strips to them instead, a bit of a homage to Malka's log cabin blocks.



i love it. it is so much busier than i usually make things, but i think it's fabulous, and i think a 6 year old girl would love it.

after i finished my big block, i had all sorts of scraps to play with! i was inspired by the diamonds improv pillow cover and made up the first in what ended up being a little set of 6"x6" blocks.



i love the look of that block, but the majority of my scraps were strips, not triangles, so i went back to the wonky log cabin idea for my second scrap block.



my third scrap block used the two prints that i struggled with the most. the colours are less saturated in them, so they didn't seem to flow with the others as well, and the enchino is a heavier weight. usually i love the cotton/linen blend that Kokka uses for their fabrics, but it just didn't seem like a good combo for improv curves!



those used up most of my scraps, but inspired by some of the blocks that Cynthia made for Christine, i decided to sew together all of my eensy-weensy squares and make a crumb block as well. it ended up being 6.5" x 9.5"




fun, huh? i'm working on a couple more bee blocks, but they're all still in progress. i'm super excited about them, and oh-so-happy about these ones!!

Bee Blocks, part 1!

i feel like i have nothing to show for all of the work that i've done lately.

that's ridiculous, actually, because i have SO MANY things to blog, and i'm actually getting caught up on things, it's just that few of those things are actually finished projects!

i have a backlog of small projects to post about, but my big focus for the past few months has been blocks, blocks, blocks. blocks for bees, blocks for guild, blocks for the hell of it...

but mostly blocks for a bee!

(that links explains what a modern bee is, but for eye candy, lists of current bees, etc, i highly recommend the flickr group QuiltingBeeBlocks)



remember way back in... holy crap, september, i mentioned the unscripted bee?

i'm finally getting caught up!


first up was Sara's log cabin blocks. her blocks were inspired by this quilt, and she sent us all sorts of yummy scraps to use.



i have to confess that i have always planned to make a scrappy log cabin like this "one day", so it's fun to see hers come together!



the packets of fabric were a bit short, partly because i was picky and couldn't pull a few of the scraps in with the other colours, and partly just because Sara weren't sure how much would be needed, so i supplemented a bit with fabrics from my stash. i went through the pictures of everyone else's blocks and found a few prints that i had in different colourways, and then i dug into my japanese stash (intended for my own future log cabin!) to keep with the same types of prints that she had sent along. all of the fabrics i added were the longer strips needed for the edges of the blocks, so i figured if she really hated them, she could replace them!


the next blocks i made were Lysa's circle blocks. hers weren't actually "catching up", since they were intended for this month, but since i was so behind, i wasn't sure if everyone would still want me to make their blocks, so while i was waiting to hear, i thought i'd whip up her blocks. plus, she wrote up wonderful instructions, so they were a great project to work on when i was feeling intimidated by improv!



Lysa asked us to make two full circles, and a slightly larger circle that we cut in half for the edges of the quilt.



she sent us a bag full of colour coordinated scraps, backing fabric, interfacing for the circle technique, circle patterns and awesome instructions. (plus supplies for signature blocks, but i'll blog that another day)



i'm really loving grey lately! i have very little in my stash, and after sewing up Lysa's blocks, i think i need some!


the next catch up blocks that i made were for Val's sampler quilt. Val bundled up a bunch of blue, white, grey and aqua scraps and asked that we make her one or two blocks. she left the choice of the block design up to us, and just requested the size and that they not have any raw edge applique. she's adding the blocks from this bee to the ones that she received in an earlier swap to make herself a queen size bed. (don't they look awesome together?)

the first block that i made up turned out fabulous, i'm so in love! i want to do an entire quilt in blocks like this. i followed this tutorial for a wonky churn-dash block, with a bit of a variation. i didn't use the cut out pieces as foundations for the pieced sections, i used them as patterns. i didn't want to add the bulk, and i didn't know if i'd need the scraps of white for my second block!


this block ended up a teensy bit small, because i only had the fabric provided. i thought the piece would be big enough, but i underestimated how much the wonkiness would take up! it can easily be brought up to size with the addition of a border, either in the solid white or in one of the blue prints.

i decided that the second block was the perfect excuse to try one of the chevrons i'd been seeing around. i liked aspects of two different tutorials, one from Tall Grass Prairie Studio and one from Six White Horses, so i combined the two. i like the variety of fabrics in the first tutorial, but i loved the shape of the second.

closeup!!

i added a bunch of fabrics from my stash, because it really needed more variety in the "braids", but i think they combine well with the fabrics Val sent.

the full block

as i was making this block, i started thinking that it might be good for my month of the bee, but by the time i finished it, i knew there was no way i'd ask the other participants to make it. it turned out really cool, but it took so much longer than i'd anticipated!


that's enough for today! what do you think of them? are any of the blocks designs that you'd make yourself?


i'll post some more in a separate post, cause there are lots more to come!

more halloween blocks, and that's about it! - WIP Wednesday

my last WIPs post was long, because it was several weeks worth of projects, but this one doesn't have much to report. i've been spending a lot of time at my parent's place this past week, and as a result, i haven't gotten a whole lot accomplished, sewing-wise. however, i did suceed in getting one of their cats to have a nap with me today - kitty joined the family back in may, and though she's mellowing to us, she's not very cuddly yet. honestly, i was kind of surprised that she actually came when i called, and i thought she'd stay with me for a few minutes. i woke up an hour later, and she was still curled up against my back! it was pretty sweet.

but anyway, back onto the sewing topic. i posted a WIP photo of my Outfoxed quilt yesterday, and i started quilting it today. i'm not sure if i'll get it finished by the FVMQG meeting tomorrow night, but i'm hoping. cross your fingers! i am totally totally loving the quilt, and i can't wait to finish the quilting.


have you seen the Drunkard's Path Quilt-a-long that Kristie of OCD and Kate of Needle and Spatula are doing? i know, i know, i already have way too many projects on the go....

but i'm so tempted! i've been dying to make some quilts with curves lately. however, i know that i definitely don't have time for a project that has to be cut out with templates, and sewn very precisely. i started thinking about some improv circles that i'd done, and wondered how they would work. Kate has written a tutorial for wonky drunkard's path blocks, but they're not quite as wonky as i was thinking, so i just did it my way. i wanted to try it before i cut a whole bunch of fabric for a full quilt, so i pulled out some of the Spooktacular charms leftover after i made those halloween blocks a few weeks ago. i made 16 blocks, and then wondered what the hell i was going to use them for! using 5" charms, i ended up with 4.25" blocks after i trimmed them - i played around with them for a bit and decided to use them for the VMQG Halloween block challenge that the other blocks i made were for. i had to trim them down so that they'd fit the size requirements, but considering that i really just made them to play, i wasn't too concerned.



i sewed 4 blocks together, creating 4 - 6.5" blocks for the challenge. i like the effect, especially on the two brighter blocks, and if i do decide to pull together a drunkard's path quilt, this will definitely be how i'll do it.











this week's iron craft challenge was Halloween themed, so the blocks fit that perfectly!


i haven't made an progress on the Billboard quilt, FVMQG's Mod Sampler Quilt-a-long, the Across the Sea Quilt-a-long, the Blue and Brown baby quilt, either of the Bowtie Quilts, or the Sherbet Pips baby quilt. i was hoping to get the second Sherbet Pips sewn together, but i didn't get around to it. i do need to move on it soon, because the recipient will be arriving soon!

other projects on my WIPs list are the ongoing Unscripted blocks, the RSR pouches that are ridiculously close to being finished, the binding on my green kona quilt, that blue and black half-quilted monstrosity that's holding half my favourite basting pins hostage, the blue modern traditional quilt.

somehow, in my big studio clean up at the end of august/beginning of september, i managed to lose the RSR pouches that i'm almost finished, and a big bag full of Kona solids that i'd purchased especially for portrait quilts, full of skin colour shades and hair colours. i'm super frustrated about it, because i've looked EVERYWHERE, but i have faith that they'll turn up at some point. they've gotta be in this apartment somewhere!


on a positive note, while i was cleaning, i found a $100 bill! awesome! it was from last christmas, and it was in a little vinyl pouch that my mom bought me, along with all of the scratch'n'win tickets that were in my stocking. most of our extended family just send cheques for christmas gifts, which my mom then cashes and distributes, so basically, i just found my birthday and christmas gifts from my grandparents, and my christmas gifts from several aunts and uncles. i won $2 on the lotto tickets, and the $100 was perfect timing, because i'm going to a quilt retreat this weekend, organized by the fabulous Krista from Poppyprint, so it covered that and a bit of fabric, because i obviously need more! i'm really excited about the retreat, the last one was fabulous! it's 13 hours of sewing, and this time i AM going to rest part way through the day. i need to figure out which projects i should bring with me, because i'm determined to gather my stuff and get it ready BEFORE 11:59 on friday night!


i'm linking up to WIP Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced, along with lots of other folks who've managed to get a lot more done than i have.
woops! i started writing this, and forgot to actually post it (i got distracted quilting Outfoxed!), so i missed the linky thing over on Freshly Pieced. let's just pretend that i linked to it, shall we?