I'm Swooning

Have you all heard about the Swoon-along?

Truth, this block scares me... I have Swoon fear....If you have seen much of my blog in the past, I am a big block kind a girl, without a lot of fussy little pieces.... but I had committed to expanding my horizons, tackling more complicated patterns and I started obsessing on the Swoon... and after all, its just a bunch of HST's and flying geese.... uhm, a LOT of HST's. The Flicker group has some great tips, two specific on construction that saved me some time and Advil I am sure.

My first block, in all its Hope Valley glory.  I am loving it! 

Click below to go to the flicker site... over 700 registered Swooners!

Scraptacular

This is my version of Nannett's Picnic quilt as shared this month by Jodi at Pleasant Home.

Rather than sticking to 4.5 and 2.5 inch squares, I added 2.5 x4.5 and 6.5 strips and 4.5 x 6.5 rectangles.... then made the 12.5 blocks.

I included solids as well, and a solid mustard yellow border to keep it bright.

The backing is some wonderful soft flannel that I fell in love... it will be so snugly on the couch!

I want to go find a pine forest to take pictures of this, with lovely mountains in the background, but... well... its a wood fence, and there are shadows of the scraggly oaks ... that will have to do.

Todays PSA

When they say 'check stitching on back periodically'... they mean it is a good idea unless you want to spend 3 hours taking out quilting covering a 32" x 38" area rather than doing something productive with your day..... now back to regularly scheduled programming...

Leaves Fall

I know, its January, most leaves that are going to fall have done so already..

But this is the Leaves quilt, that has finally fallen...

From the UFO list... to the completed category!

WIP 1/18/12

New starts this week:

"Picnic" scrap quilt from Jodi at Pleasant Home's month of scraps.

Worked on this past week:

Quilting done, binding cut for D9P Leaves quilt.

Completed this past week:

Double Hour Glass pot holders rescued from the dark corner of a closet and completed. Also did a Courthouse Steps block as part of Randi's sew along and made it into a pot holder too.

Sitting quietly this week:Rainbow blocks, Chubby Stars QAL, Juki Spring, American Jane blocks, 36 patch QAL, HST project, Storybook Quilt, New Wave, Pinwheel Sampler, 1-2-3 County Fair, Hope Valley round-and-round QAL

WIP Stats for week :started -1, ongoing -12, completed- 2 = 13 total WIP

Stash Enhancement

I visited my favorite fabric stores this week....

The ones downtown, next to the girly clubs... not a nice neighborhood, but wow, was the trip worth it.... The above Grand Revival and Dolce prints by Tanya Whelan still had the plastic wrap on the bolt... It looked like there were about 10 prints total, but I stuck to the ones that could play well as stash and stayed away from the large scale focus prints...

These Anna Maria Horner were also new bolts.... two Garden Party and one Good Folks.

Brown and red Wild Thyme print that I love, and a pink Park Slope print... none of these are new fabrics, but all are favorites of mine, some hard to find, and did I mention they were $3.50/yard? I think I exhibited considerable constraint in getting only a yard of each....

Last, I got 5 yards of this lovely flannel that is targeted to be used for backing on the scrap quilt I started this week... again, $3.50/yard.

The backing is perhaps the only one that I can pretend that I need, but I could not pass up the rest... They were way too pretty to not come home with me.

Scrap 'Picnic' quilt

I have been following along with Jodi at Pleasant Home's Scrap-Along. Last week she featured a great quilt from Feda's Hive, the Picnic Quilt. I got out my scraps and started sorting, finding that most of my stash was earth tones and got started....



I also found that I have a lot of 2.5 strips and not a lot of pieces that were in the 4.5" square range.... so I decided to adjust the 6.5 x 4.5 units to what I had, still using the original, but adding some other configurations as well.

This is the first 6 units, combined to make a 12" block up on the design wall.



I am not sure how big this will be, and don't have a target for completion, but I do visualize snuggling with it on my couch.