Catching up
Saturday, April 17, 2010 4 Comments »I may be a faithful reader, but when it comes to posting, I'm erratic at best. All of the more recent posting have revolved around our new grandbaby. I have been sewing however. Really I have.
Nancy, Near Philadephia was kind enough to get me started on Civil War repro fabrics. A blessing and a curse. Now I'm fully addicted.
The first step on the road to perdition was involvement in an "Indigo and Caramel" block swap. We are basing the blocks on a Batik Baskets BOM Nancy found on The Quilters Guild of Plano website. If you are interested, the links are half-way down the page here. We each chose a different month's basket block, making 12 to swap, using CW repro fabric in indigo and caramel. Half of us are using indigo backgrounds with caramel baskets; the other half did indigo on caramel. Mine is the March block, with an indigo basket.
Well, I'm going to need more than 12 blocks for a potential quilt, so I decided to make my own additional set consisting of a block for each month, using the opposite color scheme. So if Nancy is making the April block using blue background/tan basket, I'm making the same block for myself but with a tan background/blue basket.
Well, I'm going to need more than 12 blocks for a potential quilt, so I decided to make my own additional set consisting of a block for each month, using the opposite color scheme. So if Nancy is making the April block using blue background/tan basket, I'm making the same block for myself but with a tan background/blue basket. Here's what I have so far. My swap block is in the center. The swaps aren't due until June so I have plenty of time to finish my reverse set. And yes, all my swappers are done and mailed to the Swap Maven. Finished block size - 10.5"
Then a number of us discovered a book called The Farmer's Wife during a quilting retreat in Lancaster. Not wanting to go totally crazy I agreed to swap 12 FW blocks with Nancy. They are interesting, though challenging, and the "patterns" in the book are not for the faint of heart. Here's what I have so far. More than half of the blocks are Nancy's -- at one point, I was doing a block for her & a block for me, but then I stopped matching and just did hers. I was afraid if I didn't get hers done & mailed, I'd never get them done. The finished size of these babies is 6". Yep, more CW repros.
Coincidently, I got interested in a BOM that my LQS was doing. It's Marcus Fabrics' Civil War Tribute quilt. I posted about it when I first started, and again when I did the first month's block. Here is an update on what we've done so far. There are 2 each of the light blue blocks, one each of the blocks with the dark brown corbnewrs, and 4 each of the lot-of-HSTs block. Big blocks are 18"; smaller ones are 12". The HST block is 15", with spacers on the top/bottom.
Then I saw this cute little table-topper in the June issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. Designed by one of the Repro Fabric Queens, Jo Morton, I had to make it. Those little star blocks are 3".My wedding anniversary is 4th of July, so this will be my gift to us.
That's the end of my show-and-tell for now, but before I go I want to share a nifty tool that I found. I'm almost as crazy about tools as I am about fabric. This one looks as though it will really help my just-say-no-to-math brain figure out the setting triangles for the on-point settings I will be doing. It's called The Setting Triangle, by Lynn Gravia, and is distributed by Little Foot, Ltd. I can't wait to try it.Wow, that was a long post! It's turning out to be a beautiful day here in Eastern PA, and hubby Rod-o and I are off to meet out newest grandbaby. I hope hope your day is as blessed as mine!
love and pieces, Pat
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4 comments:
Your caramel and indigo baskets are looking smashing. I'm going to make more of them, too.
These blocks are all amazing, I have that setting ruler... it's still in the original shrink wrap it was in when I bought it five, six years ago! Groan. Will you show us how to use it? Ha!! I haven't succumbed to the CW fabrics YET... I'd better get out of here while the getting's good.
I've since discovered that there are a number of setting triangle rulers out there, including one by Fons & Porter. I'm sure they all work in a similar fashion, but right now mine looks quite professional tacked up on the wall with all of it's other ruler friends. As my husband recently said: "Good Lord, woman, do your really NEED all those rulers?" He's such a man.
These are fantastic blocks!!
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