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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. 


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

4 comments:

Nancy Near Philadelphia said...

Your caramel and indigo baskets are looking smashing. I'm going to make more of them, too.

Mrs. Goodneedle said...

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.

Pat said...

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.

Anonymous said...

These are fantastic blocks!!