A little surprise and a little playtime

Yesterday I went to our Friendship (block exchange) group and I received a little surprise.




This is the front and back of the 21 x 18 little quilt that Jan made for me from a "Notso" Pack that she won last year at the Diva Jellyroll Race. I had put together several packs of fabric for the prizes last year when I was decluttering and this was from a not so charming pack of 5 inch squares.

She said it is made from all the fabrics in the pack. I think maybe she added the dotted fabric on the back but maybe she was "lucky" enough to win a second pack of odd pieces. I love it and it is going to occupy a space on my sewing room wall.

I did a little more playing this morning and finished 2 more blocks. After I made the first one yesterday I couldn't wait to see if I really did like the way it was going or if the one block was the only one that I would like. I like it. I didn't plan for the placement of anything except the purple and blue green fabrics and I am sure that the rest of the blocks are not going to fall together in the same way with the yellow and orange lining up and I am not sure what my final layout will be. It might be "Many Trips Around". I think that decision is a long time away. For now, I will keep the strips handy and play a little when I have steal time from something I should be doing instead.

Now I really have to get busy and do what I need to do, starting with the laundry I didn't do yesterday after all.

A Little Playtime

I spent the last 5 days fiddling around with something that I can't show yet and it is taking a lot more time and making a much bigger mess than I had anticipated. I keep trying to get ahead of the messiness but to no avail. I finally put it aside for now.
I really have no business starting something right now as I have things I need to finish up and a deadline coming up fast. Our group at church is having a two day "retreat" Friday evening and all day Saturday. I have my own things to get ready for that; thankfully, I got the things done ahead of time for the group.

Well anyway, to get back to the matter at hand, I had decided to Quilt Along With Melody   this month and here it was February 5 and I had nothing started. I cut some 2 1/2 inch strips yesterday and about an hour ago I made one block.
These are a few of the strips that I cut. At first I cut oranges and yellows, I have a lot more than you see here. I thought I needed something more so I added a few other colors. I had halfway planned to have a citrus palette but I soon saw that I did not have enough citrus colored fabrics and I started adding others. I  have a lot of older 2 1/2 inch strips that don't work  too well with a nice bright group of fabrics and I am not going to use them for this. I need to play with something more cheerful this time of year. I am leaving out anything mostly black, brown, or dark and grayed colors.

So here is my one block. I may not get another one done till after the weekend but my outlook has brightened up for having played for an hour.

Now to do some, laundry, some cleaning up and looking ahead to dinner. I might even go out after dinner to see some of my playmates if things work out.

New

Hi,


This my first attempt at blogging and I don't know if I am ready for it. However that never stopped me before.

Melody Johnson invited her followers to Quilt Along with Melody in February as she uses up her stash of printed fabrics. I have a couple of boxes of floral fabric left from my colorwash days and I decided to join the fun. It isn't so much fun if you can't share what you are doing, so here I am.

This was my first arrangement when I got the blocks upon the wall. Not too impressive, but very reminiscent of
colorwash.

This where I am now after making a bunch more darker blocks. I am still working on more dark blocks

I am beginning to like it and I will be so happy to have those empty boxes. I think that there will be more than one quilt from this but that is OK. Some of these fabrics are at least 13-15 years old and there are almost no pieces big enough to make anything but a scrap quilt and I have made a lot of those. For colorwash/watercolor quilts you need a lot of different fabrics but not so much of one fabric so I bought mostly 1/2 to 1 yard of anything. It is good have my focus on using the fabric.

I can see that I am going to have to spend some time learning how to blog and move things around. I think I am also going to have to learn to take better pictures.