Strips & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails

You might want to get a cuppa your favorite beverage... I have been busy!

Actually, I had a few days where I was unable to function. Then, in desperation, I paged through my Gwen & Freddy books for color and inspiration. This "Housetop" quilt caught my attention.

(ppg. 154-155 of Gwen & Freddy Collaborate Again)

I needed something I could do without too much thought or effort. This looked do-able and these 4.5" patches seemed like a good place to start.

Making a quilt of chevron or half log cabin or housetop blocks has been on my list of Quilts To Make for years. I gave myself permission to let this be the first one, and to let it be as scrappy as it needed to be. In two days I had seven blocks built up and trimmed down to 18.5," which is the size Gwen & Freddy used for their version.

Seven blocks was either one too many for a baby quilt or not enough for a larger person's quilt. Before I had made up my mind what to do my friend C~ talked with me about the need for quilts for the young men in the Foster Care system. Our local quilt group makes plenty of baby and child size quilts but the teenagers tend to get left out, especially the young men. So I decided to make five more blocks, and to try to skew the blocks masculine and older. This was not easy to do! I don't have a lot of florals in my stash but I do have a preponderance of feminine and juvenile prints - at least in my opinion. Eventually I had twelve 18.5" blocks though.

The second set of blocks were started with five inch patches, not 4.5," just because. I also tried hard to make them very dark. The upright sashes between blocks were cut from assorted 2.5" strips but all the horizontal sashing was cut from one print.

It took some doing to find an appropriate print for the outer border. I had just the right thing in my stash though. The gold in the horizontal sashing is reflected in some of the circles on the purple print. Woohoo!

So we have strips... and snails...

and puppy dog tails...

 

for a young man who, as we all know, will be a little boy at heart forever. ;- )

Happy, Happy Day!

But we'll get to that in a moment ;- )

I've made some progress with the friendship blocks. I was frankly freaking out about this project early in the day yesterday. I think part of the problem was that I didn't have a clear plan of attack. After working with the bits and pieces for a while I began to understand how it needed to be assembled. By the end of the day I was able to actually get some of the blocks and checkerboard units sewn together and now I feel much better about it. I'm pretty happy with the way it's looking so far.

As you look at these pictures keep in mind that the columns of blocks on the right side are hanging crooked. Consequently they overlap slightly, making it a bit of a challenge to gauge how they're going to look in the end. For example, I thought the Sunbonnet Sue block was the same size as the Spiderweb or Kaleidoscope block beneath it. In reality it's half an inch skinnier. Hmm...

I still have quite a bit of work to do but it may be hard to maintain momentum because of this:

My altered version of Gwen & Freddy's new book arrived late yesterday! Woohoo! I've already skimmed through it and am anxious to dig deeper. My sweet SIL did this for me, technically for my birthday in June. Hope she'll forgive me for opening my present early ;- )

Ta Da!

My first picture uploaded! Hurray for me!

This is a detail shot of a preemie quilt I made recently. As soon as I learn how to fine tune the image of the whole quilt I'll share that with you.

I think this preemie quilt turned out pretty cool. It moves from a crazy patch block to one giant Log Cabin-type block with every strip being a different color/print. I'd been wanting to try this particular design style for a long time. It was fun to actually do it and have it turn out so well (in my eyes at least!). It may be hard to part with this one ;- )

Yesterday I went to the La Conner Quilt Museum to see the exhibit of Gwen Marsten and Freddy Moran's collaborative quilts. I lucked out in that there were only a handful of other people there and no-one was wearing toxic fragrance. The color in those quilts sure brightened up the place! Lots of gorgeous reds (Freddy uses red as a neutral; works for me!) and tons of fun prints. There was actually one quilt that hurt my eyes to look at. Those who know me well will be surprised to learn this because I love bright saturated colors. The truly odd thing about this is that it was one of the calmer quilts. I think what was happening was the juxtaposition of red and yellow was aggravating my astigmatism. Other than that I can't account for it. Suffice to say that I thoroughly enjoyed being able to see these quilts by two of my favorite quilters/artists in person. If only I'd been able to go on opening day when both Freddy and Gwen were there!!! {sigh}

On my way home I still felt well enough (in spite of the absence of obvious toxins, something in that building makes me ill; that's why I had to quit working there) to stop in at my LQS where they are celebrating their anniversary with a sale (fancy that!). I was able to buy Gwen and Freddy's book, Collaborative Quilting, and a few pieces of fabrics at 20% off. Let's see... I bought a red batik, a funky stripe of red and orange and green and black, a yellow/orange batik, and a multi-color on black print in Robert Kaufman's "Color Quake" line. All very bright and happy :- )