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 ;- )

Aww Sheet!

Since my last post the Flower Garden Shoo Fly top has been taken to the quilter. She expects to have it ready for me by the end of this week. I'll have the camera back then too so you'll get to see how I resolved the problem with the blocks that were not getting along together. In the meantime, I dedicated myself to using this holiday weekend to make some real progress on this set of friendship blocks:


I'm afraid to go back and see when I first posted this picture. Suffice to say that these blocks are all dated from 2002. They've not been on the sheet that long, but the sheet has been hanging in front of my studio closet doors for far too long! These are all friendship blocks that were made per my request. I asked my guild buddies to make a block of their choice (preferably a favorite pattern of theirs) but to restrict their color choices to black and white prints and hot pink. They were also supposed to keep the finished size of the blocks divisible by two. You know, 12" blocks or 10" blocks or 8 inches or 6 inches. I would even have accepted 4" blocks! As I have been working with these blocks I've discovered that I have a couple that would have finished at 7.5" or 9" (very few of them actually finish at the size they were intended to be - but I expected that). I knew there was a reason I kept putting off tackling this project ;- )

One of my friends made a simple double four-patch block. When I laid the blocks out on the sheet I decided to break that block into two units for the purpose of balancing out the two sides of the quilt top. You might be able to see that in the first picture. Eventually that led me to the decision to use checkerboards as the spacer units between the blocks. I really didn't want the blocks all mashed up side by side, but neither did I want more traditional sashing.

Shortly after I started working on this I knew I would have to move that sheet or those blocks somewhere, somehow. All that pinning and unpinning as I moved elements around was just too tedious to tolerate. My flannel design wall is not big enough to accommodate all of these blocks and I wasn't comfortable trying to work on this in blind sections as it were. I wasn't even sure the sheet would fit between the two doors at either end of what constitutes my design wall. As it turns out it does, but just barely. So I've hung the sheet over my design wall and now I can push the pins into the Styrofoam insulation board that's between the flannel and the wall itself, at least for the section I'm working on at the moment. Much better! I may even have this mostly together by the time the floral quilt comes home. (But don't hold your breath!)

And now I leave you with this little quilt in honor of those who gave their lives in the service of our country...

May their sacrifices never be forgotten.

Floral Shoo Fly

Here are eleven of the blocks I made to add to the 31 I already had for my floral Shoo Fly quilt top:


My blocks tended to be brighter and darker than those I started with. Which made it a real challenge to distribute values and colors evenly across the surface of the quilt. This didn't help either:

I did finally come up with a layout I could live with. There are places where I would make slight changes if I could but I'm more committed to including as many of the original blocks as possible. As it was I left three out of the top, and they were all made by someone else.

Once I had the blocks sewn together I discovered an issue I could not live with. Even as I was sewing the blocks together I thought I must have turned a couple the wrong way around. Did I really intend to put this yellow and this peach block side by side? Yuck! It hurts my eyes!

When I downloaded the pictures I'd taken I discovered what had happened. I was laying the blocks out on my bed, and even on that surface I was running out of room. To compensate I had overlapped the last couple of rows of blocks. The peachy block was barely visible amongst its' neighbors.

I let it rest overnight. Come morning I knew I would have to do something to correct the situation. The peach block had been made by someone else so I chose to remove the yellow block. I felt very fortunate to find a softer yellow floral print in my stash that was absolutely perfect. I don't have a lot of floral prints to begin with, and finding the right color to slide into that hole quadrupled the challenge. You'll have to wait to see the change because I don't have access to the camera at the moment. Trust me, it's a big improvement. :- )

Second Toy Drop

Here's the little ball I made for The Toy Society:


And another view:

I used to make these balls for my own children some 20 years ago. The patches for this ball were still in my stash from way back then. The fabric is that polyester sort-of-flannel stuff they make for children's sleepwear. I must have cut the pieces just right because this ball turned out almost perfectly round. If you cut them going the wrong way on the grain of woven fabrics they sometimes come out kind of wonky. Too bad I don't remember which is the right way! (Of course I didn't mark it on my pattern piece.)

I left this toy near the front door of a health clinic in my own town on my way back from delivering the Foodie Quilt. Stopping at the dentist's office for the first drop gave me the idea to leave the ball here. I'd never been to this particular building before so I didn't know what I would find in terms of places to leave the toy. There wasn't much of an entrance. As you can see, I ended up tying it up in a young tree. It will at least be more visible than the dog I left on the backside of the statue.

I could see one of the clients in the clinic watching me through the narrow window when I took this picture so I'm pretty confident this toy will have been taken to a new home by now.

:- )

First Toy Drop

I read about The Toy Society over on Carol's blog a short while ago and then went to check it out for myself on their blog and Flickr site. What a cool project! I immediately knew I had to play along. But what toy to make? I checked out the links to free patterns on The Toy Society's blog. I went through the doll and stuffed animal patterns in my stash. Hmmm...

In the end I designed my own little puppy dog. Just a pancake style toy but with floppy ears that hang loose.

Now, where to leave it? Making that decision actually took longer than it took to make the toy. I had to drive over to a nearby town to deliver the Foodie Quilt today so I took the dog with me, all bagged and tagged. This town has an annual chain saw carving contest as part of its' Fourth of July festivities. A lot of the shop owners have purchased the various carvings; there are statues and benches and all of it is wonderful.

On one corner there's a dental clinic that's virtually hemmed in by wooden statues. Going to the dentist was always a scary proposition for me when I was a kid (to be honest, it still is) so I thought a new little companion might help someone cope today.

Unfortunately I had to tuck the bag in around the backside of this particular statue. I just hope it was spotted and collected before the rain began this afternoon!

It was a bit of a challenge for me to make this drop inconspicuously. I already stand out from the crowd because of the face mask I wear when I go out in public. The carvings gave me an excuse of sorts for taking pictures but I still felt very obvious as I fooled around trying to leave the toy behind. There weren't many people out and about at the time but the street was full of parked cars so I was afraid someone would show up any minute and catch me in the act.

I made a soft ball and dropped it off today too. Stay tuned for that story...