Accomplishments

I'm feeling good about yesterday's work!  My Interpret This piece is finished.  It was very simple to construct once I finally had an idea of what I wanted to "say,"  so it went together quickly.  Reveals begin March 27.  Look at the blog for some hints of what people are doing with that doll photo.

With that cleared away, I  sewed the borders on this little give-away piece that I began assembling at the end of February.  It's made with orphan blocks, framed using Sharyn Craig's ideas.  I'm very happy with its bright cheerfulness, and am looking forward to practicing some free-motion in the spaces of those blocks.  It's a size I think I can manage.  The quilting can be done after I finish the baskets.

Yes, I gritted my teeth and sewed together all the rows on the basket quilt.  Now just the  borders from the focus fabric are left, and the top will be done.  Maybe I'll do that today.  Notice the ray of morning sunshine falling across the quilt--spring!

Boring Baskets: Moving On

Boring Baskets as a working title doesn't refer to the finished look, I hope, but to the piecing process: slow enough to be tedious and time-consuming, and not difficult enough to be terribly interesting. This quilt has been in process a very long time.

After lots and lots of thought and advice and shopping and stash-rummaging, I settled on this blue fabric for the baskets, and can get back to piecing blocks. Ironically, although I had thought I couldn't move on until I settled on a basket fabric, when I started working today, I found there were several steps before the basket triangle had to go on. So more time has passed. But now, I hope I can buckle down and finish the blocks; the slow part with the flowers and the leaf unit has been done, and I'm sewing large units together now. There are also alternate blocks, but they are mostly strip piecing, all squares, no triangles.

Retreat Report

Isn't the opposite of "retreat" "advance"? I guess I'm ready to advance after a weekend of retreating. It was a good weekend, relaxing and productive. My only complaint is sore shoulders from too long at the sewing machine in a far from perfect chair.

This crowd likes the very newest patterns and newest fabric lines, but here's a quilt made from old shirts. There's one maverick in the group, at least.



Marcia pulled an all-nighter to get this far on her top; I really like the cheerfulness of the colors, and so will her grand-daughter. This pattern is from a recent Fons and Porter, I think.



I quilted my liberated wedding ring lap quilt, and finished two small pictorial quilts I'll post later. I also made more pieces for this block. I would have done more, but I don't think I want this basket fabric, and haven't found an alternative.


I think I'll try to finish it before next year's retreat!

And last but not least, the frog went to a new keeper, who thinks maybe he needs hair. It will be fun to see.

The Vanishing Triangles, or Why You Shouldn't Shoot Your Mouth Off about Quilters and Math

OK, here's today's word problem, boys and girls. If you are going to make 13 of these blocks in yellow and 12 in pink, how many of the tiny quarter square triangles do you need? Let's just figure out the colored ones first and save the blue ones till later.




I made the pink ones already, so I need the yellow ones. Each block has three flowers and each flower takes two of the itty-bitties, so that's 13(2x3) = 78, right? Hold your applause. If I can figure that out, WHY do I continue to have to cut more? Having to go back to the cutting board repeatedly is making this sloow block even slooower.

I guess I can calculate but not count. Or maybe the whole formula is wrong. If so, someone set me straight, please. There's also the part that trips me up every time, which is: How many squares do you need to cut if you cut each square into four triangles? May that's the problem. There's also the fact that I should write this down when I figure it out, but I didn't. So back to the rotary cutter!

And I have no idea if I have enough blue triangles cut.