Here are my results from my Friday night sewing. I finished the little pinwheels for the Pinwheel Party blue & orange quilts and started sewing the sashings on the blue one.
While sewing these, I made these cute 1 1/4″ half square triangles leader/ender style along with adding a couple of more strips to my crumb house block and this purple piece (leftovers from trimming down a couple of pinwheel blocks). Fun times!
I bought two items from the Craft Hope for Haiti Etsy store. Below is the second item….a terrific zipper purse made by Margarida from Portugal. It’s it amazing that Craft Hope allowed people from all over the world help? Margarida has a blog (http://www.margaridagodinho.blogspot.com/) and an Etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/margaridagodinho). I love her tags….see it on the right?
I’ve been busy sewing away on things this weekend and am amazed at how many of these leader/enders blocks I’ve gotten made!
Here’s my updated stash report…..more bad news, but it isn’t my fault, really, it isn’t. I was given a gift certificate to The Quilted Fox and I had to use it 
Added: 12 Cumulative Added: 39.5 yds
Used: 0 Cumulative Used: 0 yds
Net Out/(In): (39.5 yds) Something is still wrong here. I had better finish something soon!!!!
With the sewing I’ve been doing lately, I managed to finish up a number of leader/ender 9 & 4 patch blocks. I ironed a few up last night and put them in my collection box (isn’t it a fun box?) and, wow, check out these piles-ups! Leader/enders rock, thanks Bonnie
The first Saturday is…..Saturday!!! I didn’t have and still don’t have my block ready yet but I made some progress last night
I also threw some of the many 9-patch blocks on my design wall to see how they are looking. These are made from 1 1/2″ squares so the 9-patch blocks will finish at 3″. I have at least 100 of these made…..all done via leader/enders. I think they’ll look better set on point….
I’ve been making leader/ender 9 patches for a while…..here’s a pile.
I read about fanning or twirling the seams on a couple of blogs. Doing this helps your blocks lay flat but I haven’t given it too much thought. Judy Laquidara from Patchwork Times has a good post about it here and since these are small blocks, 3 inches finished, the lumps at the intersection of the seams does make them un-flat so I thought I’d try it. Last night while watching the Biggest Loser I picked the threads and this morning I gave a couple of these blocks a press. Look at this:
Don’t they look nice and neat? They certainly lay much nicer now. I’m thinking I need to do this to all the 4 patches I’ve made…..nothing like a block that’s nice and flat
Every once in a while I grab a couple of fabrics from my scrap salad bag and sew them together as a leader/ender when I don’t have nine patch pieces all lined up. I really do like the freedom of the crumb blocks!
It’s kind of like the cloud game where you look at the clouds and try to spot shapes, like a dog or an elephant. In this one I see a house and a crooked fence 
Here’s a picture of the new leader/ender 9-patches I’ve made. These have the dark fabric in the corners versus the previous ones which had the light fabric in the corners. Still not sure what I’ll do with them but the red ones seem like they’d look nice set on point and made into a miniature quilt
