I finished block 7 of the Vicksburg FREE BOM on the MetroLink this morning.
I realized, horror of horrors, I would finish the last leave well before arriving at work leaving me with no hand work!! I dashed downstairs, quick cut a square of background fabric and stuffed a handful of scraps in a bag. Whew! Saved by the tile quilt. There are several folks working on modern tile quilts as can been seen here. I had a heart go all wonky on the Vicksburg block above so I’m using it as the first piece of my tile block. Think I’ll leave this project in my work bag permanently to keep me out of trouble just in case 
Craft Hope’s new project, Project 8, is collecting wash cloth and hand towel sized cotton cloths for three organizations who have mobilized to clean birds, turtles and marine mammals. Please check out all the details here if you are interested in doing something to help.
Last night I finished the other 4 Storm at Sea blocks for our guilds fund raising quilt. Again I have to hand it to the quilt committee, these are looking terrific! Boy, the half hexie blocks on my design wall do -not- enhance the blocks, do they 
Just because I think they are so darn cute, here’s a picture of Max and Pattison from The Owl Box that is/was streaming live video of the barn owls Molly & McGee as they nested and raised their 4 owletts.
Judy from Patchwork Times sponsors Design Wall Mondays where you can link to lots of other blogs to check out projects other quilters have on their walls……be sure to click the link and check them out 
My wall has the half hexagon quilt I cut a while back. I’m sewing it via leader/enders right now. I played with different layouts and ended up liking this one which reminds me of the plastic pop beads for toddlers. Never ceases to amaze me how much “shrinkage” happens when you sew the pieces together!
I sewed the Pinwheel Party block 11 for both the navy and orange PP quilts. Only one more block then the sashing, yea!!
My mom agreed to work on a quilt with me. Actually we’ll be doing two quilts one for her that she will start and one for me that I start. There aren’t many rules…..we’re just going to add a row with fabric from our stash each time we receive it. I finally got my first row finished!! I’ll send it along with some extra fabric from my stash in case my mom wants to use it and I’ll wait to receive my mom’s first row.
I also sewed the borders on the Downy Touch of Comfort quilt so it’s ready to be quilted.
And I paper pieced a couple of the blocks for our guild’s fundraising quilt. I’m not a paper piecing fan. The problem lies in the fact that it wastes a lot of fabric so to minimize the waste, I cut my pieces too small and then have trouble getting them to cover the area they are supposed to cover. The kits put together by the quilt committee are excellent, the pieces are plenty big and I had no trouble. I used the tip from Bonnie Hunter (at Quiltville) to put a dab of washable glue stick for the first piece to keep it in place when you turn the whole thing fabric side down to sew. Worked like a charm…thanks Bonnie!
Stash Report
- Added: 0 Cumulative Added: 97 yds
- Used: 1 (for the mini 9-patch) Cumulative Used: 16 yds
- Net Out/(In): (81 yds) Not much change but I’m getting close to several finishes so watch out!
I made 36 half square triangles last night for block 11 (D-2) of the Pinwheel Party quilts. Over the weekend I managed to get all the pieces cut for the remainder of the PP quilts AND mark the sewing lines for the half square triangles.
Dawn-Marie commented on Monday’s post about my perfect points. They aren’t perfect but they are pretty good I used to -hate- squaring up my half square triangles and always had less than satisfactory points which I blamed on everything except not squaring up. Once I finally gave in and started squaring them up, my points have improved a lot! It takes less time to square up than to fiddle with the blocks, unsewing and resewing to get them within my tolerance for point-i-ness.
I was lucky with the orange background fabric I used for the second, spur-of-the-moment, Pinwheel Party quilt. I knew I’d have enough fabric for the blocks but probably not for the sashing and borders……as it turned out I had enough for the sashing but not the outside border (I’m okay with this) with only this much to spare. Not bad, huh?
I sewed the last two seams on the center of the Downy Touch of Comfort quilt, too. I have a couple of the 4-patches left over so I’m thinking about piecing them into the backing but maybe I’ll just want to hurry up and get it quilted………
Here’s my design wall. The Downy Touch of Comfort top has only two more seams to go then borders and my May First Sat blocks are done!
Hop over to Judy’s DWM post to link to enjoy other Design Wall Monday posts
I also finished appliqueing the 6th block of the Folk Sampler Next up is 7th Vicksburg FREE BOM. Moving right along now
I’ve picked up the Folk Style Sampler applique project again. This is a project from the Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine. Here’s the magazine cover with Part II of the two part series.
So I’m busy working on my 6th block which happens to be the block in the top row left or bottom row right.
I’ve completed the other 2 blocks in the both the top and bottom rows as well as the block in the middle since starting this quilt in August 2007. No typo there, I started this in 2007!!! Anyway, here’s the progress I’ve made on the block and the block from the completed quilt above. Notice anything?
I doubled checked the pattern and sure enough, there are two sets of leaves! At first I thought maybe I’d mismatched the stems from another block….could easily have happened with so much time gone by since I started this project But no, there are definitely two sets of leaves.
WARNING: Immediately following the two pictures below is a picture of something dead so don’t page down if you’re squeamish!
I showed a picture a while back of the spike-y plant the squirrels attacked. Well, here it is now, recovering nicely. I think I’ll try to hang this on the tree again, but I’ll watch it VERY carefully.
I also showed a picture of a nest in the hanging fern on my front porch. We’ve since determined it’s a house finch nest. There were three eggs laid and now we have baby finches, woo hoo!! Can’t tell yet if there are two hatch-lings or if there’s a third as well.
Here’s to a great Memorial Day weekend! I know my DH started his off with a bang since he caught a mole this morning that has been VERY busy tunneling up our yard! THIS IS WAR. DH has new grass growing in the huge bare spot where previous mole tunnels finally killed off the grass. Look at those digging feet….talk about specialized! They are so destructive to the yard but their fur is amazingly soft. Check out that pointy nose….hey the nose and tail are about the same length. If you stuck with me to the end, have a fabulous weekend>
I received my Downy Touch of Comfort Quilt kit! Our guild coordinated receiving 20 kits and I got mine from Darlene yesterday since I wasn’t at the guild meeting last week. I read at least one blog where they thought their kit fabrics didn’t go together at all. I’m lucky Mine is very cute!
I like so much about this program, including their request for you to return the bag & instructions to use again. They have a nice request to add in an additional quilt when this one is returned…..as generous as quilters are, I’ll bet they get quite a few more quilts because they asked. I’ll have to see what my stash has in the way of little kid prints
I selected fabrics for block 7 of the Vicksburg FREE BOM this weekend. I wasn’t sure which background fabric to use for it so I put the blocks on my design wall. I was going to throw in a third background fabric but now think I’ll just sew two of the remaining 4 blocks on the lighter background and the 2 on the darker background. I’ll move the pineapple and cherry blocks and replace them with the darker background blocks. In hind sight I should have switched to a third background when I did the cherry and pineapple blocks. Check out what other quilters have going at Judy’s Design Wall Monday post
