F8 Swap Blocks

I ended up joining four groups for the Fat Eighth Swap on my favorite online group - 16 blocks. I finished two groups so far, so I'm half done. Here's what the second group looked like. I have until April 15 to finish the other two. Should be no problem. Then I'll get back 16 blocks from my swap mates. The two blocks on the left were ones I had never completed. The top one was free on the site -- 4500 Member Celebration Block and the bottom left was the Spain block from the Carol Doak Mariner's Compass Stars Book. The two on the right are from the Carol Doak Simply Sensational 9 Patch Stars Book. This is my favorite swap. It's so much fun to try new blocks and new color combinations. Just hard to find the time since I have my daughter and two grandsons (under 2) visiting. But I'll keep working on that.

Oops, missed my anniversary

I started this blog in January 2008 to record my quilting journey. I just took a look over the year and it's fun to see what I've done. But I realized I missed quite a few too. Like the quilt I actually made at Hershey in July isn't in here and none of my potted posies are in here and a few other BOMs are missing. If I can find the time I'll search them out and load them so we can all see what I reallly did last year. 2008 was GREAT!

But it's a new year and I need to get busy. I have plans to make a quilt for my grandson Lliam (Sponge Bob Square Pants) and for my grandson Luke (Mater from Cars) and for my friend Barb and her fiance Eddie (Fireman stuff) and still need to finish my son Ben's quilt (red white and black) and I have plans for at least 3 Hawaiian Table toppers. I have a ton more projects I've planned, just got to get busy and get them done. 2009 will be FINE!

No time

My daughter and grandson are visiting while we wait for Grandson #2 to make his arrival, so not a lot of time on my hands. Llliam is 18 months old and wears us all out. But I do spend a lot of time laughing. I've been very busy at my job as well. We're short two people. The boss found another job and one of my coworkers had some unexpected surgery. They sent me to Hawaii for a little work that ended up being a great 3 day mini vacation and I bought TONS of fabric (Hawaiian prints) while I was there. I have been doing a little bit of sewing to keep up with swaps on my favorite online group. I've made a bunch of little potted posies for one swap and I'm working on a Fat Eighth swap now. You get fabric from four other people and you make each one of them a block using their fabric and yours. You get back four blocks from four different people all with your same fabric in it somewhere. This year I was pretty specific about the block and where I wanted my fabric to be. It should be a pretty quilt when all is said and done. It doesn't end until April 15, so it'll be a while until I can show my blocks. Here's some of the blocks I've made for others. I stuck with very similar designed blocks. I wanted to get done quickly and all these swappers left it quilters choice. They weren't as picky as I was. Not sure how much time I'll have once Luke is born to sew, so I need to finish up the rest of these soon. This is one group -- I'm in four groups, so 12 more to come.

Christmas Presents -- TT Galore

I made a table topper for each of my coworkers. I asked what their favorite colors were and tried to accommodate those who gave me an answer. I used to just put boring backings on these until I found one I had gave a friend with the backing up -- she said she liked the front but got tired of it and really liked the paisley on the back so sometimes she used it back up. The quilting (luckily) looked pretty good. I always stitch-in-the-ditch on these. So now I spend more time picking the backing fabric and am a little more careful on the quilting. I'm posting pictures of the front and back of each of the christmas presents I made. Some came out better than others, but it's hard to pick my favorite. All the stars are Carol Doak designs. Most are from the 50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars book but two are freebies from her Yahoo Group web site. Hope my coworkers like them. They sure were fun to make and design. I let my daughter and grandbaby pick the colors on one.

Fall Table Topper

I love the colors in this table topper. Fall is my favorite time of the year, I just love the colors all around. I made two of these centers. I'm keeping one for myself. Don't know if it will be this one or the second one. We'll see when it's done. But here is the top of the first one. It's the Connecticut Block from Carol Doak's 50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars Book.

Latest Challenge

Sometime in July the online quilt group I belong to posted a challenge. We were given three different blocks and needed to use them to design and sew a quilt. I designed mine right away but never got around to sewing it. Well the challenge is over Oct. 31, so I worked this weekend on sewing the challenge. I wanted to use this great mushroom fabric I have and lots of bright colors, but I didn't want to use too much of my favorite fabric since I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with the quilt. It didn't come out great, but it's okay. The challenge has 3 prizes. One prize was for the quickest -- that wasn't me. Another prize is for viewer's choice. Everyone on the site gets a chance to vote on their favorite. I got no chance of winning that either. There are some beautiful quilts, far better than mine. And then the last prize is a random drawing. There's less than 20 people involved right now so the odds aren't bad. Sometimes more than a hundred participate. Don't think I'll win, but gotta give it a shot. It took me quite a while to do it, but there are only 32 blocks, I think. I took a close up of the mushrooms, they're my favorite part.

November BOM

Our fearless leader posted the November BOM early. I made 2 again. One standard and one a little more fun. These blocks are only 7" finished so the finished quilt should be a cute wall hanging - about 28 x 36 - with borders. This one was geared towards labor day, so I made one with the flag, but then I made another with the leaves on the roof and a kitty in the window and a stray cat hanging around outside. Kind of like my house. Can't wait til December's block is ready.