A whole bunch of randomness!

I did it! I updated my Tuffets Tute to show how I have had the greatest success making a smooth closure on the Tuffets. You can find it in the tabs under my header photo, or just click here.
In order to get photos of the process I made another boxy pincushion--the little purple and cheddar one. This tiny thing finishes at 2" square.

If you look closely you can see a pin head on the bottom edge of the dark pincushion. I hadn't stitched it closed yet. : )

And, as you can see, I couldn't resist taking the little Dresden to the dark side. I love the way a black background makes colors pop!

If you recall the block Lisa Bongean designed for The Splendid Sampler, you may recognize the center of this. Lisa called her block "Dedication Rose", and it was designed for needle turned applique, but I did it in wool.

And then I gave it a few borders to make a little medallion quilt out of it.

 My red/white mini Burgoyne Surrounded was intended to be entered in our State Quilt Guild Jubilee show of red/white quilts, but life happened--and my entry did not. It would have been the first time I entered a show. I finally got another block made. I am making this square, so I only have 5 more blocks to go.
I think it is fun to see how much the 97 pieces in each block shrink as you assemble them.

 


Since everything is already cut for the whole quilt, and some of the little units are assembled, you may wonder why I haven't whipped this up faster. I'll tell you--because it takes so much concentration!! More often than not I am sewing at night and I am too tired to think this hard. But I will say that the red/white version is easier than the black/tan/cheddar version that I did a couple of years ago.

The beast has been set aside for a while now, but I have completed all of the quilting in black thread and white thread. I'll probably do the gold, light blue, and bright green blocks next, but I am struggling to match those greens with a thread. I'll do the grey and navy blue blocks last. There are a lot of those.



If you have followed me for any length of time you know how much I love red/white/blue projects. Take a look at these two free patterns by Stacy West (Buttermilk Basin) available from Henry Glass.
On the left is an 11" x 17" wool applique pattern and on the right is a little pieced quilt about 22" x 28". Oh, I want to make them both. You can find the pattern links here.




I debated whether or not to share this. You have seen a lot of my Mom's quilts lately. But here we go. On Mother's Day the women's auxiliary organization of my Mom's congregation held a little reception with a fruit/veggie buffet after their meeting. 

They featured as many of my Mom's quilts as she could gather. I had to go get photos, but I will just share one I took when I slipped in early, before the women arrived. There are 15 of Mom's quilts displayed here, all hand quilted in her tiny stitches. The quilt in the corner won sweepstakes at our county and state fairs many years ago. It went to the Houston show, too. It is a simple Irish Chain--the thing that made it win is Mom's quilting.

One more random thing, after sifting through the comments on my giveaway and weeding out the No-reply comments that didn't include an email address, the random number generator chose a winner for my drawing. Gayle (middlesister blog) is our winner. Gayle already had the book, and she graciously offered that it be gifted to another winner. So back to the random generator and this time it selected Kristie (cowgirlquilter blog). Congrats to you both. Your winnings will be on their way soon!

Until then,
Janet O.

p.s. Thanks to everyone that left a comment on the giveaway. I enjoyed hearing from so many that usually don't say much. I had 21 "no-reply" comments this time--more than ever. I appreciate the six that left contact info in their comment. If you are "no-reply" and you don't leave your email address in your comment, you are not entered. Sorry, it is just too complicated to deal with winners that can't be contacted. This is supposed to be fun. : )