Swapping, Winning, and More Flag Waving

Look at the wonderful quilt that came to live at my house today!

Gayle (of The Middle Sister blog) and I finally met up in April, after talking about it for some time. We only live an hour apart, but things just never seemed to line up until then. Somewhere along the way we decided to do a small quilt swap and this was the day we met up to exchange. I love what she created. I love the colors, fabrics, the snowball blocks, the diamonds, the touches of applique (which she knows I don't do), and the yoyos. I have never made one of those in my life--and I especially love that the four in the middle are purple. I think I came out ahead on this deal! Thanks, Gayle--we will have to do this again!

This is what I gave to Gayle. I named it (what else?) Patriotic Pineapples. I wanted those little woolly sheep in the center of the blocks because Gayle works a lot with wool in her rug hooking.

I used all Primitive Gatherings fabric, mostly from the "Old Glory" line, which I got from my friend, Kris (Lavender Quilts blog). She has a good deal on some of this line in FQ bundles in her etsy store here.

I have to share this cute photo of Gayle with the quilts before we parted ways today. What a sweetheart!

I also have a block swap going this Summer with Maureen (Pursuit of Quilts blog). We have exchanged our first batch and I am thrilled with the results. I am going to wait until all three swaps are completed before sharing the blocks.

You may recall that recently I shared a link to Doniene's blog (Now It's Just Quilts) when she had a bunch of fun patriotic quilts to show. Well, she gave away three of them in a drawing recently and I won one of them!! It arrived today and already feels right at home. Thanks, Doniene!

I got my patriotic runner quilted and bound and on the hutch, as planned! After I took the picture I put my soup tureen on it and now you can't see much of it. Oh, well, I feel better just knowing it is there. : )



I told some of you that I made Bars & Stars  for our family reunion auction. Then it looked like the reunion wouldn't happen, so I hung the little quilt in my sewing room and got kind of attached to it. When I discovered the reunion was happening after all, I hurried up and made this little piece, very similar to the one I took last year. I used too light a thread on the quilting--I really need to quit quilting late at night--but no one else seemed to care.

I think that pretty well finishes up my patriotic projects for this year. I'm going to move on to a new color scheme now. : )

Until next time,
Janet O.

Robots Welcome!

Well, maybe not welcome, but you don't have to prove you aren't one in order to leave a comment!

As you can see, I have most of the Rocky Mountain Christmas (aka Smoky Mountain Stars) flimsy assembled. I am down to borders and wondering if I want to square up all of the little bonus HSTs created in the making of this quilt and slip them in between two of the cranberry colored borders. They are 1 1/2" unfinished. What do you think? I've put the few I have finished on opposite sides of the quilt in different layouts. The original pattern has the two plain borders.
Squaring up all of these little HSTs is not fun, I don't know about you, but on the tiny blocks like this the seam just seems to make a teeter-totter out of the ruler and it is so hard to hold it stable. I'm okay on the larger blocks--the bigger surface area allows more contact, or something. I had seen the Bloc-Loc rulers online before, and it seemed that they would solve the problem. Sandi has posted about them on her blog here, and I thought it was something I wanted to try. Then Bonnie posted about it here. There is a channel cut into them that you place over the center seam. It does kind of lock in place and make the job much easier.

They are kind of pricey for such little things and then to pay shipping besides, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. But when I started considering doing all of these little HST I knew I would be playing teeter-totter again. So I was excited to find that my LQS now carries the Bloc-Loc rulers. They are still pricey, but at least I avoided shipping!

I have had fun playing with my new toy (I have GOT to choose a name!) this week and got my version of Pink Lemonade quilted.

I've played with the name for this one and "Flies in the Mustard" is settling in, I think. I used the Handi Quilter 2" clamshell template to do this. There is a learning curve to get used to it. Masking tape helped hold it securely in place. If you look closely you will see some misshapen shells in the finished product, but I think if you aren't looking for them they don't jump out at you. I unpicked the worst ones, but there are some that I am leaving in place.

Some fun mail lately--I got this LOVELY PURPLE PLAID cotton shirt from Doniene at Now It's Just Quilts blog. What a treat. She knows I am making The Farmer's Wife from plaid shirts and she knows I love purple. Oh, I love this fabric. Thanks again, Doniene. I owe you one!

Then Randy at Barrister's Block blog generously DONATED (she said dumped, but I don't consider this a dump) half of her Christmas scraps to my second set of the FW blocks which I am making in Christmas scraps. This is more than scraps, Randy--this is a prize package! I owe you, too.

Finally, I know many of you follow Judy L. over at Patchwork Times, so you have probably seen this new book. I have her Weekend Quilts book and I think it was her clever border treatments that really drew me in. So when I saw that she had a book devoted to borders I immediately put it on my Amazon wishlist. I checked local shops, but couldn't find it, so I finally ordered. Got it today and it is a great source for border inspiration! It includes 15 quilt patterns, which in and of themselves are fun layouts. But each quilt is paired with 4 different border options. The title doesn't lie--60 borders in all! How cool is that? And there are instructions on how to adapt the borders to any quilts. Judy uses primarily bright tone-on-tone prints for her quilts. Those are not my fabrics of choice, but lets face it--a beautiful quilt is a beautiful quilt, no matter your fabric preferences, and Judy makes beautiful quilts made all the more beautiful by her creative borders. This is a keeper! Check it out! No affiliation, I just appreciate a job well done!

Lots of random stuff in this post. If you stayed with me, thanks! 

Until next time, 

Janet O.