Floribunda Lives!!

...and I love it! Mine does not have that 50s look of many others posted, but my florals tend to be of the "dark and dirty" variety and my yellows are more golden and patterned, rather than lemony and solid.

The top six blocks are sewn up (but not together). The
four blocks on the bottom are still each nine separate
pieces waiting on design boards to go to the sewing
machine and get sewn together.

That's okay--it is the pattern and scrappiness that I love about it. I have all of the pieces cut and ready to go. The original was 6x8 blocks. I have cut mine to be 7x8 blocks. I wanted this to be totally from my stash, but today I broke down and picked up 1/4 yard of more yellow (and I grabbed a floral remnant while I was in the store--I can't resist the remnants). I use a lot of mustard and gold in my quilts, but not much yellow, so I couldn't quite make it without a tad more. Can't decide yet what I will do for borders.
 Now I will set aside "Eye Fooler" as my leader/ender for a time, and let this one butt in line. It just wouldn't patiently wait its turn. In fact, it got so impatient that when I was just going to sew up one block to get a feel for it tonight, something happened and you can see the results above. I am going to put my foot down now and keep it in its place as my leader/ender project. Wonder how long that will last?
I am following Bonnie's instructions for this quilt, but I want to share with you one tip I like to use. Maybe you all are doing this already, but in case not, here goes. When I have a bunch of strips or squares to cut in a row I like to use the June Tailor Shape Cut ruler. On this quilt, when you have the two 21" strips sewn together and are putting half of one set on top of the other half (or whole ones on top of each other if you are making two blocks from the same fabric), butting the seams to prepare to slice every two inches as Bonnie shows ...

...then I like to pull out this ruler, which has cuts in it every 1/2 inch,  and line it up so that one of the black lines follows the seam on the strips. Grab your rotary cutter and slice through every two inches.

 

After you have sliced every two inches down the length of the fabric, remove the ruler and you are ready to sew the 4-patch units, and you never had to reposition the ruler. It is so slick! Yes, the ruler can be a bit pricey, but that is what those 40 or 50% off coupons at JoAnn's are for!

Of course, no matter how many slick tricks I use, I have to include some major error along the way. Why couldn't I catch this before having it all sewn and pressed?

I wanted to say thanks to all who responded to my last post. It really seems to have struck a chord--or a nerve, or something. As we are drowning in Bonnie's creative juices I guess we can take comfort in the fact that we are not going down alone. : ) I had some good chuckles over your responses and have met some wonderful new people. I know many of you found your way here because Bonnie put a link to that post on her Facebook page, and thanks to whomever it was that mentioned that to me in an email. I'm not on Facebook, so I wouldn't have known. If you are a new follower, I hope you don't expect me to be that entertaining all the time. I'm usually pretty dry.
My mini, wonky 9-patches are finally a flimsy. I'm trying to talk myself into my first attempt at machine quilting on this, but I really don't want to ruin it with my noviceness (when there isn't a word that says what I need, I'll make one). I'll have to think about it some more. If you can recommend a good book or website about quilting on your home machine, I would appreciate the input.

Until next time, from the little mountain valley where the mosquitos are returning like swallows to Capistrano (I'd rather have the swallows--besides, they eat mosquitos),
Janet O.