Still working with orphans

It

Sometime last week I got out all of the smaller orphan blocks I had and put them on the design wall.  Several seemed just perfect for mug rugs, so I made six.   I'll be giving them to the board of the state guild as thank you gifts at our meeting in August.   They really work hard to make the semi-annual meetings fun and active.   

I worked on a little table topper, too, which incorporated a few 6" blocks and a bunch of neutral "crumb" blocks.  I am thinking of a little applique on the neutral parts but will set it aside for a while.

Saturday, I joined the Calico County Quilters for a nice afternoon of hand stitching and chatting.  I made good headway on a sashiko piece I worked on in Colorado.  I'm not sure what I'll do with that when finished, but I have a few guild meetings' worth of embroidery to go.

The backing fabric for the purple Barn Star quilt came in the mail from Keepsake (how I miss their store in New Hampshire!). Now I need cut it to size and get it ready to take to Marie for long arming.  I hope to get to the quilt shop on Thursday when she works.

This morning I started cutting out a new quilt using a fat quarter bundle I've had for a while.  The fabric line is called "Flora" by Riley Blake, and while cutting I couldn't help singing that song about Flora, the lily of the West (I love this version by Tim O'Brien).  It's got pink, periwinkle, green, yellow, and black florals as well as a few geometrics which are making nice Dresden Plates.  

I saw a quilt on the Moda website that really caught my fancy, and I will adapt it to suit me.  I like a mix of applique, paper piecing, and regular piecing.   I'm planning a Dresden Plate to replace the center panel which didn't come with the bundle.   I'm not wild about panels anyway, but my next quilt will probably incorporate one.  Stay tuned for Bigfoot!

We were fairly busy this past week because of a break in the hot weather (ahh!  a few good nights' sleep!), and, regardless of the weather, we have a busy week and weekend coming up.  

Barre Heritage Days will flood downtown with lots of activity, including a library book sale Friday and Saturday.  The tent will be put up Thursday when we'll take all the accumulated books outside.  I'm scheduled to work Friday afternoon and most of the day Saturday. Sunday I'll collapse, rest my feet, and maybe work on Flora a little more.

Finished and unfinished

 I forgot to take a picture of the Christmassy mug rug I made for Leigh in a swap, but, thankfully, she did.  She has a black dog so I used doggy Christmas fabric.  Because she lives in Australia, I didn't want to do anything wintry, either.  I wrapped the mug rug in some more of the doggy fabric which I love.  The dogs are kind of wacky.

The dog was paperpieced, using a free pattern I found online.  Leigh's dog is a cocker spaniel, so I probably should have made shorter legs, but that would make the mug rug a little smaller than my usual 6" x 9" size.  I have fun quilting the ears and making it scrappy.

I've been chipping away at my 16" sampler blocks and made this Drunkard's Path the other day.

I got the idea from a new book, Crumb Quilts, by Emily Bailey.  All of the quilts in the book are made with "crumbs," snippets of leftover fabrics, but my block is just made of scraps.   The designs in her book are really great, especially the diagonally striped drunkard's path bed-sized quilt in many colors.

I got the book because I'm thinking of joining a crumb block swap in 2022, but I must say Bailey's directions for making crumb blocks are a bit too brief for me - only two pages long.  I need a little more guidance because my first three blocks were really bad.  I ended up throwing one away, and the third one has gotten a brief stay of execution.  I'll give it another try soon.