Busy on a sampler

At guild the other night, I showed this quilt, recently finished, and picked up my blocks from the "block robin" I was participating in all year.  Now I'm busily making more black, white, and red blocks to go with the blocks I received.

Since our fabric bag only goes around to 8 people over 9 months, we each received 9 blocks.  I had made one block over the year, and wanted to make a Carpenter's Wheel as a center medallion.  When I got the bag of fabrics back, I noticed that most of the stash was 2.5" strips that came from a "strip club" at our LQS.  What to do? 

The Carpenter's Wheel finished at 12.5" because I cut all those half square triangles down to an even 2" to get them all to fit together.  Well, maybe I need to make a few more 12.5" blocks, and then some 6.5" and 3.5" blocks, too, to go with the 9.5" ones I received from guild members!  I had set aside a pattern from Judy Martin, so tried it in my colorway.  I don't know if it was me or the pattern, but it ended up at 13", partly because the solid black triangles just didn't fit at the size Judy's pattern called for.  I cut more a bit larger.

This is going to be quite a busy quilt - it has taken on a life of its own!   I still plan to put the Carpenter's Wheel in the center but will surround it with a variety of blocks in various sizes and shapes, as well as some solid blacks to give the eye places to rest.  It will come together, eventually.

I will have to set this all aside by the middle of next week because we have house guests arriving late Thurs. night.  Before that, we are going to see Young Frankenstein, the musical, tomorrow afternoon and will attend the Vermont History Expo on Sunday.   Tuesday night we'll  help show The Lego Movie for family film night at the library. This involves setting up chairs and handing out popcorn mostly.  And Wednesday night I'll be introducing a friend at the library's Author program.  Sonja has written a nice cozy set in a fictional Vermont town, Carding, called The Road Unsalted.  Retirement sure is busy!