Project Quilting 16.4 - Birthstone Bowl Cozies

 

This week's Project Quilting challenge allowed me to pick off another backlogged project.  Yay!  

The challenge required using my birthstone color, which is peridot.  I can't tell you how much I hated that color as a kid.  I wish I had been born in any other month than August!  The color grew on me about 20 years ago when I picked out a pair of peridot and amethyst earrings (still one of my favorite pairs).  While researching this project I discovered the stone comes in quite a variety of greens.  I dug through my stash and found a few fabrics that would work (ooh!  pretty!).

Back to Black (and Grey and White)

Back to work on the Midnight Garden quilt.  

Still no complete blocks but I now have a dozen octagons.  The light set is done and I'm working diligently on the darker ones.  I really like the contrast of the black and silver.  Such a pain to press open all the seams, but I'm impressed with how flat the centers are (with eight points all jammed together).  

I spent some time brainstorming the best way to square the block and how/when to add the corners.  Each set will need to be pieced to the corners of specific blocks, so I won't start cutting and working on them until octagons are lined up and ready. 

What really excited me was setting up the design wall - swapping out the small piece of batting for a new king-sized sheet that covers the entire wall.  I had to conscript Rob's help to wrestle it in place.  Its should be just tall enough to hold the whole quilt. 

I Like Thursday: Sewing, Snow and Skiing

Wow - the last time I liked up with I Like Thursday was at Christmas.  I've been busy, I guess!  Yeah, lots of good stuff going on.

The new year means a new season of Project Quilting challenges:  three completed and three to go.  I've been squeezing in the challenges between the Midnight Garden quilt: a week for the PQ challenge, then a week of sewing triangles (and playing with layouts).  I've accomplished a lot in six weeks!

Snow!  Let's see... first was the Snow Ball at the end of January - a 12 hour contra dance event (I made it through most of the first nine hours before I tuckered out).  It was a blast!

Project Quilting 16.3 - Common Block Postcard

This week's Project Quilting challenge was common blocks - block designs that have been around for so long no one knows who "invented" them.  We had to have a finished project with at least three common blocks.

The challenge didn't fit with any of my backlogged projects, so I settled on another postcard.  To keep from getting bogged down with too many blocks I looked at only 4-patch block patterns.  Then I pilfered the pile of black-and-white scrap from my current Midnight Garden project and got to work. 

My original plan was six two-inch blocks in the black and grey.  I fiddled with it and got most of them stitched together... and that's when things went off the rails.