Black Blocks

Gee, was I supposed to be working on applique today? I didn't. I did get the black blocks together for the pink/black beast. I also worked on that pieced border for the rally quilt.

This is four stacks of blocks, not just one block. Can you tell which quilt my heart is in right now? I keep saying I'll put the pink/black beast aside, but I haven't. Now if I can just get the 100 blocks assembled, cut the outer borders and add them, and piece the backing, then it can get sent off to the LAQ. When will that be? Who knows? ;-)

I ordered a few quilty things today. I found some WOW fabrics on sale, and I had a 20% off coupon to use on top of that, and since I have used all the WOW fabrics from my stash, now was a good time to buy. I also bought another Ott Lite. I had a floor lamp in my sewing room a while ago, but DS the Younger needed a lamp so he ended up with it. I have an Ott desk lamp on my sewing cabinet, but it keeps getting in my way. We are turning the small room next to my sewing room into a home office for now, and DH could use a desk lamp. I had an AHA! moment, and ordered the Ott floor lamp for the sewing room, and I will give DH the desk lamp. The best part? The Ott lamps were on sale for half price and my 20% off coupon worked for it too! Yes, I spent some money, but I got some amazing deals, and I will use everything I bought. I can never keep WOW or creams in my stash very long. For that matter, I'm using a lot of black lately too, it's those neutral background colors you can never have too much of.

Robot Baby

Here the robot baby quilt top I've been working on in between other things. It went together so fast! This is every bit of the rocket ship fabric I had, and all of the sashing fabric too. I even had to piece part of the sashing.

I need three baby quilts ASAP, and now all three tops are done. After the rally quilt is finished, I will quilt the baby quilts and get them sent on their way.

I was also working on piecing one of the borders for the rally quilt, and I've started putting blocks together for the pink/black beast. I have as much of the rally quilt center together as I can do without having the appliqued panel done, so tomorrow I plan on starting that. I'll be happy if I can even get half the fusible parts done tomorrow, there is quite a bit to do, and I haven't even chosen fabrics yet. When I need a break from messing with all the applique, I will continue piecing the pink/black beast blocks and the pieced border for the rally quilt.

Tomorrow is my last sewing day until after Easter. I'll get done what I can, and not worry about any of it while I celebrate the fact that He is risen!

More Blocks

I sewed quite a bit today, and got a lot done.


I have all of the blocks for my great-nephew's quilt, but here^ are one of each so you can see them. Isn't that robot adorable? I was trying for a gear type look with the other block. It is a Broken Wheel block with the colors switched around a bit. I have the sashing, cornerstones, and border cut and ready to go. I'm hoping to get it assembled while working on the rally quilt.

I also finished the sub-block A blocks for the pink/black beast. I kept working on them, because I had a leftover piece when making one of the logs, and I wasn't sure if I had one log too few, or if I had miscounted and grabbed one piece too many. I'm glad I stuck with making the sub-blocks, because I had one log too few, but since my extra pieces were still out and sorted, I easily made up the missing log. Now I can trim the extra pieces to 1 1/2" squares and dump any other pieces in with my crumbs. I get my containers back, and clean off some of my sewing cabinet, it's a win/win. I haven't decided if I am going to assemble the blocks now, or wait until after the rally quilt is finished. I'll decide tomorrow.

I got two of the rows assembled for the rally quilt. I have two more rows ready to go, and they'll be quick. I am planning on assembling the pieced inner border tomorrow, and then I will need to work on the appliqued center panel before I can do anything else on that quilt. The applique will have to wait until next week, I have lots of non-quilt related things to do for Easter. I'm hoping the applique goes quickly, I always dread doing it, even though it's not bad once I get started. The quilt will go together quickly once the applique is finished.

Some Fast Blocks

Wow! After starting the pink/black beast right after I finished the Orca Bay Mystery, I had almost forgotten that some blocks are quick to make!

I got all of these blocks finished today! (and I added another log on to the pink/black beast sub-blocks.....shhh, don't tell DH) Some of these blocks I have 20 of, some as few as four, depending on how many I needed for the project. It is easy to feel like you are making progress when working on big blocks like these.

In case you are wondering what in the world I am doing with colors, rest easy, these blocks are for four different quilts. I really did work on the rally quilt, the cowboy boot blocks (there are four of them) are for the rally quilt.

Did you see that several of the blocks have similar colors? Those are for a baby quilt. It's really funny, I am a firm believer that turquoise and red do NOT match. The designer of my focus fabric, which I haven't shown yet, does not agree with me, so to match the focus fabric I am stuck using turquoise and red together. The color with the turquoise and red is really a butter yellow, but it never photographs well. I think once the quilt is together it will be really cute, but I am still shaking my head at the colors.

I cooked a turkey breast in the Crock Pot today. So easy and it came out nice and moist. I love my Crock Pot for big sewing days, or any other day I have lots to do. A lot of people tease me because I have so many Crock Pots (I have six), but when we entertain, I have been known to use all six at once. I don't have a clue how many people are coming for Easter yet, I think it will be a small holiday gathering by our standards, I'm thinking under 20, but you never know.

Cut It Up Sunday

In one of my yahoo quilting groups, Stashbusters, Sunday is known as cut it up day. Today I took that advice, and cut things for several different projects. I have two quilts in the works, where I am using pieced cornerstones. Today, I cut out the cornerstones for both of those. I had realized I didn't cut enough sashing for the Quiltmaker 100 blocks sampler quilt. Today I cut more. I did work on the rally quilt, in that I cut out the cowboy boot blocks for it. I also finished cutting out a quilt for a great-nephew due to be born this summer!

I have a bunch of black and pink 1 1/2" squares left over from the pink/black beast. I decided to make a couple quilts with nine patches. I've been wanting to make a scrap quilt with 3" nine patches, so I designed one on EQ. I am going to use white squares in the corners and center, and the other four squares will be black. I will alternate the nine patches with 3" squares of every color except black and white. I'm putting it on point too, and I think it will be a really fun quilt. I need 506 nine patches. I will use up my extra black squares first, then strip piece the rest of the nine patches. I'm not going to worry about the 3" squares until all those nine patches are done, which will be a while.

I am also going to make nine patches with the pink squares, again with white, but with the pink in the corners and center. I haven't decided what I'll do with the pink nine patches yet. Since I decided to use white in both sets of nine patches, I needed to cut up some white to get started. I figured out for the black/white nine patches I needed 100 WOF strips! That's about 5 yards of fabric. I started looking at my white on white fabrics, and I don't have much more than that in my entire stash. I tend to use white on whites and cream on creams as soon as I buy them. I have more creams than whites, which is kind of funny because I use far more cream than white in my quilts. I really only want to use white on whites in the black/white nine patches, but I may look through my stash and find something else to use for the pink nine patches. If not, I'll be shopping for more white on whites. These nine patches will be my leader/ender project for a while.

The twins are feeling better today. They both have runny noses and Mr. L has a cough, but compared to last week, they are doing much better. We do have a humidifier in their room, and that helps. We put some Vick's Vapor Rub on them as well. Miss S was drinking well and eating today, so that is a great improvement for her. They got to go visit their other grandmother today, the house was strangely quiet without them.

Oh, I managed to rearrange a room today too! DH and I talked about it, and he needs a quiet place to blog and do computer stuff. Somehow working in the living room with the twins crawling on him wasn't working for him ;-) He has been wanting a laptop computer (I have a laptop, but he has always had a desktop), so he went and bought a laptop today, while I rearranged the small room next to my sewing room, and made room for a table for him to put his computer on. Right now there is a twin sized bed in that room, but when the twins move into beds that will be moved up their room, and then I will work in earnest to make that small room into a home office for DH. I still have some of my sewing stuff stored in there, but when I finish all the projects I am working on with due dates, I should be able to get most of that put away in my sewing room. It was a busy day!