More Sunday Stash

Looking forward to greeting my friends from Around the Block Quilts today. They've been on a Row-by-Row Experience road trip to Santa Fe, and will stop at Ruth's Stitchery on the way back to Cheyenne. I can't wait to show them "my" shop!

In the meanwhile, here are some more stash additions from my own road trip to Idaho last month. It's pattern week!

Next year at Ruth's, we're doing something other than a strip quilt every month. The odd-numbered months will still be "Jelly Roll Party." First Friday of every odd-numbered month (January, March, May, July, September, and November) we'll make a different quilt using 2½" strips.

On the first Friday of the even-numbered months (February, April, June, August, October), we'll have Fat Quarter Fun. Quilts made using fat quarters! I can't wait to start putting together unique fat quarter bundles for each sample quilt.

Do you have a favorite strip or fat quarter quilt? Tell me the name of the pattern in the comments!

From the desk of your

Design Wall Monday

I confess: When I first saw this pattern, I thought the name was currants, as in raisins. Not currents, as in water. So I wondered why the sample was made with blue fabrics instead of purples.  Oh.

Well, mine is currants! This is one of those "easy to make" but "easier to mess up" designs. The layout of each block is critical, or the secondary pattern won't emerge.

I only had to "un-sew" and "re-sew" three or four blocks because the HSTs were turned the wrong way!

I'm thinking a "curvy straight-line" quilting design with purple thread. What do you think? This is Quilt #23 for 2013 -- if I finish one more before Friday, I'll be caught up for 52 Quilts in 52 Weeks.

I have a new tool to share with you tomorrow. Come back for "Tuesday Tool!"


From the desk of your

Fat Quarter Fun -- and Fat Quarter Foul-up

Wow, this is one of those days I'm glad we live close to the mountains -- all kinds of tornadoes and tornado warnings in far Eastern Colorado.  Pretty colors on the weather map mean bad news!

Today was Fat Quarter Fun at Ruth's Stitchery.  Yesterday I finished the FQF quilt from last time, "Hot Tamale."

The strip of fabric on the left is my "border audition"  The pattern doesn't call for a border, but the other folks in the class added one and I think it will finish off the quilt nicely.  First, a narrow border of Kona "Cerise," then a wider border of the olive/fuchsia/cerise print.  I blogged the details on this pattern yesterday

Today we made another Villa Rosa Designs pattern, "Lovers Lane."  I love these simple, quick quilts!

I didn't notice the mistake until I took the photo!  Oops!  This will have a narrow red border and a wider border of the navy patriotic print.  I will quilt this on Meggie, practicing my "loops and stars" quilting.

Tomorrow is Scrappy Sunday, I am planning to work on my Anna Lena's Block-a-Day pyramids.  Only 18 days until the first day of Summer!  



From the desk of your

January Color Palette Challenge

Last year I followed a blog that assigned a "monochrome quilt" challenge each month, a single color with a background color.  This year a real colorist, Vicki Welsh of Field Trips in Fiber will create a color palette for quilters (or painters, knitters, crafters!) each month.

Her January inspiration, some antique English tiles:

Vicki writes, "This is a photo that I took in the V&A Museum in September. These are tiles from an English ship made in 1882 by Architectural Pottery Company, Poole, UK."

Aren't they lovely?  My own interpretation of this color palette is inspired by a favorite Vera Bradley handbag:

I was surprised how close the colors on my bag were to the antique tiles.

I used my colors for the February Fat Quarter Fun group at Ruth's Stitchery.  Our pattern this month is by Cheryl Witt of sew-be-it in Billings, Montana.

"On the Slant" is a really fun design and it was interesting to see what colors my classmates chose.  Here is my finished top:

And a closeup.  The solids are all Kona cottons ranging from lightest blue to navy.  The border is "Japanese Chrysanthemum" by Philip Jacobs for Rowan, Westminster Fibers.

I'm amazed how well the border fabric goes with the solids. Usually I would choose the print first, then select other fabrics to go with it.  This time the border came after the top was mostly pieced.  The only thing I would do differently (always second-guessing) is to put the light yellow in the very center, so there would be less of it.

By the way, this is quilt top #10 for 2012!