Seriously, August had to be the busiest month of this year! Only one blog post?? What's up with that? Obviously a failing on my part. I can't believe how quickly it all passed. We had glorious summer weather, and I loved it. And too soon, it's on it's way out. Look what I saw 2 days ago . . .
. . . . the first autumn leaf in the yard. Yikes! It seems awfully early for this to be happening, but the weather is definitely changing. Groups of Canadian Geese are coming and going from the pond, and the weather is cooler. (Only got to 69*F today) We've had 2 or 3 days of thunderstorms and buckets of rain. Sad to say, I think summer is over. We'll probably get some more summery days still, but no more real summer.
On the plus side is that, probably, hopefully, more time in the quilt studio will be happening now.
I have gotten some quilt-y stuff done. I got 3 tops finished, backs made and all shipped off to my quilter, Shari. The quilt show is happening in one month, and it finally dawned on me just what that means. It's nearly Panic Time! I found out yesterday that the patriotic panel I showed you in my last post has to be a FINISHED QUILT at the quilt show! I haven't touched it since I showed it to you last month. Holy cow, I'm running out of time very quickly! I seriously don't know if I can make that deadline. So, time to put the pedal to the metal and see what I can do. I think I can finish the top, but I don't know about the quilting, not to mention the binding. Wish me lots of luck! I think I'm going to need it.
Speaking of luck, August was a very lucky month for me! I was a winner twice! First off, I won a giveaway over Big Lake Quilter. Cathy was giving away this wonderful book. I've already had a look through it a couple of times and have thought about trying a few of the projects. Lots of inspiration in here! Thank you, Cathy!
The other lucky event was I won the Block Lotto for August! These blocks are the first six that I made. My favorite one is the one with the wild polka dots. It makes me smile.
And here are the other three. I'll be receiving another 41 in the mail, for a total of 50. These are wonky stars that will finish to 6 inches by 9 inches. I've already gotten the first 5, and they're wonderful. This is going to be a fun quilt!
I fell in love with Kelly's quilt she just finished over at Pinkadot Quilts. Kelly links to the original tutorial so I had to go take a look. Since I already had a pile of scraps out, I decided to try making a block. I think it came out pretty good, and it was easy-peasy. So, now this has been added to the list of quilts I want/need to make!
I was asked to do a demo on the Double Disappearing 9 Patch for my quilt guild. I found the tutorial at A Few Scraps blog, but had never tried it yet. Of course, I had to make some samples etc. for my demo because, well, one just needs examples! Here is my first DD9P block. I started with 3 inch cut squares, and they made up into a 10 inch finished block.
After those demo pieces were made, I had to try the process in another size and color scheme. I was having trouble imagining what the DD9P would look like in other colors and/or styles. So, I decided to jump out of my box and go with some real traditional fabrics and make a dolly-sized quilt. I really should have made 6 blocks instead of 4, but I was tired and running out of time. So four blocks had to do. This was my first layout, in the "traditional" setting. I started with 2 inch cut blocks for this one, and ended up with a 5 1/4 inch finished block.
Behind my little design board, you can kind of get an idea of what my cutting table currently looks like. That will be my first order of business in the quilt studio - taming the chaos of fabric!
Here is the dolly quilt layout that I decided on. I'm not completely certain it really does what I wanted it to do. I was hoping for a more pronounced diagonal design, but DH says he really likes it. He thinks it looks very complex. (Here is where I saw the quilt that gave me this idea - you need to scroll about half way or a little more down the page) (Oh, going back and looking at this, I figured out what I did wrong differently - no plain alternate blocks!) I flirted with the idea of ripping it out and re-doing it, but sat down until that feeling passed and I returned to my senses. LOL I don't think I'll do a border but will do a wider-than-usual binding in the dark brown and let that be enough border for it.
I hope you're getting a chance to be creative this weekend!
p.s. Haven't seen Froggie for a few days. He hung around all of August. Wonder if he decided to go back to the pond?
