What I’m Working On…

I’ve been a busy girl.  It’s because I had Thursday and Friday over the weekend off from childcare.  One of my childcare families was going to be gone so I decided it would be great for me to take some time off too.

I have a doctor’s appointment today so I’m off today too.  I’m back at Mayo Clinic for my six-month check-up for my thyroid cancer.  I’ll let you know how that all went later in a blog post later this week.

For now…let’s talk about something fun.  Let’s talk about what I’ve been working on.

I’m still working away on my Red Sampler Quilt Along with Lori Holt.  I am still loving it.  This week we made one 12″ and two 6″ block week.  I cut the blocks out during one naptime and sewed two the next morning…and one the next evening.  It’s so easy to squeeze it time to make these as they don’t long at all.

Admittedly I am getting a little lazy on my color selection.  At first I as so careful to not repeat any prints.  Now, I’ve totally given that up.  The stem of the leaf block is the same as the 12″ block star fabric.  The border fabric on the 6″ block on the left is the same as the corners on the 12″ blocks.

I am now trying to use up the strip of fabric as I do and have kept all of the leftovers in one box.  I rummage through the cut strip leftovers before I cut into any fabric.

Thanks so much to the blog reader who sent the neutral star fabric in the center of the block.  I saw the print and immediately knew it would perfectly in my sampler blocks.  I love the diagonal lines of the print.

I worked on my County Fair quilt…

County Fair comes from the book Scrap School.

As you can see from the tally, I have all of my blocks done.  I needed 72 and I have 74 made.

A blog reader asked is there was a method to how I tally and decide how many of each block to make.  I guess my answer would be yes there is and no there isn’t.   Let me explain.

I’ve often told readers that I take quilt books to bed with me and I study them.  This is the picture from the book.  I looked careful and noticed the colors that are in the quilt.  I counted about about how many blocks of each color there were.  For the most part, there was an even mix.  I noticed there weren’t as many orange but there were a couple.  There wasn’t any purple.  I decided to add purple because the little girl I am making this for, likes purple.

I am making mine bigger than the original so I need more blocks.  I sat down at the machine and started making a few blocks.  I wanted to keep a tally of how many I was making and for the most part, I had decided to make between 6 and 12 of each block.  I thought that would be a nice variety.  So…I kept a tally.

Other things I noticed as I looked at the quilt, for the most part, light WHITE background were chosen.  A variety was chosen and some were fairly heavily printed.  When it was time to cut the background pieces out, I’d want to NOT include cream based backgrounds.  Yes, some are off white but they are not light yellow, not light tan….they all lean towards white.

I did get the sashing and setting corners cut out.  YAHOO!!  I’m so happy to have that done.  Now I can move on and sew the top together as I already have all of the blocks finished.  I forgot to take a picture of them.  Right now, I’m too lazy to go upstairs and take the picture.

My leader and ender project is growing.  It’s my batik charm square quilt.

Last week I was here…

I had almost all of the rows sewn together.

I got the rest of the rows sewn and am now this far along…I have 15 rows sewn together.  I need to add four more rows and then I’ll count this as finished.  Well, a finished top.  So far, I love this.

Having a charm square quilt in the works is something I do a lot.  It’s the easiest leader and ender project.  They are great for donating too.

I’m trying to finish up a few projects and then I’m going to start in on making Eli and Emmett’s baby quilts.  I’m excited to be working on them!!