Last to the Dance . . . . . .

Better late than never I suppose........

I'm joining in the fun of the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along sponsored by Moose on the Porch. It seemed every I blog I visited the last two weeks was participating, and all the blocks looked adorable. The only thing holding me back was that I own one jelly roll. The jelly roll I just personally rolled and put in my Shangri la purse, there's no way I'm using that fabric, plus it's mainly leftover lights, not a good color way for a sampler quilt.

So no jelly roll for me, just scraps, but that will work too.

I've been wanting to make a twin size quilt to donate to a local children's home but hadn't come across a pattern or idea to suit. I think this quilt along will be perfect.

So here's Block One!

The Block Two pattern will be revealed today, so I just barely got in. Although really, anyone can join at anytime.

The multi colored dot fabric will be my background fabric. I mainly just want a cheerful and bright quilt and plan to add a rainbow of color for each block.

So in addition to making Block One of the JRSQA, I started my Jacob's Ladder project this weekend.

Here's where I stand on piecing four hundred, 2 1/2 inch, four patch blocks. As you can see, I've got a little work ahead of me on this one! This pattern requires 80 six inch blocks made up of half square triangles and four patches. What could be simpler? I'm thinking this is going to be a fun and relaxing project.

I would have gotten more done but I lost an hour this weekend, and for some reason, it felt like I lost five. I hope I get back on schedule this week.

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Grace is Back . . . . .

My Shangri La containment border fabric arrived yesterday, allowing me to put the finishing touches on State of Grace. Yes, Grace is back, now that she's done and I love her, I decided to drop State of Chaos and go back to Grace!

When I started this project, if someone would have told me that I had to use the tone on tone green as my containment boarder I would have thrown a fit. But once the inner blocks were connected, and I auditioned all the other color options, I thought the green was the best choice. I was leaning towards red, but once I put the red up on the design wall, it was easy to see that red added nothing to the overall look of the quilt.

This is lifetime quilt number 56 and has 732 pieces. I started this quilt on 2/27 and finished it on 3/10. Twelve days! Before I started this quilt I thought it would take the better part of a month. One of the reasons I didn't get to this kit sooner was that I thought it would take quite a bit of time. I was wrong! It all went together pretty easily. It finished at 61 x 72. I have a 63 inch span on my bannister where I like to hang quilts, this will be a perfect fit. I'm so glad I reduced the block size from 8 to 6 inches.

Darlene/Quilting Daze blogged last week about her March goals for the Charming Guys and Girls Quilt Club. One of her goals is to quilt and bind an adorable quilt from the Schnibbles pattern State Fair. I liked the whole quilt but the one thing that really caught my eye was what I thought were two cute thin containment borders. When I left a comment about the borders Darlene told me that one of the borders was called a "peeper" border. It's just a strip of fabric, folded in half, pressed and sewn on the same time the border is added. I had never heard of a "peeper" border. I googled it hoping to find some instructions, "peeper" got a couple million hits but no "peeper border". There's really nothing to it and I was able to add a red peeper border between the tone on tone green and brown floral borders.

The fabric I used for this top, Shangri la, has popped up on a couple of blogs just this week. Sherri/A Quilting Life is using Shangri la for the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along, and Heather/Quilt or Stitch is working on two quilts using this fabric. They are both amazing, although I don't think you can make a bad quilt using this fabric.

Thanks Lisa/Stashmaster for selling this kit!! I never would have made this quilt if you hadn't decided to part with it!

Finally, thanks to all for helping me through my fabric drama, I could not be happier with our choice!

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Another Day Another Iron . . . . . .

The other day, when I walked into my sewing room, I noticed my dependable Rowenta iron had wet herself.......there she was, all embarrassed, sitting in the middle of a gigantic wet spot that took up half my ironing board. I know I got lucky that's all she wet on, I've heard the horror stories of steam irons ruining quilt tops, but luckily that wasn't the case this time. As long as I choose to use steam, I know that's a risk just floating out there in the future.

So I went to look for a replacement for my iron, but I guess they no longer produce my old model, so I was forced to upgrade. The nose on this iron has a great elongated tip and there are three times as many steam holes that are a third of the size of the ones on my old iron. So far we are getting along great. In a moment of weakness or boredom, I read the owner's manual. Did you know you're to empty the water well in the iron each time you're finished with it? That was news to me. I use my iron almost everyday, but since reading that tip I've been emptying out the water at the end of the day. I'm hoping this new little routine will make my iron last longer and just maybe prevent a water stain issue down the road.

I've sewed all the inner blocks for State of Chaos together, the process was relatively easy. I had a few points that did not match exactly but overall I would rate this pattern as pretty forgiving. The pattern called to sew each 6 inch block into rows, then sew together the ten rows.

I chose to sew 4 blocks together to create this block, then sewed these 12 inch blocks together to finish it up. I did this so I could pay attention to the corners making up the center pinwheel, plus it gave me another chance to square things up. Whenever I can, I take the opportunity to square blocks up! So now I'm waiting for my containment border fabric that I ordered online. Once I have it I'll be able to finish this quilt. It's staying on the design wall until it's done.

On to the next project...

I saw a Hunters Star project on Allyson/Fat Cat Quilts blog. I loved its color way, beige, navy and black. I dropped her a note saying how much I liked that color combination and was thinking of going with those colors for my next project. She was nice enough to let me know that the project was really all blacks, no blues, just poor photography. That's just like me, to pick a color pattern for my next project off a bad picture. But it didn't stop me!

So I'm taking these blacks and blues ........

And these lights.....

and making 80 of these. This block has several names, Jacobs Ladder, Road to California, Off to San Francisco and Gone to Chicago. But whatever it's called, this is what I'm going to be working on the rest of this month. No fabric drama, just cutting and sewing.

I really like navy, and in the summer, I don't think there's anything sharper than a navy blue and white outfit. I don't really have any navy in my house but I think adding the black will make it fit in and be a nice change of pace.

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The Weekend's Over ? ? ?

Wow, this weekend just flew by.........

Even though it's March, and folks in warmer climates are blogging about flowers and green grass, the pond out back of our house is still frozen.

I took this picture Saturday!

We did get a little break in the weather over the weekend. I was able to get the first coat of winter off my car ( I think it will take a couple more washes to get it all off) and was able to grill out for the first time this year!!

So even though it doesn't really feel like spring, I got in a spring mood.

I leave a few snowman decorations out after Christmas, like this set.....

this cookie jar,

and we drink out of snowman glasses. But even though it's still cold outside, I packed them all up.

I did leave this guy out, with those colors, I think he looks like a springtime snowman.

I also got in a organizing mood over the weekend, mainly due to the fact that I need to do our income taxes soon, but can't start until I get my filing up to date. For some reason I started about 5 different projects and finished none. My house is a mess this morning. I went to bed cranky, I like to have the house in order and laundry washed, folded and put up by the end of the day on Sunday. I think it's a holdover habit from working the first 28 years of my married life.

I think I was also crabby because I didn't get to sew at all this weekend, or have the house in order so I could get in my sewing room today. I did accomplish one thing....

Remember this?

It's now this!!

No I didn't break down and order another jellyroll for my Shangri La purse, these are the strips I have left over!! I decided not to go with the pattern's instructions of using the scrappy lights for the containment border (shocking I know, me not following directions!) which left several leftover strips.

So I rolled this bundle myself! I didn't think I stood a chance of getting them rolled evenly or small enough to fit back into the purse, but I did! I think it's because I had fewer strips than the original roll. Although Linda F left a great suggestion about filling the purse with Hershey Kisses which I was seriously considering.

Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments on how to piece State of Chaos. It's really close between Choice 1 and Choice 2. Which is why I came up with Choice 3, because I couldn't decide between 1 and 2! I'm leaning towards #2. That design wall is a mixed blessing, I probably spend more time rearranging my blocks than what it takes to sew all the blocks together. I guess I can't make a bad choice, since it's so close, and the fabric is lovely either way.

I'm hoping to have S of C all done this week, which would mean maybe I can squeeze in two projects this month, I bet that would get me out of my cranky mood, my husband hopes!!

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State of Chaos . . . .

I'm renaming this quilt, right now I'm leaning towards State of Chaos instead of State of Grace, but it's still open to debate.

So as soon as I got some strips made I threw them up on the design wall. The pattern calls for a totally scrappy design. I immediately started having the same problems with this design that I did with Toulouse......I thought it looked messy, sloppy, not me. "No place for the eye to rest" someone said last time...so true!

If I could talk to a fabric designer, I would be curious to know if when they create these families of fabrics, do they really expect all the fabrics to be used in one project? Because if it were up to me, I would pick some of the fabrics for a top, but never all of them. In the past I just figured the designers had different color ways in the same pattern to please everyone, the browns for the fall folks, the reds for me, the blues and greens for the pastel folks. But all in one quilt, really, that's what they had in mind?

So this is what the design looks like all scrappy.....uhm I don't think so. This family of fabrics is heavy on the greens and light on the reds. So if I went with this design not only would it look messy, it would have a strong green presence.

At this point I still didn't have a design in my mind, but I did know that I wanted an equal number of reds, browns, greens, and blues. I like things even Steven, I'm a debits equals credits type of girl. This required more strips......this required me to raid my Shangri La purse!!

There it is, setting on my shelf, empty!! I think I'll make a round tuffet to put in there when I'm done with this project. Hopefully then the purse won't look as sad. But really, the fabric is too pretty to spend its life in a purse!

So here's the polar opposite of scrappy, each buzz saw block made up of like colors....... another no, I don't think so.

So then I decided to go half brown and half red in one buzz saw and half blue and half green in the other buzz saw, an improvement but I still think no.

This time I continued to separate the pastels from the bolds but I intermingled the red with the browns and the blues with the greens. This I liked.

So then I took it one step further. I mixed my mixes, a predominately red, brown, blue and green in every buzz saw. I think this pattern makes the buzz saws look like they are moving.

So a little mix on the left, a little more of a mix on the right. I couldn't decide which design I preferred, so I combined the above two,

into this. A pastel buzz saw, a mixed buzz saw, a bold buzz saw then another mixed buzz saw.

One thing I know for sure, the 6 inch blocks will be a mix of blue, green, blue, or red, brown, red, or green, blue, green or brown, red, brown. That I know I like, other than that I'm not so sure.

Ok, hit me with your best shot......what should it be:

Choice # 1, bold buzz saws and pastel buzz saws (second to last picture, square on the left).

Choice #2, one mixed block, of each color, in one buzz saw (second to last picture, square on the right)

Choice #3, last picture, combination of #1 and # 2.

Choice #4, can you come up with anything else?

THANKS!!

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