Thursday, March 06, 2008

Caps and Block Progress

Hi Everybody! Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but in addition to a booger of a cold, I've been busy! But first, a picture of something my Mom's doing... remember the incubator blankets the quilt guild is making? Mom's a knitter, and she's knitting away every night, making teeny caps for the babies that will receive our blankets. The orange and yellow tennis ball that's tucked in the pink cap is on there for some idea of size, aren't they little? Mom is making two sizes, small and extra small. This is only the first installment, she's still making more. :)



My quilt guild is doing a half square triangle swap for March - where people bring as many hsts as they want to make, swap even, and go home with as many as they came with, but in more variety. Here's our current block of the month page, if you want to see how we're doing it. I don't know if any of the blocks I swap for will end up in the jewel box quilt, or in an incubator blanket, or in a future block of the month project. A 3 inch finished size hst is useful in a lot of things!

Every night when I get home from work, I've been making the pieces that will go into my jewel box king size quilt. Since I haven't decided yet which of those three designs I'll be doing (either #2 or #3 though) there's not an exact count for most of the bits, but the color-to-blue half square triangles are at about 90 right now, and the color-to-white hsts about the same.


I wish I could be the kind of scrappy sewer that doesn't obsess about placement of fabric, but I'm not... lol First I'll divide my fabric squares and hsts up into fourths, by color, to spread them out in the 4 different quadrants of the quilt, then make sure that none of the blocks match each other, THEN make sure that none of the fabrics in the blocks are in adjacent blocks. Do any of you go to these extremes or am I the only one? But I have made a few sample blocks:



This quilt is really helping me clean out my scraps - anything I can get a two inch strip out of gets used in the 4 patch blocks... and I'm sorting thru my 4 inch squares I bought on eBay for a lot of the half square triangles. Black, browns, creams, and beiges are about the only colors I'm not using. And since this one is for MY bed, I'm making a special point to try to use fabrics from previous quilts, like a memory quilt. See the navy 2 inch square with what looks like pick-up sticks in the block above? Those are knitting needles, and I used a FQ of that fabric in the fan blades and depression blocks of the quilt Mom got for Christmas. :)

3 comments:

Pam said...

As the mom of an incubator baby (26+ years ago!!) I thank you and your mom!!!

I struggle greatly with the whole scrappy quilt thing...and my pals just laugh at me! So glad to know I am not alone in this! I have cut yards and yards of scraps, someday...someday I will get the hang of it...someday I will be able to sit down and not stress over how the finished product will look.

Pam@
www.pamgwillim.com

Faith said...

oh its wondeful what you do and well appreciated.... I was born prematurely twenty seven years ago and weighed just under two pounds.
Just think all those wonderful babies you will be helping I think its fantastic

Shelina said...

I appreciate the tip on how you sort out your scraps for making sure they are evenly spread out in a quilt. I often wonder what decisions other quilters make when making scrappy quilts. I like all the designs you have for this jewelbox quilt, but I like the one in the middle picture with the bigger center the best.

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