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. :)

More Patriotic Progress

Well, got it all put together, now I can start adding borders. :)


A two inch red comes next, then the sawtooth half square triangles. Neither one of them should take me too long, all the hsts are already made. Looks pretty much like my EQ design, doesn't it?

I'm always amazed by the number of people that say... but have you ever used EQ to design and make a REAL quilt? Yes, All The Time. :D

Finally, 576!

Well, here they are, 576 half square triangles, arranged in 16 stacks of 36 triangles:


Sure doesn't look like that many, does it? Each of the sixteen stacks has different blue fabrics, so I can make 36 blocks with no two fabrics the same. Four stacks have 36 identical blue triangles all the way down, but different tans and creams and beiges... a couple of stacks have 18 different blues, and all the rest of the stacks have 3 different blue fabrics. I'm really looking forward to sewing the blocks now! I'm not into football, so that's what I'll do instead of watch the game.

Anyone want to come over to my house Sunday and iron all these before I start to sew?

434

I was going to just post the number... 434, and get back to sewing, but I'd been showing people at work the EQ pattern I put up way back in December, and got tired of having to go back in the archives to show the bright scrappy one, and explaining that the version Mom had decided on would be done less colorful, only in blues and beiges.

So, here's a blue-toned EQ version of where all 576 (if I ever get done with them) half square triangles will end up:



I've also got one kaleidoscope block done, and ten more cut out. Back to sewing!