Pineapple Blossom Progress

There, I've sewn together the first twenty-four blocks, but you can only see a few here. I love the way the orange/yellow/pink batik looks in the large segments. Almost like a sunrise. I started this last Saturday, in Bonnie Hunter's class, and it came along really fast. It's been a long time since I made a quilt with only three fabrics. Working with the batiks and white was a treat too, there was no right or wrong side, no almost invisible white-on-white print to search for either!

Toby decided that the hanging quilt-center was put up for HIM to play behind. See the bump at the bottom left corner? That bump's name is Toby.

I'll add a two-inch border of that aqua-turquoise. I also have finished part of 24 pinwheels from the bonus triangles, they'll go in a thick white border surrounding the whole quilt. I haven't decided if I want to put the pinwheels on point, or make them wonky or... space them evenly or... ? Any suggestions? When I put four of the bonus triangles together to make a pinwheel, the block finishes at 7 inches.

Scrap Squad, Snow, and BOM

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, I've been selected as one of Quiltmaker Magazine's Scrap Squad. It's nice to make a little money with my quilting and not have to sell the quilt! We can't reveal the quilt designs we're given to make until after the issue of the magazine comes out, but we CAN give you a sneak preview teaser. Here's Toby to present it:

Toby agrees with keeping things quiet. Or maybe he just wants ME to be quiet so he can sleep on the nice, freshly ironed block segments. I'm doing this first quilt for Scrap Squad with leftover flannel bits from my Christmas flannel rag quilts, with the addition of some blue FQ's I won at a retreat auction.

And we had SNOW! In Memphis, that's amazing. Can you see the glowing red stop sign? It was pretty falling, but I'm glad it's all melted now:

The 3 inches we got were more than I wanted to drive to work through the next morning. But did the library close? No. It made for some slick and slushy travelling.

And speaking of travelling, my quilt-guild friend is touring Turkey this winter with her husband, and they're posting some fantastic pictures and a little Turkish history on the blog. Such vibrant blue skies! Such intricate tile work on the ceilings, floors, walls. For some real quilt inspiration, check this out:

Jeanie Goes Cold Turkey

I also finally got the new block of the month up for my quilt guild. We're doing twelve 16 inch blocks, and they'll all be tied together with a diagonal line of ... well, go see. Here's the address for the 2011 Sweet Sixteen Intro.

It's not just for my guild members, so feel free to join us if you want. :) Really, don't you have enough fabric where you could join something like this and not have to buy a thing? I sure do.

The work part for me was not drawing the quilt in EQ, or designing twelve blocks, but in taking last year's block of the month selection off of the website index page, making teeny thumbnails of the pix, and re-linking all the pages from within the BOM archives section. So I'll leave you with a couple of nail clippings from last year:

Batiks!

I fell off the fabric no-buy bandwagon, and fell hard. But it IS all three yard lengths, which falls under the borders, backings and binding rule, right? *rationalizing* It's mainly FQ's I don't need any more of.

Phillyfabrics, on eBay, sells Timeless Treasure batiks and other fabric for only $3.33 per yard, in three yard increments. She doesn't charge more than she has to for shipping, either. Not sure what I will do with the cat fabric on the bottom right, but fell in love with it. :) I have lots of browns and blues that will go great with it, plus it looks great with the dark brown that's on top of it.


And here's the two I've unfolded, ready to wash (yes, I wash all my fabric before I use it, even the batiks.) First a pink and purple with dragonflies and bugs, which goes great with the pinks above:


And an orange, yellow, and purple with blue curls, which also looks good with the yellow in the first picture:


And here's one of Toby, so you can get a kitty pix-fix in:


When I lay out my blocks to make photo instructions for the guild website block of the month page, I usually tilt the pressing board, putting the end of it up on my sewing machine. That helps me get a picture that's more evenly framed and not bigger at the top than at the bottom due to depth of field. I'd just finished taking pix for the row quilt bom for this month, and Toby insisted he had to sit there. He CAN'T be comfortable, his fuzzy little butt is about 4 inches higher than his head! :D