Trivia Thursday

 This is the yarn that I have been using lately:

 The one on the right, by Willow Island is my favorite.  It is 100% wool, and very squishy. They have a limited range of hand-dyed colors.  I've been using them in a granny squares afghan which I am nearly finished, but just have some rounds to crochet around the whole thing.

 Yesterday I finished quilting the 3 small quilts that I had basted.
This is the kid's disappearing nine-patch that we made kits of for the store, and  so I took it in there on Tuesday to display as the sample.  It has some pretty bright fabrics, but I liked how it turned out.

 Even though the colors weren't quite a match, I used this flannel on the back of it, because I just loved it.

 Since I was on a roll, and had a few blocks left over, I decided to pull some other fabrics from my stash to use up some odds and ends... you know how that goes.  So this is the second one,

Oh, and I sewed in a little piece of an old embroidered table runner. 
Then, I had the other end of it left over, and a bunch of odd scraps, so I decided to start sewing them all together in a "decide as you go" kind of thing:

These are the odd shaped scraps around my sewing machine yet to add to this center.

 And this is the pile of extra fabric that I had left when I cleaned up my cutting table!!!!

 Why is it that you can sew several projects from a group of fabrics and then still have so much left over?
Oh, you may notice the "Monet" colored fabrics there as well.  I sewed that nine-patch quilt from them last week, and just thought I'd mention that the top Is finished, in case you might have thought I had abandoned it-- not so!  Although it does need to be quilted now.  Hmm.  I quilted 3 this week and will have 3 more to quilt when I finish the scrap quilt. Maybe I'll use it as the back of the other one.  That'll kill 2 birds with one stone. So to speak.  I would never kill birds.  Not with stones or any other method.  I love birds.
 Oh, I popped into the store to see the new fabrics and there were no Christmas fabrics there after all!  Instead we got about 25 batiks (about half of what we've been waiting for), the new Nancy Halvorson/ Art to Heart line: Garden song, which is lovely, and has a book that features the  fabrics. Very Pretty.
Then we got the new French General group called "Rural Jardin", I think, which again has those gorgeous reds, with "oyster" and some nice blues this time.
We also got some other stuff as well!  I'll drop by there later today to refresh my memory.  Have a great day!

Report on Saturday.

Yesterday I took a trip to the garden center to "look around".  Brought home a couple of these columbine that I like a lot.  I had some a few years ago, but left them behind when we moved.  They are sort of hard to find later on, so I got them early.    I had been to the Farmer's market on 19th St a little earlier and there was a seller who had a lot of herbs available.  Her stall was pretty crowded so I didn't get a close look.
At the shop later, it was nice to see some regular customers to chat with.  I picked out some fabrics for a Kid's Disappearing nine-patch quilt kit:

The large floral on the left is what I had tentatively picked for the border, and the other fabrics were ones I just liked. 
Last night i thought I'd start the blocks, and within an hour had them all sewn, but not sewn together yet, this is what they look like on the floor:

I might shift them around a bit more before sewing them together, as I'm not sure that I like the 6 blue/green ones so evenly spaced in the center.  I think I might take it back and try some other possible border fabrics with it -- maybe the dark orange Amy Butler one would be nice?

Finally finished reading "The Children's Book", by A.S. Byatt, one of my favorite authors.  It was very long, about 600 pages? but it was mostly quite enjoyable, altho in a few sections it felt like a history lecture.  The story took place from about 1890 to 1918 among that group of people in England who adhered to the Fabian/ William Morris way of life.  This morning I started a new book by John Irving, "Last Night in Twisted River" --another long one, looks like. 
Another gorgeous day out here, hope you have a great day wherever you are!!

Sunshine today

It's a gorgeous day today, with sunlight after 2 days of rain, and Toad is sitting by my window to keep me company.

I am putting the finishing details on the pattern for Saturday's block and the new pattern for the disappearing 9-patch.

I made a table to use as a quick reference guide to make various sizes of quilts, starting with 5-inch blocks.  However,  I have discovered that you can't just copy and paste from a word document to this blogger format.  I will however try to put it into straight columns so you can perhaps use it if you're interested.
......
This did not work.  I will think of something else.
 Aha! I have photographed it! that's why it sort of waves a bit, but you should still be able to read the info from it, and also, a little refresher about the technique,

 basically, you sew the squares into nine-patches, then cut each nine-patch into 4 equal parts, and voila!!!

But, for now, I guess I'd better head into town to do pay-checks.
Have a great day.
p.s. did i mention that I now have a convertible?!!!! it is lovely! I love it! 

 

Well, even though I'm sewing the nine-patches together as is, I did work on a disappearing nine-patch project today. Actually 2 items:

1. this week's saturday Surprise Block will use one for the corners:( and I must apologize for the photos tonight, I don't know why i couldn't get this one cropped right, it kept changing on me--so I made it very small) 

 2. I did up a pattern for the kid-sized quilt that I sewed a while back.  I just really liked the size of it and how it turned out.  Plus, with all these babies everywhere we can't have enough patterns for easy to sew baby quilts.   Maybe we'll do up a bunch of kits out of other fabric colorways we have in stock, batiks? flannel? who knows.

Also,
3. Picked up some really nice yarns yesterday, and today I got them wound into balls using my wonderful winder. I think I may have to make some fair-isle patterned socks!  Big ones this time, not for little people.

 4. this is an update on the nine-patch quilt. At this point, I have just over half the top sewn together. It sort of looks like a watercolor quilt, reminds me of Monet colors!  And I realized that when sewn together, it will only be 66" square!  (Plus I have a large-ish ball of monet colored 2-1/2" strips)