Day #6- Some book notes and more

    Today I made a bit of headway on the scrap quilt. Three of the four rows sashed and joined; I'll finish the top tomorrow.

     
     Nothing at the book sale struck my fancy this morning. Last year I came out with only four books,  two of those were added to my brother's Christmas gifts, but the remaining two were without a doubt  two of the three best books I read all year:

      I was happy to later pass them on to others who enjoyed them as much as I did. Sadly, the one person I would have loved to have given "Team of Rivals" to, my paternal grandfather, passed away 41 years ago.

    I did a little shopping later in the day, and found a lone skein of Keppi yarn at Ocean State Job Lot hidden on the shelf behind boring brown wool yarn. It's going to make a cheery hat for a special little girl- this fun yarn even comes with its own ready-made pom-pom.

    
     
    

Day #5- Winter is just around the corner...

...so this past Saturday, one of the rare days Rick and I were both home, we decided on the spur of the moment to go hiking at Bluff Point. We had a glorious time. It's the perfect hiking place- shoreline, woods, hills, etc. And rocks- lots of rocks. You can still see old stone walls that probably once marked property lines- too rocky for fields or pasture in many places.

     I love the leathery browns shades of oak leaves in autumn. And wouldn't this hollow log with lichen make a great fairy house?

    

In the 17th century this was the homestead of Connecticut's colonial governor John Winthrop the Younger.

     And here we have Rick atop a rock.

     Looking forward to our next outdoor adventure.

     On the quilting front, I'm making progress on my scrap quilt. Pictures of that as well as another completed piece may come as soon as tomorrow or the next day. The 6" blocks are all sewn and trimmed, need to be joined into larger
12" blocks. The sashing and cornerstones are all cut. I think I have enough striped fabric for a border, and if even have an appropriate fabric for backing, although I may change my mind and go scrappy there too.


  

Day #4- Hasn't killed me yet!

     Wow! Four consecutive days!
     I had a few minutes to kill before work today, so I ran into my favorite consignment shop, armed with a $1 off coupon.  Five minutes and $7.83 later, this is what I left with.

Today's haul

     It's rare for me to find one, let alone five quilt books that I don't already have, let alone want, so this was a treat.
     Sometimes it's just a theme, or combination of colors, that gets the imagination working.
     I also managed to get a few minutes at the sewing machine early this morning, and again before dinner, working on the new Boxy Stars I mentioned a couple days ago. After reluctantly settling for my second choice for the sashing (all I had left of the "perfect" fabric was a couple of strips) I decided it would work just fine. I'll probably have pictures in by the end of this week.
    

Day #3- Supernova

     Earlier in 2016 I submitted a design to a major quilt magazine. Like Twisted Star, it was a design I had done a while ago, but it wasn't until I changed my color selection, that I decided to do something with it. The Powers That Be liked it, and wanted to hold onto it for a while. Then, all of a sudden, while I was in the midst of other projects, it was "officially" accepted for publication, not in the magazine to which I had originally sent it, but to another of that publisher's magazines.
     Things moved very quickly from there. The magazine would provide me with fabrics, so I poured over the suggested textile companies' websites. Once my box of fabrics arrived, I got to work.
     Supernova was published in the October/November 2017 issue of McCall's Quick Quilts. It's a large (for me) quilt, so I had it longarm quilted (a special shoutout to Kathie at Stitch Chicks in North Franklin, CT for her lovely cloud quilting).

Supernova

Day #2; Three's Company

Making the scrap quilts I posted about yesterday was a great way for me to get over "Quilt Designer's Block". I discovered after they were done I was ready to tackle some of my own new designs once again.
   Design #1 had been languishing on a sheet of graph paper for a couple of years. Once I ditched my original (very uninspired) color palette and thought about using OPM (Other People's Material), things began to take shape. In my bag of "dead lady's stash" was a huge piece of  teal tonal fabric, and a smaller piece of teal and tan bird print. Two fabrics down, two to go. A beige tonal was a no-brainer, even though I begrudgingly had to purchase that. I was still missing one fabric. VOILA! A customer had actually given me a piece of fabric because she was unable to find a suitable coordinating print in a heavier home-dec fabric, and was tired of shopping around. She hadn't even bought the fabric in the first place- another person had given it to HER. The dark mustardy gold reproduction-looking print was perfect, and Twisted Star was born.

Twisted Star

     Somewhere during the process of making that quilt, I played around with the original design. Keeping the same basic block, and using five fabrics instead of four, I came up with a quilt that looked, 3-D, A Whole New Dimension.  I used two values each of two colors, along with an accent fabric.

A Whole New Dimension

     I'm not a fan of doing straight-line quilting, but this pattern called out for some so I forged ahead. The accent squares each have a quilted flower.

     But wait; there's more! Same block, this time only three fabrics and a more modern look. I love this pattern, and thought "Twist of Fate"was the perfect name.

Twist of Fate

   This was another fun one to quilt,with dense loops and hearts on the nearly-white print, and lots of little curlicues on the grey.

Day #1: Alive and kicking!

     Wow! Almost a year and a half since I last posted. I have no good excuse for this, so I am challenging myself by participating in Cheryl Sleboda's "31 Day Blog Writing Challenge". This is Day #2 of the challenge, but as I only found out about it this morning, it's Day #1 for me. Which means I won't finish the challenge until 2018.
    2016 ended with several fall shows, including a new one I had never done before. I also had the opportunity to take a workshop with Bonnie Hunter, and was inspired to put some of my scraps to use in two of her free scrappy patterns. I hesitate to call them "my" scraps, as truth is, most of them were other quilters' cast-offs.
    I made Bricks and Cobblestones for a nephew. The picture isn't great, but it was cold and damp and I wanted to get back inside to my hot mug of coffee. I LOVED making this quilt. and got rid of some seriously butt ugly scraps in the process.

Bricks and Cobblestones

     Of course that didn't make a discernible dent in my scrap pile, so I made a Boxy Star quilt. I didn't realize until the other day, that a year had passed since I finished the quilt, but I had never taken a picture of it. See the bright green piece with the white scallops in the second row down, middle block? It's OLD! My guess is 1940s. I only had a small piece-enough for just one point of one star.

Boxy Stars

    When I make a scrap quilt I have one of two rules. Either I have to make it entirely from my stash, as I did for Boxy Stars, or I can only purchase fabric for the outer border and/or backing (Bricks and Cobblestones).

      Playing with these colors and fabrics was a great way to keep my creative juices going until I came up with some new designs for 2017.