One block and other stuff

Three things to be happy about:
(1) peanut butter with grape jelly
(2) a back rub
(3) traditions

Well, we're at the end of another month - where did October go??!  This is the day Bonnie at Quiltville reveals the color palette for her 2018 mystery quilt, been looking forward to it.  It's also the day of the Great Pumpkin!! 

 It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was created in 1966 as a prime time animated TV special, based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz. Did you know it was nominated for a 1966 Emmy Award?  Go figure.

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I'm asking for a little quilty help here - I have a friend who really really wants to get ahold of a soft cover book - Scrap Quilts Through the Seasons - published by The Quilter magazine about 10 years ago.  It's out of print, but if you know of a source please let me know - thanks!

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Progress on my challenge quilt?  Not so much! 

I discovered that the blocks I intended to use are way too dark; your eye goes straight to that area, and they look out of place.  As an alternative I'm making wonky flying geese and other units using a light fabric instead of the black.  But on second thought, I might be able to use the dark units, depending on the other fabric I throw in - we'll see!

This is all I had time to do for the sashing fillers (just ignore those two little strips) ...

Life does get in the way!

Sew forth and sew on

Dancing ladies layout

Three things to be happy about:
(1) refrigerator magnets
(2) salmon cakes with lots of onions
(3) a jar full of crayons

I like what I did for lady #8 -

I wanted to have a second drummer, and to make it different from the first one I changed her short fitted skirt to a longer one with a slit in the front.

Showing a little leg, hah!

This is the first time I used this lady, #9. 

I didn't like the head wrap I used on another one earlier, but to save fiddling time with the hair I went ahead and used it again. 

It's not half bad!

So now comes the boring part:  I have to decide on a setting that won't overpower the quilt, so I arranged them at random on my design floor.

Now, I'm a very clever lady, but if I'd been a bit cleverer I'd have made all the blocks divisible by 2 to make the setting easier.  I think I can get away with it though, with a little fancy footwork!

Then I grabbed some random hunks and chunks and strips of African fabrics to see how they'll look as fillers.  These will be used along with the little wonky 2-1/2" square-in-a-square blocks that I mentioned in this post. 

My first thought was to make more, but I'll just use what's already pieced.

I found these leftover blocks from some long-forgotten project that'll probably fit in nicely, I must have more leftovers someplace.. 

Also, I can see some very classic black and white being thrown into the mix somewhere.



That's it for now, sew forth and sew on til later!

Quilt exhibit

Three things to be happy about:
(1) new movie releases
(2) a hot cup of tea
(3) fall foliage

My bee had a quilt exhibit at Harmony Hall in Ft. Washington, MD from the middle of August until October 5.  It was very successful; here are some of the quilts we displayed.

These are just a few of the beautiful quilts we displayed, I've forgotten the total number.  The opening reception was very well attended, and there were dozens more visitors during the weeks the exhibit was open.

Sew forth and sew on til later!