A Little Bit of This...

I think the hardest thing about blogging is coming up with a catchy title for each post.  My blog is mostly about my stitching, but there are only so many ways to say that...What I Sewed This Week, What I DIDN'T Sew This Week, The Beautiful Fabric I Ordered This Week (Riley Blake's Little Red Riding Hood - yum!)...not very catchy....I shall continue to struggle with that one...and not worry overly much about how catchy it is.

This week, one of the ladies on the About.com Quilt Forum challenged everyone to show a picture of their cutting table.  Well, before I could post a picture I had to do some cleaning up.  In the course of cleaning up, I found a bunch of little bits and bobs of fabric that were too big to toss but too small to do much with.  I decided to stitch them together into crumb blocks...I've also heard them called crazy blocks...I ended up making five and plan to continue to make a few each week until I have enough to do something with.  These are 6" unfinished.  I chose 6" because that was the ruler I had in my hand at the time.  Real scientific decision-making going on here...LOL!

These three have fairly large pieces in them.  The other two had much smaller pieces, but I didn't get a picture taken of those.  Maybe next week...

I also made a couple of Scrappy Trips blocks.  You can find the pattern for these on Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog here.  I really like the way they turned out, but I didn't really enjoy the process.  I may have to tweak it a bit, and I am wondering how they would look if you used a larger strip - these squares finish at 2" for a 12" finished block.  I have a 12 1/2" ruler for squaring up.  If I made the blocks bigger, would I need to get a bigger ruler????  Or could I just use the lines on the cutting mat?  I wonder how big they make rulers...I bet the bigger ones cost a pretty penny!

I spent this morning catching up on the Oklahoma City Modern Quilt Guild BOM.  I made both March and April's blocks.  I am doing in all solids and am enjoying the look.  I am looking forward to May's block and will try to make it in the month of May - what a concept!

I plan to work on February's Sugar Block Club Block next.  It is paper piecing, and I haven't really done much of that so I have been avoiding it.  But I hope to show a picture of it next week. 

Once I get caught up on the Sugar Block Club, I will start on the Lucky Stars blocks - those scare me.  These stars have about a bajillion pieces.  But I signed up because I wanted to learn how to paper piece.  Should be interesting. 

I am also gearing up to start a new project soon - the Butterfly Quilt on Red Pepper Quilts.  This is such a beautiful quilt and will make a wonderful retirement gift for one of my best friends.  Fortunately, I have more than a year and a half to get it done.  I'm going to need it.  By my calculations - which could be wrong - to make the quilt 60" square, I will need 225 butterflies.  And I think it would be neat if every butterfly were a different fabric.  I must shop!!!!  I've also been collecting some text fabrics for the butterfly body here and there - there won't be 225 different text fabrics...Fortunately, I'm not that crazy....But I am going to have to track down a few more.

Have a great week!

Bri