Dear Jane and others progress

It seems like I can either sew or blog, but have a hard time doing both! I've been super inspired by being surrounded by quilts in Houston to come home and sew! Well, that plus a few deadlines! LOL I did get my DJ block done while in Houston, but didn't get it posted. And then I got last week's done on Sat. night about 11 PM--just under our self-imposed deadline! The first one is H4 ane the second one is H5. It takes my total pieces to 1902. I thought that sounded like a lot, but there are over 5300 pieces total, I believe, or close to it. Which means I'm not even halfway! :(

These blocks are for my Friday night quilt group exchange. We swap blocks every year and this year decided to do the Monkey Wrench (or Churn Dash), but about half the group is very traditional and the other half tend to lean towards the more bright, contemporary quilts. So the solution was this....We got to choose what colors we liked and whether we wanted it pieced Traditional style or "Liberated", like above. Here are 3 out of 4 sets of the 'liberated' blocks I've made so far. We had to make 4 blocks per person (that's how many you could get out of 2 FQ's). I've also been working on a quilt to hang in my Living room....one day it will get done. I just hope it gets to hang a while before I decide to change the colors again! LOL I'm going to use a Poppy fabric on the borders and pulled all my basket colors from that print.

And this is on my daily sewing list (I also am doing the Calendar quilt...from Pat Sloan's website where you add one new piece of fabric per day, a Scrappy Diamond Star, one Heartstring block, and one of the blocks for a class sample I'm making). This is a scrappy Flying Geese, all cut out of my scraps!I've been also very busy at cutting out 'kits' for myself for making class samples. I have tested one block per quilt to make sure it all works right. I cut out 7 quilts last week, ALL out of stash! Yee haw! Two of the quilts required at least 8 yards of fabric total. I shocked myself in that I was able to pull out enough fabric for a Bargello quilt (that required 12 different fabrics). My stash STILL does not look like it's been even touched. Okay, it's been touched, because it's a mess, but no dent in the fabric!

I'm also did a customer quilt last week (I really don't do that much--only if someone wants it meandered). The longarmers around here get so backed up at this time of year, that once in a while I'll pitch in and help out a student. But I'll gladly leave that business to the longarmers! I don't know how they do it! I'm also doing a commissioned quilt for a lady who has a total of 12 siblings in her family and they wanted a memory quilt to give to their mother. I had to put 30 pictures on fabric and somehow standardize the block. I got it cut out last night. My goal it to have it pieced by the day's end, quilted by tomorrow night, binding on by Wednesday night and deliver it by Thursday. I know, I dream a lot! I act as if I don't have anything else to do. So..with that, I better get off and go start sewing! LOL Have a great day!