Spring Geese

Well, it's April 21 and you would expect to see lots of signs of spring and some nice warm weather to help us say goodbye to winter, but that seems to be a big ask from Mother Nature right now. Spring is, for the most part, still quite chilly and we actually saw flurries this morning, so we aren't out of the woods yet. Despite that, I've been working on decidedly spring-themed Flying Geese.

They will border my Snowballs & Nine Patch quilt, an idea that I got from Then Came June. Actually, the inspiration for this entire quilt has come from her Barret quilt pattern.

Originally, it was just the colour palette and blocks that appealed to me but as my sewing progressed and I started to think about border/no border, I took a second look at what she had done and realized that the picot border was a collection of Flying Geese blocks. Brilliant!

One of my favourite quilts - and the first that I completely pieced by hand - has a picot border and I really love it, the only difference being that it's constructed with HSTs. It always makes me smile. I did the math and realized that if I used the four-at-a-time method to make the geese they'd come together quite quickly. 

Making them scrappy really worked with the rest of the quilt layout.

I'm well on my way and looking forward to starting to sew the rows together....M

The Last of My Quadrangle Blocks

Since January, my hand stitching project has been sewing scrappy Quadrangle blocks for a Quilts for Survivors quilt top. As you can see, Minnie is doing double duty as my side table until I return to quilting her...

The colours are quite cheery and spring-like and have been fun to pull together.

The fact that the word 'LOVE' showed up in gold alongside these orange squares made me smile.

Slow but steady progress means that I now have the last of the required 20 blocks at the finish line - I saved these pretty blues for the last.

There are about half a dozen blocks still to press and then it's time to cut a variety of 9.5" low volume squares to alternate with the pieced blocks. I think when it's time to assemble everything I might use the machine....M

Scrappy Stars for QFS

From January thru June on the last Sunday of each month, the church quilters put up a small display during Coffee Hour to encourage donations to help offset the cost of shipping quilts to residential school survivors - a flimsy or quilt and several blocks. It's a nice let everyone see what we are working on throughout the year and a good way to engage the congregation in this group effort. This coming Sunday is one of those days so I have been busy putting together a collection of 16-inch Scrappy Star blocks.

Quite some time ago, I cut a variety of 4.5" blocks in blues, aquas and yellows trying to have enough variety so that there isn't too much duplication of a print in a block, and then occasionally I sew one or two together.

The stars are the stitch-and-flip variety - easy peasy. I just lay out 15 coloured squares and one white, set two 2.5" blocks on the four coloured squares that will have star points, and off I go.

I think that there's only one yellow block, the rest are blue and aqua. And I think it's getting close to the point of there being enough for a quilt top but I'm undecided yet as to whether I will assemble them all or send them off as they are.

In my book, you just can't beat scrappy....M

Snowballs Are Flying!

Mother Nature seems intent on giving us one or two good blasts of snow before letting spring through the door so, rather than fight her I've decided to join her and make a few Snowballs of my own!

I'm going to blame Jan for this one. Included in the scrap bundles that she donated to the church quilters recently were a few nice pinks and peaches, which got me to thinking about a lovely, soft Snowball and Nine-Patch quilt I'd seen recently.

And, I had a few small pieces in that colour range just dying to be used up, so I started cutting. It's a Quilts for Survivors project so it will be lap sized, which means that it should move along nicely.

The year before last, I made a pink and orange QFS quilt and loved the combination, so it wasn't a huge stretch to jump in feet first.

Just to make things interesting, I've included the large floral in the upper right. This was one of Jan's scraps and there wasn't very much of it, but it adds a lovely bit of interest. Doesn't take much.

There's also a wee bit of mauve added to the mix. It's coming together very nicely, despite the pinky tinge that my sewing room lighting is casting....M