Will swap for fabric...

Karen at Sew Many Ways is organizing a swap meet. The deal is, you post something you don't want, and (cross your fingers!) someone wants it and you can agree on a fair trade for something you do want -- no money changes hands.

I'm reorganizing my craft space, and I'm ready to give up this little stack of cross-stitch patterns. The top one is a magazine from 1990 and the others are pamphlets from various companies. The designs include:
borders -- floral, Christmas, and a variety of alphabet, fruit, shells, etc.
baby and kid stuff
beautiful fuchsias and hummingbirds
"man" stuff -- ducks, old cars, etc.
other floral, vegetable and shell designs
New Orleans motifs (this one didn't make it into the photo)

I'm happy to trade for fabric -- preferably batik. I'd like to have one person take all of these, but if you really, really want something in particular, let me know! Thanks.

Scrappy Saturday

Today I decided to tackle the big bin o' batik scraps -- the rotary cutter is there for scale! This is a cube from Ikea with batik scraps going back for years. I blatantly stole an idea from Kate and started working away at a quilt day with friends. Here's how far I got:

My fabrics seem to be a little more neutral than Kate's overall, but I'm really liking the interplay of color and pattern so far. Unfortunately this hasn't really made a noticeable change in the scrap bin; I feel this could be a very long project!

In other news, I finished one (modified) Switcheroo sock and have started the second:

This is with Shibui Sock yarn. The heel is a very nice linen stitch, which I hadn't done before. I decided to stop the lace pattern at the foot because I don't really like lace feet, and also because I could not for the life of me figure out how to start it up again after doing the heel turn... or I was tired of doing it -- your choice!

Wednesday random

I don't know why, but I seem to notice stuff on sidewalks all the time. This showed up outside my favorite local coffee shop today...


Is it guerrilla quilting now?

scrappy Saturday in the forest

It's still "blue" month in the old scrap-basket... the funky stack blocks for the block lotto morphed into regular coins and this is the result. Everything came from my closet, and only the sashing and binding weren't scraps. Maybe there will be a rainbow of donation quilts at the end of the year? No promises!And - YAY -- I was one of the winners for last month's lotto! Meet "the forest primeval" on my wall:
I'm waiting for just a few more blocks to arrive and then I know this quilt will be sewn up quickly. Quilting ideas, anyone?

Heffalumps!

I haven't done any blocks for the Friday Block Party for a while, but this year they've decided to include some animals and I just had to jump back in for this one! In fact I've signed up to use it as my birthday block in a little exchange group, so next month I should have cool dozen to put together. I can't wait. Check it out -- the block was very easy to put together.

(when I was in college in Berkeley in the 70's I had an Indian print bedspread with elephants that I eventually made into a long caftan... wish I still had it, or at least a photo! I can't believe how much I wore that crazy thing. I do still have a copy of the pattern, so maybe I could re-create it with my "new" elephants.)







These are my three sections so far for the "Oh My Stars" BOM on Patchwork Planet. Someday I'll learn have to get the photos where I want them in blogger, but (sigh) is it worth the brainpower?

better blues

Further adventures in blue mosaics... I redid a couple of seams on yesterday's block and quilted it this morning. And then I made a second one with 1" white strips instead of 3/4" and it came out much better.

I went back to a book in my collection -- Jackie Robinson's "Quilts in the Tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright", which uses a lot of narrow black strips. She says to always sew with the black strip on top, to go slowly, and to go back and fix it if you wobble! Very good advice...

challenges and mysteries

Aren't these the coolest blocks ever? They're the lotto block for January, called "stacks" and I think I might have to make "stacks" from all my buckets of scraps! Head on over to the Block Lotto blog for more information if you'd like to join in.

I've been busy this weekend, working on the Planet Patchwork mystery from Christmas day. Here's the result, minus a border or two. I had just enough of the geometric fabric left over from an old row robin, and I paired it with a bunch of yellow scraps. That fabric folded up on the right side is green that "in real life" matches the green in the print -- but you really can't tell that from the picture! Anyway, it's clearly not the right border fabric so I need to go root around in the stash some more tomorrow.
One more little project -- this is for the monochromatic challenge at Soscrappy. I wanted to try out Elizabeth's mod mosaic technique using the January color of Blue.

It was a fun project -- but as you can see I had a lot of trouble keeping my white strips even, although I sewed very slowly and really thought they should be doing better. I "built" the quilt from bottom to top, and the strips on the top do look better... so I guess it's just something else that needs practice!

I'm planning to do another one of these for a swap quilt; since the finished size will be quite small, I started my white strips at 3/4" instead of the 1" strips in the Mod Mosaic tutorial.

This is what's left over: