Just a quick post

Years ago when the Florence Peto quilts first became the rage, my friend Marlena and I decided to do a block exchange and make our own version of FPs quilt.

We decided to exchange two 6 1/2" appliqued blocks and two 9-patch blocks each month for 6 months.  We did great the first few months and then we slowed down.  I think our big gardens and canning season had something to do with it. 

Anyway, she eventually gave me 11 pairs and I gave her 9.  I made a birthday cake block (very wonky) to exchange and I'm thinking the birthday was a significant one.  I turned 60 in 2011 so that tells you how long ago it was. 

I made and gave her another pair of blocks over a year ago.  Saturday I decided I didn't want this to be a UFO anymore and so I made another pair of blocks for each of us and sewed this little quilt together.  It measures 47 inches square.

I'm going to use one of her blocks for my label and one of my blocks won't get used, another weird one . . .

So I have officially finished another UFO to the quilt top stage.  That makes 7 tops completed from my list of 16 UFOs that I made last August.  The original list was 15 but, alas, I found another one to add.  That means I have 9 more to go.  Again, nine sounds a lot better than 16.

I was in a hurry to get this put together.  The bobbin above proves that when I hurry I always make mistakes.

Slow down Robin

Just a little groggy~

Sometimes sleep is so elusive.  Tuesdays always finds me waking up numerous times during the night because I have to get up early and my body wants to make sure I don't sleep in.  Not only do I not sleep in but I don't sleep.  Frustrating to say the least.

At least today I'll have some extra time to work on my hand quilting before I have to leave.  I'm using the baptist fan template from Barb Vedder's Etsy store for the background of the applique.  I didn't want to do a grid again and this is fun to do.

This is a picture of the side border.  Progress is slow but anything worthwhile takes time.

Hope you're all sleeping while I write this and will enjoy a peaceful day when you wake up refreshed.

Robin

An older cheddar project

I'm working on the Cheddarback SAL on Setimental Stitches blog but I'll comment more on that at the end of this post.

I have been slowly replacing the squares in the quilt above.

I unpicked all the alternating white squares because there was just too much white.  I originally wanted to use cheddar fabric for the squares but I couldn't find any.  I settled on gold and then some fabric I thought looked like cheddar but it was just orange and some honey colored fabric.

It looks 100% better with the cheddar squares but that's 100 little pieces I'm having to replace.

I've come up with a new mantra. . . "Do not remake a finished quilt top".

I seem to age my tops for a few years before quilting them (having 20 tops waiting to be quilted might have something to do with it) and when I get them out again they get a labor intensive makeover.  Crazy, I'm just crazy!

I gave this quilt to my DIL but she liked another one better so we traded and this quilt went to one of my grandson's (top left).

Some mornings it just pays to get up early!

I'm working away at the handquilting on this quilt.  No name yet.  The whole quilt can be seen on my sidebar.

We've got another storm coming in.  In fact, it's already started to rain.  The snow is due tomorrow.  Hopefully the apricot blossoms can withstand the cooler temps.

And here is my Cheddarback progress.  I love the way the first set of blocks turned out.  I would smile at them every time I walked by my design wall.  But, this second set has given me fits, both with color placement and unpicking.  I made the center pinwheel too small in the block on the lower left and so I had to add a little border.  The jury is still out on whether to leave that stripe fabric in the corners.

Going clockwise - I kept cutting the backgrounds out backwards for the black block.  Argh!  The basket went together fairly well, thank goodness.  The lower right block has been made twice and I finally just decided to leave it.  And then I used the extra block that Gay gave the facebook group instead of a pinwheel block and I really like it.

Hopefully next month I'll be more focused so I can do these blocks in one day instead of three.

Skipping quiltfully along,
Robin