Design Wall Monday (Week 18)

Here is the wall:

At the top are my 9-patch/snowball "leader-enders", I just love sticking them up there as I make them.

The 4 blue blocks on the left are the first Snowbound BOM (button on the side of page). They are this year's BOM from BunnyHill Designs.  I'm trying to use a Blush charm pack for the appliques plus a few green blender type charms from a different line.

The center 12 blocks are BunnyHill Design's 2009's BOM A Tisket A Tasket.  I used  Civil war repo charm and a few other fabrics.  I am loving this quilt.  The embroidery needs done on all the blocks in both BOM's but that should get done in the evenings watching tv or sitting on the porch. Porch sitting is one of my favorite good weather sports. 

4 lonely crumb blocks, and 2 finished FFF stitchey's that are up there while I decide how I want to finish them and on the cutting table my Bl-a-days, which have pretty much become a regular "habit" and I've thought a couple times about what will I do next year when this project is through...oh yeah, I'll be making a gazillion quilts with all these blocks, silly me.

I do think though that in a day or so everything will be off the design wall because of these:

The last 10 sets of triangles for the 2nd OBW! shivers of excitement...

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And finally, I came up to get the camera to take the pictures for this post and this is what I found.

What is wrong with the 2 matching dog beds right there that they had to walk by to jump up onto the sofa?

They are the best "bad-dogs" I know!

For more design wall fun go here.

It's so nice out

A beautiful day here in the 'burgh, 78 degrees and sunny.  I hadn't listened to the weather forecast so it was a lovely surprise!  
I actually fused the first 6 blocks for A Tisket, a Tasket BOM today and sat on the porch and cut them all out! I have a nice divet in my thumb from the scissors for my effort! 

I fused them and am real happy with my color/fabric choices. 

If you click on the picture and look at the bunny in the top far right block--I did not fussy cut that, but after I fused it, I thought it looked like an eye, right where his little eye should be!

I also got another FFF ready to stitch.  It's the April one, Stitching Annie.

The Pens are on tonight, so I will stitch while watching the game.

Also this morning before I did the baskets, I sewed 10 more OBW hexi's together, I only have 30 more to do.  woo-hoo!

Block a days 5/6 through 5/11 (I am loving these civil war repro. fabrics)

And finally, a few weeks ago I noticed a pair of Mourning Doves trying to nest in my Clematis vine that is growing up the side of the deck.

I tried to "discourage" them, for they're own good, 2 dogs roaming around right under that vine is not a good thing for fledgling baby birds, especially when the one dog, Annie is a bird dog. sigh.
They were tenacious and I kept forgetting to go shoo them away every 10 minutes. So yesterday when I went out on the deck and looked over to see what Mr. Otis was up too, one of the doves flushed and scared the heck out of me. 

And look what I saw....

Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be a gramma!!

I've spent so much time worrying over these dang little things- it's nuts.  I just read that mourning doves pair for life and will have 6 clutches of 2 eggs in a season! (good Lord, if Annie could read this she'd be drooling all over the place in birdie anticipation).  AND they will commonly return to the same spot to nest each year...oh dear--that can't be good.

Block-a-days

I have the Bl-a-D done up to May 5th.  The 8" block 2nd row far right is called "autograph star". I am going to use this for the label on one of the future quilts.  

The bottom 3 blocks are using a new set of civil war fabrics.

 I was tired of the color way I had been using (blues&golds).  I have twelve (12" blocks) in those colors so now  it's time to change it up a bit.  

In between I'm sewing leader/enders:  9-patches and snowball scrap blocks together, since the 9-patches are all dark 2.5" squares and random they stitch up so fast, cuz I ain't thinking about anything but a dark value. The snowball blocks could be a bit brighter (lighter) but I like the subtle look so far.  I need to cut some more HST for the snowball blocks.

I think technically I should just be sewing 2 patches together for "leader-enders" but I like to just keep them off to the side of my pressing board on the right of my sewing machine and put a block together as I go.  It doesn't seem to slow me down too much and I like the almost instant gratification of seeing completed blocks.

Jelly Roll Block #5 and ETC...

I made it yesterday.  I also sewed together 20 hexi's for the OBW.

2 more piles of 20 and I'll be ready for the fun part of arranging them!  Last night I bought OBW Encore.  I do want to try and put a few cubes in this quilt.  

Last week after I posted about my swirly feathers on Libby's quilt I got some very nice compliments, and I thank you all kindly.   Mary emailed me that the quilting looked like something her sister did but she quilted it way smaller as a background fill.  I had a Pat Sloan Tall and Skinny wall quilt called Daisy Baskets.  The pattern was in Amer. Patchwork & quilting June 2005 issue.  I quilted it with 1" wide sort of echo's using my dsm, which was all I had at the time and never liked the quilting, but loved the wall hanging and it was finished. So on Friday I unsewed it and re-did it. Quilting this design teeny takes A LONG time, sheesh! but I really like it now.  Here are a few pictures while I was working on it:

And here is a picture I literally just took (because I forgot to take an "after" shot when I finished it).

LUV it!!

Design Wall Monday (week 17)

Empty again!  I had the crumb blocks on the wall almost all week and did make a few more but took it down to put up this one:

This is the Many Thanks top (59 x 59) with its borders.  It is going to be loaded today and quilted this week.

I had no plans to work on this I want it done by November for Thanksgiving. (I had the blocks all put together. It just needed the borders.) But that's how I get off track...

I was putting something away in the closet and spied it hanging there.  I pieced the scrappy inner border Friday night.

Block-a-days and some quilting

Here are this week's blocks + one. 

I have 2 more blocks cut out and ready to sew (want to get a week or more ahead, anticipating vacation in June). 

Libby gave me a small wall quilt to do for her.   I saw these swirly feathers on Feathered Fibers the blog is Carla Barrett's. Her quilting is amazing, and when I saw this design I thought it was something I could do.

I practiced these, mine remind me more of a flowery-feather, on my dry-erase board. 

and then quilted it. 

 The pattern is called Sphere of Influence using the Crazy curves templates.