Left-Over Blocks

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If you look in my archives.... waaaay back to January of 2006, you will see a rather largish collection of these Grandmother's Choice blocks... these are 16 of the 17 blocks that did NOT make the cut for my bigger quilt (which still remains unfinished as I left it in Austria and then last year my stay over there was much shorter than anticipated - still I can hope to get that top finished sometime this winter!). Anyway, these blocks were left-over, or just didn't fit in, from my original project so were tossed in a suitcase and came with me back to the North American continent. They probably would have lived in a UFO bin very happily for a long while, except for the fact that sometime in - maybe May - Judy issued a challenge to use a piece of fabric from our stash.

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Although not super motivated to buy new fabrics right now or even start new projects for that matter, somewhere along the way I pulled together enough energy to be a tiny bit interested in quilting again. Inspired from other blogger's working away on string quilts, I went to work making Chinese Coins strips - I showed these in a June post. The idea was to use a dark blue fabric from my stash as the alternate rows... except once all my strips were pieced together - they decided that they would much more prefer to be set with a bright turquoise fabric instead, thank you very much. Oh, they are perfectly willing to wait until I get around to acquiring the correct fabric... but in the meantime, this dark blue started to act all disappointed because it had been so sure it was finally going to be used. What to do? What to do?

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Grandmother's Choice blocks to the rescue! They are 10.5" unfinished and I cut the sashing strips 3.5" and chain pieced them. It is an odd collection of blocks in that some of them are a tiny bit differently sized than others - and I didn't want to square them up because that would chop the points. Instead, I sashed each block along one side and then the bottom. End blocks get an extra sashing on the side (you can see that the bottom row block still needs to be sashed). Sewed the blocks together into rows- letting any uneven-ness fall along the sashed edge. Now all I have to do is to trim the sashing evenly and then piece the rows together. Sashing each block individually prevents distortion/rippling that would have happened if I had cut 1 long piece of sashing per row since the blocks are a bit uneven. No one is really going to notice if 1 sashing row is about 1/4"+ off than the next row up or down, and this way everything will fit together very nicely. Works for me.

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You may be able to see that I have numbers pinned on the blocks. I use a little code - TR (top right), BL (bottom left) BR2 (bottom row, 2nd block over), R2/2 (row 2, 2nd block over), etc. That just helps keep me organized so I know where I left off.

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And - no - I am not using pink fabric on this quilt. That is actually the back of my heart quilt. I like the size of the heart quilt alot and wanted to make this quilt a similar size. So, I lay out the pink quilt to work off of when setting blocks - then I can guess about how big to make /cut everything. After the borders, this quilt will be a bit bigger than the pink quilt, which is fine - I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't be smaller/shorter!

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I have to trim and then sew the rows together. Inner narrow border will be beige - probably 2.5" cut. 6.5" cut outer border in that blue. I have a few yards of that blue left over, but at least I am putting some of it to excellent use! Backing on this quilt will probably be a rust colored flannel I have in the stash.

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In answer to some questions... all the photos in the last photo collage were of my son - yes, he is getting BIG! Yes, he has a summer haircut - beach sand, salt water, hot weather... all good reasons for a short cut - and the fact that someone spilled duck sauce all in his hair one night and he didn't want me to WASH his hair - sponging it "out" was a temporary measure and the next day it smelled like kuk-ka. So, rather than battling it out with shampoo, I buzzed it off - much simplier!

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So - not my usual production level, but it is something. Thanks for all the kind words about me being so tired. No I am not pregnant and I don't think I have lyme's disease, but both of those guesses certainly would be cause for being tired! I am working long hours and have a lot to juggle, always trying to put my son and his schedule first and then catching up on what I have to get done, which of course, is also very important. But, ssshhhh - I don't like to talk about work on my blog! But that is nothing new for me as I've managed that schedule since my son was a baby. Being tired for no good reason in particular is just plain frustrating. Oh well, like I said before - at least my doctors have ruled out anything serious and I will just have to sit down and put my feet up a bit more often.