Goodnight Irene - month two!!

Here are my month two blocks for the Goodnight Irene sew-along over at Terry's Treasures. Be sure to check out what everyone else is doing... Terry's got a linky party on her sidebar that she updates every month. There are some gorgeous quilts starting to take shape!! And, believe it or not - some have even finished their quilt tops. Overachievers!!

These are some of the squares I'm working with and I think they look a whole lot better on the table than they do in the quilt!

I love the "Goodnight Irene" quilt pattern, but I'm just not sure I love it in the batiks I've chosen. Thinking maybe I'll start all over...especially after seeing how pretty everyone's finished quilts are.

Take care,

Sometimes I wonder...

if I have a "screw loose" or something. :) If there is one thing I do not need to do - it's sign up for a sew-along. But I couldn't resist! There are a couple of interesting things going on out there in blogland and this is the first (but probably not the last) that I have succumbed to. It's a quilt called "Goodnight Irene" and I have the button for it on my sidebar if you want to visit Terry's blog and see all the gorgeous progress so far. There are a lot of people that have signed up. Check out her sidebar and you'll see where she has a linky party for the month. This month our "assignment" was to make the first 5 blocks... so I did (and before the month was over)!

I'm using batiks, and as I said a few days ago, I like how they look but I don't care for sewing with them. However, this is coming along nicely, although I think the fabric I've chosen for my X blocks may overwhelm the batiks a bit. We'll see as it progresses.

And, I have been busy doing other quilty things too. I've got three quilts that have now been pin-basted and I've just begun the quilting on the Fractured quilt. I'm showing you a pic of the mystery quilt just to give you a tiny glimpse of what I did for the border.

Take care,

It's on the wall!

My Scrappy String quilt/wallhanging is finished and hanging on my entryway wall. It's the perfect spot for it I think, and my husband agrees. We love it hanging there to greet people as they enter our home.

I quilted it with "organic" lines down the middle of each string. I like the fact that the lines are not perfect. And, I love the black/white polka dot binding. It's perfect!

There is not a good way to get a photo of the whole quilt so this view is from the hallway looking toward the front door. The next photo is the view from the stairs as you are walking downstairs.

I'm really, really happy with this quilt. It was fun to do and I love how it looks on the wall!!

I was going to do a tutorial but I found an even better one than I could have written. It's seems many, many people have used this tutorial and I can see why. It's very good. Here's what I did differently - rather than one narrow white strip down the middle, I did two strips of black/white fabrics. That way, when they were opened, they created a much wider light "middle". I used a 10" foundation block and when finished sewing all the strips onto it, I trimmed it to 9 1/2". I used 1 1/2" strips throughout. It was an easy, easy quilt!!

In case you want to see even more string quilts, I've created a little linky party. Please join in if you've got a great string quilt to show us!

Take care,

You're invited to my party...

my "Oldest UFO" linky party. I know I'm not the only one with a huge pile/stack/ box/ container/shelf of UFOs. The other evening I was thinking about all my UFOs and I couldn't remember them all so I decided to get my pile out and start looking through it.

If you want to enlarge any of the photos, just double-click on them.

This is my oldest UFO and it was started in 1994. I'm kind of surprised that I don't have one that is older. In those days, I was actually finishing a lot more quilts than I have in the last 5 or so years. Our quilting group, Ladies of the Evening, always had some kind of activity going on and that year we were doing friendship blocks. When it came time for my turn, my request was for a block of any size, any pattern, using a piece of fabric that I provided.  When I received all the blocks, I hadn't thought about how I would use them, so they sat for a little while. On a trip to Paso Robles with my husband, we visited the quilt shop and they had a quilt hanging on the wall that consisted of many different sized blocks. They had assembled the quilt in just this manner...using smaller blocks and sashing strips to make everything uniform. I loved the idea and took several pictures so I could remember what they had done.

At that time, our group consisted of mostly beginner quilters. We did have a couple of advanced quilters and one of them was into applique. I remember thinking then that I would never want to do applique. Of course, I changed my mind along my quilting journey.

If I remember correctly, this is the Pineapple block that I made. As you can see, I knew very little about contrast or value. :)

For the border, I was planning on using lots of the smaller, simpler blocks. In fact, I have many of them cut and/or sewn. Maybe one of these days I will finish this quilt although right now I have no desire to do so. A sad note....one of these blocks was made by a lovely woman who just passed away last week. That makes this quilt top extra special.

Anyway, I would like to invite you to join in the party by linking up and showing us your oldest UFO. There's really only one stipulation....you must be willing to admit how old it is! :))   Anyway, I hope a lot of you will participate and make this FUN!

Here's how to join in the party:

• Publish your own "Oldest UFO" post on your blog.
• Once your post is published, click on the title of the post. This will take you to the link URL for your post. This URL points directly to the page with your post on it. Copy the URL from your browser at the top of the page.
• Paste the URL into the appropriate linkytools box in this post.
• Type your name in the appropriate linktytools box in this post.
• Click on "Enter."
• Please link back to this (my Oldest UFO) post so that your readers can find other Old UFOs.

That's it! You might want to check and see if your link is working properly. We'll hope that everything works correctly, since this is my first time hosting a "linky party."

Take care,