Sort of free-form House block

If the charge is starting a new project before the other ones are completed, I plead guilty. I'm about to be arrested by the quilt police again, I guess. But I had this idea. I love Gwen Marston's design of a liberated house square. But then, I was struggling with how to put those blocks together. So I decided to make a more tame version. I came up with the idea to square up the pieces. I'm not that accurate a piecer, but I make up for it with enthusiasm. Anyhow, here's the recipe for the quilt block:
6 1/2 inch squares of free-form piecing,
roof: 6 1/2 by 3 1/2 dark color
sides of roof: 3 1/2 inch squares of white. Mark the squares on the diagonal. Sew to sides of roof.
Sides: strips of white 2 1/2 inches wide (I sew to sides and then trim with rotary cutter to make the length)
Grass: 1 3/4 inch wide strip of green. Sew to bottom.
Square up the thing.
This block uses up all the little scraps of fabric any other person would have thrown away long ago. And I'm even using some old bits of muslin.

My quilt is finished

Here's my quilt, all finished and someone was visiting me who was kind enough to hold it up for it's photo. This quilt was a great way to use up some really old scraps. And as my daughter has told me numerous times, "Mom you can't have too much turquoise."
Speaking of old scraps--Lazy Girl (Tonya) on her blog has challenged folks to make "fungly" quilts, using up some really old, ugly, fabrics, with some very questionable seams. I have been looking through my baskets, and I think I have a real head start on this! I have some of the worst sample blocks and bits of fabric. I guess that other people would have tossed them out long ago. Actually, I did have to toss out two bags of scraps that I have finally pronounced as totally useless--not even good enough for a quilt such as the above.

Time to do a little happy dance--my baby toes plant has bloomed! I don't know why, but the little flower is a big deal to me!

Krazy Kats quilt

This is one of my favorite quilts. I made it some time ago. It's the right size to throw over a sofa or easy-chair. I like to do embroidery--by hand. I don't have one of those sewing machines that does embroidery, although I do use some of the fancy stitches on my regular machine sometimes. My grandmother taught me to embroider when I was a little girl. But I don't recall seeing her embroider or sew anything. She had a treadle sewing machine that was all painted with a lovely flower design. I remember that I used it on rare occasions. Grandma was a queen in the kitchen, though. She could bake bread that was heavenly, make pickles and pickled salmon. It wasn't easy to make pickles then, first Grandma had to hire a farmer to grow the pickling cucumbers, and we had to go out to the farm and walk around in the field while she looked at them and he picked them for us. Grandma had some of those big old-fashioned candy jars, the kind with the slanted tops. She would put the pickles and solution in the jars and then she had a special flat rock (that she had of course cleaned very well) and she would weigh the cucumbers down with that. To be continued--someday I'll tell you about the cherry wine she made.... The quilt pattern is still available from http://www.whitepicketfencequilts.com/

Sample squares

Here's an idea I'm thinking about. It's crazy patches made into sort of a Roman Stripe pattern. That's as far as it goes right now. I don't know where I'm taking it. Luckily I still have a big piece of that solid color turquoise fabric left! I even have a quilt batt hanging around in the corner of the room. The quilt is loosely based on a pattern I saw in a magazine called "Quilt Pink, 2007." Also, I have in my mind to do a wall hanging, sort of winging it. I want to start with some reverse applique. And then, I'm doing some crocheting. I should be dusting my place, washing the kitchen floor, vacuuming the bedroom, but I do believe I'll take a nap and catch up on some reading.

What happened to the lemonade

This is a sample of what can be made with those wild and crazy blocks. I put together six of them (9 1/2 inch) into a baby quilt. I like to make easy quilts for babies using lots of colors. Babies love these quilts and usually use the ones I give them until they shred. As any of you who have read my blog know, none of my quilts is going to win a ribbon at any quilt show or fair. But they keep loved ones warm. I generally put flannel on the back of these baby quilts. I put an assortment of my baby quilts on my flickr. You can view them by clicking the flickr block on my blog.
Happy New Year, and may you make some satisfying quilt projects in 2008.

Make Lemonade

I used to have a small erasable board hanging in my dining room and write sayings on it. The "lemonade" one was one of my favorites. Right now, that saying applies both to my life and my quilting. I can't really create anything original when I have a lot of worries. So I just get out a bunch of scraps (I have a whole laundry basketful) and make some machine crazy squares with no foundations. I sew 'em, iron 'em, and square 'em up. These particular ones are squared up to 6 1/2 inches. When I'm back to feeling creative these crazy squares will become a quilt (any size) with some sort of set. Or I can use them for a border on a quilt. Meanwhile, the things I'm worried about are improving a bit.

Ultimate scrap quilt

Here's my Ultimate Scrap Quilt. It's my first Internet quilt. If you Google those words, you'll find the pattern. It's still on the Internet, after all this time. True to it's name, this pattern used up just about all the stash I had at the time. I only had little bits and pieces left then, and the quilt used those nearly all up. It's a medallion quilt, and so I wasn't able to use my usual method of quilting a quilt in sections, so I tied this quilt. But tying is the best thing on a crazy quilt anyhow, and I ended up with a very cozy quilt. I made the off-white parts from a sheet, and I made them wider than the directions said, to make this quilt fit on a full size mattress. All of the embroidery is by hand.

I sewed a cross stitch picture into the crazy quilt. On the top of the photo, there's a little crochet motif that I sewed on, also.

Here's my little tea pot. This type of hand embroidery is called chicken scratch. It's embroidery on gingham, made to look like lace. There's some feather stitch on the side of the block, but it's hard to see in the photo.

Finished crazy-quilt

Here's good news--the quilt has been finished. And I really am enthusiastic about the result.

For the Birds

This is a recent quilt, the subject is birds, appliqued and embroidered, alternating with some crazy quilt squares.