I know, I know! It's been a while since I posted anything. I took a little vacation (just in my head) from Daring Greatly and that spread out into other forms of vacationing from the normal routine. All except the habit of quilting :)

Disappearing 4-patch

This is a surprise quilt - to me at least. I started out with material and a very simple pattern but shifted to the Disappearing tutorial thinking if it didn't work, it was just a couple of fat quarters - I could toss them and no one would be the wiser. Now that it's almost together, I'm not sure what to do with it but I'm liking it!

Here's what the blocks looked like after the slice and dice:

 

There were a bunch of possible lay outs - as you can imagine. I had 21 blocks to play with - odd number but that's the amount of material I had. After the blocks spent several days on the design board (which is really our spare bed), I had a rather bizarre idea to integrate a piece of yellow material to make it look like the Yellow Brick road - I'd just tried to watch the new Wizard of Oz movie and was overly influenced by those cute little Munchkins.

The math turned out to be just a little too much for me - figuring out how to add yellow sash on 3 out of 4 sides of the block and still have everything fit together made my brain smoke. So I stepped back from that idea but still wanted to use the yellow material - it brought out the yellow in the focus fabric.

With my new-found skills from the Quilt Basics class I'm taking, I decided to put some yellow on the edges of the outer blocks, fill in with sash of different widths and here is the results. I totally didn't expect the way the blocks almost look like hearts or that the center looks like a framed picture. Funny how the "design as you go" approach always seems to show me things I couldn't have ever imagined.

And for the back, I took a small piece of left over flannel from another project and used the rest of the top material. I wanted to imitate the blocks on the front - only bigger. Here's what the back looks like.

My plan is to do the quilting my self on this one - just simple stitch in the ditch. And that way, I can take it with me to the Craft Fare this weekend. I think it would be good to have something to work on so the passers by don't feel like I'm just sitting there waiting to pounce on them.

Basic Quilting Class - #1

I've also been doing my homework for the Basics class I'm taking. We postponed class until next week and I'm glad I didn't wait until then to do the blocks we were assigned to do. Although the blocks aren't my favorite, getting to practice all the new techniques is going to make all my other quilts better (and easier).

Here we have a house - looks like one, doesn't it? I don't think it would pass the city inspector but it is great for a quilt (it's a bit more lopsided than I'd want to live in).

And then there is a block with the year:

And my favorite - a cat. We were given a book with all sorts of animal blocks but the cat called to me. If I were serious about using this block, I'd learn more about appliqué so I could "poof" up the tail and make the ears flop over - to make it look more like our precious Rave.

I also found a tutorial for making half-triangle squares that I wanted to try out so I made another one of the blocks that uses a lot of HTSs. I didn't get the math right (no surprise there) so the block is 12 x 12 instead of 10 x 10 but the method in the tutorial is very easy and there is zero waste. I'll use this method the next time I need HTS. And give the block to the Scrap Squad to integrate into one of their fabulous quilts.

While I was at it, I decided to make a couple more of the other blocks. I'm not sure which ones will end up in the quilt top but at least this way, I have plenty to chose from and I've gotten lots of practice. It's great to have this level of confidence - I think I could pull apart and make just about any block now.

Wedding Guest Quilt

The last block for this quilt is now in place. Now, the customer and I are ready to get together to pick out the border, backing, and binding material. We are having a little trouble with schedules but it will happen in the next week or so.