Okay, so I am feeling a tad guilty today. “Why?” you may ask, if you are really
interested. Well, I know that I should
be working on the fish quilt I want to make for Harry. I had already planned on giving Layla the
quilt I am making in the Block of the Month group on Craftsy, and I had planned
all along to make him a fish quilt. In
fact, I had let him help pick out fish materials, which I think I now have
about 25 different ones. I just hadn’t
made up my mind on how to approach it yet – at this point, the only thing I am
sure about is the border.
So yesterday, Mom started cleaning out some tubs we have
stacked in the backyard and Casey and I helped her. They have been
there for over 2 years, and they are full of stuff we packed up long ago. We had gone through a couple earlier this year
when it was cooler outside and found they had cracked from the heat, and even
though they were covered with tarps, they had gotten wet and some of the stuff
inside was not worth anything anymore. A
lot of the boxes had books in them, and some of them were just black logs from
mold now. One of the ones we looked
through back then had material in it, that quite a bit of it was wet and moldy
and had to be thrown out. I did manage
to salvage a couple of pieces but not much.
So when we started looking yesterday, I was kind of not looking forward
to some of what I knew we would find.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of tubs that
were filled with fabric that were still okay.
In the past, I have admitted how much of a color freak I am, I love all
colors, but you put red, orange, or yellow in front of me and I can go
nuts. You can imagine my reaction to
this-
I absolutely love this – it practically screamed my
name. It’s one of those African batiks
that became popular in the early 90’s. The
solid gold color on the flowers is some sort of metallic paint and very
stiff. Mom had bought it to make a
jacket out of, but she never got around to it.
She told me I could have it. There
was about 3 yards of it and perfectly fine, but I washed it anyway and it is
just gorgeous.
So even though I know that I should be working on that
fish quilt, I started working on this. (No worries, though – the guilt is
quickly fading!) I knew just what I wanted to do with it – a
couple of months ago I was talking with a fellow quilter who asked what I liked
to work on and I told him I was just crazy about the kaleidoscope blocks. He started telling me about a kaleidoscope block
that is made from only four pieces, so ever since then I have wanted to try it. I only needed four repeats in the pattern,
and I had that, so I started tearing and cutting!
The repeats were pretty good size, about 14”, so I
decided that after trimming them down to 13”, I would cut it into 6 ½” blocks.
This was really hard material to match up all the repeats – everything was off
just a fraction, so my blocks are coming out a bit off, but I’m okay with it –
I think they still look pretty good. From
this 6 ½” block-
which I cut like this-
I got these-
I decided to also cut half the blocks up and down and across
just to get some variety, and this is a mix of them-
I have been squaring them all down to 5 ½” and I really
like how they are coming out. From my
four repeats, I got 12 6 ½” squares, so as long as I don’t screw something up
too bad, I should get 48 finished blocks. (Can you see why my guilt is rapidly
fading?) I can’t wait to get the other 32 finished!
In the tubs, we also found this-
It is the most luscious variegated blue velour you could
dream of! The really wonderful part –
there is about 7 yards of the stuff!
I have no idea what to do with it, especially since I am usually a 100% cotton quilter! However,
I am determined to figure it out! I
washed and dried it, and it almost killed me to fold it back up – my arms were
killing me by the time I got it all neatly together – this stuff is really
heavy!
Good news – I got the Blue Moves and Ecstasy quilts back
from the longarmer. She had sad news, so
I totally understood her delay. When I
picked the quilts up, I took her the green kaleidoscope quilt and told her no
rush on it. Now I just need to get some
binding for the two.
And that is what is going on with me. I am feeling better because I quit playing
games through Facebook and picked up the material and rotary cutter again. Wonderful therapy for depression – highly recommended!
Thanks for stopping by!
I don't even like orange and I love that Batik! I'm seeing a purse made with that and red.
ReplyDeleteLove the blocks- they came out great.
Thanks - I was also thinking about a purse out of it. I may have enough of it left!
DeleteOh...and that blue - would it work for the back of Harrys fish quilt?
ReplyDeleteHey - that is a neat idea - and I would have enough to do the back of Layla's quilt! My only concern is how stretchy the velour is - I will have to do some research and see if anyone had ever done that successfully. Thanks for the great idea!
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