Random Notions – Got Guilt?

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!