Not giving things away - part 3

Just when you thought it was safe to start reading the blog again, here's another post about all the blocks and tops and whatnot I have hanging around waiting to be used... This one will show all the sets of blocks I HAVEN'T given away in the last year on my blog. There are quite a few, I warn you now!

1. Japanese Lantern Blocks. 8x12". 46 blocks. These are from a swap I ran on about.com in Spring 2007 and although I really liked the idea at the time, I am less enamoured of them now. Still, I think they will make a nice quilt someday, so I am hanging on to them. I may not use all of them when I come to make the quilt, but for the moment, I'm not making any decisions.

2. Black and batik. 9" square. 12 blocks. These are from a swap on another forum on Delphi (not QuiltShoppe or Scrap Quilting, but I can't remember where) and the swap was originally for three 18" blocks and a bunch of 9" blocks. I have used two of the 18" blocks for mini quilts for gifts - one for a leaving present for a friend & colleague of Geoff's and the other as a wedding present for a friend. The third one, I think I gave away, as well as a few of the 9" blocks which didn't work as well as the others. These 12 will make a nice small quilt, so I'm happy to keep them around for a while.

3. Batik stretched stars. 8" square. 20 blocks. Another nice baby quilt. Originally I think I had some grand plan to make more of these with a batik background and cream star points, but well, let's be realistic, folks.

4. Sand and blue batik blocks. 6" square. 20 blocks. From a swap with the euro-swap group - all are pieced onto magic paper or other superthin lining. Just need to put them together. Not sure why I haven't. Keep forgetting they are there, I guess. I think I have enough baby quilt materials to last quite a while!

5. Batik Jacob's Ladder. 12" square. 4 blocks. I had a load of these and sent most of them to Margaret for Project Linus quilts - I decided to keep four of them - with a little border, they'll make a nice baby quilt.

6 & 7. Hand-dyed 9 patches. 6" block. 32 blocks. From a swap on the dyehard group. I used a number of these to make a bag as a present for someone last Christmas (2007) but there are some left. I used the disappearing 9 patch technique - which is what we all had in mind when we did the swap. 6" framed squares in hand dyes. 72 blocks plus 21 with signatures in the centre. Also a dyehard swap, from a long time ago - I'm thinking 2005. Not sure what I will do with these, but I should really do something. Or at least work out how many I need to use so I can pass the others along to someone who can make better use of them!

8. Black HST blocks. 12" square. 16 blocks. These blocks were from a swap where the theme was blocks that could be made solely from HST units - I had more blocks than this, but removed some which weren't the right colour (supposed to be a white background, I think) or which just didn't go with the others. These 16 will make a nice throw, though.

9. Batik Framed Four Patch. 10" square. 62 blocks. Not sure why I have 62 of these - it seems a lot. I think this was a swap on about.com. Here, I will almost certainly separate them into a few smaller sets and then give the leftovers to someone doing charity quilts.

10. This is sort of three sets of blocks, though they are all similar and could be used together - all are 6" square and there are 40 of the ones with purple triangles; 58 of the dark blue and 48 of the light blue. Not quite sure why I made these - there was a point when I did a lot of blocks using batik strips - I had belonged to a batik FQ monthly club and had a lot of batiks. So I made these blocks and then kind of got bored of them. But I will use them for something.

11. These are more that I made at that point, only I have used some of these for a baby quilt for a friend so there are only 26 left. They are 7" squares. There are also 56 half-sized blocks left. I think these would make a nice border on something - that's what I have in mind with saving them, at any rate.

12. This one doesn't have a photo as it seems to have vanished in between my taking the blocks out of the box and counting them and now (read: I managed not to take a photo of them) - 6" Green and Purple Buckeye Beauty blocks - 50 blocks. They look like this - only there are more of them. I won these in the block lotto last summer and intend to make - you guessed it - a baby quilt from them.

13. Layer cake blocks. I think there are 48 of them - when they are all laid out, they look like this. Frankly, I think this will be one for the longarmer, so there's no real rush in getting them put together.

14. The little double four patch blocks with Japanese taupes on the right of the left-hand photo are actually not a set of blocks, as I am still making the blocks. They should go in the NEXT post, which is all the stuff which is sort of being worked on at the moment - not in block or top state, but I photographed them together for some reason, so there you go. Anyway. This is eventually going to be a new runner for Geoff's dresser - which has a runner on it now, but it's old and anyway, it's sometimes nice to wash it and I'd rather have something else to put there in the interim (it's an old dresser made of proper wood, so it scratches easily and gets watermarks, etc).

15. And on the right, the last set of blocks - these vary in size and there are lots of them - I didn't count them, as it happens. They are from the first birthday block swap I hosted on about.com, last year, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet. They will all get used for something, but probably not all in the same thing as there are lots of them, plus although they all have black or BOB backgrounds, the blacks vary a lot and some work better together than others.

This may seem a long list, but it's a lot better than last year's list would have been - since last year I have got rid of a number of sets (or partial sets) of blocks, made at least 4 or 5 baby quilts (complete) from blocks and put together a number of sets of blocks into finished tops. I have also passed a few finished tops on to Project Linus or similar to go for charity quilts. Progress is being made, it's just slow. Probably because I am more into small things and mixed media at the moment - though every so often I really just want to make blocks, LOL.