Lonely Heart

This is a single heart block, for the February Block Lotto. It should turn into a few more before the end of the month, but today, just one (though I did lots of other stuff as well). 

I did make more string blocks to make more hearts with, though - this month's assignment of "low volume" fabrics has been an interesting exercise, for sure.

More Tall Shoo Fly Blocks

I showed the blocks I made for the lotto the other day; these are the extra blocks I made as I was going along - assembled into a top!  My first charity top of 2013.  I am once again aiming for one per month (last year I managed a lot more than that, which is great, but one a month is the aim) and this is my January top, despite not blogging it until February.  

I do still have several sets of blocks waiting to be put into tops, so at some point, I can probably do a few quick tops from those. Those of you who have followed here for any length of time will know that my first love in quilting is block making.  I don't mind the other parts, but block making is the main love, so there are always stacks of blocks hanging around to be made into tops!

Giveaway, part two

Back on my blog intro for the Grow Your Blog Party, I offered up these 6" squares as a prize for a random commentor on that post. The number generated (of which I forgot to take a screen shot) was no 4

drumroll please

Anne Bebbington

I've known Anne (virtually) for a long time, so it was nice to see her name come up. (Anne, I have your address, unless you have moved!)  But, I do feel sorry for all the other people not chosen, so I'm going to offer some consolation prizes of set of 20 random pieces (they will all be 5" squares or smaller, but at least 2" square - they won't all be square) from my scrap drawers to any of those folks who commented on that post but didn't get chosen. The catch is, you have to comment on this post as well, and you have to tell me what colour category you'd like (see below).  I'll also send you one of these random packs if you didn't comment on the original post but comment on this one.  Deadline is a dozen people or a week's time, whichever comes first!

Here are the colour choices:

• blue
• green
• red/orange/yellow
• pink/purple
• neutral
• black
• brown
• multicoloured

Please be sure I can contact you!  If you are set to no-reply, it's hard for me to get in touch, so you need to provide some sort of alternative contact...

A finish...but not quite mine!

This lovely string quilt is a recent finish for my friend Lisa.  I'm blogging it here because most of the string blocks in it were made by yours truly - she won them in a giveaway on my blog about four years ago.   It's great to see stuff finished, and if it's stuff that I had a hand in, in some way, well, that's even better. It looks fantastic, I think, and will really suit her house, which is an actual log cabin in the mountains of Colorado. Read more about it over here on her blog...

Cross stitch update

This perhaps doesn't look like a lot of progress this week, but there are actually four rows of stitches in this border in addition to the lettering, so it takes longer than you might think.  Tempting though it is to carry on working until it's finished, I don't think I will, because it will actually take quite a while. I'll switch to my garden sampler and then come back to this next week. I do think that will be the last week, though!

Not giving away...

Yesterday I showed the tops I gave away in 2012 (or which were made in 2012 and are sitting in my charity stack) and there were lots of lovely comments about them.  Today, I thought I'd show the ones I didn't give away.  This one above was originally going to be given away, but I decided I liked it too much for that.

A top made from Block Lotto blocks I won.

A French Braid top.

Another small one - probably a baby quilt in time.

Scrappy stars - this was sort of a challenge, to use my 5" squares which were acquired from Karol-Ann's stash (plus others)

Baby quilt in hand dyes

and one in purples and pinks.

"Slash-a-stash" quilt in low volume fabrics.

Brown and black string hearts with alternating blocks.

Project Linus 2012

As those of you who read here regularly know, I like to make blocks and sometimes make them into tops much more than I like to finish quilts.  And I am trying to reduce unnecessary stash & especially scraps. Consequently, I make a lot of small quilt tops which I donate to a Linus coordinator who is a friend of a friend, who is happy to take tops and organise them getting finished into quilts.  I also donate tops & blocks and things to my blog friend Sarah's quilt ministry.  In 2012, I donated 35 or so tops to these causes.  Here's a post showing them!

In 2013, I am to donate at least one quilt top per month to some sort of charitable cause - some months, there may be more, of course. Depends on my sewing time!  And in 2013, for the first time in a while, I am working full time again...


October

September

August

July

May

April

March (I originally made another top in March to donate, but decided to keep it, as I liked it a lot!)

February 

January