Another B

I wanted to make a B with a spiral base for Brenda's Big Birthday -- I imagined lots of swirls and elegance. Not so easy to stitch since I don't do applique! But when I looked at my drawings, the swirl looked like a cat's tail. And the top could be a cat's head, couldn't it?

So I added ears and voila, a cat! I'm thinking about adding embroidered eyes, but am not sure. Thoughts?

I  made the cat by cutting 1-1/2" strips. I was going to cut some squares to make half square triangles (for the ears and the indentations in the B) when I remembered my Easy Angle Ruler. It lets you make HST's using the same size strips as your squares. I learned about it from Bonnie Hunter's website and absolutely love it!

Brenda's Big Birthday B

Happy Birthday, Brenda!

Brenda at Scraps and Strings is having a Big Birthday, and she's asking fellow Bloggers to send her a Big B for her Birthday quilt. Happy Birthday fabric seemed in order, so that's what I used for my Big B. I'm toying with the idea of another B but don't know whether I can pull it off. I may give it a try, and if it works, you'll know.

This fabric is for valences for our bathroom windows. I knew the fabric I wanted (I had designed it in my mind), but of course no designer had read my mind. This fabric has the right colors and is cheery, so it will do -- especially as it was on half price sale! It's outdoor fabric and fairly stiff, which got me thinking that it would make a wonderful satchel. I think I should have just about enough fabric left over for that, too.

At home with Sweet Baby James

How cute is sweet baby James? Adorable! See what he's lying on? That's right, that's his very own quilt!






This is the "back" (aka, the fun part). My friend Joe Filer quilted it and did an amazing job!

To appreciate the quilting, you have to know that the front is a matching game. There are two squares of each fabric, and James (when he's older!) can try to find the two that go together.

So Joe made 6 matching pairs among the starbursts in his quilting design -- and he did it with glow-in-the-dark thread! Awesome!


Sleep tight, Sweet Baby James!

Twists and embroidery

My friend G has an embroidery machine with some mola-inspired designs and she made this one for me! It's beautiful -- much more vibrant than it shows in the photo. I think it will make a great panel on a satchel.

All my strip twist blocks are now spider blocks!

I had to rummage through my stash to find fabrics that coordinated with the jelly roll strips I was using in order to get enough blocks, but I think they worked really well. I'm going to join them with white sashing and borders to make a summertime twin bed quilt. Woo-hoo! I haven't made a real bed quilt yet that I'll keep in my house -- this is my first!

Also, I have been trying to redesign my blog but the template designer shows only grey no matter what I do. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thank you!! **UPDATE -- After much searching on the help forums, I discovered that the new template is incompatible with the older version of Firefox that I was using, so I updated that and now I can play around with the new templates!**