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!**

Flimsies and fun

How do you recover from knee surgery? Well, the first few days, you keep your knee elevated -- but then you keep your spirits up by quilting!

I can't do anything where I have to crawl around on the floor, or stand up too long while cutting, so I'm finishing up some UFOs. Today I pulled out the strip twist quilt I started a couple years ago. I needed more strips, couldn't find fabrics I was happy with, and put it away. Today I laid it out, thinking I might just use what I have to make a small throw, but then I played around a bit with the layout. The traditional layout is below, but what I'm thinking of now is on top -- setting the blocks differently and putting white sashing between them. I'm a little concerned about some of the dotted whites in the outer edges of the blocks, but I think I like it. Thoughts?

I needed to work on that bright, sunny quilt today because I spent yesterday piecing together blocks I won in a block lotto about 5 years ago. Yuck!! I hate how dull they are, how boring. Not my style at all. The colors are not quite as bad as they appear in this photo, but I didn't enjoy working on it. But it feels good to be DONE! Someone will like it -- I'm donating it and asking that it be quilted with bright thread and butterfly designs (most of the bigger squares have flowers).

I also made some blocks for the Block Lotto that Julie at Floribunda told me about.  They do some wonderful blocks -- February was wonky string hearts. Fun! And more fun when I took the huge bandage off my knee. What's that beneath the wrapping? BATTING?!?! Sure looked like it!

And how cool is this?

It's from a wonderful site called Dornob that has design ideas. It's not a quilting site, but has lots of inspiring stuff. The photo above is from their page where they show vintage furniture rehabed with patchwork -- take a look by clicking HERE.

One card short of a deck

...and one block short of a quilt. Before I started, I calculated whether a jelly roll would make this quilt, and it would, no problem. But then I had to leave out 4 strips for lack of contrast, and now I'm half a block short. (There are 12 blocks in the quilt.) I got to this point (7 blocks) in putting them on the design wall when I started to wonder.
Fortunately, the LQS has some of these fabrics on bolts -- I hope some of the lighter ones! -- so I should be able to finish the quilt. I may even be able to switch out some of the lower contrast ones if I can find the right fabrics.

Do you love your stash?
DD#1 is a knitter, and she sent me a link to a very funny post by the Yarn Harlot (don't you just love that blog name?). She's talking about yarn, but fabric can cause the same reaction. Check out Hey Beautiful, that is your name isn't it?

And I leave you with a photo of another simple donation blanket I made a week or two ago. It's the Fringed Fleece pattern from Project Linus. If you don't have much time but want to make a donation blanket, it's a terrific pattern.

A twisted mini-retreat

About a year ago I bought this Jelly Roll on an impulse. I'd never bought a Jelly Roll before and had no idea what to do with one, but those colors! I love saturated brights anyway, but it was January and I could just feel the sun shining when I looked at these. I left them on my desk near the computer for awhile, but eventually put them in the closet where they languished until my guild's mini-retreat yesterday.

I love going to these sew-alongs because it's fun to visit with everyone and I get so inspired by people's projects, but I do find it awkward to work in a cramped space without my stash. I thought I might piece an I Spy that I had already cut out, but I was afraid I wouldn't have enough space to lay the whole thing out. Then I saw Bonnie's post on the Super Bowl Twist, and I knew what to do! I stitched up a little sunshine on the last day of January.
Bonnie's directions emphasized that contrast was important, so I laid out some strip set possibilities and checked for contrast. I learned that the Jelly Roll had more darks than lights and quite a few fabrics that I would classify as mediums -- but of course, that depends on what they are next to.
I ended up with 4 strips left that just would not give me the contrast I needed. But Bonnie showed a photo of Freida B's Strip Twist quilt with a terrific diagonal border, so I plan to mix these up with the ends of the strip sets to make a border like that myself.
All the blocks are pieced (this is a very quick quilt when you start with pre-cut strips), but I haven't gotten my design wall up again since I got my new sewing table, so I couldn't lay the whole thing out.
Desperately wanting to see what it was going to look like, I put a few blocks out on the floor. So much fun! Tonight's the Super Bowl, so I may get the design wall up and the quilt laid out then. I am incredibly grateful that my husband isn't a big sports fan. Most years his football watching consists of tuning in to at least part of the Super Bowl. This year he's invited a friend who has about his level of interest in the game over to watch with him, and we're getting Indian take-out for dinner. My laugh for the day came when DH worried about having a long wait for the food because everyone would be getting take-out for the game. I think the pizza delivery guy will be busy, but I doubt there'll be a long line for aloo tikki chat!