Seeds of Kindness

Here is my apple core quilt as of yesterday. Many of you know I usually hand sew or quilt in the car for about 2 hours on Fridays. Not to be yesterday. I did attach 2 more horizontal rows that had been pieced earlier.

We have adopted some of the college guys at our church. The college is directly across the street from the violin lesson house. I usually park in the lot there and the boys take turns having lessons. Well, yesterday started spring break, so there wasn't a soul except for the bookstore lady in there. Both boys were disappointed that there wasn't anyone to play pingpong with, so I did the good Mom thing and played pingpong with them instead of hand sewing. I beat boy #1 soundly (even though it's been probably 23-25 years since I've even played a game!). Boy #2 thought it was hilarious until I beat him the same score, 21-3. Not so funny now, is it big guy?

I think I'll just show my apple core quilt every week so you can see the progress. News flash***the quilt will have a new name from henceforth and forevermore. I was thinking about names for quilts the other night when I stayed up so late working on Plan B (which might be Plan B, C, oh, make that D).

I had just asked for donations of scraps for my apple core quilt. I have 9 ladies who have promised to send me pieces. The truly incredible thing is that this is the first time I've "talked" to 7 of them!! I was overwhelmed with the generosity.

Since apple core makes me think of the browning, smelly, slightly repulsive remnants of what used to be something good, I am going to give this quilt a name which will make me think of the generosity and friendship I have discovered since I started blogging. The new name is (drum roll, please)...Seeds of Kindness (apple seeds, naturally). What do you think? Isn't that better??

The quilt is NOT going to Minnie Pearl. The paper pinned to the upper right corner is very small and simply reads "upper right corner". After piddling around and getting all the colors just where I want them, how tragic it would be to sew a row on the wrong side and have two blues touching!!

These lovely pieces arrived in the mail from Eileen today. Saturday's mail is usually horrendous. A few junk mail flyers on a good day. But today, I received a lovely packet of fabrics from Eileen. I just had to sit right down and cut them out. I even unpinned and unlaid my next couple rows so I could work a few of these in. In the very front is my template. It's neat because I can mark the sewing line and cutting line at the same time. It's by Brandy's. Many thanks to Eileen for her Seeds of Kindness. Look for your fabrics in a quilt near you next week :)

~Joan

Which TWO of These Blocks Are Not Like The Others?

I have some new-found b-friends (that's what my WH calls my blog friends) that are into scrap quilts as much as I am, or so it appears! I have spent much of my sewing time recently thinking about why I make the quilts I do. Why not just pick out 3 or 4 fabrics and sew a quilt from them?? Several well-used cliches come to mind..."There's no accounting for taste." "To each his own." "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." We all have our favorite colors, designs, styles. That doesn't mean if I like my quilt better than yours that you're not a good person or I don't like YOU!! I digress.

I'm not sure I would enjoy making a completely planned quilt at all. After one block, the excitement would be gone. I wouldn't be seeing "old friends" (aka former favorite fabrics that I only have one 2" square left from)...

Last night after church I was putting together a few of the units from my Plan B quilt. I was musing over the generosity of the ladies who are selflessly sending me Thimbleberries scraps for my apple core quilt. I have only had contact 2 of the 7 before this. And I think Lisa is moving to the mainland so she can buy Thimbleberries just so she can say she participated in my quilt (LOL--I'll know when Lisa reads this!). Well, there I was, mindlessly connecting block units into the "big block".

I looked in a little drawer where I keep leftover small block units that I have marinating for a better day, and what did I see? SEVEN centers for the very block I was making...well, sort of. Look at the picture below and see how long it takes you to see "which TWO of these blocks are not like the others"...

Well, you either spotted them right off, or scrolled down out of desperation. You know I wouldn't leave you hanging! The top left and bottom right blocks are my "found" blocks that sort of looked like the blocks I was piecing. I was trying to sort through my quilt memory and remember when I made them. I think it was when I had seen the "Plan B" quilt originally, but didn't have the book yet, so was guessing at the block construction.

I was struck with inspiration for a NEW name for this quilt. It will be "Plan B...and C". The alternate 7 blocks will not stand out in the finished quilt. That's the glory of the scrap quilt. If you're close enough, anything goes!

Here is the way the block is SUPPOSED to be made...notice the corner units are two 2" squares (a color and a light) with a 2" x 3-1/2" rectangle of light beside them?

When I pieced the one below, I didn't know about the easier corner, so I pieced the center. Well, I just added a cream sashing around and put a 2" colored corner on so from a little distance (please scroll up to first picture if you forget) it appears the same as the REAL block.

I love it when a plan comes together, even if it is Plan C. Or Plan B and C!!

I had laid out a few blocks from the units I have been stockpiling. I just wanted to see how they would look. So I pieced and ironed 20 of them! That is very exciting because I only need 40 of the light background blocks. At this point in time, everyone else in my family was asleep. Translate that: no interruptions. So I thought, "Hey, the night is young, even if I'm not." I sewed up as many blocks as I had units for, and ended up with 35 blocks!! Whoo hoo--only 5 more of these to make, then I can concentrate on the light stars with the dark backgrounds. Zooming along.

More on the creative scrap process later...

~Joan

Apple Parings Desired

Here is what my Apple Core quilt will look like after I get all the pieces I have cut out sewn together. In the picture, the top right is already sewn. It will measure about 26" x 24" with these pieces.

Pardon me for a second while I get off my computer chair and get down on my knees (I'm about to grovel). I just realized how L-O-N-G it it going to take me to get this quilt up to any large size with the fabrics I have if I keep it a charm quilt. So...

...if anyone out there has Thimbleberries fabrics that are 4" x 5" or larger that they would be willing to mail me, I'd love to have them. I know that's borderline begging. And I'm being snobbish about it by only asking for Thimbleberries. They just don't play nice with other fabrics. I don't want any creams. I'll send you a recipe for great apple dumplings in return, written in my own hand, along with cream Thimbleberries to match the amount of fabric you send me. Seriously, ladies, if you have a bunch of small pieces of T'b and you're just going to let them rot, please send them my way.

To distract you from the begging above, I'm showing you quite possibly the cutest 8-year-old in the country, who happens to reside at MY house and calls me Mommy.




This was Ole Blue Eyes first thing this morning. Certifiably huggable, right??

~Joan

Apple Core Slightly Larger

This is my Apple Core quilt after today's addition. The vertical row on the far right is not sewn to the quilt, but the pieces are sewn to each other except the top two.

It now measures 18" x 15". Quite a step forward, especially considering that I'm ill, this is hand cut and hand-pieced. It would make a nice wall hanging, huh? Instead of a full-sized quilt, that is!

In search of more tissues...

~Joan

Beginning of Something BIG

I wasn't the kid in the back seat asking "are we there yet?", but I've always wanted to know, "How much farther?" What you see below is 18% of the 16 eleven-row blocks needed for the center of the Mennonite Mosaic. All cut and stitched up today.

If you compare this to my earlier post of color selections, you will see that I substituted a different red and green. These are the lighter side of Thimbleberries. I just can't put my trust in another fabric name brand. These wash up so well and rarely fade.


I'm already looking forward to putting some hand-quilting stitches in the finished top. How's that for VISION??

These worked up quickly. I'm taking a half of a width of fabric and piecing one row, then cutting it into 2" wide strips and piecing the strips together. Much easier than laying out all 2,025 two-inch squares (the original pattern actually calls for 1-3/4" squares, but I'm making mine a bit larger). I plan to use brown quilting thread and doing diagonal lines through all of it, but seeing someone else's might change my mind.

I cut out all my Apple Core quilt pieces. That will be my car project for the next few weeks of violin/piano lesson time (2 hours of car time per week). Maybe I'll make some progress on it in spite of not making the van trip this weekend.

Good night!
~Joan

They Are All Here!

Here are all the fabrics for my Mennonite Mosaic Quilt. After we return from our trip, I will begin cutting and piecing this. It's my next big hand quilting piece.

This afternoon I also cut an apple core piece (4" x 5") from all my small scraps so I can cut and hand-piece more of my Apple Core Quilt on the long van trip.

Hope you're enjoying a few quilt-y moments today.

~Joan

Apple Core Eye Candy

The above is a *NEW* UFO of mine. That makes it sound not-so-bad, you know? It's an apple core quilt. I'm hand piecing it because of the curved seams. I'd like to make it a charm quilt, but time will tell on that one. It's about 12" x 15" now.

The main reason I'm posting this picture is because I've met another kindred spirit. Julie wrote me about our Carolina Crossroads quilts and their similarities. After looking at her blog, I see that we enjoy the same quilts very much. What a great benefit of blogging. Finding kindred spirits!

Today has been drive and sit, drive and sit. But it's been good. I hand quilted an entire block and a little more while at the laundromat. I was thanking the Lord that it wasn't crowded...that makes me nervous. Turned out that the only other customer there was a church friend from up the street! PTL!

Our washer died a slow, noisy, and painful-sounding death this weekend. Whew--when it was spinning, it sounded like a 747 revving up for take-off! But thank God, we were able to purchase a new washer today for about half of what we expected it to cost. God is so good to us, even when we're having a bad day. Thankful today for a new washer!

~Joan