A Prairie Home Quilts

Another recently started cut-and-not-yet-started-to be-sewn-project is a rose basket wall hanging.  I made myself a little crazy on this one by purchasing four batiks that I really liked instead of only the three that I needed.  I liked all four of them equally well, and I liked all four of them together so it made it difficult to eliminate one.

Did I like the roses against the lovely gray batik or against the dark one better?  The dark won out.  My inspiration for this quilt is a photo that has a black background so the dark gives the effect I was originally going for.

The decision on the background helped with the fabrics for the basket.  After I got all the fabrics home, I liked the dark with one of the batiks I bought for the basket.  But I couldn’t use it in the basket if I was using it for the background.  These two fabrics made an appearance together in the 9 patch block for my Inklingo Sampler.

So these two won out for the basket design which I realize makes no difference whatsoever to any of you because you haven’t seen any of the design idea.  Teehee.  Another Top Secret Area 51 project maybe? Probably not since I’ve given away too many details and even shown you some of the roses…

Rachel at p.s. i quilt is having a giveaway for a $50 gift certificate from the Fat Quarter Shop.

I normally don’t enter a lot of giveaways–only if it’s something I’d really like to win–like the OttLite I recently won.  The $50 gift certificate is something I’d really like to win.  So why am I telling you all about the giveaway & therefore decreasing my chances to win? Because I get another chance to win by blogging about it! Go here & leave a comment or 2 or 3 for your chance(s) to win.

I’m behind in posting pictures of the finished blocks for my Inklingo Sampler.   [What's new?] This is Friendship Star.  Instructions for this block were posted on 17 July 2009 on the Inklingo Sampler blog.

I love doing HST with Inklingo.  I printed on the back of the light fabric, put it on top of the dark fabric [RST], sewed on the dotted lines and cut on the solid lines.  Voilà.  Precise HST are easy with Inklingo without using paper that you have to pick off.  And I don’t know about you, but I always found it difficult to sew straight, even lines on either side of the center line when I used the method that involves cutting a larger square and marking a line down the center to make HST.  Here is Linda’s video showing how to do HST with Inklingo.

Nice, huh?

Michele at With Heart & Hands was given the opportunity to give away a copy of Freddy Moran & Gwen Marston’s new book on her blog.  Michele says the book has 70 new & innovative designs.  Seventy?  Really? Wow.

The subtitle is:  Freewheeling Twists on Traditional Quilt Designs.  It looks and sounds like fun.  I really need to get more gutsy with my piecing and do some “freewheeling” I think.  I do love the bold, bright colors that Freddy is famous for.  Go & leave a comment here for your chance to win.

Block Two of the Inklingo Sampler was posted on 10 July 2009.  It’s a simple 9 patch block.  Here is mine in batiks.  I don’t have all the Inklingo collections so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do all the blocks Tilde will be posting.  I’ve combed through the block library in EQ6 and may add in a few of my own block ideas.  I think I’d like to do some 3″, 9″ & 12″ blocks to mix things up a bit when the sampler is going together into a finished top.  I like that mismatched block look in sampler quilts.

Don’t you just love batiks?  Well, I do.  If I had the money for a large fabric stash, it’d be mostly batiks I think.  All these yummy fabrics are for one of my newly started projects–one of the ones that I’ve cut fabric bits for but haven’t started sewing yet.  These are for the pattern in development called Nevada, hence the name of this post.  Area 51 is just down the road a ways from where I live in Nevada–well, that is if you could actually get there.  According to information on Wikipedia, you could be risking your life to get there [read the Wikipedia article portion: US Government's positions on Area 51].  I know people who’ve worked there that would joke they could tell you what they do, but then they’d have to kill ya.  [It'll be interesting to see who ends up on this post from the search engines.]  Anyway, mine is a “top secret” project only to be revealed upon completion–kinda like the stealth bomber. *wink*

A few posts back, after I listed all my projects and promptly fainted, I had a heart-t0-heart with myself about my long list.  I decided I needed to whittle it down.  [Ha! Yeah, so you could add more projects to it without feeling so guilty. Oh hush, Guilty Conscience.  No one asked you!] One of the things I did was to stop kidding myself that I was going to get all those cute, free BOMs done.  I think there were about 5 or 6 of them previously listed on my sidebar.  I’d been saving the patterns but never actually making the blocks.  So I put a stop to that madness and even cleared some space on my hard drive by deleting all the PDFs.

I half-heartedly decided I was only going to do Guute’s Antique Quilt. But then reality set in. I really couldn’t justify spending money for background and reproduction fabrics when I really needed to use the money for the quilts on my “to do” list that are much more important.  [So now my Guilty Conscience was feeling all smug, but my Muse was not amused.] About that time, Tilde announced she was starting up an Inklingo Sampler quilt–a new block listed on her blog each week and made with Inklingo.  That sounded intriguing.  A sampler quilt that I could make with scraps.  Batik scraps.  The leftovers from my Top Secret–Area 51–Nevada quilt.  [The Guilty Conscience tried to raise his ugly head, but my Muse subdued him.  She's strong like that.] [Sorry, I don't know where some of these side comments are coming from, but I'm cracking myself up at least.]

Block One:  LeMoyne Star

A new block will be posted every Friday on the Inklingo Sampler blog.  Instructions for Block One are here and pictures of other completed blocks are here.  I used the  Inklingo 6″ LeMoyne Star collection for this block instead of the Inklingo Free 4.5″ LeMoyne Star collection.  We are only on the fourth block so there’s plenty of time to catch up if you’d like to join us.