A Prairie Home Quilts

Here is my “home” block for Tonya’s four letter word quilt.  You can see some of the wonky words she’s received for the quilt so far here.  As you can tell by looking at my block I was still having difficulty doing wonky after the unwonkiness of “pray.”  [Yes, I'm making up words now.] The letters are still quite uniform and pretty much the same size across the block.   It was a bit harder to put these letters together because Tonya wanted all the blocks to be fairly uniform in size so she gave a block measurement to use as a guideline.  I do like going all the way to the top and bottom of the block with the letters for some reason. I probably wouldn’t  have put the strip on the bottom if it weren’t for the block needing to be 6 1/2″ tall.  It is much easier to make the letters and let the word be the size it ends up.

I was inspired by Lucy of Quilting with the Past to make some HST from the scraps in my basket of 2″ squares.  It was mindless sewing and before you know it, I had enough HST to make three mini quilts.  [I hadn't planned to do that many.] I made my youngest DS put them together into sets for me so I wouldn’t make myself crazy over-thinking the layouts.  [I know I'm not the only one who does that.]  I finished two of them up while I was house sitting.

The third needs binding.  I’d originally cut one that matches the border but found I liked the red binding better so I need to cut & sew a new binding for it.  Mom has taken these two to put in her booth at the antique/craft shop to sell.  I’m going to put the third one with one of her bears.  The bear sits on the bench in the dining room.  Let’s see how long it takes for her to notice it.  [Tee hee]

I needed some buttons for 2 projects I was working on the other day so I unearthed some jars of buttons that were hidden away in a tub in the closet. There were several jars of buttons with all the different styles & colors mixed together. I was looking for something in green or purple. The first jar had buttons still on cards so I started to put it back but the lavender buttons in the picture caught my eye. Can you believe 7 pearl buttons for 25¢?

Most of my buttons belonged to Barb, a dear friend who passed away about 20 years ago.  She had all sorts of patterns, fabric & (obviously) buttons stored away in an upstairs bedroom.  She used to tell me that when she retired she planned to take up sewing again.  Sadly she never made it to her retirement and the creative enjoyment she kept telling herself she’d get to “someday.”  After Barb’s husband, Bill, passed away a few years ago, my ex-husband gave me the jars of buttons that belonged to Barb.  I think Barb would be happy that I’m using her buttons.

Barb’s story is one of the main reasons that I started “creating” again.  When my children were younger, I put away my creative side for a time because there just didn’t seem to be enough of me left to be creative after caring for 4 children that are less than 5 years apart in age. [That and the fact that I was a single parent.]

I didn’t want to wait for a “someday” that might never come to find the creator in me that needs expression.  I’m glad I found quilting to express my creative side and be passionate about.

I took time out from my “creating” the other day to sort the buttons  by color  into separate jars & put them out in my sewing room.  I think Barb would have liked that too.

On the wall opposite my design wall is this:

My inspiration board looks a little bare, don’t you think? Not that I haven’t been inspired lately to be creative. . .  My goal for this though was to be filled with a bit more than family photos.  I want to fill it with notes and pictures that make me feel good & want to be more creative as I sit and ponder its contents.  Let’s see if I can add some stuff to it over the next 4 weeks to accomplish that!

Are you inspired visually?

Do you have an inspiration board?

What’s on it?