Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Aware that it has been a little while since I last posted anything at all quilty, and having a day at home with no major obligations, I thought I'd remedy that situation.

This picture is the first three of the Festival of Trees blocks that I first admired on Juliann's blog. I wish this woman lived down the street -- I could see myself running down to consult, to chat, to invite her up to spend an afternoon sewing together and talking about books. Anyway, she posted pics from her Festival of Trees and that was all it took. I was Googling away, trying to find a place where I could get them, too. They come as BOMs, and are wool on wool. The big red one took some time to do, but the others were finished in an evening or two. The thought was that I could get this finished in time for Christmas, 2008.

This block is a preview. By two months from now, I will have many of them! An on-line group that I belong to has an ongoing project where each month we receive one persons's fabric and heart's desire and/or instructions, and we make a block and send it back to her. I had bought a collection of hand-dyed FQs at Lancaster last year and really had no plan at all for them. So I am sending each participant two pieces of hand-dyed fabric, each combination unique, and asked them to make me a Basket of Chips using Kona black for the background.

They will receive my kits the first of March and should have their offerings back to me by the first week of April. I think these are going to make a striking quilt.

Finally we come to a birthday gift a couple of weeks ago from My Beloved. I'd been looking for a bulletin board to go over my cutting table, and he seemed to think I needed one as well. Actually, he thought I needed two, and that is what he bought for me. And then we dear enough to hang them up!

I have a couple of other things in the works. One is a secret quilt top that I pieced the weekend I was at White Oak. It is going to the machine quilter this coming Saturday and when it is back, bound, and received by its rightful owner, I'll post a pic. Another is a YBR that I'm doing for Sam's big-boy bed. It is yellow/red/blue/green homespuns, very simple, and tied with blue and yellow floss. I'm tying and tying and tying at present. As soon as it is finished, I'll post a pic before it goes off to keep the boy toasty.