Costume Progress Report

The skirt of the Shakespeare costume is beautiful! Daughter is holding it up...it is much too long, but I won't hem it until it gets attached to the bodice. The bodice is in process. The next step is to decide on the trim.

Am I stressed about the dress? No, not really. Still, I have a stress reliever project started... I am making 8" red and white bow tie blocks. These are quick to cut and sew! I can do one at a time.

The bow tie blocks leave behind two half square triangles, which I am making into 5.5" bear paw blocks! Cool! Two blocks out of one cutting!

Just have to show this...17 yards of fabric! I found it at Goodwill, marked at $7.99. But it was a blue tag, and today was blue tag special....all blue tags are.....$1.29! Yep, 17 yards of a cotton fabric for $1.29. Un be lieve a ble.

Here is a close up of the fabric. It will be the perfect backing for one of the church graduation quilts, but that will use only 6 yards. That leaves 11 yards for me!

I think I will make some sort of stack and whack eventually...like way off in the future...when the costume is finished as well as some UFOs!

Death and Taxes..

Ben Franklin once said, "in this world nothing can be said to be certain but death and taxes..." Well, yes, death is inevitable, and yesterday I worked on my taxes. But I would like to amend Ben's words just a bit...
"...nothing can be certain but death, taxes, and quilting!!"
I took a well-deserved break from the most taxing task (groan) and made a few quick quilt blocks for charity.

These two star blocks are for Moda's Just One Star project. Moda is a top producer of fabulous lines of fabrics by amazing designers. Their challenge is to make 100 quilts in 100 days; the quilts will be donated through the Semper Fi Fund. For more information and the pattern, go to www.unitednotions.com/LA_just_one_star.pdf

These next two red and white blocks are for Matryoshka Mom. She plans to make a quilt or two for Japan, and she is asking for 12.5" red and white blocks. These two came together so quickly!

Her blog is found at www.matryoshkamom.blogspot.com/2011/03/inspired-by-beautiful-quilts-at-new.html

On Saturday evening I made one final block for my batik sampler quilt. Here is block 20!

Little Green Quilters Update

I have not been working on any UFOs. I have not been doing much sewing at all. The Block-a-paloosa is finished, and the other participants have been putting their blocks into quilts. I decided I wanted a few more blocks, so here are three of my extras. . This first one used up a nine patch I made for another block, but the colors were wrong. The pinwheels were made from extra triangles trimmed off of flying geese blocks. I love this second one. I saw a block of this pattern online, so I drafted it and made one for my sampler quilt. I can see using this one again.

The third one is a simple nine patch; I wanted to use triangles and four patch units, as both of these motifs are used in many other blocks.

I won't be doing much quilting for a while.

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I must transform this gold drapery fabric and purple velveteen into a Shakespeare costume for my daughter...

...that will (hopefully) look something like this!

It is a Simplicity pattern, and from the reviews I have read, the pattern is for intermediate sewers. I think I am up to the task!