Opening the Brown Bag

I was in Florida in March and the Brown Bag Challenge came to a conclusion that month at Guild (http://www.thistlequiltguild.com/). Last night I received my bag from Margaret and it was a completed runner! Ready to go!! What a lovely surprise.

This was one of our most successful challenges done by Guild members over the past number of years. Receiving an assortment of fabric from an anonymous quilter in a little brown bag required each of us to put on our thinking caps and decide on a small project which we hoped our person would like. Margaret was certainly on the money with this one. Great job!!

More on the Disappearing Nine Patch

When I first saw the technique to make this quilt, my response was that after sewing a block together, the last thing I wanted to do was slice it through the middle both horizontally and vertically and then puzzle how to put it back together. There are many web sites that show this technique if you are unfamiliar with it (just type 'disappearing nine patch quilt' in the search box and hit enter and away you go) , and after visiting a few, decided to leap in. I now think it's a great little quilt for a few reasons.

There are no points to worry about! That in itself is a great bonus. After sewing the blocks together and measuring them, I found that they were pretty well the same size with a couple of deviations here and there, so I decided to square the blocks up at thirteen inches. An easy task and a very good plan. The block squares up with no problem and the absence of points makes this a real snap.

It's a great stash buster of a quilt. I think that in the future, I will cut some strips of perhaps four inches from each of my fabrics and put them into a box till it's full...and from there I can make one of these dandy little quilts. .. or just cut squares...which is a little more time consuming to piece but still a good way to use up those bits you hate to toss. When I did garment sewing, I would get rid of all the scraps upon completing a task. No more!! Quilters save everything, don't we!?

I think this would make a great miniature quilt pattern. Make a little nine patch...and I mean LITTLE, and then do the magic cuts! Cute!

The DNP is a teriffic beginners quilt; for REAL beginners. Fast track quilting. The down side here of course is the small learning curve. You won't LEARN much about accuracy and piecing when the whole purpose of the quilt is to avoid the points and nesting of seams and not having to WORRY about acuracy. You can line up on either side of this argument. I know a quilter who is into production and not detail. She would love this!!!

My quilt is very scrappy looking although I used the Layer Cake. It's quite country as well. Both are fine with me. Not for everyone, but the DNP has a place in our arsenal. I will likely do another one: first the mini and then...it's into the queue!!

Disappearing Nine Patch

Perhaps I am a slow learner/quilter...but I have just pieced my first Disappearing Nine Patch quilt top. Quite some time ago I bought a Layer Cake called Cranberry Wishes. Beautiful dark rich Christmas fabrics...but what to do with them!? One day last week I decided that a DNP might be just the project. I cut the 10 x 10 inch squares into rectangles and started piecing and cutting. The nine patches had dark/light/dark on the top and bottom with the opposite combination in the middle. Quite random. Press and then slice; pin together and then think. I decided to reassemble the original patches so as to have some integrity in the quilt but the process of turning the cut up nine-patches into a quilt can be whatever you want it to be. I am not a 'totally random' kind of a person!! Once together I had a square quilt top, four assembled blocks by four. Added a two and a half inch border and called it done. I may add another narrow border but I am not sure...right now I am enjoying the thought that I used the Layer Cake and have a lovely Christmas quilt waiting to be quilted. What a great combination!!

Two great new purses

Making a purse is a great quilting project. It's small; it uses your stash and it can be a wonderful gift, if you are willing to part with it. Additionally you can use it yourself and people really love seeing a new completed project...no matter how small. Recently my friend Wilma gave me a beautiful assortment of fats and right away I knew I wanted to make something specific with them. A purse was the logical choice. The ladies at Lucy's had also given me a few fats that matched those from Wilma. I was able to make not one but two purses...the larger one was designed to use Bali Pops but fats worked very well. The smaller purse was one of Mary's designs and I think it's great. Shown also are two others...the purple bag is Laura's and is a great little purse for a single event. You can't cram much into it but it's not meant for that. Heather got the smaller bag in our Brown Bag Challenge and I hope she likes it as much as I liked making it.

It's Spring. Hard to believe that winter is practically gone; I say practically because here in the east we could get up any morning and find the ground covered with snow. That's just the way it is here in Northern Nova Scotia. Additionally I have to say that I missed winter due to a totally unexpected visit to the emergency room on November 31 and an eleven day stay in hospital. A ruptured bowel. How absolutely unglamorous. In the first days after my surgery as I lay in bed, I thought about the things I would do when I got home. My doctor kept telling me I would be finding the time to read and undertake new tasks....didn't happen. I lost my mojo for three months. I had no interest in reading or writing or sewing or quilting or crafting or doing anything. Looking back, it's hard to believe that anesthetic can do that to you. Recovery was slow and sometimes painful. I was sad and I cried buckets of tears. I was impatient with myself for that behavior, being the over achiever that I am. If someone took two months to recover, I could do it in one. NO I COULD NOT!! I learned lessons I wasn't prepared to learn. Friends fed us for a month. As a child, when I would ask my Mother what we were having for supper, she jokingly would reply "whatever the neighbours sent in". In December, when Left Brain would ask that question, he got the same answer. I would make breakfast for LB every day so as to maintain some normalcy in our lives. His patience was tested beyond belief and he met every challenge graciously. He insisted on a Christmas tree, albeit an artificial one, when I couldn't be bothered with the thought of one. We did our best with the holiday season and on January first, I got dressed up in my Ann Taylor dress that I had bought for the Christmas season, and went out to a Gyro levee. I paid the price for that outing for three days but it was lovely to see friends and feel alive again. Gradually I got better. After two and a half months, I could drive again. And so, ...spring is here and I am back. I have started to sew. In March we went to Florida. We hung out with our son and daughter in law and precious grandbaby Jocelyn; visited with Bonnie and Peter in Perry, Georgia and attended the NASCAR race weekend in Bristol Tennessee. I bought sixteen yards of fabric in Maine and just for good measure, eight more meters at Harbour Quilts in Antigonish (http://www.harbourquiltcompany.com/) for my next quilt. I must be back. That's a lot of fabric!! Carol and I walk the Samson Trail again. Life goes on. Life is good! Thank you, Jesus!!