It is day 55 of the 100 Days 100 Blocks Challenge.  Many of us are using the same block patterns from last year’s Kinship Fusion offered by Gnome Angel.  This year I’m doing two versions.  One is Sink or Swim using Dear Stella fabric and the other is a “vintage” Alexander Henry fabric.  It has adorable little baby animals going to bed.   The little piggy makes me smile.  But then again so do the birds and the bear with the fish.  I’m easily amused. 

Another project that I’ve had on my UFO list is Arabesque.  I had purchased a “layer cake” on sale several years ago and it was perfect for this project.  I cut the squares according to directions.  That all went along great.  Then it came to assembling the quilt.  The blocks are offset and there is a piece that moves from one block to another, but you don’t assemble the blocks first, the entire quilt is assembled row by row.  After several attempts I had to step back.  The directions, for this free pattern or my lack of understanding said directions were killing my mojo. So I decided that I could do something simpler, there was no specific plan for this quilt other than to finish it.  By moving forward with a simpler design I could experience a win, and move on.  Well, I’m moving forward.  These will be cheerful little pinwheel quilts!  And soon I will be onto something I really WANT to work on.

Working with abandoned or thrifted fabrics, has made me really happy the last few years.  I hope to do more of it.  While making samples for the Q^ retreat several years ago, we did a block exchange using Bonnie Hunters Delectable Mountains (you can find the block pattern here https://quiltville.com/delmtspf.html ).  I had many shirts left over from that and other thrift store finds, and have been cutting and sewing these blocks to build my own mountain range.  I think once the blocks start getting up on the design wall it will go quickly.

In the studio there was a bookcase fail.  You know those little thingies that hold the bookshelf into place.  Well, apparently the load was more than they could handle.  It was no surprise when I saw that they were plastic.  The first task (after picking up the books) was to replace those plastic “thingies” with metal ones. All of them, not just the failed ones.

Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t looked or touched some of those books in several years.  So in an effort to be responsible, and start a little “downsizing”, I’ve started going through all of my quilting books.  It there aren’t 3 projects in a book that I’m interested in tackling, the book doesn’t return to the shelf.  Most of these books are pristine.  So I’ve put them up for sale on Etsy.  The prices are seriously discounted.  You can find them at https://www.etsy.com/shop/vintagevacouple.  If you know of anyone that is new to quilting and trying to build their library feel free to share the shop information.  More books go up weekly.  And my WannaDo list gets longer.

Sew, what’s under your needle?