Dusting off an old WIP and other recent happenings

Well I'm still here! Look how I let weeks go by without a post! So many plans and ideas, so little time. I finished two books, Ahab's Wife and Backseat Saints. Both worth it if you are looking for a new book to dive into. Ahab's Wife is written in the style of the late 1800s. Think Little Women or Anne of Green Gables. I thought it was wonderfully refreshing. And Backseat Saints, the latest from a favorite author of mine (Joshilyn Jackson) is a total page-turner! Be prepared to go without sleep reading her Southern women-based fiction books.

What is going on in Pensacola? The usual stuff: heat, humidity, thunderstorms. My aunt has been visiting from California. We got to shop for fabric together and she and I got a little time in to visit. Never enough though.

My grandson is growing like a weed and adding to his vocabulary every day. He grew an inch in the last month. Now he is working on potty training. Already!

Isn't this the coolest picture of him making a shape with the water from the hose? This is his favorite toy. He calls it the "Ohse" and he will soak himself happily for as long as water will come out of it. Must be a combination of the summer heat and him being a Pisces. That boy LOVES water play!

So, about that WIP. I started this a year or two ago. I saw the pattern in Quilt magazine (October 2006) and I had all these leftover 4 patches from a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, so I started putting colors together and pulled together a scrappy  Country French-colored assortment.
I think I put it all in a box and moved on to other things because I couldn't come up with an arrangement that did not look like a calamity.   

You know what is nice about WIPs (or UFOs) ??? The cutting is all or mostly done already. If you are like me, you have everything, including the pattern and fabrics you haven't cut all together in a box. If only the pieces had arranged themselves into something not so hectic. And still I persist, uh, persevere stubbornly refuse to give up on it.

I am just starting to play around with the arrangement here, but it is definitely scrappy. Because I sew at work a lot, my husband suggested I could call it "Bad Day at the Office." Maybe it could be "Wild Turkey" and people will just think I was drinking when I made it. 

Ask and You Shall Receive

For my birthday, I asked for this and it arrived yesterday! My birthday is a couple weeks away, but I had to open the package. This is the whole Cherish Nature line by Deb Strain for Moda. Fat quarter bundle! 40% off at Hancocks of Paducah!! I LOVE DEB STRAIN. Her fabric lines are so cheerful and happy!

My honey is so good! And I don't even know yet what I will be doing with these, but it will definitely be a King size quilt for my bed. I don't even care that the blue on my walls won't match these colors! Maybe we'll have to repaint again?

This is my very first whole stack of fat quarters! What do you do with a fat quarter collection? I would love to hear some suggestions. I have so many books and magazines and bookmarked free online patterns, I could spend days going back through them and I would end up side tracked into a long forgotten project I meant to make.

For now, I may just put these under my pillow and dream about them!

I won! Just in time for my birthday too!

http://kakorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/read-it-backseat-saints-giveaway.html  

Just wanted to share that I won the book "Backseat Saints" by Joshilyn Jackson from Katie at Katie's Korner! Please check out Katie's blog. She has great ideas, and I think her blog roll might be even longer than mine!

If you like good Southern fiction (that is to say, Southern women's lit.) you'll love Joshilyn Jackson's books. "Between, Georgia" is my personal favorite so far, but this one is supposed to be a follow up to "Gods in Alabama" and maybe it will become my new favorite?

Thanks, Katie!  So looking forward to curling up with this one. 

Summer Sampler Quilt Along Tutorials

Hello! I am still here. Just totally busy. Going in many directions at once and trying to keep it together. Know what I mean? I hope everyone enjoyed their celebration of America's birthday!

Anyway, I found two quilt alongs in blogland today. One even offers a beginner version in case the center medallion of the main one intimidates you (like it does me!)  http://quiltcetera.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/week-one-summer-star-sampler-quilt-along-2010/   this page is the start of the directions. The first two blocks. You can backtrack to find the layouts for both the main sampler quilt and also the beginner version without the center medallion.

  http://www.amyscreativeside.com/2010/06/simple-sampler-quilt-along-details.html   This is the other sampler quilt along, and it is very scrap friendly.  Since I have never done a sampler, I am going to try to get at least one of these in the works. I have tons of scraps and one block of each is not that intimidating right? Just finding the time is my obstacle.

I am thinking that one of these could be a Christmas sampler. That is far enough out that I could make it a gift. And I recently scored on some older Fig Tree fabrics at ridiculous prices, so those are in mind for one of these also.

If I can manage one of these (or both) it will be a small miracle, but at least I shared it here so others can jump in and make something fun!