Design Wall Monday-Hearts and My Lupine Heaven

It's Design Wall Monday.  See more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

I felt like piecing rather than quilting on a hot day, and pulled out a couple of projects, one of which is a doll quilt from trimmings of 30s prints from another quilt; I had already sewn the HSTs into four patches.

I thought the HSTs looked like a heart set this way, and used a couple of 2" wide strips to lengthen the little quilt and feature the heart row. This will be finished for guild donation. 

A few leftover sets will make a cute start to a mug rug or bookmark.  I intended to make three hearts but the butterfly insisted on being included.  I don't mind :)

Still avoiding the Dreamweaver quilting job occupying the cutting table, I pulled out another project box needing piecing.  I took a class with Bonnie Hunter two years ago (just looked it up, yikes!) for her My Blue Heaven quilt, a free pattern on her blog.  I last worked on some of the star blocks in January, but had a lot of pieces cut and ready to sew.  My version has two color groups and I'm calling it My Lupine Heaven.  We get splashes of pretty purple lupine here after the winter rains, but it doesn't last long in SoCal. 

Revisiting my notes and checking the box, I was happy to find that all of the center blocks are finished and the border hourglass blocks started.  More cutting was required but soon I had a bunch of pieces ready to feed through the sewing machine.  I used Bonnie's specialty Essential Triangle Tool  to cut out the QSTs, which I purchased at the class.  For my smaller version, a 6x8 setting, I need 64 of the border hourglass blocks, which are separated from the center blocks by a plain border (not yet cut).

This is looking good!  Somehow the outer hourglass blocks seem to tame the busyness of the star blocks, and I think the plain border will too.  A lot more cutting is in my future as I have exhausted the 2 1/2" green strips from the precut scrap drawer.  I also have cut up a bunch of scraps for Bonnie's 2020 Leader-Ender project--a triangle free chain block she is calling Easy Breezy.  Mine will be the 6" finished size, she also offers a 4" finished size.

I had fun picking out colored 2" strips from the scrap drawers and cutting up odds and ends for the light rectangles. These can be set many ways--I may use a two color hourglass block as I did for the Chunky Churndash quilt (another free Bonnie pattern), it's such a great fool-the-eye framing trick. 

Now I really do need to get the quilting finished on Dreamweaver!

Tuesday's Orts January 2020

Tuesday's Orts--bits of thoughts and happenings that land here occasionally....

• I just finished my first week of intermittent fasting and lost 3 lbs.  Since I'm not usually hungry in the morning, but ate mostly out of habit, breaking my fast at 12 noon works well for me. I stop eating at 8 pm--again not a problem since late night snacking isn't a habit of mine.  Otherwise I have not changed much of my diet, however, need to get off the sugar and carb train if I want to lose more lbs!
• My fractured molar from some Secret Santa popcorn has been crowned.  That was an expensive gift.  Thank goodness we have dental insurance as the crown was priced at $1295. Gulp.
• Mini nap-tested my Lucky quilt almost immediately and a-purr-ooved.

•  Our avocado tree is loaded with fruit and we pick a few at a time to ripen together.  Yummy avocado toast was my treat at lunch one day this week.

 I found, however, that my recently purged spice cabinet was lacking some necessary ingredients--namely cumin.  I suffered through it with extra garlic salt :)

•  Our first guild challenge was to make a project from a letter tile we were given in December.  I got the letter L.  I went fairly literal in my project but virtuously used only scraps and leftover triangles to make some  L blocks ...

 ...which turned on point become hearts.  I didn't add the final set of triangles yet but intend to make a pillow cover.  It was fun to play with the leftovers.  Not that the scrap drawer was much diminished, tho!

• A lot of other scraps have been being run under my needle.  In trying to get projects moved along, I pulled out the Bonnie Hunter My Blue Heaven pattern project.  Having completed all of the purple blocks for my two color version, many green pieces were cut and sewn for the star blocks.

Lots and lots of greens and neutrals.  I tried to mix some of the earlier cut pieces with the newer batch to distribute the colors around.

For my version I'm making 24 of each color.  I'm getting pretty close to having the center blocks ready to play layout. This is a free pattern on Quiltville.com.

•  Traffic Rant:  Besides the usual zoomers and slowpokes, there is hardly anything new to complain about--and yet, still I find something:  People who park on the corner of the street.   I don't understand why people do this when there are plenty of straight curbs to park against mere feet away!  We live on a street with a lot of kids and it really makes it hard to see them, having to creep around vehicles. 
• We watched our grandsons over the weekend and I spent the evening after their bedtime stitching a cute owl. 

 The paper is relatively thick and pre-printed with the owl eyes and beak.  I did not have the recommended floss colors, but had no trouble selecting from my stash.  I bought this at JoAnn's Fabrics, I believe on clearance.

The Cross Stitch Style Kit came with several different precut animals and each had several choices of cross-stitch designs.  Love the kitty, of course, but the others are darn cute too. I plan to give this to a friend who loves birds and flowers.

Hearts and Home

I got some better photos of my little heart wallhanging--this was made from some fat quarters I picked up at my LQS.  Somehow I completely missed the Valentine's Day fabric section and just looked at the bins of pinks and reds!

The super-simple 6.5" blocks came from the free patterns on about.com.  What a great resource!  I became aware of these hearts due to a post by Jeanne of a swap she was in.  Such a cute, quick quilt project!  She graciously sent me the link at my request.  As soon as I checked it out, I realized it was the same block requested for a healing heart quilt being made by an online group I belong to for a fellow member whose husband is in hospice. Easy to cut and piece and fun to play with.  I made this wallhanging to raffle off at work for the girls--high roll of the dice won!  I made another wallhanging for myself with borders and sashing of randomly arranged 2" squares cut from the same fabrics.  No picture of that one yet, it got left at work today for the saddest loser (my office roommate) to enjoy for a day or two...She jinxed herself by first pretending to roll a six, but then she rolled a one on the real try!  I told her I would make her a single heart block but it had to be on the q.t. ( I have no idea what "q.t." actually means, I just realized)

My sewing machine had its spa day today and did not need any additional work beyond the cleaning/maintenance check, though the repair guy did write to me that I would get a better looking stitch if I used 50 wt thread rather than 40 wt.  Oh, well, it was just what I had on hand of ecru thread!

Don't forget to leave me a comment one my previous post if you want to have a chance at my little quilt/pattern blogaversary giveaway.  I have been doing a lot more handquilting on it in the meantime...Drawing will be tomorrow morning before Grant leaves for the day, probably 9-9:30 ish.