On The Design Wall

A little behind here!  I have been keeping up with the Block-A-Palooza Quilt Along just been too preoccupied with another project, more about that later, but first, Block 5 designed by Miss Print.  I love the block and the way it turned out!

The green is from my stash, the others from the Romanza line.

And this is Block 6 from Happy Zombie, love this design too!  Used all Romanza fabric, which I am getting worried about running out before the end.  I have the most of the pale yellow background so I am doing my best to use that wherever possible.  I will not be playing along tomorrow with Block 7 as I was summoned for the dreaded jury duty!  I shouldn't complain:  this is the very first time I have been called and no matter where I have lived I have always registered to vote.  If you can believe this, my daughter was called about one week before she left for college her freshman year!  The judge very kindly excused her, but what a start.
One of my quilting New Year's resolutions besides making a dent in getting my growing pile of quilt tops quilted (resolution #1) was to start making some of the quilt kits (resolution #2) I have collected over the years.  And I have a lot.  I have a history of being a real sucker for those Objects of Desire!   ~ I've started with a kit that somehow became separated from its instructions, here's the fabric along with some from my stash (resolution No. 3:  use stash rather than buy).

So sans any guidance, I started on a Bento Box design, the pictures really don't do it justice,

When I did a doll quilt swap a few years ago, my partner sent several blue/yellow charm squares that I've been able to put in the quilt.  Each Bento Box block (try saying that three times fast!) measures 8 inches finished.  I've been somewhat obsessed with working on it for the past few days, here's my progress so far,

It really reads more blendy in person, exactly what I was trying to achieve.  I hope to get another couple rows done before running out of fabric.
Talk to you later ~

An Annoying Quilt

Hi everyone,
Just a little sewing going on here, first up is my (Fig and Plum) block 2 in the Jelly Roll Quilt Along over at Konda's blog.
Then in keeping with my personal challenge  to start sewing the many quilt kits I've accumulated~

I started with these.  They are from  Patchwork Party 2007 Spring edition.   If you're not familiar with the concept, you visit 12 different online shops to purchase 12 different sampler blocks.  Each shop offers their own finishing kit for their own rendition of the finished quilt.  Each block makes up a 12 inch block.  The ones I purchased used Sanctuary fabric by Three Sisters.  So I got them out and what an unpleasant surprise!  I assumed that the instructions would be for using a rotary cutter to construct them.  Uh, no.  To be fair, there were templates printed on the instruction sheet, but clearly the intent was for customers to purchase a template set by Marti Michell, who designed the blocks.  This little bit of info was not shared before purchase.  I might add the templates were weird sizes not readily duplicated through simple measuring.  I hope that's clear.  Anyway, I cannot stand working with templates so I made 12 different blocks and simply tried to keep the gist of the blocks similar.

Here's a few blocks,  Rolling Pin,

Foxy Grandpa!

Chinese Block,

and Four Crowns.
Now for the setting, I got the not-so-brilliant idea to set the blocks alternating with stepping stones blocks,  and bought some more of the red tone-on-tone fabric.

Too much red!  Tried another setting using a white floral,

and thought it too plain,

added pink which makes the already cut white floral the wrong size!  Yup, had to order more of the white floral.  Thank goodness for the one online shop that still has Sanctuary fabric.

I'll leave you with this little tree frog, cute on the shrub, not so cute when attached to your leg!  Thanks for stopping by.