Sparrow In Flight: Red White Blue

Block 1--This is my accidental block! I was sewing blocks of 3" fabric together, sewing both sides down and then cutting straight down the middle. I realized it looked a an American flag when I added the first white strip next to the 2 squares. I was trying to play around with making a straight paperclip mini at first. My Favorite part about this block is that I could use pieces of fabric that I cut about 14 years ago when I dabbled in taking scraps along in my purse to try some crazy hand-quilting. At that point in my life I had only made square patch blanket/quilts for a pregnancy center where I volunteered. Now I have actually made up several of these blocks, making plans to make a nice lap quilt for watching the summer games. Maybe Ziona will get to use it as a floor quilt.

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Block 2--This is an improve block using that same basket of scraps! I used the same concept as my paperclip quilt but in wonky miniature. This was a fun, but time consuming block. I love working in little bits of fabric that really stood out. If you want to make something like this start with some scraps (You could always make your colored strips with angles blocks too!) and strips of solids of different widths to create the wonky effects. In my paperclip quilt I went for straight turns; I am working on making that quilt into a tutorial. The beauty of a block like this is there is no wrong way exactly, just trim your sides with a straight edge in whatever angle you wish as you add the next strip of white or pieced strips

You can see another particular block that caught my eye HERE. Would that be so fun done up in Red, White and Blue? I am thinking of using this idea in some other scrap fabrics first.

Tonight I will be taking out time to participate in Friday Night Sew-in, so I will be posting my finishes for the week along with whatever else I accomplish on tomorrow's post.

For those who sell quilted items, I just heard there will a "finished quilts" auction added to Top Hatter (You also can find out more info at facebook)! It's an interesting concept in selling as it is a live auction. It's certainly fun to watch the online proceedings. I have bought a few items from the site but I have yet to sell anything. If anyone ends up joining the auction, let me know what you think, if they add further finished quilts auctions I may sell some of my quilts.

(Sorry For the Delay on this post, there was a technical difficulty, it kept coming up as a blank post)

Thursday, July 12, 2012

On Your Mark...

I wasn't able to get my WIP post completed to show my progress on a few projects this week. While chatting for most of yesterday afternoon with my sister-in-law, I was working on my blocks for the RW&B Blog Hop (thankfully for her sake there is a mute button so I could put her on speaker and floor my machine peddle)!

It really was my goal to get these blocks completed before the month started, but I was sincerely struggling with inspiration. I mean I found a great paper-pieced pattern HERE that I thought would be neat, but then I cheekily thought I should super-impose Alaska across the middle to show how large it is (still not out of the question, just not in time for tomorrow)! I realized that since I have never paper-pieced before, this is probably not the week to try that out. As per usual, inspiration struck out of desperation, and a couple of the blocks came about by sheer accident! One of the blocks I am even trying to wiggle into a lap quilt, but all I am going to tease you with today is a basket of scrap fabrics from which I started! Come back tomorrow for my post and you can see what I have been up to for the past couple of days!