What I've been working on

First of all I am going to have to get a new deck, this one is just too small for this large quilt! 

I got the red and white fabric from a swap hosted by Karen at Sew Many Ways . It was fun picking out the fabric I wanted to send. It took me three stores before I decided.

Karen put together a little information regarding the swap:

• 121 swappers...4 ladies never responded, so we took the extra four squares from every one, put them in a basket and mixed them up. At the end, we gave everyone the four squares to make up the 125.
• 37 states represented...2 states with the most swappers....9 from California and 9 from Texas!!!

Alabama

Arizona

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Nebraska

Nevada

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

Ohio

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wyoming

• 16 international swappers

Alberta, Canada

2 from British Columbia, Canada

2 from Ontario, Canada

Victoria, Australia

Tasmania, Australia

Queensland, Australia

Holland

Scotland

Malaysia

Slovokia

Israel

2 from the United Kingdom

Thialand

I also was one of the lucky quilters to win a bag of the selvages from these fabrics.  Five out of 121 were chosen and the odds weren't in my favor. But I lucked out and won!  The selvages are the center of the blue blocks.

I had planned on using this quilt on my bed, under my top decorative quilt. Guess I didn't plan too well as it turned out a little too big. However it is now big enough to use as a top quilt on our queen size bed. I can't wait to get it into the frame to hand quilt. It will be easy as no marking will be needed, just stitch in the ditch.

Next up is a baby quilt. My lighting isn't the best, but the colors are gray and pink. It's for a young lineman I work with. They are expecting their first child, a girl. So far he has told me he painted the room gray. He thought the accent color was pink. Regardless, if he is correct or not, they are getting pink and grey. Now that I have the top 99% completed, I am going to make some changes.

I plan to paper piece the year "2011" and put it in the bottom border. I really want to paper piece her name, Sadie.  I am just waiting on confirmation on the spelling. I don't know, do you think it's too much of a risk, in case they look at her at birth and say, no she isn't a Sadie????

This one I will machine quilt. For a baby quilt that gets lots of use, washing, and handling it is just more durable.

I am seeing RED

I feel like I've been MIA. It's just that I we've been busy with canning, watering (heat indices of 110 and rising), and cutting lots of red fabric. Plus taking care of the 3 grand kids, for a 3 day weekend while their parents went on an adults only float trip.

I started cutting the red 5 inch squares I won from Sew Many Ways into 2 1/2 inch squares. I found some blue to add to the color and now it's time to sew. And the red and white fabric inside the blue squares, are the selvages I won. No waste here!

I found the pattern in this book. I support my local quilt shop and found this book and many more I really wanted to bring home with me.

Here is more red we made last night, 6 quarts and 1 pint of homemade tomato soup. Bring on wintertime, I'm ready for it now. (More ways than one!)

I'll leave you with some of the fun the boys had over the weekend with their big wheels.

I'm seeing RED . . .

and WHITE.

You see Karen at Sew many Ways had a red and white fabric swap. I sent in 125 - 5 inch squares and in exchange I got 125 different 5 inch squares!

I opened this package last night after our marathon canning fest and I was so tickled.

I played with every pieces. I grouped them, I regrouped them and then I started allover regrouping them again.

My mind is a whirl on how to set them together. For some reason blue and white vintage fabric keeps popping into my head. Then I think solid red.  I sometimes see solid white. How about all polka dots?  Maybe strips. I then fall back to the vintage blue and white.

As for as a pattern to use, I'm open to any suggestions.

In this group I love the leaf fabric, it has a white square just big enough to embroidery something on it. Something like thanks to Karen I got these awesome fabrics.

I spy puppy dog prints.

I spy birds.

Something here reminds me of candy canes.

Elephants and lady bugs in the same group!

Peppermint twist and horseshoes?

Strawberries!

I love the simplicity of some of these.

Paisley!!

Karen even included a gift. You do the math, there were 125 who participated. She made a lot of flowered Tee's.

And the bonus was a bag of selvages. I'm not sure how many of us won a bag, but I know I was sure glad to get one. Now I need to check out one of the selvage quilt books. Here's a neat selvage blog that always has a great show and tell.

Thank you Karen for all your hard work!