My goodness…I opened up the website to write a mother’s day post and saw that this will be post number 201! Now how did that upcoming milestone get past me, I wonder? I think I better start planning ahead a bit better because surely a prize would have been appropriate. Well, never say never, and I will put some thought into that!
Meanwhile, Happy Mother’s Day to everyone, whether you are a mother or not! I have had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Look what I was served for breakfast!
I adore French toast. And didn’t he set a beautiful table, oh my! I must have raised him very well, if I don’t say so myself!
Chef Michael:
And on the sewing front, I picked up Heidi’s quilt for the first time in too long and did some hand quilting whilst we watched a movie on TV last night.
Yesterday I worked on my 3×6 bee blocks. I decided to make disappearing 9-patches this time around. Sometimes I feel badly that I make such simple blocks for this group, but everyone makes the best of their ability, and you are placed in a group by first-come, first-served. So there are very experienced quilters making some very advanced blocks in the group, and then there are the beginner “me’s” who make simple blocks. So anyway, I felt that the disappearing 9-patch was going to be a challenge – and it was, but in a different way than I had expected. The challenge wasn’t in the sewing, it was in the fabric selection. A couple of the blocks I made over because while the colours looked like they would be perfect, when the block was actually sewn, they just didn’t cut it.
So what is a disappearing 9-patch, all my non-quilting friends are wondering? Well, you start off by sewing a straight-ahead 9-patch block that looks like this:
Then you cut it into quarters, like this:
And then you twist and turn the quarters around until you like the pattern!
Pretty cool, eh?
What I learned is that strong colours work best, especially a contrasting colour in the center of the original 9-patch. All of these squares are the same pattern, and the colours I used are according to the chosen palette of each person in the bee. See what you think:
Happy Mother’s Day to you all, and especially to my own mother!
I hope you all had a great weekend, and if you’re hungry, I’ll share my French toast with you.
Bonn Appétite!
To buy some fabric.
Well no, actually. We went so that Mr. C. could fulfill a life-long dream of doing his astronomy thing under the Southern Night Sky.
But of course, I bought some fabric.
I bought 12 fat quarters of these beautiful prints, designed by Aboriginal women who live in Alice Springs.
No, we didn’t go to Alice Springs. But we did go to The Plague and I in Canowindra, New South Wales, which is pronounced “Can-an-dra,” by the way (not Can-o-win-dra like it’s written).
I’ve done lots of this:
Followed by lots of this (yes, that’s a seam ripper, lol!):
Next step is cutting those beautiful 9-patches up so that they disappear. eek!
All the while, Mr C (for carpenter) has been busily building a gate.
What are you doing today?
