Moving Right Along

My attempt to regain some sense of normalcy after the wedding resulted in laying myself flat with the flu (I knew I forgot something....my freakin' flu shot!!!). But by Friday, I was feeling well enough to sit at the sewing machine for a couple hours, and I've been at it for a few hours today. Only two blocks left to quilt on the Halloween quilt and it's on to binding. Happily I will have a couple of OPAM finishes for October. Not too shabby.

My big score this month was adding this book to my collection. Long out of print, and selling for $95, I posted an ISO ad on the 'Sew Its For Sale' Yahoo Group, and a lovely woman in California sold me a mint, hard cover, first edition that doesn't even look like it was read for what she paid for the book  15 years ago.  I'm so excited to have this book because it's the handbook for putting together a free-form Gee's Bend kind of quilt, which is on my quilt bucket list. And I'm especially happy that there are quilters out there who are happy to share resources without taking advantage.

When you're home sick and you just don't feel like making messes, you tend to read, and I dove into a stack of books I borrowed from the Guild library about One Block Wonders. I guess they're kind of related to Kaleidoscopes. You take one fabric and hack it up and rearrange the pieces so the pattern is unrecognizable but artistically pleasing. Then you include a piece of what the real fabric looks like on the back and everyone oohs and ahs and goes, "OMG! That's freakin' amazing!". I want to do that. (I want to do everything, why wouldn't I want to do that?)  Fabric.com had a killer sale earlier this week (another advantage of being sick....computer time in bed), so I grabbed some Alexander Henry fabric that just might work for this. I will say that I have a gut feeling that this is going to be one of those projects I'll be sorry I started, but we shall see. Quilting techniques are kind of like artichokes....you've got to try it once--you might love it.

And since there was a sale, and since I am expanding my horizons, I thought I'd play around with a little 'ombre'...I just like saying that word.....'ahhm-bray'.  And this is going to be my 'ahhm-bray poochie' project, whatever it turns out to be.

While I'm adding projects to the heap, why not a black and yellow quilt?  Here's the first two half yards to start that collection. Now I've got something to look for on the Florida trip. (As if I needed a mission to visit quilt shops).

That was a quick catch-up, and now I'm off to finish these last two blocks so I can bind these babies (yep, the pumpkin table quilt is still raggedy).