All Caught Up

January...Peace and Comfort

My fabric is on the way to you. In your package you'll find some muslin/kona bone and some red scraps. I am planning a quilt inspired by this one. I would love for you to make me one or more red cross blocks. I'd like the blocks to be 6.5" square. The crosses can extend to the edge of the block or they can float in the muslin...they can be centered or not...fat or skinny or a combo of both. The crosses can be a combination of the fabrics, pieced or one fabric. Feel free to innovate the shape of your cross. I love the curvy, improv feeling of these crosses. As long as it reads as a red cross, it'll be great! You can see some of the crosses close up here.
I'm going to combine these in some way with Alexander Henry's black and red peace fabric. Not quite sure how yet, but that will come.
feel free to add your own fabric...little touches of black would be cool too.

looking forward to seeing your blocks!

ps

i probably sent way more fabric than you need, but i wanted you to have some choices..keep the extra, send it back. whatever, works for me.

Squares for Rebekah

Originally I had not planned to do any embroidery, but after I finished the blocks, I felt that they would probably benefit from a little more embellishment. So I added a little running stitch around the maroon solid. I’m happy with how they turned out.

I did not add much of my own fabric to these blocks, because the fabric Rebekah sent was so pretty together already. I did add a few little bits – I have to admit that I love the tiny black polka-dot square (see pic below).

Block for Rossie - October

Here is Rossie's block for October. What a neat concept for a quilt! I love the pictures of the inspiration quilt in her post. I did have a hard time settling on a word or phrase, but eventually I went with "there will be time". This comes from a T.S. Eliot poem, & is a phrase I often repeat to myself when it just seems that there is too much to do. It reminds me to slow down & live in the moment.

Thanks for the fun challenge!

bookshelf for carissa

Thanks for choosing this block, Carissa. So fun to make! I hope the scraps I used work for you.


On another note, January is my month. My question for all of you is, should I go ahead and send my fabrics or should I wait a bit for folks to catch up? Let me know, I'm good either way.

A fabric bookshelf

I finished up Carissa's block last weekend and it's in the mail, heading to her now.

I hope I matched the fabrics enough to your color scheme, Carissa!

It was a little hard to photograph so I just did sections of it - I ran out of white so didn't get the full 30" but it's close...

looking for your help

If you have a moment to spare, please stop by here and throw in your two cents.

I'm getting ready to put my round one quilt together and could use your thoughts.

Thanks!

details, details...

I finally have some fabric parceled out for each of you. I just need to add in the white and pop it in the mail--hopefully by monday. because everyone will only get a small selection of fabrics, I thought I'd show you the range of what i picked out of my own stash to use. do these photos help?

Final measurement requests: please make a block that is 12" high and up to 30" long. If you'd rather make two 15" long pieces or 3 10" long pieces, or if you don't feel like making a strip longer than 12" (or if the fabric I've sent plus the scraps from your stash don't make anything longer than that) then that's okay by me too. I'll create whatever i need to finish off the quilt. the colored strips should all line up on the "bottom" edge of the block(s), but they should all be different heights with the difference made up (to make the full 12" height) with white fabric. If one or maybe two of the colored strips is the full 12" height, that's fine. Thickness of the strips can (and preferably should) vary as well. I'm hoping that these instructions (plus the diagram I posted before) will be clear. If anyone needs more explanation, or has questions, please let me know. I'm very excited to see the blocks you create!

Way overdue

I sent them all a long time ago (way back in 2009-ha ha!) but never posted about them here...

Amy's blocks...

and Rebekah's blocks..

Both were so fun and loved the fabric selections. Can't wait to see everyone's quilt ideas in 2010!

Rebekah's Block from November

This is my first post on Common Threads, because I'm fairly new to the group. My invite to be an author was sent to an email I hardly use which also gets clogged with lots of stuff, so I missed it. By the time I saw it, it was expired. Okay. Long, boring story. Here's Rebekah's block. Inspiration? Bathroom vanity cabinets.

I just love her colors, and I especially love the butterfly fabric.

not so good with math, late at night

if you're reading this over an RSS feed, just a heads-up that I've gone in and edited the measurements I originally listed in the post last night. I originally got the approximate quilt dimensions from some unreliable online source and then this morning when I actually measured my bed and then looked at a package of queen-size batting, I realized that the measurements I'd been working with would have made an eNORmous quilt, so I went back in and tweaked my numbers. I'll be sure to send out the correct numbers with my fabrics. sorry for any confusion.

better late than really, really late

I don't know how this past December was in your lives, but mine felt very busy. Everything non-essential went flying out the window and I'm afraid that sending out fabric to you, my Common Threads buddies, didn't make the cut. And so now, here it is, a few days into January, and I'm finally getting around to thinking about this project. Let me tell you what I've got so far.

This summer, my husband and I realized that we need a lightweight, summer quilt for our bed. We've got comforters galore (hello, Wisconsin!) but on warm (but not yet stiflingly hot) summer nights, we'd like to have just a nice, thin quilt to cover ourselves. I've been admiring the bookstack quilts that have been cropping up on flickr (and even on the blogs of our own jacquie and amber!) but i wanted to try a slightly different twist on that theme. see, those bookstacks remind me of the stacks of books sitting beside my bed waiting to be read and although i looooooove reading, having THAT many books on the stack would really stress me out (so many books, so little time!), so I'd prefer it if they were in neat and tidy rows on shelves, appearing to have already been read, or at least waiting more patiently than the stacked books. and so i've created this sketch:


(I have no idea where that bottom black line went.) As you can see from the sketch, i'm not interested in a LITERAL bookshelf quilt. No cutesy knick-knacks, no books leaning on other books, no cats peeking out from behind the books, no strips of faux wood-grain..... just lovely random-height vertical strips of fabric, lined up on the bottom edge and with plenty of white space in between.

Here's the thing... I"m hoping that I can entreat you all to dig into your stash to help me come up with a lovely assortment of fabrics. I'll send you a few prints, plus plenty of white, and invite you to add your own scraps and strips to make other "books" to add to my shelf. I'm hoping for mostly modern prints in bold colors (similar-ish to the sketch--at least in value). If your stash is full of vintage pastel or country prints, please write me a quick e-mail and when I pack up the fabrics to send out, I"ll be sure to send you more fabrics from my own stash. I'm still fiddling with the measurements (am I REALLY crazy enough to try to quilt a queen size quilt in my own little sewing machine?) but I'm thinking that I'd like each of you to create a strip of 'books' up to 30" long, and 12" high. You could also create 2 or 3 smaller strips (still 12" high, but a different length) if you'd prefer.

Since this project is still in the design phase, I'm open to suggestions for tweaking the plan. I love it when projects allow for some room for creativity and this one seems a little straightforward to me.... Thoughts from you? Maybe a few book titles embroidered on spines? (or would that tip the design over into cutesy kitsch?) Is the freedom to choose fabrics and book height/thickness room for enough creativity?

Questions? Does this design idea make sense?

p.s. I'll try to have my fabrics sent out SOON so as not to overlap with Jacquie's month too terribly! (thanks for your flexibility, Jacquie!)