A Current Project

Hi Everyone,

I'm really enjoying hearing about the dream quilts that you would like to make one day.  If you didn't see yesterday's post and want to enter the give away, you can find it here.

Although I haven't been blogging much this month, I have been working on things here and there.  At the moment, I have a couple things going and I seem to be jumping from project to project with no rhyme or reason--just quilter's ADD.  I find it fairly frustrating, as I normally start and finish something so I can keep my focus.  I'm not sure what is going on with me lately.  I suppose I have lots on my mind and am stressed more than usual with my husband's impending retirement from the Army and having NO IDEA where we will end up this summer!  Yikes!

Here is one project:  the Bee that I'm in has decided to do some exchange projects this year.  One of the projects is to make some flower blocks.  We who are participating will each make 16 and then swap and come home with 16 others.  The rules are that the flower fabric must be a floral--any type of floral fabric--and the background is white or white-on-white.  One of our members donated yellow for the centers, so they will all be the same.

They are fairly easy in that the construction is complex.  Each petal block begins with a square of floral and then smaller squares are used in the "flip corner" technique to give the shape to the petal.

Two larger squares of background are done like this, pressed and the "waste corner" is trimmed away.   (Yes, I'm keeping the corners and sewing them into half square triangles.   Whether they ever become anything remains to be seen.) 

A smaller yellow square is applied in the same manner for the center.  Then all 4 petals are stitched together to make the flower.  While the techniques are pretty "easy," we are all finding that keeping everything square and the correct size is more challenging.  I am taking my time at each step to make sure I'm keeping everything right and also utilizing a more "scant" quarter inch seam allowance than usual.  

Here are some of my first set.  We will be exchanging groups of 16 three times over the year.  I only have 3 more to make for this group but I got interested in something else!  I'll show that tomorrow.  That project is why I'm posting so late today.  Do you know the feeling when you get interested/excited in something so much that you hit the floor running with it in the morning? Anyway, knowing how distracted I am lately, I'll probably be onto something else later this afternoon. (If so, hopefully it will be finishing these flower blocks!)

Have a great day!
JoAnne