Luck O' the Irish, etc.

I follow several hand-picked blogs and look forward to reading them, some every day! A couple of weeks ago, I was reading one of my favorites, "Kim's Big Quilting Adventure" and she had a great shamrock pattern on it. I drafted it out in a size I need for the little quilt hanger I have on my front door and whipped it up in no time. Finally I have an appropriate St. Patrick's Day embellishment in my foyer! This is about 19" square and was actually up for 10 days before St. P's Day yesterday!

       I have a new favorite ruler, the Omnigrid 8 1/2" x 24". It's huge and not easily transportable but when I put it down on my fabric to cut long strips, it stays put! Unlike my 6" x 24" which always seems to jimmy around at the end no matter how tightly I hold it. I didn't have any secure, padded container to put it in to take it on my recent retreat so I created a pattern and made one--softly but surely padded, complete with a handle. Know what? it's also perfect for my newly purchased yoga mat!! (That's Tippy our #2 kitty).

And speaking of my retreat (loads of fun with Thimble Creek Quilt Shop to Murphy's California a couple of weeks ago) this is one of the projects I worked on. The pattern is "Peppermint Wreaths" by Bonnie Sullivan but I wouldn't recommend it as it doesn't give you a CLUE as to how to put all those 1" squares together--just an illustration and the rest is up to you. VERY difficult to piece as there are no obvious sets of 'blocks' to put together and in many places I had to "Y" seam a single 1" square--blagh!

    This is the 26" table-topper version and there's a tree-skirt exactly the same pattern only much larger--an no easier to piece!
     I've just finished quilting the center and green parts with the off white edges remaining. Then I'll cut it around the edges to form a 26" circle (also no CLUE in the pattern as to how to manage that!) and bind it in red.
     Seems it's the pinning of a quilt that's always the point where I put it aside and start on another project. I find small pieces like the 3 on this page, where I can pin them on my cutting table rather than struggle to find a large area to pin, they actually get finished! Could it be I'll have this one done months before I need it at Christmas-time?

     Check out the other design walls on Judy's blog today!