I won!

I just found out that I won 56 blocks in the Block Lotto drawing for August. I am so excited! The blocks are African Violets, and they are so sweet. I posted the five I made to enter a few days ago. These will make a lovely little quilt!

Love this lunch box....

I spotted this on a shelf in my local craft shop and asked if I could take a photo. Even my husband thought it was pretty funny!

Why Quilts Matter, History, Art & Politics DVD

I just received my copy of Why Quilts Matter, put out by The Kentucky Quilt Project, which is a 2-DVD set that contains 9 episodes of a television series about the size and depth of the quilt culture. The series is scheduled to be aired on PBS starting later in August, I believe, but when when I saw it was for sale I knew I needed my own copy.
I'm gonna watch the first episode right now.
To order your own copy, visit www.whyquiltsmatter.org.

Another on-line contest

I entered this quilt, which I've called "All About Flowers" in an on-line contest for flower-themed quilts. You can vote for it by going to this link.  It's about half-way down in the group of quilts that have been entered. I think the contest closes on Sunday at midnight.
I'm flattered that already two people, including the person who runs the website for the contest, have contacted me to ask about the pattern.  I honestly can't remember if I used a pattern or just reassembled bits and pieces of other patterns I liked.....I'll have to look through my books and piles of Xeroxes and see what I can find.

Square Pants block

I made this block using scraps today from a pattern I found on a blog called Lily's Quilts, which you can find here. The blog's author, Lynne, made her block with a black background, and was more artful about how she arranged the pieces,  so that she ended up with a block where the two overlapping squares embedded in the pattern emerged more clearly. If I make this block again, I'll try to follow her example more closely, so that my block won't look like such a jumble of color.

She wasn't sure whether she'd invented the block, or what it's name was, so she decided to name it after herself.....and one of my favorite cartoon characters: LynneBob Square Pants. I've abbreviated mine to be called simple The Square Pants Block..

African Violet blocks for Block Lotto

I made 5 block for the September round of Block Lotto, and may may a few more if I get a chance. These blocks are easy to make, and they are fun besides---they look very 70s to me. I love participating in Block Lotto, because I always come away with new ideas for blocks, even when I don't win.

Small floral quilt...Done!

I posted earlier in the summer about my ideas for making a 20 x 20-inch quilt for my quilt guild's summer challenge project. In the end, I decided to used a quilt-as-you-go block that I'd made last year and had never used.  One of my favorite parts about his block is the back: I really love how it came out, even though I am new to this kind of machine appliqueing.  Here are a couple of photos showing details of how the back looks:

I'm sorry that the photo quality is not better, but you get the idea!

It was tricky to add borders to a quilt top that already had a backing and binding attached to it. Since I had made this as part of a class at City Quilter in Manhattan, I had a vague memory of the instructors teaching me how to do it, but that was about it.  After quite a bit of incorrect cutting (luckily I had extra fabric!) and ripping out of bad stitching I was able to create something that was more-or-less what I wanted. And I still have two more of these blocks, so maybe I'll make small quilts from them as well.

Log cabin contest

I just entered this log cabin quilt, which I made as a gift for my husband Mac a couple of years ago, into a weekly on-line contest. This is the first time I'm entering....if you're reading this post and you've had any experience with this kind of contest I hope you'll let me know!

Anyway, you can go to the website over the weekend and vote for my quilt. Visit early and often! Any votes will be much appreciated. Here's the address: 

http://quiltinggallery.com/2011/08/05/log-cabin-quilts-2/

Thank you and happy quilting!