FWS blocks - Contrary Wife and Corn & Beans

BOW #12 for the Farmer's Wife Sampler was #21 Contrary Wife, which I was about to cut out anyway, so that was a pleasant surprise. Cut using Marti Michell templates B12 and B13.

While I had those templates out, I pulled out two more, B14 and D29, to make the next block in the book, Corn and Beans.

33 done, 80 to go. These blocks were sitting next to each other on the design wall, and the background fabric is the same. Boy, does each one look different.

Let's Go Fly a Kite

The other day I finally finished the binding on my California North American Mystery Quilt which I call"Let's Go Fly a Kite". The background fabric is Peking Kids, where in another print you can see the kids flying kites. These are just the Kites.

I did kites and kite tail quilting in the background pieces, and a large stipple in the orange bow tie sections.

The blue border is also from the Peking Kids line, but the oranges were all leftovers from my Women of the Bible quilt, still a UFO, but no more orange is needed. The border has kite tail quilting. All of the quilting was done free motion, no marking, on my Bernina 630. The quilt is about 62" square, with cotton batting (I thing it was warm and natural, but it might have been Hobb's Heirloom), from leftovers of another quilt.

FWS blocks - Frienship Star and Friendship

Friendship Star was the BOW (#11), and while I had the book open (or EQ6 up), I decided to also cut out Friendship.

Friendship used Marti Michell templates C20 (four cut from light fabric), and A2 and A6 (cut 4 dark fabrics using each template, so a small and a large triangle from each fabric). I found these went together nicely if I pressed two squares' seams towards the large triangles and two squares' seams towards the small triangles, then the seams nested when I sewed the squares together.


Friendship Star used B12 and B13 (like so many other blocks in this quilt). I reversed the dark and light fabrics, making a gold star in a black background.
31 blocks done, 82 to go!

Not much quilting going on

While I am working away at trying to finish my Kites quilt ( stitching down binding when I get the chance, hopefully some more tomorrow night), I have been mostly working on making shopping bags for gifts. I finished up the sixth one today, sending three to each sister-in-law. I get complements on mine, they hold a bunch and they are sturdy, and did I mention they look good? They might get used to wrap the other presents that we bought, or not. This is the same bag I did this summer with the flower fairy fabric (to hold the flower fairy quilt).
Then I also made two pillowcases for the eight year old, with paper doll fabric that is just too cute.

I did actually make one block today, using Marti Michell's 5-patch templates, making a humongous 12" block.

Too tired to cut, so I think I will just read a bit then go to bed.