Design Decisions

I think words are driving my design ideas. It started with a simple plan to use up my leftovers and clear out the randomness in order to free up the space to work on something monochromatic. When working with leftovers, I find it easier to separate the crumbs (kinda square) from the strings (long and skinnyish). As I worked on sorting them, the names Crumb Cake and String Cheese started working their way through my mind. The crumbs came first, and as I worked through them, I quickly became bored with pure randomness, and in the way that an idle mind does, I started creating patterns out of chaos. The patterns turned into letters. Using Tonya's tutorial for free pieced letters as it exists in my head, the Crumb Cake quilt asked for a saying. Marie Antionette was haunting my mind from the long ago days of high school French and so I decided upon, "Let them eat crumb cake". There are only 6 letters done so far out of the 19 that are needed, but the general idea is starting to coagulate. The blocks are 7 inches with a 3 inch sashing strip between. I still need to decide on the color for that. DH Kurt thinks something dark to make the blocks blend better and I am liking the white to make the blocks pop out better. Maybe a comprimise with contrasting cornerstones? I'll let it simmer overnight and then think about it some more in the morning. My floor is a tangled mass of trimmings and treads as the basket of rejects, leftovers and afterthoughts turns into something. How happy is that?

Thursday is for Sharing

I finished up the sharing quilt and it is ready to go to school tomorrow. I had trouble getting the sewing machine to do letters properly. I knew I should have taken all those orientation classes that went with the new machine! I could make it do letters one by one, but I couldn't figure out how to make it remember a sequence of letters. They ended up a little crickety from all the starting and stopping, but it is finished none the less. I tried some of the new variegated thread that I ordered from Connecting Threads and it worked quite well. I got several other goodies at the same time because they will ship free with a $50 order. The prices seem quite good and I've been happy with everything I've ordered so far.
As we were getting ready for bed tonight, Ryan came down with a tooth in his hand. It's been loose for quite a while, and finally fell out tonight. Then he rushed into the kitchen to write a note for the tooth fairy explaining that he swallowed his last two teeth accidentally and asking if he could have money for those as well.

Tiny Word Quilt

Father Rob presented 7 words during a bible verse in chapel at the begining of the week and challenged the students to try to do one word each day. I think they were encouragement, consolation, love, sharing, joy and ...I forget the other two. Anytime I see words now, I picture them in quilts. I'm still pondering rendering my classroom rules in wonky letters.
So I decided to make sharing as a little quilt and give it to Father Rob on Thursday. I've got all the letters done, I'll just slap on a couple of borders tomorrow and then get it quilted up. I'm thinking of putting some words in the bottom border, maybe something like "the word of God" to follow they word sharing. My machine will do a couple of different fonts at least. I brought home a huge stack of papers, and if I carry them home again I might just go a little crazy, so I'd better get some done before I'm too tired to see straight. It might be too late already, but I'll give it a try.
I just left Bonnie's Blog and am happy to know that my book is in the mail!! I was lucky order number 1355 and should have my book soon! I can't wait to see her new book, but I think one of my recent quilts was one of her patterns, I saw a quilt that I really liked on her sight with stars alternating with a simple block she called "pus in the corner" I think. I started the quilt and then went back later to try to find the same pattern again, but couldn't. When I saw the theme of her new book, I was sure she must have pulled the pattern off of her blog so that she could put it in her book. I'll be curious to see if I'm right. Either way, I'm sure there will be lots of good ideas and we all owe some serious support to Bonnie for her great patterns, mystery quilts, and organizational inspirations.