Prayer Flag

About three years ago, my daughter Dana and I went to visit my sister in North Carolina.  We visited some quilt shops while there and I purchased some fabrics from the Prayer Flag by April Cornell for Moda line to make Dana a new quilt for her king-size bed.  I had these fabrics laid out recently and someone saw them and asked what I was making.  I told her it was a quilt for Dana.  She asked if it was going to be a surprise.  I said, probably.  She was with me when I bought the fabric, but that was almost 3 years ago and I'm sure she has completely forgotten about it by now. Sure enough, when I got the top together and showed it to her, she didn't remember the fabric at all, but she LOVED it!

I had a layer cake, a jelly roll, and a few other fabrics in various yardages.  I just made strip blocks from the jelly roll and alternated them with the layer cake squares.  Used the extra fabrics for borders.  It finishes at 105 x 105.  Still have to bind and hem but maybe it won't take as long to get around to that as making the top!!

Log Cabin

When I attended the Huntsville Heritage Quilters' Quilt Show in Huntsville, Alabama in October, I purchased a Log Cabin Trim Tool by Creative Grids from one of the vendors.  Starting with a 2-1/2" square in the middle, you can then add any size strips that are at least 1-1/2" wide up to......whatever.  You sew two light strips and two dark strips around the square, then using the tool and lining up one of the squares on the tool with the 2-1/2" middle square, you trim all four sides and end up with a 4-1/2" square consisting of the center square and four equal 1" (finished) strips all the way around.  Repeat that process two more times and the last cut will give you a finished 8" square.  I pulled strips from my boxes of strings, boxes of pre-cut 2" and 2-1/2" scrappy strips, and cut more from scraps.  When I finished, I had a total of 56 blocks.  Had no idea how I wanted to lay them out, but found a layout in one of my Quilter magazines that gave me this idea.  It took only 42 of the blocks, but I was able to sort them into enough blocks of each color to lay them out by rows of certain colors.  I still plan to add borders to this to make it queen size, but wanted to go ahead and get a picture while it still fits on my design wall.

Finally got some borders on this top with fabric from my stash.  Now to find just the right backing for it...........I will have to go shopping!

Sister's Choice

Just remembered that I had completed this scrappy quilt a few weeks ago and wanted to share it.  I had spent several days one week cutting all my scraps into 2-1/2" strips and ended up with about 700 strips. Since I had the strips cut, I went looking for a pattern that would use up quite a few.  I found this one in Bonnie Hunter's free patterns on Quiltville and paired up enough strips for 63 nine-patches.  Then I used a variety of greens for all the star points (eight folded corners per block....yikes!  thought I never would get all those finished).  But I persevered and am happy with the results.