bits and bobbles

Hello all, Mary Ellen back again.

Hope you had a great weekend. Fathers’ Day was super for all of you? Another excuse, if you need one, for getting together with all the family. Perhaps not quite as fussy a day as the celebrations in May for moms. Dads are more BBQ, boats and beer than cake, curls and champagne–at least mine anyway.

Wrote last week about Liberty cottons coming out with quilting weight fabrics-to be released here in the US in the fall. Lets nominate a local shop and all start lobbying for the shop to carry Liberty. What do you think? I found the Liberty boards at Pinterest this morning. Some gorgeous projects to be found there, and inspiration for all fabrics, not just Liberty. The various fabric flower uses of Liberty are very pretty, I think.

Do you own a dresden plate template? Maybe you purchased the Darlene Zimmerman one after she spoke at our guild? If you have that one, or any other one which has a straightedge on the top and the bottom, you can easily use it as a tumbler block template as well. Here’s a nice tumbler quilt using that template. I like the way she has included some “focus” blocks, fussy cut from a larger print. This would also be a nice way to use up some panels-cut up the panel into blocks and mix them among the tumbler sections. I’m think of several of the Christmas panels (way too many) that I have in my stash, and my increasing stash of Christmas scraps.

Was reading on the Pat Sloan blog (next year’s seminar national teacher) about a UFO busting challenge. She notes that almost all of our UFOs are projects intended for ourselves. Somehow we put ourselves down farther on our priority lists. She challenges us to get out one of those UFOs which is for us, and finish it this month. Good idea, I think. Maybe I’ll work on that “never again” quilt I talked about in a recent post.

If you have a UFO that is intended for yourself, tell us about it in a comment.

PS. Don’t forget to finish up a Lucy Goosey star or two, and take it to the guild meeting this week so we can get photos for the album over at our website. Part of the fun of a quilt-a-long is sharing photos of our blocks so all can see. Cool to see other color choices and the different look they give to the same block design. Don’t be shy! The photo can be just of the block without you in the photo, if you wish. Just insist to our guild photographer, or send in your own photo!