Blueberry Buckle

Progress

We were away for Memorial Day weekend, first spending a day in western Maryland where we are getting our old house ready to sell, then traveling with the teens to the Delaware shore for a couple of days' visit to my son Wills. We had a great time playing mini golf, walking to the beach, watching Wills run a 5K, and eating fish and chips here. Really, if you ever get to the Delaware beaches, you've got to eat at Go FIsh. (And if you don't like fish, try the shepherd's pie. My stepson Josh said the it's the best he's tasted. He knows his shepherd's pie.)

I don't want to lose my quilting momentum, so as soon as I shipped out all the weekend fabric orders from the shop and the other shop, I got right back to the postage stamp quilt.

Thank you for the encouragement for this particular quilt design. It's very popular! Tiffany brought up a good point in her comment about strip piecing. While I'm not able to strip piece due to, well, lack of strips, I have been able to chain piece just as she suggested. I stitched each print square to a white square. I decided to work the quilt in four sections, so I started with one-fourth of the print squares. I chain pieced them by running them through the sewing machine one after another

and then I clipped them apart. Chain piecing saves a lot of time and thread!

I pressed the seam of each pair toward the print fabric and laid them out on the dining table to ensure even distribution of each of the prints. I call this technique "planned random".

I then stacked up each "column" of pairs, placed the stacks, in order, onto the lid of a plastic container, and took it over to the sewing table. In the morning, I'll chain piece the rows together. I love progress.

Speaking of progress, we stopped by the new house this morning and it has siding! They also poured concrete for the front stoop and walkway. We're really getting excited about our home!

Progress is good.

Hello, Quilting Mojo. Welcome back!

I love the postage stamp quilts that I've been seeing on flickr and around the web. They are just so simple and pretty. I'm especially fond of the quilts that alternate white squares with the printed fabrics, and this quilt by oh fransson really inspired me.

I had these in the stash:

Black and white charm packs. (Photo taken last night in poor lighting.)

I promptly cut them into fourths, and attacked 4 yards of White Kona Cotton with the rotary cutter as well.

This is probably the hard way to make a postage stamp quilt, starting with all these little squares and not strip piecing, but you have to work with what you've got, right?

Oh! I thought I'd show you how far our house has come along since the hole was dug for the foundation. This was taken not too long ago.

I can't wait to move. Living in a temporary space has been very unsettling. Last week I wanted to bake a cake and, well, the tube pan was at our house, two hours away. Things like that happen with the sewing and knitting, too, so I'll be very happy when everything is conveniently located under one roof!