It's Nine O'Clock in August

The Lotto Block for August is called Nine O'Clock.

We'll be making this block in the summery color combination of bright yellow sunshine and clear blue skies on a crisp WOW background.

Referring to Marcia Hohn's original pattern on the Quilter's Cache site for color placement:

Color 1: tone-on-tone or print fabric that reads as yellow or is a yellow/white or yellow/blue/white print
Color 2: tone-on-tone or print fabric that reads as any shade of blue
Color 3 (background): is white-on-white (WOW)

This block really goes quite quickly and is easily made from any 10" squares you may have collected through swaps. When I was making the sample, before I knew it, I'd two more:

The yellow in the block on the left is my first attempt at shibori hand dye; the blue and yellow print in the block on the right is fussy cut from a mostly blue fabric with suns and moons and clouds. I used a range of blue prints in my blocks to add variety to the scrappy blocks this month's winner(s) will receive.

And the July winner is ...

LAURA!

Congrats Laura. I know you're going to make something wonderful.

Purple Progress

For a while, it looked like I wouldn't find the time to make all the blocks I wanted to swap in Colene's Penny Pincher Swap #2 ... but I did ;-)

Here are 16 of the 40 blocks I'll be mailing on the deadline tomorrow.

Lotto blocks from Jeni & Laura

Today I picked up blocks from Jeni and Laura ... bringing us to a grand total of 17 blocks this month.




It's a smallish set that will make a nice patriotic wall hanging or baby quilt or table topper ... or the start of great quilt. Winner to be announced later today ...

Colene's lotto block

It arrived last week and I went out of town and forgot to photo and post -- sorry, Colene. It's a great block, isn't it?

Lotto Blocks from Julie, Kate, Lee Ann, Sue & Vanessa

It was like Christmas in July at the post office yesterday. In addition to these blocks from Julie, Kate, Lee Ann, Sue and Vanessa, there were WWIT squares from Sally and a beautiful neutral HST sampler block from Kate.



I'm not normally a white background person and yesterday, as I had the blocks up on the wall taking photos, I realized these blocks could easily be tea-dyed (or over-dyed with tan dye) and would still look great.

Lotto blocks from Betty, Kristen & Terri

Terri's blocks were the first to fit my post office box (last week). I picked up blocks from Betty and Kristen today. Check out all the wonderful fabric choices.




Hover over the image with your mouse to see who made it, click for a larger image.

Penny Pincher Progress Report

I should be working on purple PP2 blocks ... but what I really want to do is piece the scrappy red back I have in mind for this top and quilt it.

These scrappy blocks came from coast to coast, with a couple from England. Thanks to Pat R, Pat H, Colene, kate, Michelle, Susanna and Linda for making the blocks that found their way to me and to this little 40-inch by 60-inch quilt.

12 times 3 is (not) 48

Last weekend I finally started on my blocks for Kate's half-square-triangle sampler swap. I started with the black and red blocks, so that I could include Kate and Michelle's blocks with the sets of June lotto blocks they won.

Each of the sawtooth square blocks contains 12 HST units and one large one ... I started doing the math and realized I'd be making 260 HSTs by the time I'd finished my blocks for the swap. It was daunting ... so much so that when I started making HSTs for the three red blocks, I multiplied 12 times 3 and came up with 48 ;-)

After recovering from that mistake, I proceeded to sew right side to wrong side when making the pink block, decided I was too distracted and put the blocks away until today.

Things in the studio went smoother today ... and I'm happy to report my new status: 169 HSTs done, 91 HSTs (in blue and neutral) to go.





With each color I find myself saying, I wish I would have decided on this colorway ... these are going to be very pretty quilts, I think.

July's Patriotic (Lotto Block) Thing

The block lotto pattern for July is Marcia Hohn's original, That Thirties Thing. This paper-pieced block seems designed for a red, white and blue color theme.

It's one of those blocks whose odd angles becomes much more interesting when assembled into a top--imagine something like Marcia's illustration of the completed quilt (at the bottom of the pattern page linked above), but better, because it will have all the richness of a scrappy quilt.

If you're new to paper foundation piecing--also known as paper piecing or simply pfp--be sure to check out Janet Wickell's Introduction to Foundation Piecing on the Quilting site on about.com and look at the annotated in-progress photos I took while making this block.

Scotties Go to Good Homes

Congratulations to the winners of the June Block Lotto drawing, Michelle and Kate.

Michelle's daughter Katy liked the block and has a birthday coming up ... Kate already has a baby quilt in mind for someone. I'm feeling a little like someone with a large litter of pups, getting ready to send them to a couple of new homes.

Laura's Blocks

I picked up Laura's blocks yesterday, just in time for the drawing.