Not a Turtle

When I was at the quilt show a week ago, my friend and I both admired the TURTLE quilt hanging across the aisle from my booth.  Did I take a picture?  No. When I got home, I went online to see if I could find the source of the cute block.  Nope.

I found other turtles but not the one I was looking for.  And, in the midst of the turtle patterns, I found this (attributed to www.pinsdaddy.com):

CUTE!  I sketched the block and worked it out on my ancient EQ4 program (mirror image).  I printed 15 copies sized for 4" blocks. That's what I'm playing with today. 

I decided that the hourglass quilt needed a little bit more zing, so I'm in the midst of making a zillion crooked half square triangles for a second border. That should be ready for viewing soon.

Crooked Hourglass Blocks

A few weeks ago, I began to make some hourglass blocks, a la Sujata Shah.

I got completely side-tracked.

And ended up with this:

Then there was a graduation....

Then I was a vendor at a quilt show....

Everything is finally back in place and I can sew again! I had admired a quilt with the hourglass blocks set in columns, so they made vertical rows of crooked squares.  I tried that.

Then I made some blocks that included RED.  I don't know why, I just like brown and red together.

Then I tried just putting the four small blocks from each set together to make larger blocks.

I had to stop and make one more set of blocks.  Then I sewed them together and put them back up on the design wall.

I'll revisit the column idea at a later date.

Turtle Time

It's not what you'd call an ART QUILT, 

but it IS original.

My shop (Cotton Fields Quilt Shop, Washington, NC) is participating in the Row by Row experience for the third time this year.  The theme is "On the Go".

I thought about this one for a long time.  I had the turtle idea almost right away, but wondered about what the turtles should be doing or carrying. Over the years, the designs nationwide have gotten ever more sophisticated and almost exclusively iron-on applique. In my previous designs, I've incorporated a little bit of both.  I decided to keep things simple.

I heard that a lot of Row by Row folks were looking for more PIECED designs.  Out came the graph paper. After I was happy with my little turtles, I added the checkerboard bottom for a little more interest.  The discovery of the cotton tape printed like a tape measure was great.  So, the leader of my turtles is "on the go" wearing a tape measure bow. 

* If you're not familiar with the Row by Row Experience, the best thing to do is look it up online for a more complete explanation than I could give here.

Aftermath

Baby found the new quilt and gave it her stamp of approval.  I took her picture, then made her move.

Facings Finished!

I just finished the facing on the piece I've been working on.  Many thanks to influence from Rayna Gillman and Sujata Shah.

Next, I'm off to work on my "Row by Row Experience" design for the shop.  It's overdue.  I've got the pattern worked out, now to get it stitched together.