Flimsies 6 and 19

Since I'm going to be cutting scraps and making string blocks for awhile I probably won't have anything new and exciting to show you for the next 2-3 weeks. I still want to post, so I thought this might be a good time to show you some of my flimsies waiting for quilting.

Flimsy #6 is what's left from a round robin that I participated in over15 years ago. The Rose of Sharon center was my entry in the guild's yearly block contest. Just days before I was to hand it in it got buried under a few fabrics on my cutting table - and I accidentally cut into the edge with my rotary cutter. It was supposed to be a finished 12" block, and I sliced about 1/2" too far in towards the center. I couldn't enter it in the contest so I threw it in the drawer. I pulled it out a couple years later to be the center of the first round robin I ever participated in.


I loved my center block, but months later when the finished top was revealed to me I gazed upon it with horror. I loved what had been done up until a certain point, but the last three borders went from bad to worse. I stuffed it in a drawer for several years.


When I joined Stashbusters for the first time on January 1, 2002 I ruthlessly began culling my UFO's. That's when I took a good look at this flimsy, decided I liked it well enough to salvage it, so I ripped off the last three borders. Out went the terrible screaming hot pink polka dot that was the outer border. Off came the brown border with a "nest" in one corner constructed from a crazy log cabin block that was stuffed so full of polyfill that it weighed down the entire corner. Off went the border just outside the rabbits - the border on muslin with three dimensional seed packets including pictures, etc. of marijuana plants. What you see is what was left - which I like a lot. I love the rabbits running through the briar patch - see the thorns on the brambles made from bugle beads?

Flimsy #19 is from a pattern called "My House" by the little quilts ladies. I bought the pattern and a kit for this quilt years and years ago at the Stitchin' Post in Sisters, Oregon. I made the top several years later, then added it to my "to be quilted pile where it has sat ever since.


These are two of the flimsies I hope to quilt in the next few weeks, as I think they both work well for the upcoming seasons. I already have the binding made for the second one. Neither should take all that long to quilt, so I hope I can show these to you as two finished projects by the end of March.

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Gratitudes:

1. Frogs singing everywhere in the evening
2. Dinner with our kids
3. A sound Hand and Foot win for the girls - we trounced the guys!
4. Spring pajama weather
5. A very confused, blooming Thanksgiving cactus

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