I admit to a little fascination over the years with Pantone’s pick for color of the year, mostly from the aspect of an observer.  If you pay attention, you may notice the color popping up in your life–whether you are looking for it or not–in fashion, in home decor and even in website design. Recently I noticed some home decor items at Target, including these bookends. About a week ago I dreamed of buying a new wallet in this color …...

I made 9 pieced strings blocks for this month’s lotto but I didn’t stop there.  I alternated the strings with units for the Quiltville En Provence mystery — I’m not sure which were the leaders-and-enders.  I’m all caught up with the mystery units and 72 string blocks are now a flimsy (=unquilted top).  (54 x 66) I’m still going to participate in the lotto!

Just as I was reading about this month’s red and white theme, I was pointed to a gallery of quilts from this year’s New South Wales quilters guild exhibition featuring: you guessed it, red and white quilts. If you’d like to be inspired, check them out here.

I’m participating in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year. The color for January is blue. This month’s Lotto block was the beginning of my design. Most of the 3.5″ nine-patch blocks came from the Block Swappers.  Thus, three online groups came together in the design of this...

Look how wonderful and modern this Double 9-patch quilt is. The blocks are set on point and alternated with plain squares. Updated to add a second photo (that failed when I uploaded it from my phone) to show the detail of the quilting.   I took these photos with my phone … I will replace them with better quality photos taken with my camera after the battery is recharged and I have pulled them off the camera and onto my computer.  In...

  Using blocks from the lotto, I made two quilts. They were started ages ago. One was finished this summer and the other this fall. I am only now getting around to taking photos of the finished quilts. I am not sure how to add the links for the block patterns. Tall Bird Block Pattern String Hear Block Pattern Star-Crossed Block Pattern I just copied and pasted. I will try to get the correct tags...

  I couldn’t help myself, I printed out the picture of Helen’s blocks. (Sophie gave me the idea)  I tried laying them out in different ways. This was fun to do on a cold, rainy morning…waiting for the sun to come...

  The author of the tutorial for this sweet tree quilt uses a completely different technique for making her little X blocks (AKA quilty cross stitch blocks), but look what she made from them … and think about what we could make from the Easy-X blocks! Find the tutorial here:  The Tree is Trimmed. If you used our 7 inch Easy X blocks in this layout, you’d have a bed quilt (70 by 84 inches) … wouldn’t it make a fun...

When I saw this sampler quilt on Barbara Brackman’s blog I thought of the MMQAL. Read more about it here: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2014/11/elbe-herbert-johnsons-sampler.html Nann

I happened to flip through an issue of The Quilter while shopping tonight and this Jewel Box quilt jumped out at me because … I saw our April block, Triangles in a Square in the center of those Jewel Box blocks, and then realized how you could construct a variation of the traditional Jewel Box design by making that block and alternating it with a block constructed from four 4-patches. You would cut the squares for the 4-patches 2 1/4 inch...

When I saw this illustration on Design Sponge, my first thought was that it would make an interesting quilt block … then I noticed that the colors are the same as those we are using for our Bead-on-a-String Blocks this month (minus the black and white).   (The yellow-orange-maroon combination works pretty well with cream/tan, too, doesn’t...

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