Colourful Nine Patches, Colourful Stars

After making the squares in squares on Tuesday, I decided last night to make a few more of the 9-patch blocks set on point. They’re bright and cheerful and just what I needed after a few hours of working on the dreaded tax stuff. And the stack of finished blocks is slowly growing.

A couple more stars for the little hexagon quilt were made as well. There’s something about making a six-pointed star that I find irresistible. Possibly it’s because they always seem to go together so effortlessly. A few years ago I printed and printed the 1″ 60-degree diamonds on ’30s fabrics and solids. They’ve already been used to make one baby quilt and more will be used in the new hexagon quilt I’ve started, but that won’t even come close to making a dent in the number I’ve got printed.

That was one thing I learned early on with Inklingo. It really does pay off for me if I print lots of a shape that I know I like working with. One year I had the flu and wanted to stitch, but definitely didn’t have the energy to print or cut. So I opened up a box containing lots of shapes that I’d already printed and cut, and was able to stitch as many blocks as I wanted. Ever since then, I’ve tended to print extras of shapes. It’s also, for me, a fun way to design. I’ll grab a handful of shapes and play with them on my design book to see what I can come up with.

We have more work (hopefully, this is the end of it) to do on the taxes today. If nothing else, I’m going to start working with some form of a spreadsheet so I can keep track of everything and just be able to print off summaries at the end of the year.

Baxter was bored by the whole process and had a nap.

A Favourite Revisited

While I continue working on the red and white quilt, I decided I’d revisit some of my favourites. This is actually right up there at the top of that list. Simple nine-patch blocks, yes, but there’s something about this quilt and this photograph of it, in particular, that I just love. The nine-patch blocks measure 3″ finished, made with squares I printed using Inklingo. It’s hand pieced and machine quilted and looking at it makes me realize that the simple quilts are just as beautiful to me as the more involved ones.

It was the focus of a teddy bear adventure in this post back in June of 2008. When I looked back in my archives to find it, I was shocked that it was almost four years ago. Assuming I don’t get distracted again, which is never a safe assumption with me, I may show a few other quilts from the past on the blog over the next couple of weeks.

It was really quite chilly here yesterday. I think today’s supposed to be a bit better and then Wednesday better yet again. Yesterday the heat was back on and the windows closed again for most of the day. Oh, how we were spoiled by that lovely taste of summer in the middle of March.

Baxter was looking very alert for his photograph on Monday afternoon.