Selvage Quilt update

I'm working on my selvage quilt blocks again. This is a photo of a block I put together to show some women who have given me selvages. No one could imagine what a spiderweb quilt made with selvages would look like!

Each block uses 8 subunits and there are usually 8-10 selvages in each subunit.

After working off and on sewing selvages together into subunits, I only have enough subunits to make almost 9 blocks. Obviously, I have to make more time for this quilt as I'd still like to make it a throw or twin size. If I stopped now it would only be about 45x45 or if I still wanted a throw or twin size, I'd have to add really wide borders!

Want to see one of my P.I.G.S.?

OK, not this kind of pig! Sorry, I found this photo on the internet and just couldn't resist.

Here is one of my P.I.G.S. (Project In a Grocery Sack) Of course, someone might argue its really a Flimsie, which it is, but since its also not finished I'm calling it one of my P.I.G.S. Its been laying on an antique washstand in our bedroom for years because I haven't gotten around to having it machine quilted. One clue why it isn't quilted yet is that I dislike sewing together backings for large quilts. You can see the backing fabric under the quilt top in the photo.

I've always wanted to take beautiful photos of quilts hanging on a wash line gently blowing in the breeze. As you can see, its just a little too breezy in Kansas this morning. By the way, we're expecting winds of 20-30 miles per hour today which is not terrible but since its so dry, the fire risk is high.

Here's a photo of the quilt top taken inside. Its a large queen size and I'd originally thought of using this on our bed which probably will still happen if I ever get it to a machine quilter. I've been saving the border fabric for years and finally used most of it on this quilt.

A few more photos of the scrappy nine patches. Some of the fabric was old when I made the quilt. All of it is older now!


This past week I spent quite a bit of time at the hospital with my mother. She's back at her home but between the two of us, we have enough appointments to keep us busy! Thanksgiving seems to be right around the corner too. Its looking like I won't reach my goal of finishing all the full clamshell diamonds this month but that's OK. I'll check back in when I've actually accomplished some quilting!

Clamshell Update

This was my first month working on the clamshells and here's my progress!

I have finished appliqueing 5 of the clamshell diamonds, 2 more of the diamonds are glue basted and another 2 more ready to be glue basted. As you can see, this is going to be a very bright quilt! I may name this quilt "Myriad Gardens" so I'm trying to think of each diamond as a garden. A little blue for water perhaps in the form of a fountain, bird bath or pond, some brown and green for trees, shrubs and grasses and some color for flowers. Some of the gardens have more attitude than others!

Sometimes its been difficult to use both my older fabrics and the contemporary fabrics. They might look OK together but don't have the ZING I think is needed. I'll soon need to cut more clamshells and am seeing which fabrics work better than others in this quilt.

This past weekend, my husband and I took a quick trip to Illinois to see his family. I was hoping to get more of the handwork done in the car but I quickly discovered how difficult it is to make tiny stitches in traffic! Threading a needle was a challenge too so I was only able to work on it during the evenings. I'm happy with my progress though and hope to finish or come close to finishing the full diamonds during November. Next will be the half diamonds and corners but at this point, I'm trying not to think about how much handwork is left to do!