Score!

In the past week I have come into quite a bit of quilty largesse. First off, my name was pulled at our guild meeting on Friday and I won a stack of 12" churn dash blocks. They had been made by members as part of a display at our quilt show in March.

On Tuesday evening another guild held a social evening at one of the member's homes. The purpose was to distribute the stash of a much loved member, Darlene,  who died last year. The ladies who "curated" the stash did a wonderful job of sorting and bagging everything up. There was a lifetime of wonderful goodies from a talented quilter. No junk at all. Whether the ladies disposed of the junk ahead of time, or whether there just wasn't any, it was a marvelous thing to behold. The large dining room table, side boards, chairs, floor, and deep window sills were piled high with magazines, books, fabric, blocks, rulers, rotary cutters, and partially completed projects.

As we came in the door, we received numbers. I was lucky enough to get into group #1. There were five groups and we rotated through, picking out something each time. We went around four times or so until there were only a handful of small pamphlets left. What did I walk away with?

Bernina piping foot, 6" x 2" Creative Grids ruler, a bias tape making tool, two large packages of fabric in neutral colors, a decorative Singer sewing machine tin, and (my favorite), a baggie of 40 hand pieced 5" nine-patch blocks in red and white. Our guild's AQS appraiser was standing next to me and she pronounced them vintage, circa 1920. SCORE! I am formulating a plan for using them, incorporating some of the ideas and suggestions made by Gyleen Fitzgerald at our meeting last Friday.

I purposely chose the fabric packages of neutral colors because my stash is lacking in those. For inspiration, I have been poring over books that use only neutral colors.  The idea is to make a quilt with only the fabrics from Darlene's stash. There is a nice range from dark to light, so it will work. I counted up the yardage and it comes to 12.8 yards. Wow. Thanks, Darlene.

I have been working on making blocks from last Saturday's workshop with Gyleen Fitzgerald. I wish now that I had chosen background fabrics with more contrast. However other people have told me they like the subtlety. Don't know if they are just being polite or actually mean it. It would look better in my opinion if you could actually tell that these are tumbling blocks. Live and learn.

This photo is "just because." The peonies were extra pretty this year. These pale pink ones remind me of the tissue paper flowers we used to make in grade school.