Happy St. Patrick's Day

My little guy never did catch a leprechaun. Oh well! I got him a shamrock plant today though as a little gift. He's been wanting a plant (and a fish and a bird and a ....). You get the idea. Shamrocks are pretty easy to grow so maybe he'll be able to keep this plant alive for a while. He has named it Patricia.

Yesterday I was feeling the need to sew, but I didn't feel like working on any of my in progress projects. I know, this is how UFOs are born, but come back tomorrow for my UFO Bust report and you'll see that I am making progress in that department. Anyway, I pulled out my solids scraps and found some that were about 4" square so I paired them up and made half square triangles.

This little piece has turned into my challenge project for the month. The monthly challenge I am doing with Stephanie from Peas in a Pod. The assignment this month is "narrow inset piecing." I know you don't see any narrow inset piecing in the photo above, but I'm not going to show you that yet! This is just a sneak peak. We reveal our challenge projects around the end of the month.

While making these half square triangles yesterday I also finished my other two blocks for the Just One Star project. See yesterdays post for details about the project. There is still plenty of time to participate. Here are the blocks I am sending in.

And will you just look at this crazy cat!

What is that she is killing? It is my bunny slipper pin cushion. (The link will take you to my blog post where I showed how I made it.) I have had to rescue it three times today!

Just One Star times 4

Moda is coordinating making quilts for the Quilts of Valor program. These quilts will be given to Marines injured in the line of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The are asking folks to make a star block and send it to them. All the details can be found on the Moda blog post for Just One Star. The deadline for star blocks is May 1, 2011. They don't want just any star block. Click on the link for the block pattern. The block pattern link is to a two page .pdf pattern file. The first page shows a picture of what the finished quilts will look like and the second page is the instructions. They need 1800 blocks to make 100 quilts.

This morning I cut out four blocks, two red and two blue. I have already finished the blue ones.

I'll make the red ones later today.

Playing with Lines and Stitches 2

I finished up my second "playing with lines and stitches" piece recently. I liked the pinkish red binding better than the charcoal, so I changed the binding on the first piece.

I did not have enough of this pinkish red fabric to bind both pieces, but my LQS had some pomegranate Kona solid that is pretty close. Click here to see it with the charcoal binding.

On a personal note, today is a special day. Parker came home from school and said, "Mom, do you notice anything different about me?"

He lost a tooth at school today. This is only the third tooth he has lost and he'll be 8 in a few weeks. Many of his friends have already lost all of their baby teeth. He feels a bit self-conscience that he hasn't lost many teeth yet. So this is a big deal at our house. I'm trying to decide if we should go out to eat tonight to celebrate or if I should just fix what I have planned for dinner. I've already got the tooth fairy pillowcase on his bed.

Quilts of Valor

I've read several posts today about remembering 9/11. One of the blogs mentioned Quilts of Valor. I thought I would share the quilt I made for Quilts of Valor earlier this year. This is a photo of just the top, before I quilted it. It was a fun pattern to make and I have thought about making another and possibly resizing the blocks.