#73, 74, 75

#73 Rainbow Flowers

If something's called "rainbow flowers," it should probably have more than one color. But I love these greens, and I realized that since it's my favorite color, there should be more green in my quilt. This is the essence of that realization.

#74 Ribbons

And... more green. I like these colors together, and I already used them in Flower Garden Path.

#75 Rosebud

Okay, for a previous block (I forget which) I cut out a bunch of these purple triangles. But I cut them out wrong or I cut too many or something. So I had a pile of purple triangles and some scraps that worked out perfectly for this block. And what do you know, the background is green! Yay for green week!

#70, 71, 72

#70 Prairie Queen

I like the idea of this, with a solid and a busy print, but I really don't like how it turned out. The busy print is just busy, instead of being complimentary and busy. I'll probably redo this one at the end.

#71 Puss in the Corner

Wow, 0 for 2. I kind of hate this one too. The solid pink is too boring, and the brown is too stark of a change. I'll probably redo this one. Maybe I'll put the ugly ones together for a quilt of ugliness. Any takers?

#72 Railroad

This one, though, I can get behind! I love these colors together! They match and compliment each other perfectly. I would be happy with a whole quilt of these colors. If I had more of the floral print, that could become a reality. But I only have a teensy bit left. Sad day. 

Maybe I'll remake the first two with these fabrics!

So 1 for 3. Better luck next week, me!

#67, 68, 69

#67 Every-which-way

If you look carefully, you might notice that this is not a Pine Tree block made up of a hundred tiny triangles. As much as I like pine trees, it wasn't worth it! So instead, I made this block, which is a variation on Ozark Maple Leaf. As I was putting the Ozark block together, I rearranged it a bit, and I really like this layout! Sometimes I see the arrows, and sometimes I see a frame around the X in the middle. And though I've never used it before, I really like the combination of these two fabrics!

#68 Postage Stamp

Okay, this is going to sound super lame, but when I was about 10 blocks away from this one, I started thinking and planning what blocks I would use for my Postage Stamp. I felt like I needed some cool, soft colors, and these just spoke to me.

#69 Practical Orchard

When I was putting these fabrics together, I thought they might look nice together because one is black-and-white, while the other one is grey. Black+white=grey, so it works, right? But then it wasn't until after I cut out the pieces that I realized the black and white fabric DOES have grey in it! I've seriously been looking at that fabric for months and didn't notice it until working with it. Maybe it makes me a complete nerd (which I'm okay with), but I love how working with little pieces in a quilt or a puzzle help me notice the details like this!

34, 35, 36 by Sarah

Oh, I found a great place to photograph my squares as I finish them! I put a little stool (don't mind the scratches, stains, paint, etc.) by our window in the afternoon and there's some great sunlight. They're so evenly lit. Nope, I didn't use a flash. I like it anyway. It shows off the colors. Aaaaand here we go:

 Flock: The picture is upside down from the diagram in the book. The flock is flying south in the book, and these are flying north. I don't really ever see/hear flocks of birds heading north or south here like I did growing up. It's a shame. I loved hearing the canadian geese honking as they flew by signaling the change of seasons.

Flower Basket: What!? no handle!? I need to get on my applique stuff. Truth is I've never done applique and I'm a little scared to mess it up horribly. This one and "basket" will be posted again once I get the handles on.  The bottom of the basket kinda hides because of the white background to the polka dots. Can't decide if I like it like that or not. I do like the green though. 

Flower Garden Path: Here's what I was thinking on this one. Brick path - striped fabric; Flowers - purple fabric; Foliage - green fabric. Turned out a little funky looking, especially since the points don't line up. Oh well. I think it'll look fine with the other blocks around it. Funny thing is I was reading a book called The Quilter's Apprentice for book club this month when I was piecing this one and one of the main characters said she could always tell which quilts her sister had made because the triangle points didn't line up and how it was because she just wasn't patient enough to line them up or re-do them until they lined up. Yep, me, too!

#64, 65, 66

#64 Peace and Plenty

I love the name of this block: Peace and Plenty. When we were little, our mom would sing us, "Love at Home," as our going-to-sleep song. It's her favorite hymn. She knew all the verses, and in one, there's a part that says, "Peace and plenty here abide, smiling sweet on every side. Time doth softly, sweetly glide when there's love at home." Love at home was something we tried for as a whole. We were not always good, and we were not always loving. But most of the time we were fairly loving. We knew we loved each other, and we definitely knew our parents loved us.

So I love the title, I love the idea of peace and plenty, but I don't love the block design. So I decided to make it in a low-contrast coupling of prints. I chose purple: my mom's favorite color is purple, and it comes from her favorite song. And since the prints aren't strikingly different, the weird pattern is kind of downplayed. It turned out nicely in the end.

#65 Peaceful Hours

Oooh, I love this one! I love the blue floral print, and I love the sunburst pattern of the block. This is essentially the color scheme from the book, and I really love how it turned out.

#66 Periwinkle

I kind of cheated for this one, making the center flower out of one print instead of two. Oh well. Pretty blue flowers. When I set out my blocks, I realized I wanted more blue and more dark squares. This fits the bill on both occasions.

31, 32, 33 by Sarah

Ugh. I thought I was so clever in scheduling out some posts to seem like I'm all on top of things. Then I go and post the last post and I see that Chelsea has scheduled out posts all the way through June. Over achiever. :-P

 Evening Star: I wanted to try to do a square that had green and red without it looking like Christmas. So I went ahead and picked one to try that out on that is titled "Evening Star." Great choice, I know. I think I pulled it off though by using the frog prince fabric because it has a little of pink in it so it pulled in the red nicely without screaming, "Santa!"

Farmer's Daughter: I like how the fabrics turned out on this one except that I should have picked a better gray because the anchor print doesn't really show up much. I like the bold red bow or star or whatever it is though. 

 Swastika Farmer's Puzzle: I thought I'd possibly be able to make this look less like a swastika if I reversed the light & dark fabrics. Nope. Oh well. I think it'd be interesting to see what this would look like as a whole quilt. I don't think I'd have the patience to do a whole quilt of this though since I could never get the two sides to line up right. Nope, they're still mis-aligned and I don't even care anymore.

Hello--28, 29, 30 by Sarah

Well, I was so occupied with catching up on my quilting that I didn't realize I had quite a few blocks to post about already! I took pictures of them all today so I can get caught up on posting about them as well. Don't worry, I'll schedule them out so it's like I'm taking the time every other day to sit and post about them. Whoops, did I write that out loud? Here we go.

 Duck and Ducklings: Not much to say about this one. I like ducks. I used squirrel fabric.

 Economy:  For this one I thought I'd tryout using two off-white fabrics with different prints to see how it turned out. I figured it'd be pretty easy to re-do if I end up not liking it. So far I like it. We'll see what it looks like laid out with the other squares.

End of Day: Yikes, don't look, but the center tips don't line up completely. I love how my camera is so sharp that you can see the weave of the fabric. Don't look but I used some pieces with selvage on them. Whoops. Looks like I was on a gray and green fix these days.

#61, 62, 63

#60 Northern Lights

I like the delicate pink floral fabric. I'd been meaning to pair it with a green print, but `I never found one I liked. So even though these pinks aren't exactly the same, I think they work together-- and I even matched them in the daylight!

#61 Old Windmill

Oh wait, is that the same pink print as the first block? Oh, yes it is! Because I am awesome, I accidentally cut a bunch of pink triangles using the fabric from #60 and the template I'd gotten out for #61. So I used it and think it works alright. The dark blue was the first fabric I chose for this block, and I literally had just enough to make these four triangles. I'm glad that tiny scrap got to make a meaningful mark on this quilt.

#62 Ozark Maple Leaf

So, is this because there's a different kind of maple tree in the Ozarks? Or is this the kind of maple leaf quilt block that people make in the Ozarks? I found this page that has a whole quilt of Ozark maple leaves, and it's a beautiful tessellating pattern! I would like to make a whole quilt of it someday. Someday in the distant future. Maybe never. But it's still a cool design!