Monday, September 05, 2005

Rockin' on the Porch

Hi! I'm Joanne
I'm a 50-something quilter.
My DH and I live in a log home in northern Illinois. We have a lovely front porch with a couple of great rockers and a swing. Rockin' on the porch is a great pastime!
I'm into scrap quilting, Slashing My Stash™, and designing my own quilts, all of which can be done at the same time!
Come on up and Sit a Spell!

I'm just getting this blog set up, so not a lot of intelligent stuff to talk about. It's actually too humid out to be rockin' on the porch this evening and besides, I have to have a colonoscopy tomorrow morning -- don't want to have to go through too many doors to get where I have to go! -- I know... more information than you ever wanted to know!

I spent most of the day on the computer writing instructions for building a quilt for a newsletter I publish. Still have one more quilt to write the instructions for and then it'll be ready to publish. This was a project I thought would be fun to do (the newsletter), and lots of people say they enjoy it, but it does get a little harder each time to come up with new and exciting things to put in it! The focus of it is to make quilts to use up or at least reduce your stash...but stash has a way of breeding in those closed cabinets and there never seems to be less than there was the day before! I try to come up with designs for small quilts using only stash for the newsletter. I also occasionally design a quilt and make a pattern -- I've published one since May! Working on the second one though. In fact, yesterday I spent the day quilting - actually making the quilt from my own instructions! It came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. Might eventually get a picture of it on here....sometime in the future.

I did do a little scrap quilting/designing today -- actually playing with fabric. Just a simple nine-patch with a plain alternate block set 6 x 6.
Bonnie Hunter (http://www.quiltville.com) is my mentor! I want to be like Bonnie when I grow up! She has some great ideas for using scraps and making what I first heard about in The Applique Society newsletter as "Betweens Quilts". Bonnie calls them simply leaders and enders -- instead of using a scrap fabric and sewing over and over it to start a line of quilting, actually use two squares, or strips, whatever to begin and end your sewing for another project. Eventually, you'll have enough "leaders and enders" for another quilt.
Anyway -- back to the nine-patch -- I've been working with fall fabrics and have a lot of 2½" squares that I've cut from the scraps and have been piecing them while working on the pattern quilt. Today I made nine-patches with the fall fabrics -- all mediums and darks. Picked a border fabric from stash that happens to have some black in it and chose black for the alternate blocks -- I think it'll be fabulous, but I'll know for sure tomorrow when I get it put together!

Time to head up to the recliner -- JR, our Jack Russell Terrier, is wanting my lap for a long nap!

4 comments :

Bonnie K. Hunter said...

Hi!!! My ears are burning, so I had to come over and say hello :c)

I'd love to see pics of that fabulous 9 patch! I'm sure it will look great!

In Stitches - - -
Bonnie :c)

Quilts And Pieces said...

JoAnne - I want to be Bonnie when I grow up also! :)

Quilts And Pieces said...

Hey I just looked up Byron! I was just near your house on Saturday! Well almost - I went to the quilt shop in Rockford! I LOVE that store!

If you want to send me an email go to my profile and you'll see a link to email me.

I'm fairly new to blogging also, but I do see that you don't have the verification on for your posts, your going to want that or you'll get spammed!

Finn said...

Hi Joanne, so nice to find a new quilter in our blog community. I didn't look to see if you were a maverick as yet, but your are welcome, welcome, welcome. Scraps are my passion. I don't I have any obsessive/complulsive tendancies except for my scraps of fabric.
Remember that crazy squirrel at the beginning and end of Ice Age, well....that's about where I am...*VBG*
I look forward to seeing your quilts and learning more about you. Finn