Patriotic Crazy

I spent yesterday being productive in a lazy kind of way. Got grocery shopping out of the way and then spent the afternoon going through magazines, ripping out articles I want to keep and then tossing them (the magazines, not the articles).

Here I was worrying about how dull my blog is going to be over the next few months, yet ya'all seem to be happy seeing the old stuff over again, so that gives me something to write about after all.

This is my Patriotic Crazy quilt. It's a cotton crazy - made similiarly to traditional crazy quilts, only in cotton and without any of the embroidery. It's like Bonnie playing with crumbs , only I don't make my units into consistently sized blocks.

It's about 18" by 20" and was inspired by Gwen Marston's "Liberated Quiltmaking." I like the quilt, I'm pleased with how it turned out, but I did learn that when I'm working with fabrics that are this busy I don't want to use so many scraps this tiny. I've gotten better about throwing away little tiny bits, but I always figured that if a scrap was 3/4" by 3/4" (or even an eensy bit smaller) it was big enough to save...

This quilt top wasn't constructed in the usual fashion. Instead of making the central bit and then surrounding it with borders, I made two parts. I had an upper section with border on three sides and a lower section, also with three sides bordered. Then I joined them unevenly.

This unit is 2.75" square. Roughly. It looks way bigger on my monitor than it does in real life. If you're trying to figure out the construction, remember that the shorter the seam, the earlier it was sewn.

I did a bit of fussy cutting to get the wonderful flag in this unit. That tiny white rectangle is a bit less than a quarter inch across. I told you I love tiny pieces and they're so easy to work with on a project like this.

This tells you how big of a geek I am. I actually wrote the Tour de France schedule down so I would know when the rest days are and when we get the exciting mountain stages. When I watched the race in the states, it was always on in the morning and rarely caused a scheduling problem. Now it's on right at the time I should be making dinner and it's causing chaos.

Can't believe how little the American press is playing the race up this year. Several Americans have a great chance at it with Lance retired and so many condenders dropped due to a big doping scandal.