Patriotic Quilt Tops

I got two quilt tops pieced today and a third ready for the border. hurray. Of course it helps when your quilts are small and either consist of a center with borders or orphans. Still counts as progress and I'm thrilled to have more projects lined up to quilt on. Not that I've been doing any hand quilting, but that's about to change.

This first quilt has been percolating for quite a while, which is silly considering how simple it is. Lucy recently posted a pic that has been blogged about before, that shows a wall of doll/mini quilts. It is marvelous. Go look, because her little poison green stars are marvelous too. Anyway, there is an American patriotic quilt with a starred blue center and red and white stripes on either side. I LOVE that quilt and it inspired me to make this:

No need to adjust your set, yes the top border is skinnier than the bottom.

I decided that since it's almost July it might just be time to play with my patriotic orphans. Turns out I've never taken a picture of all of them. Whoops. Anyway. I had already cut out the flaglike bit of fabric and it fit well with the word America so I chose to sew them together and then add a border. I like it. Don't love it, but like it. Will look better quilted, but isn't that (almost) always the case.

And this is the project that has been making me pull my hair out. I got out my orphan Indian Orange Peel arcs to show Finn and I was just hit with the urge to destroy them, uh, make them work. I played with different kinds of crumbs, before settling on cutting each arc into a rectangle 2.25" x 4.5" and sewing them into strips. I was thinking about some kind of Amish-inspired bars, but didn't like how they looked, so the rows ended up getting all whomped together. What a nightmare of seams, all sorts of extra fabric. It was the ugliest sewing job I've ever had.

I've tried all sorts of fabric for the border, including some warm brights from the other side of the colorwheel. The only thing that seems to work in my mind is this turqoise. I need to let this top rest for awhile and see if I fall in love with it. I hate to waste the border fabric, because that I do love.

Kinda boring. Maybe that's why I'm having fun with the red, white, and blue. That is one of the punchiest color combinations out there.

In other news, I broke down and baked the other day. Trying not to, since I think that's why I managed to keep the weight off that I lost after the thyroidectomy. Made a shortbread base with chocolate, toffee bits and pecans. Does it count as fattening if you eat it as your entire meal? I had it for dinner and then breakfast. Baaaad girl.

You know how tv obsessed I am. Well I was channel suring up into the high reaches and discovered a number of movie channels. I found a cheesy vampire movie being shown in English with French subtitles. Woohoo. Unfortunately that's not always the case and the movie selection is sometimes to be desired. I sewed to Predator today, which has surprisingly little dialogue. (Whoever would have that two future U.S. governors would appear in a movie that silly?)