Silver linings

I try to look for the good in everything. Usually, I am successful.

I learned this week that one of my quilter buddies, Judi AKA Karate Quilter, got engaged (YAY!) and is moving to China (BOO!). That makes 3 quilting buddies moving away in just 2 years. As someone who is used to being the one who moves away, not the one left behind, I am finding this difficult to deal with. So what is the silver lining, you ask? I am the beneficiary of stash reduction measures as she packs up to move - woo hoo!

I'd rather have her stay, but I'll settle for her stash scraps.

I played around a bit more with the Nickelmania blocks from this weekend's workshop. I still haven't chosen a layout, but I'm having a great time exploring my options.

Of course, I'm not sure when I'll get to play with it again. I'm off to work shortly, and I am working 12 days straight. Ugh! Sew a little extra for me, won't you?

Distractions

I should be further along hand quilting my Bright Idea quilt, but I've been distracted. First, I stumbled upon a blog of a wonderful wonky quilter, Emily at Em Celebrates, and have lost myself in enjoying her quilts and her adventures. It's funny, I've seen several of her quilts before on Judi's blog, Green Fairy Quilts, but I didn't come upon her blog through Judi. Anyway, upon going back through her entries, I found a quilt that really spoke to me, and immediately thought I could do something like that to use up some of the yo-yos I inherited a while ago (envision yo-yo flowers in urns or vases). I started putting some blocks together trying to stay within a certain color scheme - green, purple and tan/gold (don't ask me why).
I like the blocks, but I don't really like the colors. Do I continue?

Luckily, I didn't have to decide because our Guild had a Nickelmania workshop today with Ann Littleton, using up 5" charm squares that we've been trading in our Guild. Ann brought lots of samples of layouts using the 4-patches and HST that we were making:




Of course, I challenged myself to come up with a layout different from all those presented. Perhaps something on the diagonal. Here are the layouts I played with:

I'm itching to go down to the studio and whip up some more blocks so I can flesh these ideas out a bit. But first, I leave you with some photos of Jason, who sat on the bench with the team today and kept track of the score and timeouts and other basketball-y stuff. For those of you who know my husband, doesn't he look JUST LIKE HIM? Gorgeous! You'd think I had nothing to do with his creation...well, except for the poor kid's height. Mea culpa.