Orphan 9-patches

Well, basketball season is officially over for my family.

My youngest and me at the game, wearing our pom poms on our heads.

My husband's team lost in the semifinals yesterday (by TWO HEARTBREAKING POINTS!!!), so all of a sudden, I have a little more free time.   Time to visit my sewing room that I haven't set foot in for quite some time.  I did a little tidying up, and then unpacked a bag of scraps that someone had recently given me.

Lo and behold!  What's this?

There were nine 9-patch orphan blocks in the bag, too!  I could have thrown them into my orphan block drawer, but chose instead to throw them up on the design wall and play around with them a bit.  Add some snowball blocks and some setting triangles from other fabrics that I found in the bag, and I may have the beginnings of little quilt here.  It's busy, but it reminds me of the old-timey scrap quilts that I love.  Hopefully some big, dark borders will calm it down some.

It isn't sewn together yet.  Gotta let this marinate, not sure I'm committed to this.

As a leader and ender while making the snowball blocks, I sewed together a couple more Charming Plus Blocks.  Still not sure what I'm going to do with these, but I love seeing each one come together.

Play time is over, though.  Work calls; I have many college admissions files to read before March 1.  Meanwhile, I'm linking up with Oh, Scrap and Monday Making.

The Start of my Star Sampler

A month since my last post!?!  How embarrassing!  Of course, I have been crazy busy...

And I have been creating.  Lately, it's been A LOT of knitting, but also working on a Star Sampler quilt for a class I'll be teaching.  I'm using a batik charm pack and a coordinating 2.5" strip roll and a gray Kona solid for the background, setting the four different star blocks that we are making with simple Irish Chain alternate blocks.  We are doing the ribbon star

the woven star

the simplified lemoyne star

and the rising star (which I haven't finished yet).

Is it possible I only have 8 blocks done so far??  I need to get cracking!

With three of each star block and 13 alternate blocks, they can make a nice 60" square quilt in no time.  I need to sit down and crank out the rest of these blocks this weekend so I can hang the top in the shop as advertisement for the class.

I've also been working on my row for the 2017 Row by Row Experience, but I can't show you that!

Here's hoping everyone out there is finding some "me" time in all the craziness of 21st century life.