Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!

By now it should be obvious that my interests are...eclectic.  If not, then, well...my interests are eclectic.  One of my interests is medieval English history.  It is fascinating stuff.  And how lucky that someone else in the quilting world found it appealing somewhere too?  

A few years back Lizzie House designed a line that that medieval style serfs, kings, pendants and other middle agey stuff. 

 I wholly regret missing out on it, but as fortune would have it, mom was given a few sample charm packs of the line when it went out of print by one of our old reps.  Now when I say sample charm packs...I mean it.  There were very few pieces to each pack.  This quilt is made up of the two packs. 

I love the colors.  I wish I had more!  The border is from Tula Pink's line Fox Field.  Couldn't ask for a better match!  

If the entry title didn't make it plain enough, I've named this quilt, "Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!"  It's not quilted yet, but I have a cool idea...I'm going to quilt it with the lines spoken by the serf in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, WHICH WILL NEVER GET OLD.  I leave you with this...the video is below the gif for you heathens who haven't seen the movie ;-) 

"You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!"

Lifesavers

I have been feeling SO unmotivated lately, hence, no updates.  Getting the flu last week certainly didn't help.  While my fever finally broke on Friday, I still don't feel 100%.  I can't complain though...I haven't had the actual flu since I was 8, and no, I don't get flu shots (unless my grandmother physically drags me to Rite Aid to get one, which, she has done that).  That doesn't explain the few weeks prior, but you know, whatever.  Not motivated, end of story (I guess).

So anyway...I'll try to catch up on posts. 

Here's another scrap quilt I've been working on.  I got the idea from Pinterest. 

 

Apparently, based on seeing it in other pins, this is a quilt from Red Pepper Quilts.  I realized this AFTER I started making it, of course.  I have no idea what the original dimensions are, but I used 5" squares for my Nine Patches, so it's going to be pretty large once all is said and done. The original above has a very neat and tidy color scheme, but I was trying to deplete scraps, so I went with 9 colors to each block, with 2.5" sashing all the way around.

Here's mine...the blocks looks a little gross on their own, I admit it, but I'm pleased with how they turned out when I got the first bits of white sashing put on there..

I need to get the horizontal sashings put on yet, and the rows attached together ( the rows themselves are already assembled), but that's another job for another day.

Work in Progress: Urban Ninja

Every now and then, instead of doing another sample for the shop, I want to dive in to something that doesn't have a deadline...something frivolous and ridiculous and for no other reason than I want to.

A few years ago, Mom gave me three of the pared down charms square packs of Andover's Swoon line.  I say pared down because when one says "charm pack," one usually thinks of Moda's Charm Packs that have 40 or more pieces in it.  Thankfully (for so many reasons) there are other companies doing these packs instead of just Moda - the difference is, is that their packs don't always have as many pieces in it.  These packs from Andover were small - 3 colorways with maybe 5 or 6 pieces per colorway, and only one piece of each per pack. 

I loved this fabric but never found a good pattern for it, and the yardage of it is long, long gone. I decided it was time to just wing it and use it.  I wanted to do a quilt of Friendship Stars, the stars that to me always looked like ninja throwing stars

 Friendship Star (Left)

                            Ninja Star (Right)


Totally the same thing, amiright.

After I sewed all the blocks, I was one block shy of a 5x5 quilt...so there's an empty space for the block that will feature the owner of all those fancy pantsy throwing stars....the Urban Ninja!  I haven't drawn him out yet...but soon. 

Other than being able to be silly about the ninja theme, the thing I'm enjoying most is that even though the pattern itself is simple, it's forced me outside of my comfort zone.  Typically, I wouldn't just put all those colors together in the stars themselves - I don't usually work with an orgy of pattern AND color together, so having all that business in the stars was a little something different for me.  Also, I'm a big fan of tonal prints in unexpected colors for backgrounds, and I don't usually use solids, but this one I did use just solids for the backgrounds.  And, I prefer applique to piecing, so winging even a simple pieced block without a guide is different for me too.

The Urban Ninja snuck up on me and changed my style for this quilt! I don't know when I'll be getting it quilted...hey, maybe I'll try my hand at quilting a bigger quilt too!