Sewing Rainbows

It was absolutely great to be back sewing after ten days away. I've barely set foot in the sewing room since the beginning of Mike's illness. I was just sort of standing at the entrance and tossing stuff in. As a result, it was a disorganized mess, and I needed to take some time to organize things before I could even think about sewing.

And given the storm of the past week and a half, it seemed a good time to get caught up on my little ladies for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Since I'm three months behind, I'd say it's a good time for a lot of reasons. These blocks are a little tedious to make, and I spent all afternoon on the three I made today. The skirts are paper-pieced, and since that means they end up a mirror image of themselves, I start there so that I can keep the rest of the colors in the block straight as I go.

The remainder of the block is traditionally pieced, and the next step is to decide on the flesh tones for each block, and then to add the sleeves and hands.

After that, I add the legs and the shoes.

Finally, I make the heads and decide on hair color for each of my little ladies.

Then I sew them all together! Here's September's baby blue:

October's black:

and November's brown:

And here are all my little ladies! Just one block to go before this quilt is finished.

So that was a good day's work, and I am really loving how this quilt is looking despite the tedium involved in making the blocks.

Here's something else I want to tell you about. Did you know that one of the astronauts currently working and living on the International Space Station is a quilter? Meet Karen Nyberg. If you click on this link, she's filmed the cutest video about quilting in space. In the video, she invites all quilters to make one star block and submit it to be sewn into a quilt that will be displayed at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in 2014. Here's the scoop.

Click on that image if you need to to make it larger. Cool, huh? I don't know about you, but I'm going to make one of these blocks. How much fun is that?

Finally, you have just a few hours now to link up with your October NewFO's. I'll be selecting and posting the winner of this month's needle nanny tomorrow morning. Don't miss out!