Teeny Tiny Little Blocks

When I said I was going to finish off the latest Shop Hop names yesterday, I probably jumped the gun a little bit. By the end of the morning's slow-stitching session, I still had this much left.

Truly, I will finish them off this morning...no excuses.

A short trip to the grocery store was in order yesterday. The broccoli from our last CSA share had died in the crisper, and so I had no vegetable for dinner. Mike said he'd go to the grocery store with me if I went to the hardware store with him. Neither of us accompanies the other into our designated destinations, but we offer our full support to one another from our respective seats in the car. And so it was. Along the way we picked up a wreath for the front door.

A wreath at the front door is one of my favorite things about Christmas. They don't require watering, they don't take up space in the living room, they don't drop needles on the carpet, cats can't knock them over, and they last a long time. Oh yes, and they're so festive. So there's that. I'm still pondering what to do about a tree this year. We'll return to this topic in a later post.

When we'd run our respective errands, we came home. It was time to make my way into the sewing room. Believe it or not, there is a method to the madness in my sewing room. It has nothing to do with cats, and everything to do with my white board. While we were traveling last year and there was little time to think about sewing, I thought about sewing all the time. Mainly, I thought about all the projects I want to make before I die, and I came up with a list of categories of things to keep me busy; to-wit:

My method is to continue working monthly on the unfinished projects, and even those have categories. When I feel I've done enough work on the unfinished quilts and there is still time left in a month, I turn to the white board to see what kind of new thing I can start. Also, I've been limiting myself to projects that can be finished in a single month. I'm trying hard not to add to my list of unfinished projects until the oldest of the old are at least to flimsy stage.

If some of those categories don't make sense, then just know that "PINS" are Projects I Never Started. Those are the patterns I couldn't live without and then proceeded to live quite nicely without ever starting them. There are LOTS of those. "Finish it Off," refers to sets of finished quilt blocks that still need to be sewn into a flimsy. For the time being, there are none of those. "Blockbuster," refers to my UFO's still being completed one block at a time. There are really only four of those, since I don't include the embroidered quilts in that grouping. The rest are probably self explanatory.

So the only things left on the list are "mini" and "traditional." And I know I'll be starting at least one traditional quilt for next year's Rainbow Scrap project. With that in mind, it seemed like a mini was a good idea, and I turned my attention to this book:

I like this book because it has some great tips and some great patterns. All of the patterns include cutting instructions for the same quilt in three sizes...from doll quilt size down to mug rug size. And when I'm talking about mini, I mean a real mini...mug rug size. Yesterday, I settled on this pattern. I'm kind of new to mini quilts, and the difficulty level on this one read something like, "Testing the Waters." And that describes me to a T. Here is the quilt pictured in the book:

For the outer border, I chose this fabric. I have a couple of fat quarters like this that have been in my stash a very long time. It came as a part of a fat quarter bundle, and there are other color combinations as well. I chose this one.

For the inner border, I settled on black. I still have several hunks of black fabric (approximately half a yard) that was cut from the edge of a quilt many years ago. I keep chopping away at it, and it continues to be the same size it ever was. Possibly, it is alive and growing. No measurements have been taken, but I'm very suspicious. I'll use that consistently for all the blocks. I decided to make the tiniest square inside each block and the middle square all in black.

That means I'll be choosing two contrasting colors for the remaining fabrics in the blocks, and I'll be able to use my smallest scraps in these. It took hours but, finally, I had the first ones done. Fortunately each set of cuts is enough to make two blocks. (I was only expecting one, and so the project will go twice as fast as expected.)

Then I made the second set of two. The unfinished blocks are 2-1/4 inches. When they're sewn together, the finished blocks will be 1-3/4 inches.

Fun, huh? My blocks are a little wonky, but I don't mind. I'll just continue on with these today. I need 12 more. It's doubtful I'll get them finished today, but one never knows.

Today I'll be making up a grocery shopping list. Except for doing another drawer as a part of my ongoing purging quest, there's nothing else on the agenda. It's a cold morning and rain is on the way. Sounds like a good day for sewing, doesn't it? Tiny blocks will accumulate.