Sewing for Myself!

Now that I'm all caught up with birthday blocks, I've been able to do some sewing for myself!  My project of choice:  Sandi's Basket Quilt Along over at Piecemeal Quilts.  I've been lucky enough to be able join Sandi and the group of wonderful ladies she quilts with once a month, in person!!

It's sooooo nice to have quilting friends!

Anyway, these wonderful ladies are putting together basket blocks from instructions by Sandi.  All of the instructions are available on her blog.  Just scroll down and look for them on the right hand side of the page.  They're in PDFs, so you can save them for later or print to work on now.

The last two sessions with Sandi and the ladies, I was able to see some of their basket blocks.  It's really fun to see how much we all differ in our fabric/color selections.  Me?  I chose to go with a white, black and red color scheme.  Very striking, very fun.  

Then I got to my stash...  Still loving the red, white, and black.  But it needed something.




Some red.

Check.

  

Some black.

Check.

Lots of white.

Check.

And some...

LIME GREEN!

I'm a big one for 'zinger' fabrics.

Make it POP!

I am just loving the way this is coming together!  I took liberties with the color placements in the patterns - I just can't follow a pattern to the 'T'!  

And of course, I had to buy fabric to enhance this quilt:

Aren't these just gorgeous together?  I'm debating the polka dot or the wavy, red/black stripe for the binding. I think I might have the perfect red/black Alexander Henry print in my stash for the backing - depending on how much I need once I'm done.

The plan is to make two more blocks this weekend, along with at least one set of Birthday Blocks for the month of April.  I also need to make at least one large tote bag for the International Quilt Festival in Rosemont, IL.  That's coming up quickly, and, well, it's a quilt show.  That means fabric.  That means I need something to carry my goodies in, since backpacks are verboten.  

Maybe I'll even make a matching roll-up for my quilting tools, so that I can use the tote bag for taking projects with me to my quilting activities.  

Oh! Speaking of quilting activities...  I've gone and joined the Milwaukee-Madison branch of the Modern Quilt Guild.  That's TWO groups of quilters that I get to hang out with!!  Our second meeting should be coming up this month.  It looks to be a sewing day!  See?  This tote thing is becoming more and more necessary.

Well, I'm off to put together another basket block.  These things are addictive!