Grey Cat Quilts

I’ve been avoiding projects that are already in progress. I know I need to work on them, but I’m just too lazy to remove hundreds of pins from a sandwich to add necessary inches to the backing. So, I hit a brief period of stagnation once again, with the exception of swap blocks.

Patricia was our sole queen for July in the Granny Block Bee, due to another member needing to leave. She requested Granny Blocks using the colors turquoise, yellow, green and gray. Shortly after I completed my blocks, Patricia, too, needed to leave the Bee. Since my blocks are done, I’m sending them anyway. Hopefully they’ll bring Patricia a little cheer while she deals with everything life has thrown at her recently.

Because Patricia dropped out early enough in July, our August queens in the Granny Block Bee stepped forward with their requests for the month. I’ve finished those blocks already:

Julianne requested blocks using aqua, teal, mustard, dark orange, chartreuse, navy blue and red, with medium/dark gray as the background. She was inspired the this Granny Square Quilt, which used Malka Dubrawsky fabrics. I dug into my stash, looking for more modern prints to match the inspiration quilt.

Sara requested yellow, yellow and more yellow! Nice and easy, as I finally got over my stagnation hump and started cutting blocks for a Granny Block top of my own (more on that later).

So that did it for the Granny Block Bee for June and August, which is really nice. I don’t have to worry about that swap next month, unless the September queens are asked to step forward. I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind if they do.

Next up are my blocks for the Fat Stash Bee. This has been a fun swap to be in. I’ve been challenged quite a bit with this swap, to think outside of my comfortable little box. This month I was challenged to work with text print fabrics, not once, but twice! The first time was for Jane, who’d requested wonky cross blocks, using a solid, or read-as-solid, red for the crosses.

I’ll be honest. I had two challenges here – wonky and text prints. I’ve never really gotten the whole text print thing – I didn’t even own any before this month.

Due to Jane’s distance from the rest of us, being in Australia, it was cheaper for her to order half yard cuts and have them shipping directly to us. She requested two to four blocks from each of us. I made four, because, well, it’s a text print, and I want Jane to get as much of that fabric back as possible. I will probably even send her the leftovers.

July’s request for the Scrappy? Sew Bee It! Swap made me squee a little with giddiness, because I’m a total quilt dork 🙂 Janine asked me if she could use my templates for Swirling Sea of Stars – which just made me super excited to see what she wanted to do with it. I’m even more excited now that I’ve seen her take on it – her blocks are so very different from mine! Janine requested text prints, with white and cream solids for the web portion, and solids for the stars.

I had Kona White and Kona Snow on hand, so that was super easy. What I did not have were the text prints… eBay to the rescue! I bought a bundle of fat quarters of text prints. I used what I needed, and now have a bunch leftover. I have to figure out what to do with them. I’m seeing some swaps or give-aways in my future.

Linking up to Plum and June’s Let’s Get Acquainted Monday Link Up.