Grammy Squares – Chopin – A Passionate Quilter From Texas

I cannot believe that it is the end of August and we are not in the 100’s anymore! This summer we have had 20 inches of rain here on our quiet little hill. The 100’s appear to be a thing of the past now and I can live with the 90’s and decent humidity! I am so ready for Fall, end of Daylight Savings TIme and a cold winter that would bring us some snow. It has been almost 30 years since we had 16 inches of snow in the San Antonio area! Maybe this year we will have a “real” winter!

I have been working on my Grammy Squares. They are fun to make and I have the process down pat now! I have pre-cut some of my strips but not all. I had so much fabric out on the cutting table and was going to cut the strips as I needed them, but I could not take the “mess” so I have about 12 blocks (strips) ready to sew and the fabric is back in the drawer until I need more strips. I am trying to use up the Summer of Baskets fabric by Moda. There are 2 or 3 of the squares that may not make it in the quilt as the contracts in color did not work as well as I would like. But that decision will not have to be made for a while!

Here are a few of the blocks close up! The first one may be a candidate for “not in this quilt”…. I think I messed up when I used the light green for the first round, and the last picture shows a very dark block. Maybe I will make a pillow top with them!

I am caught up with Circa 2016 (well OK – I have not done the ones for the 26th of August). I hated to waste the 2 extra blocks, so will see if I can use them in the quilt.

I am caught up with Ms Potts blocks. I love the way Blocks 17 and 13 turned out, but when it came to Block 20, I gave up! I tried 3 times to do the stars, EPP, making a whole star (not piecing) with a red batik, and then back to EPP! I gave up – and so I am going to make Block 20 with a bias circle and the 4 flowers on it! May throw in a few leaves, but not the Stars! When it takes me a month to finish a simple block that turns into a nightmare, I am out of there!

And now – Dresden Heaven. I enjoy making these little Dresden plates – so much fun! I have this one down pat also. Today I had hoped to make another 20, but all I was able to achieve was to have them ready to put together! Oh well, tomorrow is another sew day!

I have no idea where I am going on this one, other than to just make them. I may just make the quilt with the small ones, then again if I end up with too many of the same color I can make 2 quilts! I just am enjoying making them.

Have a great week – getaway is just around the corner for us so my machine stitching will probably come to an end for a while after Tuesday.

After much contemplation, I decided to make the Grammy Squares from Sew’n Wild Oaks. I felt so guilty about putting it aside (LOL) that I decided to make one block to see if I wanted to REALLY do this!

The block measures 6 1/4″. The fabric is from a Moda line fat quarter pack from 2010. Then a year or so ago I made a Happy Scrappy quilt with Rosemary Youngs. I changed mine around from her pattern thinking I would use a lot of fabric and ordered more of the fabric. It is absolutely amazing how little fabric goes into a quilt when making it scrappy! Here are the fabrics I am going to use.

and more ….

This bundle is not very well organized so I will do that tomorrow before I start cutting fabric. My plan is to cut out 10 blocks for Grammy Squares and sew them along with my Dresden Heaven. This way I will not become bored!!!

I will now have projects ready to work on while I load a quilt on the long arm and when I get tired, I can go the sewing machine and work on these 2 projects. Happiness is being NUTS, but I seem to be having fun and excited that I have so many choices, quilting, piecing quits, and working on my applique at night!

What more could a quilter want? (30 years to make all the quilts that are waiting in the wings). Have a great evening.