Fairy Tale Forest

I'm not one to join a BOM (Block of the Month) because I like my quilting to be different from others.  If I'm putting all that time, energy and money into something, I want it to be unique, to show my personality.  Having said that I fell in love with DuckaDilly's Fairy Tale Forest pattern.  It's paper pieced which I enjoy doing.  I signed up for the 12 month course.  I have received Box 10.  

 

I recently finished Box 3. 

                                                      Two to a box: This is block 6

I have a lot of different white fabric but I don't have a lot of yardage for any one, so I'm using different whites for the background. 

In this one I have sewed various white scraps together and then did a cross hatch

Each month we are given a specific amount of fabric to complete the block.  When mistakes are made sometimes you don't have the fabric you need.  Since I don't want mine to look like everyone else's this is just fine with me.  I will cobble together what scraps I have leftover to make the block

My Kind of Trees

Recently I was reading someone's comment on a quilting blog that they had had to help someone clean out their relative's fabric stash as the person had passed on.  She talked about what a daunting task this was (?) (Personally I'd love to go through someone else's stash and check it out          however . . .) Her recommendation was that if a person had that much fabric they should be using it.  At least make the top.  It was a lot easier to go through tops than fabric.

I thought about that.  I do have plenty of fabric and recent events have given me time on my hands.  Nobody ever said I had to make these tops into actual quilts.  What if I did go through all my books/magazines/printed off instructions and made the tops?  What a concept!

I have several boxes full of scraps and I love making these into diamond shapes.  The thing is I have 3 quilts made exactly the same.  They look different as far as scraps and background however, the same pattern.  I need to find a new pattern and I found this one in American Patchwork & Quilting, February 2018. Here it is.  In case you can't tell they are trees.

The butterfly background I have had since I worked in a quilt shop in the '90's.  And it's now small enough that it can go in the scrap box (Yay!)

I am also making my quilts, for the most part, smaller.  I don't need more quilts on my bed.  I have three spots in my house where I can hang and change out quilts/tops at will.  If I do decide to make it into a quilt it won't cost me as much as a king size and it won't take me as long to get the binding on.

Also, since I have an embroidery machine -- put that thing to work!  I have a couple of designs that form a frame.  I'm going to do up those and attach them to my tops. I've seen so often someone finding an old, beautiful quilt while they're out shopping and they have no idea who made it or any of it's history.  The time that someone put into that, lost forever.  So your family isn't interested.  Someone out there will be. When I'm gone and my kids take these to the Salvation Army or Goodwill or wherever, my name with information will be there for the person who finds it and actually wants it.

Can you imagine 100 years from now someone saying they have an old quilt by J. R. Armstrong.  'Oh, I have one, too.'  'So do I!'  'How many do you think are out there?  Maybe we should compile them in a book?'

Hey!  What if one of my quilts ends up living on Mars?