Moving It Forward Monday: The "Cotton Boll" Blocks Are Finished!

Ta Da! And one day early!

I had managed to stay on track making these blocks for "Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll" as my "Block-A-Day" project for the first half of the month.  Yeah, stayed on track right up to last Friday when the usual "squirrel" diversions happened (more on that later).  

I had hoped to catch up over the weekend but only managed to get Friday's block done on Saturday and then had to spend Sunday die cutting more red and neutral HSTs and making more of the pieced border strips for the remaining blocks.  So today I decided to just finish up both of the weekend blocks as well as the last two blocks that were scheduled to be made today and tomorrow.

Now with the last of the blocks done, I plan to pack this up to take with me when we go to visit my MIL at the end of the week.  I'm hoping to layout all the blocks and put the top together while we are away but we'll see if that happens since I also have other projects I am taking with me.

Now, as for that "squirrel":

Yet another Valentine's Day project

I saw Kathleen Tracy's Valentine's Day Mini mystery quilt project on her blog last month and it was just perfect for a recent conundrum.   When I had finished the "Cherry Crunch" quilt last month,  I put it on the living room chair.   Hanging above the cabinet next to the chair was the little "Hearts & Flowers" mini quilt on display for the Valentine's Day holiday.  I was surprised that the "red and white" color scheme of "Crunch" didn't seem to mesh all that well in the space with the mini quilt.  Although the mini quilt has red fabrics in it, it reads more pink overall.  I would have thought that since pink is a tint of red they should look good together.

So my solution was that maybe if I made a pillow with some pink and red in it that could sit in the chair it might help the two get along better --- even though they would not hang out together for very long in any given year!  I wondered what I could make for that and as soon as I saw Kathleen's design I thought:  "that's it!".   With all the red fabrics I still have lying around right now, I decided to see if I could find a few that might work for it.  I actually picked the block and border corner square fabrics out quickly and then found a good print for the borders in my Civil War reproductions stash.  

However,  I had more trouble choosing the background fabrics.  The scrappy neutrals in "Crunch" actually read more towards light beige/tan over all in comparison to the mostly white background fabrics I used in the mini quilt.  I wanted a light neutral that would bridge the two.  What I had really hoped was that I had more of the Jo Morton stripe with pink buds that I had used for the vertical sashings in my "Civil War Strippie" quilt.  That print would be similar to what Ms. Tracy used in hers and bring more pink into the background.  

The striped print on the right is from Andover fabrics "Lucinda's Needle" line.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more of that around in the stash or scraps.  So after auditioning a few fabrics, the light tan with brown branches worked the best.  Kathleen had used scrappy backgrounds for the little envelope blocks but at this point I didn't want to do a lot more auditioning so wanted to find one print that could work for them all.  At first I tried using the wavy textured light inner border print I had used in "Crunch".... 

.....but thought it too light and "blah".

What surprised me was a sort of mod print with "X's" turned out to be the best choice to my eye of the fabrics I had on hand.  It also works in that "X" stands for "kisses" in Valentine's iconography.  Of course that meant taking the blocks completely apart to replace the fabric, sigh!  

I like the final top although I am now debating on whether to add some appliqued hearts or maybe quilt it with heart motifs using red thread.  Of course with Valentine's Day well and truly over until next year and with many other priorities on the list for March, I'll settle for just having a finished top for now.  

BTW:  Kathleen recently did a great blog post on how she displays her mini quilts (and most of them are made up in reproduction fabrics).  Check it out here!

For the rest of the week, I will be pulling stuff together to take on the trip!