Specialty Rulers

Do you have a lot of specialty rulers/templates that you don’t use much?  I am unable to resist the sales pitches and cute patterns/classes available for these types of rulers.  I store mine in protective plastic page sheets in a three-ring binder (unless they are extra big or extra long) and have often used them just the once to make “that certain” quilt and never used them again.

Well, they came in handy the other day when I wanted to add something extra to a Jelly Roll Race quilt.  This technique makes a very quick quilt top - Wee Folk Art has a good tutorial.  My colorful top looked ok, but was a bit boring and I thought it needed a punch of fun to be a good children’s donation quilt.

I saw a cute Hipster Cat pattern on Shwin and Shwin’s site that I used for inspiration.  Since I didn’t want mine as large as theirs, I made my own pattern and I dragged out these specialty rulers:

I forgot to take a photo of the circle template/ruler that I used for his head, but you can see that I used all of those triangle rulers - lol.  My cat still needs eyes and a nose and to be stitched down, but I think he’s turning out to be pretty cute.  I’ll post his photo again when I get him finished.

Groundhog Day

It's official.

You-know-who has forecast 6 more weeks of winter. 

It's been cold off and on down here in West Central Florida, but that only serves to give us a few days to wear those clothes with the layered look that we like.  Today it is forecast to be sunny and back up to 76 degrees.  Not bad!

But last weekend was still cold and I kept inside to finish this quilt top from long ago.

It had been buried in the to-be-quilted basket for way too long.  One of my Sunshine On-line Quilt Guild members put it together at their Lake Tahoe retreat that I couldn't attend.  My contribution was quilting some of the 100+ tops that they made.  This is the last one to be finished.  It has such cute prints - they were looking at me while I quilted!

Today I'm working on a cat applique to add to a jelly roll top that I thought needed a little something to perk it up.  This is what I have so far:

Happy Chinese New Year!

The beginning of the Chinese New Year depends on the date of the New Moon in Aquarius and can be anytime from Jan 21 to Feb 18^th.  Today (Jan 23^rd) begins the year of the Dragon … but did you know that there are actually 5 dragons?  Each Chinese year is named for an animal that rules that year and every animal of their zodiac has 5 elements associated with it.  This is the year of the Water Dragon – the others are Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal.  The Chinese Lunar Calendar is 2,640 years older than ours and has a 12 year cycle with a different animal for each year – therefore the Water Dragon has not appeared for 60 years.

Babies said to be born in this year of the Dragon are said to be imaginative, full of fun and energetic.  They are doers that make things happen, demanding perfection from themselves and others.  Famous people that were/are Dragons include: Joan of Arc, John Lennon, Sandra Bullock, Salvador Dali, Mr. Rogers and Robin Williams.

If you like to appliqué, there is a darling dragon quilt pattern for sale by Needlesongs called Little Dragons Everywhere:

Click on this link to purchase (I am not affiliated with Needlesongs - I just thought this was cute!):

http://www.creativequiltkits.com/little-dragons-everywhere-applique-quilt-pattern-by-needlesongs.html