Amish with a Twist: Sawtooth Star

I guess I thought I was showing each block as I did them... turns out i haven't been. I'll work on it.  Today we worked on half-square triangle.  I think one can never practice half=square triangles enough.  This block is a four-patch constuction with two half square triangles.  Do you see it?

My First Color Wheel

I took a class at Acorn Quilts in Rockford.  Have you ever been there?  It is a beautiful store.  The class room is a little small, but this was mostly lecture so it was fine for the eight of us who took the Color Theory class.  We learned how to read the wheel, the subtle differences in the tertiary colors (red-orange vs. yellow orange). Then we looked at paint chips and made mini wheels.  Paint chips are hard.  The color variants are so slight, it takes a good eye.

The instructor talked to us about reading our stash of fabrics and building up in the areas we are lacking.  The most fun was letting us go out into the store and grab bolts of fabric and making our ideal color wheel.  We had homework: to find the colors in our stash and make a wheel.  I'm proud to say I had at least one of every color but yellow.  No true yellow.  Entirely too much pink and blue and brown.  But, can you have too much blue fabric?  Hmmm... let me think about that.

There's more to do for homework... I'll share that later.    But... here it is, my first color wheel.  I enjoyed the process very much and will be pursuing other color wheels in my future.

Also, I can't really sew in a circle.
I'll need to work on that...

Status Report

I'm a sewing machine... wait. That doesn't sound right. I'm a sewing maniac. Yes, much more accurate. As time allows, Sharon tries to quilt, quilt, quilt. Well, piece really.

In February I went a little fabric shopping crazy. Kah-ray-zee. On my blog feed I've been seeing future projects and wanted to get the fabric before it sold out. So I bought fabric.

I've also been working on my BOM project. I'm a little behind: the project gives me three blocks to complete a month. I did January in time, but I've only done one block for February. It was practicing half square triangles. You remember half-square triangles from my Basics class, right?  When you put four half square triangles together you get a windmill.  Well, my BOM for February is focusing on half-square triangles.  I was going to finish my February projects this weekend.

Then it snowed.  It snowed nine inches and I was home and needed something to do.  So I started one of those rainy day projects.  This project was one of the first projects I wanted to complete when I decided that quilting was for me.  So I got the fabric that I purchased in my February Fabric Frenzie, and started.

Did you guess? Yes!  It involves, almost exclusively, half-square triangles.  100 of them so far.

there are 19 windmills

There are 24 large half square triangles

there are 100 half square triangle in all.  I love the color combinations.

Now what?  Well, I need a place to put everything together.  Placing my squares in the order i want them on the ground isn't conducive to my sad knees.  I need a large table top.  Also, the fabric isn't ready for purchase.  I've learned that pre-cuts are sold before the yardage (marketing geniuses at work).  

Also, I won a blog challenge:

... hey that's me!

.... and I want to buy the border, binding, and backing for this quilt with this gift!

It's so exciting, isn't it?