4th of July In Progress And New Toy

The square with the appliqued star has corners that one place labelled snowballing. I put a smaller red square in the corner of a blue one, then marked it and sewed diagonally. Then trim excesses of both colors--so easy and love the look, which otherwise made the star look lost in the middle. Sorry, but I still can't figure out how to get pictures where I want them to be very well, so this seems a bit disjointed!!

These are squares for my 4th of July wallhanging. They're different sizes and will need some extra strips added to make similar sizes. Patterns were from various places--a couple books I have and blocks or ideas I found online and changed around each one some. One book I just got is 301 Country Christmas Blocks and came from amazon.com through Goodwill. It was used and cost $2.41 and $3.99 to ship, but has a lot of fun pieced blocks, plus applique and other ideas. Little more than 2 cents a block! The star points in the center of the ladybug block were made using directions in Quilt In A Day's Victory Garden book. Really simple using her little ruler, but I think she has directions using a regular ruler, too.

I love this one with the red cross in the middle. It's called hearth and home and was just two colors with light in middle and outsides. All of them are really quite easy to make, some just take longer than others. Love the yellows in this one.

This is the first time ever trying the blanket stitch on my machine--thinking of tearing it all out--not really pleased with it. I love the corners of this though and the hearts themselves turned out well. Corners are pretty easy to make--lay two squares right sides together, then draw a diagonal line and sew 1/4 inch away on both sides of the line. Cut on the line you drew, press open and put the two squares on top of either other again and draw another diagonal line and sew as before and cut apart. http://quilting.about.com/od/quickpiecingtechniques/ss/quarter_squares_2.htm shows how to do them. The picture doesn't look like they're all equal squares but they are!! A Is For Alligator is a baby quilt that had a center part I made smaller for the square with red check on the outside. I'll probably use the actual pattern for our soon to be born grandbaby if it's a boy. I'm rooting for a girl, and could use the same pattern in girly colors. The alligator pattern really showcases cute character fabrics and since a bunch of owly prints flew into my house this week it'd work really well for that.

I'm thinking about doing it quilt as you go. I've not tried that before so would like to try it on something smallish. On the 3rd our church is having an Independance Flag Ceremony and Breakfast, so may use these as little center pieces for the tables before they get sewn into the actual quilt. I'm really happy with all of these and think most of them would make a pretty quilt of one kind of block.

Got Donna Dewberry's strip cutter today and used that for the strips on two of the squares. It works just like the paper cutter I've used for years. Can cut strips up to 13 inches and 4 layers of fabric. I got it through Joann's and used a 50% off coupon, so felt like it was a very good deal. Always fun to have a new toy and new material.