Well, I did do some cutting the other day. I cut the fabric for the Berkeley block and for the 3rd month of the American Beauty BOM. I also got the Berkeley block all marked but have not yet started piecing it. I think I will get to that later today, but first I want to machine piece the American Beauty block so that I am getting closer to caught up before I pick up the next block on Saturday.

No, it is not my plan to head for California. Unfortunately. Berkeley is the name of the next block in the book. It appears to be an original block by Marsha McCloskey as I can find no mention of it in any of my research attempts. It also requires only 3 fabrics and does not appear quite as difficult as Bear's Paw. (Although I must admit that if the block had turned out perfectly straight I might

Yes, I have spent some of today finishing the Bear's Paw block! Let me just mention that there are a lot of little pieces and a lot of bias sewing. I'm guessing there is an easier way to put it together somehow, but I could be wrong about that. This is the step where I started second guessing my fabric choices as usual. Also my cutting skills. So far each of those sections has 6 pieces in it.

There sure are a lot of little pieces for this! The first step is to join all the half square triangles. I must confess that I didn't read carefully and cut twice as many red and white half squares as I was supposed to! But better too many than too few, right. (Please note, these have only been finger pressed, not really pressed.) The next step is to join some of these squares together like this

I haven't actually fallen off the face of the earth. Really. I have just been enjoying a girl's weekend with my sister and eldest daughter. I did bring my hand piecing with me, but I haven't gotten much done because we have been having fun girl time. So this is just a quick update. Since I am posting this from my iPad, I can't get very fancy or add pictures anyway, so maybe it's just as well I

According to Jinny Beyer's book, this block has several names besides Bear's Paw: Premium Star (published by Nancy Cabot in the Chicago Tribune May 5, 1953), Bear's Tracks, Bear's Foot, Bear's Paw, Cross and Crown, Duck's Foot in the Mud, Goose Tracks, Hand of Friendship, Lily Design, Path of Thorns (Nancy Page in the Birmingham News August 6, 1935), Cat's Paw (different shadings - Nancy Page the

So, apparently, the most difficult part of completing this block was taking the pictures. Who'd have thought that would be the case? Especially since I bought a new camera about a month ago. First, the tale of the camera! So, last summer, just before a bridal shower she was helping to throw for a wedding in which she was a bridesmaid, my youngest daughter's camera died. Good mother that I try to

Well, it is Friday and the last day of this two weeks of working 5 days for me! I'm just not used to this anymore, and I keep thinking that maybe I'm too old for so much work. (Doesn't that make it sound like I have been overworked? The truth is I have been sitting in an office for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, waiting for someone to need help. Yes, I did spend a few days updating the help

Here is the completed Aunt Vina's Favorite block. I like the way it looks, although you would never know that the red parts were actually considered dark when making my fabric choices. But it does look kind of nice. I am adding a poll to find out which of the A blocks people like best. I think I mentioned yesterday which I like best, although I do like this one too. But let me know which is

No, those are not in the correct order. But yes, we are up to the last 2 seams for this block. And, no, they still haven't been pressed. As you can see, I found a way to photograph on the carpet here at work. The carpet isn't a very neutral color, but at least there is no irritating flash blob in the middle of the picture. I'm kind of putting off doing the actual sewing because I can't do

I was able to make a tiny bit of progress on this block yesterday. Obviously, when I am at work, work comes first. But I was able to get the light colored triangles onto the four patch units, as you can see in the pictures below. Note: I am finger pressing because I am hand piecing, so the units don't always lie flat. This makes the pictures a little less than perfect looking. Also, since I am at

I was able to make a bit of progress on this block at work last week because some of the work I was hoping to get finished last week wasn't ready yet. I hope I get that work done this week, but in the meantime, here are a couple of pictures of what I did get finished on this block. Once again, I am sorry for the glare. I think I will try putting a sheet of plastic under them if I do some

I guess I will get to do a little something this week after all. So on to Aunt Vina's Favorite! Apparently, this block is a traditional block that goes by some other names such as Butterfly (Nancy Cabot), Richmond (Hearth and Home), Pinwheel (the Kansas City Star), and Lucy's Four and Nine (Meeker). I've seen the Aunt Vina's Favorite attributed to Aunt Martha, and I've also seen an alternate

Well, I have to say this one was a fairly easy block, especially compared to the previous block! (And the upcoming block, but we won't go there yet.) And yet it still puckers a little. Ah, well. The first step in sewing the block together was to sew two triangles onto each of the paisley squares to make corner triangles. I had taken a picture of that, but for some reason my computer decided that

Once again, it was cutting day! I cut the fabric for the second American Beauty BOM block. I figure I need to get cracking on that one since I pick up block 5 next week. I'm machine piecing that one. I must confess that so far I don't especially care for the Marti Michell Templates we're using - but that probably says more about what a lousy cutter I am than the templates themselves. I kind of

Now that I have two blocks completed, I can start counting down. 118 to go! Maybe I won't start counting down quite yet. That sounds like a lot of blocks. Block Number Three is called Art Square. It apparently appeared in issues of the Ladies Art Company Catalog, which was first printed in 1897. In Jinny Beyer's The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns, there is no asterisk next to the name of

I have nothing to do today except sew and blog! I have completed the Antique Star block! When last we saw our block, I had sewed together two little triangles to make a square and then added two more triangles to make bigger triangles - several of them. (You can count how many in the previous post.) Next was using those triangles and a light colored triangle to make something that looks like

Yes, I did more work last night after posting the blog. I made quite a bit of progress on the block. First, I cut the fabric. (Duh!) The speed of this was aided by the fact that I could use my Accuquilt Go! cutter for the 5 inch center block and the 2 inch squares for the half square triangles. You remember how much I love to cut and how inept I am at it, right? Getting to use my toy added to

Here is the completed Air Castles block. Yes, it looks more crooked than it really is (maybe), and I haven't squared it up, but it is finished and pressed. Some reflections on making this block: I should have trimmed the blocks with the triangles and made sure they were exactly 3 1/2 inches square before trying to assemble the rest of the block. That would have prevented some of the ripping out

It Yes, I'm back already! I am almost done with the block. Here is the most recent picture.  As you can see, this hasn't been pressed yet, and I still need to sew the last two seams.  But the end is in sight!

I haven't really made any progress since getting home from Chicago. I have to take the next section apart even more than I thought, so I will work on that in a few minutes. But here is a picture of the first section so far. (Unlike most of the blocks I've done, the sections in this one are vertical as opposed to horizontal.) On a brighter note, I bought several fat quarters of Michael Moore's

One of the things that originally made me wonder if I would want to hand piece quilt blocks is the fact that it adds an extra step to the preparation before you can actually start sewing. You have to mark a quarter inch line on each piece in order to know where to sew. This just sounded to me like more picky stuff that I didn't want to do. However, if you are only doing the marking a block at a