Sorting Quilting Books And More

 Hello Quilty Friends!  Over the last few days the stitching has come to a screeching halt as I mull over the ideas for my current project.  This seemed like a good time to go through the quilting books and maybe get an idea or two.

It's not a huge stash of books but it's not small either.  Why do I keep collecting books when I rarely make a quilt from them?  Well, they are fun to look through and you never know when I might decide to actually make one of the quilts.

An entire day was spent looking through each and every book and magazine.   Even this one, my very first quilting book given to me by my mother in law in 1995.  Up to this point I had never seen a quilting book.  All my quilts were designed by me from looking at pictures in magazines like Better Homes and Gardens as I sat in a waiting room waiting to be called for an appointment.

It was pretty common during this time for quilting books to have templates as shown below.  So I didn't use the patterns in this book either.  The rotary cutter was still pretty new to the quilting world but I had seen them on quilting shows on PBS or the Home and Garden channel.  After telling my mom about this amazing new tool, mom and dad gave me my very first rotary cutter, mat and ruler for Christmas.

A few years later(2005) I bought my first real quilting book.  With 101 quilt patterns there would be no need to ever buy another book...HAHA!  Silly me! I made one quilt in this book and went right back to the way I has learned to make quilts, drafting them myself.

In the early days of quilt drafting I would trash my "pattern" after the quilt was finished.  Since 2010 this stack of binders, folders and pads of paper is full of my designs.  Most I've made but there's a few in there that I still need to find time to make.  Not to mention the hundreds, possibly thousands in the EQ program on my computer.

After going through every book and magazine I found a few quilt patterns that caught my eye.  They were laid aside from the rest of the books to be stored in my cutting table.

You all know me and how much I love the color red.  This one looks fairly simple and would work nicely for the summer holidays as well as Christmas.

If the quilt was bed sized it made it to the top of the list.  Smaller throw quilts are great for a quicky but being able to use them on a bed is how I'm leaning most of the time these days.  This quilt was designed using Urban Chiks fabrics.  They are still designing new lines of Christmas fabric every year.  This year their new line is called Kitty Christmas and it's adorable.  The grandkids would love it too.

This one caught my eye because of the gazillion half square triangles of which I have plenty.  About 3 or 4,000.  I've lost count.  Since they are already made, it would make for a fairly quick quilt.  If you missed my post on the leftover HST's, here's a link to the last post about them.

The next one is patriotic and you know how I love a good red, white and blue.  Imagine this in my bright red, white and blues. 

And this one would put a dent in those scrap bins. 

I bought this magazine years ago just for this pattern.  It's easy on the eye but bold at the same time.  Does that make sense? 

And I bought this issue for this pattern designed by Erin Russek from One Piece At a Time blog.  Love, love, love Erin's work.  When and if I make this, I'll enlarge it to queen sized.

Another cutie for the grandkids room.  I'm pretty sure I already have enough HST's to make the border.

Stars, stars and more stars in red!  Again, I saw this pattern and had to have it.  Making it larger enough for a queen sized bed is easy, just add a border or two.  And wouldn't you know it, I have enough fabric on hand to make it right now!  Oh this is how UFO's are made!  Stay on course Lea Anne!  No new projects, just ideas.

Fly Into Spring is an Eleanor Burns pattern.  Who doesn't love Eleanor?  She's one of the reasons why I'm here today.  By here I mean totally obsessed with quilting.  She's also the reason there's always scraps on the studio floor.  Not tossing my scraps over my shoulder is a hard habit to break.  Tell  me I'm not the only one who does this from time to time....PLEASE!

In 30+ year of quilting I've never made a log cabin quilt.  I've made a few blocks for a border, but never an entire quilt.  It has some HST's and applique to give it a little WOW.  I think it would be super cute in my happy bright fabrics, don't you?

Well looky here, another star.  Now to find the right fabrics.  I think I'm going to try to make it exactly like this one.  Normally I don't care for the color purple but it makes this quilt shine.  

This is a bucket list quilt.  If I started making the applique today maybe I'd have all of them made in a few years....HAHA!  A gorgeous simple design with a lot of pieces.  This is another I would try to make exactly as shown.

It's fun to dream about the quilts that may someday be but for now they are are just a dream and stored away in a basket under my cutting table.  It's easy access for when and if I take a notion to start something new.

Right now there's weeds to be pulled and more veggies to harvest.  This week I made some dill relish.

And  some cucumber bread which taste pretty much like zucchini bread.  Cucumbers have a little more flavor than zucchini and that flavor shines through just a bit if you omit the cloves in this recipe like I did because I thought it would be too much.  Next time I put them in to see if it hides the cucumber taste.  Mr. Podunk said it was good with the hint of cucumber.

Yesterday I harvested tomatoes and made salsa.  Before stepping foot in the Studio today there's zucchini's to process.  I can't decided if I should make zucchini bread to freeze or cut up the zucchini and freeze them to be used in stir fry.  Of course the quilting side of me says cut them, freeze them and quilt!  Hmmm......