Thimbles, Loitering Quilts, and Little Quilts To Go

Yesterday was an overdose of fun at Silver Thimbles Quilt Club. If you could bottle up the energy, creativity, friendship, and fun in that room, we could power America for at least a week. The usual Saturday gang was there and also some Friday people who I don't get to see much of outside of blogland including Karmen. (PS: I forgot my camera so you'll have to visit Pat at silverthimbletalk.blogspot.com for photos)

I finally figured out who to give my Bonnie Hunter Double Delight quilt to so I brought that to work on. This is one of my Loitering Quilts. You know the kind. One of those projects you always carrying around and work on for awhile, then put aside, then pick up again, then wonder why you started it in the first place, then work on again, then get annoyed with because it's always in the way and taking up space on your work table...a loitering quilt. Now that this quilt has a purpose, maybe it will finally get done.

I was somewhat dismayed to find out the Squaring Up Elf had not visited the project bag and finished squaring up all these square in a squares.
She is so fired. These are all oversized, which is a good thing since apparently I sewed some of them on Planet Crooked. So I had lots of trimming to do. Trimming is good at Thimbles because you can chat and trim better than chat and measure.
These are the two types of blocks for the quilt
Did you notice that there are nine-patches in here? One of the reasons for this Loitering Quilt is there are 500 million 3 1/2" nine-patches in this quilt. I have just finished making 900 million for Pat's Scrappy Nines (although if you ask her, she says there's 168 or some such number). I have 70 (!!!!) more nine-patches to make for Double Delight. So I worked on that too. yea.....

The project for Thimbles this month is a quilt I have already made (see Karin's in progress here). Since I am on a one-job budget now, I am trying to resist buying stuff at Thimbles. It was really difficult this month because Mary Ellen of Little Quilts brought the whole dang store to Thimbles and showed us all the new kits, fabrics, rulers, projects, etc. (Little Quilts To Go!) I remarked to Karin that it was like none of us had ever seen fabric before! I bought a little bundle of shirtings on sale. Whew! It was close!! Mary Ellen showed me a great ruler for trimming square in a squares and I resisted for now. If I ever make another quilt with a zillion sq.in a sq., it will be nice to have but I really try not to buy lots of specialty rulers because inevitability a newer, better, easier one comes along in a few months.

I also received the directions from math genius Kristie for our next swap. Not only is she a wonderful person but she figures out all the fabric math figuring the rest of us avoid. This is the third swap for our little group and I haven't started the last two. Yet, it still seems like I am busting stash if not really. We are swapping 5" square for this quilt from the book Nickel Quilts by Pat Speth. Kristie figured out we needed to each give 28.8 5" squares to each person but she rounded to 30. Although I first (jokingly) insisted that I was going to do 28.8 squares, I then realized this caused more math ( 0.8 of 5" YIKES!) and capitulated.

So today is more sewing and making nine-patches.