Smitten by Westering Women, Circa 2016--Splendid!

I've kept the pedal to the metal most of the week to get Smitten together:

I added a 1" black solid border and then a 4" black printed floral border.  The first border really helps--the outside edges of the top and bottom contain a lot of bias pieces--using that narrow border and cutting them to fit precisely, brings the quilt into square.  The bold floral print made the quilt the size I wanted and it really seems to work well with all those bright fabrics.  The quilt top is 58" x 73" and I'll quilt it later this spring.  This will be an upcoming class, either summer or fall.

There was a Quilt-Along in 2015 for this quilt--I didn't follow along but you can find that here.

This week Block #2 of Westering Women was posted this week so I got that 12" block done:

Remember Circa 2016? And how I thought I was done?  Fortunately for me, this week there was only one small 3" finished block to make.  Here it is with the Center Medallion portion:

This was easy to keep up with.  Eventually, there will be more blocks to do, I'm sure.

The Splendid Sampler is going strong--a new 6" block each Thursday and Sunday.  There are more than 20,000 people who have signed up worldwide to receive the blocks by email.  The Facebook group has 16, 500 members currently. There are 84 designers providing the blocks.  Lots for people to learn by going to the designers' websites and blogs for tips. Wish I had done a little more research on the fourth block--I used freezer paper for the stabilizer and it was challenging to remove:

Rather than just create and store the 100 blocks over the 50 weeks of this project I decided to sew them together as they are made:

This is a good plan as long as you know for sure how you want to set the blocks.  There will be setting suggestions throughout the year so if you're not sure, just wait.  I know this is what I want, 10  rows of 10 blocks each with 1" finished sashing from dark turquoise.  So the quilt will grow each week until it's done.

I also had a student here all day Wednesday for private lessons.  She had to miss two of my classes earlier this month due to a family emergency so I had her come here and taught her the Leaders/Enders class and Kisses and Hugs--we had fun and went out for a good lunch too:

Kisses and Hugs (Japanese X and +)

Leader/Ender Ideas

I do practice what I preach, usually, and while piecing Smitten, I joined 8 more rows to my tumbler Leader/Ender quilt, brought to you by Bonnie Hunter. 

This probably won't be done by July, when Bonnie reveals the next Leader/Ender challenge--I plan to add 18 more rows to the 27 shown here.  That may not sound like much but it's 1098 more tumblers--still have lots more to cut.  It's easy and I cut them as I'm cleaning up from whatever project I'm doing or just from scraps.  This has all kinds of fabrics in it, batiks, repros, brights, muddy, everything.

My grand-girl Stella is on her way, arriving with her folks shortly.  She'll be 9 months old next week and she is really crawling a lot now.  We'll be chasing her soon.  There will be photos next week!

Let's Quilt!

Barbara