Common little 9 patches

My leaders and enders have been these little 9 patches for a long time…maybe 8 months. 

Just little combinations of darks and lights.  I have no idea how many are stuffed into this drawer anymore.  The plan is to alternate them with solid blocks for a Linus quilt next year. 

They’re made of 1 1/2” squares.  I’m toying with the idea of piecing the strips that I’d need to turn them into 49 patches so that I can use larger solid blocks to set them with, maybe saving me a bit of time.

These are so easy.  I have a small drawer where I drop my 1 1/2” squares and I just pull out 5 darks and 4 lights at sort of random and sew them together.  I say sort of random because I can’t just do them at random or all the darks would be brown and black because that seems to be most of the dark squares.  I try to alternate in some dark greens and dark oranges and deep reds and purples, just to keep the variety consistent. 

I love building up things like this for next year, which is a Linus year for me, so I’ll be making several quilts to donate to them.  I donate in alternating years, so all the little extra blocks I’ve made this year will be used up next year.  I read in QNM recently about a lady that saves her extra blocks and at the end of the year, she makes a quilt that is like all her projects in review.  Mine is the same principle.  I make and cut stuff this year and use it up next year for quilts to give away. 

I don’t quite understand why the alternating years works for me.  It seems that it would be easier to make 5 quilts every year than it would be to make 10 quilts in alternating years, but it just doesn’t seem to work out that way for me.

Sydney is in a basketball tournament starting tomorrow and if they win any of their Friday games, then they’ll have games on Saturday.  I’ve decided that it makes me a bad person to hope they don’t win, so I’m not hoping that.  I’m not.  Really, I’m not.  But, it sure would be nice to have Saturday open.  At the rate I’m sewing, I’m never going to catch up to my ambitions. 

It’s good to have ambitions. Keeps me young.

This morning, I got one sashing strip sewn to each of the 12 Hurricane Sandy blocks.  Erin has received enough blocks to make more than one quilt.  And, they’re still coming in.  I am so happy for her, being able to coordinate this.  And, so happy that so many of my followers hopped over and volunteered to help.

Be well and have a great Thursday.  I have 15 minutes I can spend sewing if I hurry and get to it.

Lane