Crumbs–The Aftermath!

Tonya rolled out of my driveway in her little red VW, making her way back to Maryland today ---She misses her kitties and her hubby, but I a... thumbnail 1 summary

tháng 6 21, 2013

Tonya rolled out of my driveway in her little red VW, making her way back to Maryland today ---She misses her kitties and her hubby, but I am so grateful she had time to come play for a bit in the basement with me!

Yesterday we both agreed that Indian food was a MUST DO for lunch…and I was eager to show her my favorite spot in Winston-Salem for yummies to satisfy – Nawab!

A quick text message also had Lisa joining us – and I love it when friends of mine can meet each other and make friends with each other too. We had a great time ---

But there was no time to dawdle – we are working on some projects. While I sewed, Tonya dug into my stash of recycled shirts….the deal was, if she de-boned them – it would be some for me and some for she – and I was totally up to that! What you see here is my stack after she did ALL THE WORK! Now that is a win for sure!

Tonya is really good at getting me out of my funk and inspiring me to set time out for myself to work on what *I* want to work on – even if it is competing with something that has a deadline. All work and no play makes Bonnie a grumpy girl….so yesterday, current book work was put on hold ---this was a play day!

See this box of crumb blocks?

There must be 500 blocks in the box --- I’m serious! It was gifted to me by Bonita Fletcher back in 2011. And it’s been waiting to be a quilt --- because I had so many other things going – and I wasn’t sure which direction to go with them. Tonya has issued a challenge…let’s do it!

The blocks are full of " on the murky side" vintage 1980s & 1990s fabrics…in a somewhat limited color range. lots of dusty greens, mauves, greyed blues, some browns, and lots of beige-y tan. It’s different working with someone else’s palette. I keep reaching for colors that are not found in these….it’s like driving someone else’s car, and buttons and features are not available, or not where I’d put them. What a challenge!

I have been sewing the 3.5" cut blocks into groups of 4 to make 6" finished blocks.

The crumb strip piecing I had *previously* been doing is to the right of the box lid...you can see my limes and oranges and hot pinks and purples--yellows and turquoise/teal are also things I love to grab...those are colors I tend to throw in to liven something up, but I'm not doing it with these...I want to work with what she sent me.

She put so much work into these -- what a gift!

I'm focusing on "Make do with what you have" with this....and will pump up the color palette by what I use to set the blocks with, and pull more colors into borders or something.

I’m thinking of setting these against a solid…and we dug into the stash to see what would add a bit of pop to these blocks…