Some months ago I contacted a dear friend and asked her if she wanted to do a one to one block swap with me. Although we live thousands of miles apart, we have a lovely friendship and mutual admiration. She has a stressful job and I wanted to give her a reason to get into her sewing room to do something beside mending. We wanted to keep this simple and fun so we stuck with some really basic rules.
1. Make two blocks each month. Keep one, send one. Fabric does not need to be the same.
2. We each pick our own design for the month and share the directions for that block when we do the exchange.
3. Pick something that helps us skill build….No 9 patches please
4. Blocks are due the 15th of each month.
5. Blocks must be 12.5″ to finish at 12″
At the end we will each have a sampler quilt to finish with our blocks blended together.
We started in May and here is what I have so far:
Today I made my blocks for September and October. If you read the rules above, you know that my September block is late!
October is a turned applique’ pumpkin. I found a pattern online published by Pellon and used that as a guide for this block.
The mister suggested that I make a “leaf” block for September and I agreed but didn’t want to make the usual pattern. I did find a 12 point star pattern that I modified to create the look of a fall leaf.
It is a good thing that we should make two of each block. While this one turned out quite nicely….HA! My first attempt was less than stellar.
Yeah….I managed to cut off nearly every point on this leaf! Lesson learned and my second block was far, far better.
These two look pretty nice together, dontcha think?
Dear Karen made a cross country move from the East coast to the West and in honor of this my first block to her is “The Rocky Road to California”. I found this pattern on About.com
She sent me a block for one of my favorite places.
This is “Arizona”, a pattern from Quilterscache.com. What a lovely thing. Funny how we both chose state themed blocks for our first month.
I sent this block for June. It is also from Quilterscache.com and known as Noon and Light.
The block I got for June is titled “Star Cluster” from Judy Martin. This is lovely and I adore purple!
Next up was the block for July. I chose “Banner Day”, a design from Chris Hoover for Whirligig Designs.
Karen sent me a very patriotic block
Wonderful! “Glory in Scraps” from Quilterscache.com.
My contribution for August is named “Providence” and was found on About.com
Summer Winds by Janet Wickell is a great block. Karen did a nice job and I love the feathery fabric.
She is ahead of me and also sent me her September block which is based on a paper pieced block from Carol Doak.
Yeah baby! How ’bout them Steelers? Since she is a New England Patriots fan, she told me she couldn’t get that Steelers fabric out of her house fast enough! I love, love, love this.
To give you an idea of how this swap is shaping up, here are some of the blocks on my design wall.
This has really been a lot of fun thus far! Thanks Karen for being my swap partner.