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| July's BOM ~ plus the ever-growing "TMX2" |
I'm blaming Bonnie, Bonnie Hunter, that is; she's responsible for my latest obsession... tumblers! She issued
this Leader-Ender challenge for July, that's all it took. I was in. I have charms. I have a die cutter, this was a no-brainer. Wow... it's growing like weeds under the influence of Miracle Gro. It all began so innocently. I was working on piecing something else. The tumblers snuck in under the presser foot... then there were more...
and more.
Pairs turned into groups and before long there were entire rows... arghh! I set to work this morning on the block for tomorrow's "Creative Options" BOM at my LQS. Whoa. Before I knew it I'd already gotten six rows together while piecing other things. This wasn't at all intentional. Okay, I'm no longer blaming
Bonnie; now I am thanking her. I've always wanted a charm quilt made from tumblers. What was I keeping those boxes of charms for anyway? TMX2 is now underway; thank you, Bonnie! It didn't take much persuasion, I'm easily coerced when it comes to new projects...
sigh.
Life is Good!
I am part of a group that meets to exchange Charm squares once a month at my LQS. There are fourteen of us in the group and we bring that many six-inch squares of two different fabrics; in turn, we each come home from the meeting with 28-6" Charms! This month the selected Charm color was GREEN: aren't they pretty? The "rules" for a Charm Quilt are really quite simple: the quilt should be of a one-patch design with no fabric repeats. Many Charm Quilts depend on the interplay of light and dark to illustrate the chosen pattern, it's perfectly OK to turn the Charm to the wrong side to create more lights... but still, no fabric should repeat! I tend to be a quilt-rule breaker and love to read stories of mothers who, a century ago, purposely repeated a charm just so that the children would have fun, and spend hours, searching for that one pair of identical twin prints! (Go ahead and summon the quilt police now, I'm completely sure I'd like to do that!) I have found some down-loadable one patch designs with printable templates from Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, there are lots of intriguing options. We will continue to meet through the year, giving our Charm collections plenty of time to grow! (I find the collecting every bit as much fun as eventually making the quilt!) Our Charm organizer does a great job of instructing, yesterday she did a mini-lesson on value before she invited participants to come up for show and tell. Coincidentally, there happened to be two different Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts; both stunning examples of one-patch designs, it was a Spring-garden kind of day!
Somedays life is one, long smorgasbord...
