Avignon Picnic Blocks

I am making another of Moda's Avignon Picnic quilt. The last one I made I only used one jelly roll instead of two. This time I'm not using any jelly rolls. While you lose the advantage of quick strip piecing with this method, you gain the advantage of not having a lot of seams in the solid fabrics. You still use 2.5" strips.

Here's how to piece the blocks if you are using only one or no jelly rolls:

Then you lay them out in alternating rows like this:

For my lap-size layout, I made twelve blocks with white centers and six blocks with white borders (plus four half blocks).

Pin Cushion Cat Toys

Tyco and Cleo needed some toys. I came across this tutorial for these mice pin cushions you can wear on your finger and thought they would be perfect.

ETA - Tyco enjoying the pink mouse:

Julie's Quilt Progress

Julie sent me fabric so I could make her a quilt like the one I made for dad. She got a bit overwhelmed by Joann's though, so while she sent enough fabric, she didn't send enough different fabrics for the pattern. Thus we began a long process of me selecting coordinating fabrics I thought she might like and sending pictures for her approval. I'm glad I did because her choices surprised me.

I pulled these three from my stash, the blue and green from quilt block #46:

I picked up these at Joann's:

And we ended up with this:

Not all fabrics are represented equally, but here's the first set of blocks:

Goodbye Old Iron, Hello New Iron

My iron died. It was ten years old and needed to be replaced anyway, as it was getting kind of gunky.

The heating coil broke and I burned my ironing board cover, which also really needed to be replaced because the foam padding was shifting and worn out. Fortunately, it did not ruin any fabric.

I really loved my ironing board cover. It had stars on it.

I got a new iron and ironing board cover. They match.

Update, April 2014: After leaking copiously the entire 3 years I had it, this iron finally stopped heating. I replaced it with a red Shark. It has not leaked so far!

Travel Pouch

After visiting my sister for Thanksgiving, my mom requested a bag she could use to keep track of her phone charger and camera cord while traveling. She wanted something bright she could spot easily in her larger bag. This is what I made her:

I love the colors. She chose the floral fabric from my stash, and I also had the orange for the liner. I was going to get an orange zipper, but they didn't have one in the right length, and I'm really glad I ended up with the blue instead.

I happened to have the ribbons, felt, button, and beads already. I couldn't believe how many coordinating accents I had on hand.

It's about 8" x 10" x 2" on the bottom.