Happy Mother’s Day Weekend!

My goodness…I opened up the website to write a mother’s day post and saw that this will be post number 201! Now how did that upcoming milestone get past me, I wonder? I think I better start planning ahead a bit better because surely a prize would have been appropriate. Well, never say never, and I will put some thought into that!

Meanwhile, Happy Mother’s Day to everyone, whether you are a mother or not! I have had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Look what I was served for breakfast!

 

I adore French toast. And didn’t he set a beautiful table, oh my! I must have raised him very well, if I don’t say so myself!

 

 

 

 

Chef Michael:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on the sewing front, I picked up Heidi’s quilt for the first time in too long and did some hand quilting whilst we watched a movie on TV last night.

 

Yesterday I worked on my 3×6 bee blocks. I decided to make disappearing 9-patches this time around. Sometimes I feel badly that I make such simple blocks for this group, but everyone makes the best of their ability, and you are placed in a group by first-come, first-served. So there are very experienced quilters making some very advanced blocks in the group, and then there are the beginner “me’s” who make simple blocks. So anyway, I felt that the disappearing 9-patch was going to be a challenge – and it was, but in a different way than I had expected. The challenge wasn’t in the sewing, it was in the fabric selection. A couple of the blocks I made over because while the colours looked like they would be perfect, when the block was actually sewn, they just didn’t cut it.

So what is a disappearing 9-patch, all my non-quilting friends are wondering? Well, you start off by sewing a straight-ahead 9-patch block that looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then you cut it into quarters, like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then you twist and turn the quarters around until you like the pattern!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty cool, eh?

What I learned is that strong colours work best, especially a contrasting colour in the center of the original 9-patch. All of these squares are the same pattern, and the colours I used are according to the chosen palette of each person in the bee. See what you think:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Mother’s Day to you all, and especially to my own mother!

I hope you all had a great weekend, and if you’re hungry, I’ll share my French toast with you.

Bonn Appétite!