Red, White and Blue Blog Hop, My Day, Welcome!

Welcome to my blog all you hoppers!  I hope your legs aren't getting tired just yet :)

The thing I love most about a blog hop is getting to see so many different and new blogs.  So many people have so many different and great ideas about quilting and life and I've learned a lot already.  Just the first day I was blown away by the great blocks and started to sweat just a little bit, but then I thought, hey, relax and have fun with this!  I joined to make myself step outside the box and make something I wouldn't ordinarily do on my own.  I joined so I could stretch myself and grow as a quilter and a person.  So, here goes!

Of course, I also waited until the last minute to get my block done.  If you read back over the last few weeks on my blog, you will see that my family has been going through some stressful times.  My husband's mom found out she had cancer, moved to Tennessee to live out her final days with her daughter and passed away on Sunday.  I suffer from migraines and have been having a really rough time lately.  They are getting worse and worse and I'm sure the stress of everything else hasn't helped.  My oldest daughter is in Hong Kong right now teaching English (boy is she having a great time) and so today is here and I said "OH NO!" it's time to make my block for the hop :)

Well, what do you do when you are crunched for time and need to make a quilt quickly?

I GO! for my Accuquilt Go! fabric cutter.  I tell you that when my husband got it for me 2 Christmases ago he wasn't so sure I would get much use out of it.  It was a pretty big investment ($199 for the cutter from JoAnn's on sale) and each die can run from $20-$50.  But if you are smart, you will watch ebay, check out amazon or find some friends to share with.  I have no idea how I would quilt without my Accuquilt!  Especially these half square triangles.  Before the Accuquilt, I could only sew squares together :) (And I don't get paid for saying any of this--I just love them that much)

So, I grabbed two of my favorite dies, the 6 1/2inch half square triangle and the 6 1/2 inch quarter square triangle (which is called the 4 7/8 inch triangle--weird name huh?-it also makes flying geese, but I haven't tried those yet) and got busy cutting some Red, White and Blue fabrics.  I have a good friend named Debbie who brought me some fabulous fabrics from her stash last summer.  She knows I make LOTS and LOTS of quilts for kids (big and small) and brought me up a whole car load of fabrics.  I've been having fun playing with those fabrics and cutting them up and making quilts and giving those quilts away.  So, I grabbed some fabrics, cut them up and started sewing.  I wanted to make a pinwheel block and so I started sewing.  I sewed 6 blocks like this:

 Well, something wasn't right.  It wasn't spinning the way I wanted it to.  I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.  That's what I get for sewing with a migraine!  I had turned the pieces the wrong way!  Silly me :)  So, then I made 6 more blocks like this:

 Each block is different, with Red, White and Blue, to go with the theme of the Hop:

 Except for this guy.  He is just Red and Blue, because I knew I was running out of time and didn't feel like cutting more white fabric.

 Here are all 12 blocks laid out next to each other.  I'm going to make some more blocks to bring this up to a Quilt of Valor size and probably do some sashing in between them blocks as well.  I have to wait until my daughter #2 comes home from tennis before I make any kind of final decision on block placement.  She always helps me decide on how the quilt looks best.  She has a great eye for color placement.

For now, I'm about to head out the door and get a shot for my migraine.  I know this post won't appear until midnight, when I will be fast asleep :)  Hopefully tomorrow I will wake up and the headache will be gone.

I hope you can hop on over to the other bloggers today and see what they are up to as well.

July 11th
Nancy R 

North Hills Quilter That's me!

Sunshine Girl

Grammie Q
knitnoid

I'd love it if you would follow me, I'm so close to 200 followers.  The Christmas in July Blog hop is coming up soon and I'd hate for you to miss out.  Santa will be bringing presents and a giveaway for that one and then the Paper Pieced Bowls Blog Hop will follow soon after.  I've never tried paper piecing so I'm excited to give that one a try too.

Thanks for stopping by!