Quilting' Up A Storm

No rain here this weekend (finally!). But I've been quiltin' up a storm making applique blocks for my Hoochy Mama quilt. Since Saturday I've been participating in the Stashbuster's stay-at-home retreat which has its theme this time as Quiltin' Up A Storm. Thus the title of this entry. Get it? Yeah? Yeah? 'K...

It's my first occasion of giving official notification to beloved Mr. B that I would be unavailable for comments, questions, and autographs while I sink into my sewing lair for the weekend. Except, yesterday mid-afternoon, he needed a little help with making the menu. (He shops! He loves to shop! For groceries, that is. Gotta love that, though.)

And then he needed to tell me he was going to the FedEx store to ship something that absolutely positively should've been there last week.

And my dad's cat--who lives with us now in said sewing lair because she'd almost 17 and can't be bothered to socialize with the damn, bratty cats that live upstairs--was driving me crazy with pleas for attention. (She got attention, of course. I'm not made of stone. But REALLY, enough already!)

So upstairs I came with handwork a-plenty so I could continue my retreat in the livingroom. In the end, though, the storm I've quilted up is more like the drizzle that gets your car dirty. Or, in this case, my sewing lair. The cutting table is disorderly again, and I've got one completed appliqué block to show for it.


Voila! I call it Mill Wheel Rose. It's actually a combination of blocks: The "rose" is taken from an antique quilt entitled Washington Merry-Go-Round. And the stems are from a pre-designed block in Electric Quilt (a tulip block, I think, but I'm entirely tired of tulips now). I have three more blocks to buttonhole stitch, which is the way I like to appliqué. Ask anyone who knows me. Needleturn gives me headaches. Of course, fusible webbing that separates from its paper give me heartburn. So it's six of one, half dozen of the other.

Earlier this week, I appliquéd a couple of other blocks for some friends who, like myself, have lost a parent this year. They're in my KansasQuilters email group, and the group has been busy, unfortunately, making many blocks for those suffering recent loss.

This block is Sunflower Hearts Ho-Down since the flowers kinda look like they're trying to bow to their partners. I've put together a .pdf pattern sheet for it as a free download. This block is also based on an Electric Quilt library block, but I made a few significant changes to it to give it more motion.