My Circle of Nine books came the other day and this was the first time I had a chance to read them and play with the idea. This is just a first effort to familiarize myself with the design idea but I can see how using this setting with different choices for blocks and spacers can give lots of different looks. Changing how far the blocks are offset and/or adding frames to them creates even more variations. Some options are busier than I like and the piecing fussier but others are fairly simple and easy. I will say I’m more interested in the design possibilities than I am of making the actual quilts in the books but that’s why I bought them – to use the setting/concept to make my own designs.

I’m feeling good about my progress today … each time we organize another step in the process, I feel better. Today it was meeting with the realtors. Keith has a local business acquaintance/friend who referred us to this realtor and I was very happy with our meeting today. He brought a partner and the two of them were very positive about the house and the market and I just liked them. We’ll have a call on Monday to discuss pricing and next steps but I think we’re on our way to listing in about a week or so. I worked like crazy to get the house in good shape, decluttered and clean although you can certainly tell we’re in the process of prepping for a move. They didn’t stroke out about my sewing room which is great. It’s in the master bedroom and I don’t have any intention of trying to move things out of there until mid June so I admit I was happy to not get negative feedback about how the room would show as it is currently.

Tomorrow Keith will pick up a UHaul trailer and we’ll stuff it as full of bins of fabric and yarn as we can and he’ll drive to GA to unload it. I’ve already got plans to make some time for sewing next week. I have a project I need to work on for our family gift exchange that is due the end of May and I need to get cracking on it.

While I’m not sewing yet, I took a little time tonight to draft out an idea I have for a quilt. I want to remake some of my favorites from my website or in this case, combine a couple different ideas from two rail fence quilts. I’ve had this one in the back of my mind for a while and maybe I will actually get around to making it some time later this year or next year. These are the two quilts I’ve already made ….

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I would probably go ahead and make it the same size as the RWB rail fence but this slightly smaller size would work for donation too. I haven’t decided whether I’d go scrappy like the autumn quilt above using many greens, golds, reds, and oranges or stick to fewer fabrics like the RWB quilt.

I’ve had this 4 Patch Stars quilt on my website since 2013 and haven’t made it yet. It’s designed as an 8 inch finished block and I think I just didn’t want to work with the 2 inch finished HSTs.

So this morning I played around with the design. I could use either a 3 inch finished HST for a 12 inch block or I have a GO die for a 2.5 inch finished HST which would make a 10 inch block. I might eventually make it in blue AND make a scrappy multicolored version too. I’ve got a busy couple months coming up so I don’t expect to start one anytime soon but hopefully this year!

A lot of you commented on Sue’s snowball quilt that I finished up this week and it got me thinking about the next one I want to make. I have the Accuquilt GO snowball die but I’ve only used it once so far.

I like the “flower” setting and will probably use it again sometime but I’ve been wanting to do a scrappy snowball and 9 patch quilt and I drew it out last night. I will probably add more blocks and make it a nice lap size quilt for donation but this was big enough to give me an idea of how it will look.

Now if I can just find time to make this one and the king size 9 patch and friendship star quilt … I’ve got a list of tops already to work on in GA so I don’t know if I’ll get to either one yet. This one will require me to play in the scraps bins so it would have to be cut and kitted for me to piece in GA and I don’t think that’s going to happen before we leave.

It’s not drafted to size … but after looking at a lot of scrap quilts I combined a few ideas and came up with this. It will be scrappier too meaning those stars would all be different colors … I use fewer colors when I’m drafting a quilt to make it easier. Blocks would be 9 inches finished … so I’d be working with 3 inch squares and half square triangles … not too big and not too small for a king size quilt. I’d also need to put a 3 inch border on it to bring it up to the size I need which I didn’t draw but I did make some notes. I would set it 11 x 12 or 13 blocks …. 12 might be a little small, 13 might be a little big … I’ll have to measure the width of the bed to see what I’d like better.

Do you see a little similarity to the 9 patch and Hearts quilt I just finished? I love simple scrappy quilts!!!!

….and just in case you don’t remember the fabrics I’m thinking of – here’s another look.

Have you been reading the blog long enough to know that I plan a lot more quilts than I actually make? My list is always sooo long and there always seems to be another new project I want to do but I was looking through some older files the other night and came across these 3 that I still want to make one of these days … of course there are lots of other ones too — maybe I need to make a page on the website just for “one day quilts”! I’ll never run out of ideas … but then I never stop looking for inspiration.