2012: The year of the Quilt-a-long?

Gosh, I think hosting a quilt-a-log must be on the top of a lot of quilt blogger's lists!  I can't remember ever seeing so many quilt-a-longs as I have the last week or so!  I LOVE quilt a longs, and already have a growing list of ones that I eventually want to make, but alas, there's just not enough hours in the day!!

How do you choose?  There are many that I want to do, but I had to narrow the list somehow.  I'm already involved in my postcard swaps, and then there's the Etsy shop...  I finally decided to narrow it down to a scrappy quilt-a-long and an artistic challenge.  I'm joining up with Stitched in Color's Scrap Attack Quilt Along, and Kim's Crafty Apple's "Project Quilting".

Both of these QAL's involve no pattern at all.  I love the freedom involved in these.  Don't get me wrong, I love patterns too, but more and more, these projects that have a theme that you build your own quilty project around have become my favorites (the postcard cottage works much the same way).  Both are new or almost new blogs to me as well, so it'll be fun to get to know these bloggers!

I already had a pile of 3 inch batik squares laying around from extra fabric that I cut but never used in Lee's Supernova QAL.  I dug out my box of batik scraps, cut what I could into 3 inch square, and now I'm happy to say that I no longer have any batik scraps that are larger than 3 inches.  I'm not sure what I'll do with the little ones left, but they do make great postcards...  Stay tuned to see what I have planned for these.

 I don't know how I missed the first 2 "Project Quilting"s, but as soon as I saw this challenge, it grabbed me like few others have!!  I just LOVE this challenge.  The fact that we only have a week to do it is a bit intimidating, but I love challenges too!  This week's theme is to use an architectural element to make any size quilt.  Considering my New Orleans roots, I feel like I have a head start though.  New Orleans is one of the most architecturally interesting places I've ever known, something I took completely for granted until I moved out West in my 20's.  It didn't take long thinking about New Orleans and quilt design before I decided to highlight the Creole cottages and Shotgun houses' distinct style that you see all over New Orleans.  I got even more excited when I remembered that I still have a stack of Kona solids from Gen X's Kona solids swap that I did last year.  I'm SOOO excited about this project!!  I tried to design it on my new QE7 computer program, and quickly got frustrated, but I did manage to get a template made, and used  pencils to scribble out the rest....

Gosh, I'd better stop writing and go sew if I'm ever going to get this done!!  More to come...