Trial and Error

Sometimes when I want to do something new, I have to stop trying to figure it out in my brain, and just start to do it.  This is when the seam ripper gets used, I make many mistakes, but I also learn and sometimes even surprise myself.

Last week I heard about a local quilt being put together to raise money for breast cancer.  Each person makes a pink and white 12 inch block, which will all get sewn together into a big auction quilt!  I was stumped at what to do, and just started playing around with fabric I had.  I knew I wanted to use a specific fabric, but thankfully decided to try it out on other scraps first, since I wasn't using a pattern.  You can see the mistakes I made above.  I figured out partial seams were needed and that I needed to add some extra fabric in places.  Here's the finished block I made next.

Today I was making some birthday fabric postcards and trying to get my January swap cards made.  One of the cards, "embellished owls" had me stumped.  I have 3 different owl fabrics, and while I'd love to sew some of my vast bead stash onto them, I feared they wouldn't make it through the mail.  I really don't like hand sewing anything, and tried some various trims, but didn't like them.  I had these colorful batik scraps laying around from the birthday cards, and suddenly got an idea.

First the trial and error/ playing around part:

This led to another idea:

Sweet!!!

I couldn't help to also add the only embellishment the owls I used to work with had... fish and wildlife tracking leg bands ;-).

Since today, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday, has become a traditional day of service, I decided it was a great excuse to start another Project Linus Quilt.

 I've had these scraps partially cut out into pieces to make bow tie blocks forever.  This project became a UFO when I couldn't find a good "background" fabric for the bow ties.  The Kona solid scraps from my architecture quilt were still laying around, and suddenly I knew exactly what to do.  The Kona solids are PERFECT!!!

Isn't it amazing what happens when you just start playing around?