Design Wall Monday

Okay, last week wasn't very productive because I was sick. Whenever I'm sick and just beginning to feel better, I love to go to my sewing area and play. It always makes me feel better to fondle fabric. This time was not different.

I went pawing through my fabric for something interesting and happened upon some shamrock fabric. It's pretty cool, shamrocks on a black background. See? Isn't it pretty. (The fabric isn't really coarse, it just looks that way because I took the picture way too close and I'm too lazy to take another one.)

So, I started playing around and thought this might be fun to use in a string pieced quilt. Mary has shown lots of these on her blog and on the Heartstrings Quilt Project blog.

I decided to make a diamond block and feature the shamrock fabric in the centers and outline them with narrow strips of black. I wasn't sure what colors to use for the strings and I wasn't sure how it would look scrappy so I did what I always do. I decided to use blacks and whites. I know, I'm predictable and often boring, but hey, I wanted to sew something and I wanted to sew now! Well, to make a long and tedious story short, I LOVE how it turned out! I'm calling it It's really a matter of black and white. Are you Irish or aren't you? (I'm not!) This picture really doesn't do it justice. I love the green and black together.

Now I have a problem. I want this to be a big quilt, not just the wall hanging it is now, but I only had about 29" of this fabric. I have lots of all the other fabrics. See? That lonely single strip of shamrock fabric is all I have. :-(

But no more shamrock fabric. I've started the on-line search for the fabric, and I knew it was old, but since I'm having absolutely no luck, I'm thinking it's really old. So any of you lasses or lads out there in blogland who want to reduce your stash by selling some Bit-O-Luck by Hoffman International Fabric Company to a leprechaun quilter in need, just let me know!

Since I couldn't do anything else on that quilt (I'm NOT going to let this sit around and become a UFO to be finished in 2011). I decided to start quilting the Scrappy Hearts quilt.

Some might consider that I'm cheating because I'm using my embroidery machine to quilt the feathered wreath in the alternate blocks, but I'm quilting everything else myself. I guess it's not really cheating, it just feels like it though. Anyway, I like how it's turning out.

I better get moving. I have a friend coming over in a little bit to learn how to do machine applique. Yeah, a sewing play date! I'm glad I'm feeling better. I also should at least make it looks like I clean. :-)

Check out what others have on their design walls today by going to Judy L.'s Patchwork Times.