To Do Tuesday

I had my doubts that I would end up making any Dutchman's Puzzle blocks this month using blue, because I just didn't think there would be a good contrast with the aqua I'm using in all of them.  But one of my readers said I should try out some shades and it might surprise me.
 

Well - she was right.  After some auditioning I chose 2 lighter shades of aqua batik and 2 darker shades of blue batik.  And the results are really good.  This should be a whole quilt because these really work together beautifully.  I have a total of 14 blocks so far - scrappy white backgrounds, with batiks in aqua paired with another color.  

Since I can't bear to throw away those trimmed off corners from the Flying Geese I've been making Hourglass blocks from them.  There is a stack of these on the corner of my ironing board.  They make perfect Leaders/Enders when working on other projects.  Once sewn the Hourglass blocks get trimmed to 3.5" and go into a little bin.  Some day they will become something pretty.

The Quilt of Valor sampler is almost a flimsy.  The rows were all sewn together yesterday morning.  Next step was to check the QOV stash for border fabric.  This flag print was trimmed from a backing recently, and the strips came from a wide back. So the strips were long enough to not need any piecing at all.  It should be a complete flimsy later today. 

While digging into the QOV stash I came across this patriotic layer cake that I forgot I had.  That was an exciting find because a reader suggested on Monday that the Shibori Blues pattern would look good as a Quilt of Valor.  So . . . you know what was just added to my goal list for this summer.

One final thing that happened on Monday was cutting the pieces for the Sparkers quilt that was in the Liberty Box (Fat Quarter Shop) that arrived last week.  The reds and blues were in the box along with the panel.  The white background was in my stash.  I will need to buy enough of the blue - or a similar color - to add the accent pieces above and below the panel.  There is no rush on this project, but it will be fun to work on a little at a time.  The box also contained a pattern for a mini quilt, and even included a small metal hanger.  There should be plenty of scraps left to make that mini.