Sunday Quilt Inspiration: Easy Piecing

I've been thinking that sometimes a person just needs an easy project. Just a little mindless stitching to allow our brains to rest. Here are some quilts that would fit the bill.

If you're new to quilting, any one of these quilts would be easy enough to begin with. Take you time, ask questions, and lay the blocks out on a flat surface or design wall. Feel free to email me at mary.marcotte@gmail.com if you need help. I'll gladly try to help.

And now my Red Is a Neutral challenge

AHIQ has a challenge going. Ann and Kaja discussed the possibilities and introduced readers to a couple of shows in which the makers used red as a neutral in their quilts. 

I love the idea! I really wanted to get started back in January but one thing and another got in the way. Finally, I lost my guild BOM blocks when they got caught in a flood of my doing. When that happened, it occurred to me that I could simply change the colors of the blocks and meet two challenges at once. 

So figuring it out took a while, but I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I went from no blocks to five. At the time we had instructions for nine blocks. That left me four blocks when I went into the hospital. On Monday we received two more blocks, so I have to get back in gear if I plan to catch up.

I definitely do not have enough of these grays and blacks to make all the blocks, so I'll be adding more of these colors and mixing up the blocks when I put them together. Hopefully the quilt will have a coordinated scrappy look, not a disjointed messy look.

Do go by and take a look at some of the quilts other participants are making. I promised you will enjoy the show!

Pin It Weekly #276

Are you having a good week? I pray that's an affirmative.  And I hope you have had a few minutes of pinning.

It's one of the few things that I have felt well enough to do. I can get off my feet and my hiney, kick back on the sofa, and enjoy some beautiful photos of things I really love. So that's what I've been doing. It's difficult not going into the studio, but I just don't have the stamina to be on my feet for very long. 

Of course, I've found a few quilts to pin to my "heart, quilts" board. 

And a few random barns for my "barn, shed, corncrib" board.

What have you been pinning anything? Share one of your boards with us in comments!

Cotton Quilters' Guild May meeting

While I didn't get to the Baton Rouge Modern Quilt Guild meeting yesterday, I managed to get to the guild meeting in Cottonport. It wore me out, but I had so much fun!

Three of Irma's blocks

Mary C's blocks

We started the meeting in our usual way, but there were lots of laughs, and I took a little ribbing about my recent surgery and my derrière. Somehow we got past all that nonsense and talked about important things, like quilts and our upcoming show. 

Pam's blocks

Of course, we've been continuing our guild sampler BOM, and people showed the blocks they've completed thus far. Several are participating but most of us are not keeping up. I think half of mine are done, but I'm committed to catching up. At least the next two will be relatively easy. Here they are.

Aren't they pretty? I love them both and especially like that Josie and Maggie found shortcut directions so both blocks should be easy and fast. I'm looking forward to make these.

Josie is a real trooper! She not only had a BOM block, she gave a short presentation on Prairie Points. She has a sweet, easy voice that really is calming, and she explains things so they are very easy to understand.  

After discussing several quilt show plans, we moved on to Show and Share. Ingrid showed two quilts. The one above is one she made using vintage feed and flour sacks. She explained that she had been collecting the sacks for many years. The quilt below is one that she picked up while antiquing. 

Josie's quilt is the next one. She made this one for her brother.

And this last quilt is one Pam made. Don't you just love this rabbit?

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: WEBS

While I was in the hospital, I was able to do a little pinning and ran across this fun little guy. I really like this particular quilt. In no time I was looking at and appreciating web quilts.

Quilt by Angela Garrett - Heart of
Charnwood | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Here are a few of the ones I especially like.

You can find these on my "heart, quilts" board, which has over 9,000 quilts pinned. I hope you enjoy it.

I'll live! And I'm not so special, after all.

Google photo

It got kinda dicey for a little while there, but somehow I seem to be pulling through. If you've been around at all lately, you may have noticed that I have not blogged for a couple of weeks. 

You would also know that Richard's dad passed away. As we were caring for his parents, we had several weeks of difficulties, during which time I was sick. Then there was the week of the funeral and caring for Rich's mom. I was sick then, too. Sicker, actually.


You see, I had a GI hemorrhage. It didn't seem serious, so delaying treatment was easy to do since there were so many other, more serious, events happening. Then I started fainting. Not fun, by the way. It's kind of weird to know you're going down. And you can't stop it. 

Google photo

The fainting happened for a couple days at which point Richard put me in the car and drove to the hospital. Honestly, I had no idea I'd lost that much blood. The first day I got a unit. The second day I got a unit. The fourth day I got two units. One more day and a final unit. Five? Really? I thought it might be a bit much, but what do I know?

Google photo 

In the meantime, doctors were running every test known to the gastrointestinal tract. I got to drink liquids I hope to never drink again. Ever. Ever. Ever.

My PillCam

Doctors were pretty determined to find the leak. They went up with a colonoscopy. They went down with an endoscopy. They went sideways, thanks to nuclear medicine. They tried X-rays. CT scans. CT contrasts. Sigmoidoscopy. 

In all, ten days and nine tests. I even swallowed a little camera. It's not as bad as the liquid stuff. Honestly, they should have started with the camera.


I was a bit of an enigma for a little over a week. But one very determined doctor finally figured out where the leak was. (I had been telling him for a week and a half. It really was time to believe me. And for the record, I was right.)

It's now been a week since the fix and we've returned home. I'm not so special, after all, except to my sweet, darling husband, who has been the best, most wonderful, caregiver. I mean, I get tired of me.


I've been entertaining myself with Craftsy videos and the birds in our backyard. I think the birds are tired of me, too. I've been trying to sneak up but, well, when a muscle spasm hits, I cry. 

Today I managed to delay taking a pain pill for several hours. I regretted it a little once the pain really kicked in, but it means that I am mending and healing and in no time I'll be back to my old, fairly-ordinary, self. Which, it turns out, is the best self I can be.