Black and Brights

Recipe for a Black and Bright Lap quilt, sure to bring cheer to anyone who gets to use it:

Take a gloriously bright jelly roll:

Add a few more brights from the stash:

Combine with a mysteriously mottled black batik:

Sew like a crazy person until you can put together a few blocks and see how it will all turn out:

Satisfied that you won’t go blind when looking at the finished quilt, continue sewing until you end up with this:

The pattern came from this book:

Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott

My Sewing Buddy

When our family adopted Toby as a puppy last year, I had visions of him being my companion in the sewing room, blissfully sleeping at my feet while I sat at my machine, like so many other dogs in so many other bloggers quilting rooms that I had seen.

I am happy to report that  now that Toby has been with us for a little over a year, the concept of sewing companion is ever-so-slowly starting to take place.

After a vigorous game of “fetch”, followed by a long refreshing drink of water, followed by a good gnawing session on a rawhide, I finally got Toby to settle down on an old comforter that I placed under my sewing table.

He settled in contentedly for about ... 20 minutes. 

Then I looked down, and saw this:

Maybe it was the electric cords, or the contents of the storage bins on the shelf, or just wanderlust, but Toby had inched his way off the comforter and towards trouble.  My sewing session was over at that point, but at least  I had experienced  a little taste of what it’s like to have a sewing buddy.

Although, a true sewing buddy would probably not have done this to my favorite thimble:

Does this face say “Guilty” to you?

Yeah, I thought so too.

I guess that “Toby the sewing buddy” is still a work in progress.   I just hope he doesn’t become another UFO.