Quilt Alongs

I will start with a picture before I go into my subject of this blog post.

Another quilt top finish for QFC.  The designs are Barnyard Toile from Emblibrary.  I usually use 10 embroidered design squares in charity quilt but this set was of 8.  By doing the Snowball block with the design squares, it left me all those HST’s.  So…. I made use of them!  And once again, I utilized the fabric I had on hand.  I had hoped to make a mitered corner border but was short fabric and I had already sewn the two strips together so the yellow accent border just extended – it is now a design element   I am slowly using up some older fabrics that I have, some fabrics that were given to me and just simply clearing out the excess that I really want to go away.

Okay, so on to QAL’s or “Quilt Alongs”…. As I read the blogs there are quite a few of these QAL’s.   Several that I’d like to join,  but I don’t.  Why?  well, I know me.  If these were swaps, I’d be all over them!  Then I have a commitment to someone other than myself.  I know I have to make a block (or several) and send them out and I wouldn’t want to disappoint another person.  But if it’s for me, I can ‘put if off’ until later and then later, then a few months have passed and then …. well you get the idea.  And then there are the mysteries.  I think the most popular mysteries are the ones that Bonnie Hunter does.  I have downloaded the ‘clues’ for the past few years and have yet to do one.  I get really intimidated when I read something like ‘make 300 flying geese’…..  And of course, in Bonnie’s mysteries, the fabrics are scraps.  Now you’d think with my love / hate relationship with scraps I’d have plenty.  So far – nope!   Anyway…. Maybe someday I’ll actually pull out the directions and make a ‘mystery’ quilt.  Oh, and another thing (while I’m thinking about it), I really appreciate the time that Bonnie puts into creating her mysteries.  I know she’s a busy lady but I sure wish she would release the mystery AFTER the holidays.  I think that might be another reason why I shy away from them – the timing.  In order to play along with the others who are doing it, I’d have to work on they clues while still trying to get my Christmas projects done… Okay, enough of that.

I am curious, though – do you join in on the QAL’s?  and if so, what is the most enticing reason you join? 

Hope you all have a really nice weekend.  Thank goodness the temps are finally getting back to normal here in AZ.  My grandsons are playing football again, so my Saturdays will be spent in Tucson watching little guys play football and I’ll love every minute of it.

Katie