Design Wall Monday - TWO Tops to share!

Today is Monday which means for quilters time for show-n-tell also known as JudyL's Design Wall Monday :)  But today instead of taking a photo from my sewing room design wall, I'm gonna take you outside and show you two tops that I've put together.  It feels so good to have rows sewn together and to this stage!

 

First up, my most recent blocks on the design wall - this top is called Hand Me Downs and comes from Bonnie Hunter's first book Scraps & Shirttails.  It will have another 12 star blocks that will become part of the outside border.  The pattern calls for a 9x9 block setting, but I only had enough navy homespun setting fabrics to make mine an 8x9 block setting.  It will be perfect "sofa size" :)

 

After getting the shirtings cleaned up and put away for now, I spent time looking for the solid shirts I'd saved to use for my outside borders, but could not locate them. (Remember I'm not 100% unpacked in the sewing room, and anything still boxed up is just gonna have to stay that way until we buy our new home.)

So I opened up the next USPS Priority - that was labeled "My Blue Heaven" and thought I'd see about putting more of those blocks together.  You may remember that before we moved from Texas, I borrowed a few Priority Boxes from the USPS and used them to kit up a few projects so that I'd have something to work on here in the rental house... and b/c those boxes are red/white/blue they are easy to spot! :)    To my surprise, the blocks were already partially sewn into segments and several had pins in them from the last time I'd had them out on the sewing room floor - so it was easy to spend the afternoon sewing them together and getting these rows into a TOP! :)

Did you see my little "Monkey Helper" in the photo above???  Olivia was so willing and ready to help hand me pins off my magnetic pin holder Sunday afternoon. :)  I sewed together 5x5 large stars and it was taking up the whole floor and then some.... and thought surely this was big enough....

...and couldn't wait to take it upstairs with me to see how it fit our King size bed.   You can't tell from the photo but the side closest to the camera has a nice hangover and should be perfect after I add a 2" border of blue and then 2" finished HST's and another 3" of blue.... but the opposite side of the bed the blocks are ending right at the edge of the mattress - so it needs another row to be wide enough....  GOOD thing I have more sets of blocks left in my project box!! :)  Yeaaa! :)  

We only have my 1st ever quilt that I made for David before we married that we use on our bed and it's not quite wide enough but we make it work... at the time he had a King size waterbed so hangover amount wasn't considered - just enough to tuck in each side.... but this one will fit the bed or ELSE. lol

I took this photo today, outside hanging over the neighbor's fence.  Aren't all those scraps scrumptious!  ;)

  
Lastly, above are two photos of EQ7 design plans that my friend Crazy'boutquilts came up with :)  This will give you a better idea of where I'm headed with the "My Blue Heaven"quilt.

EDITED TO ADD - I'm so thankful that Crazy'boutquilts and I spent a year swapping these blocks!!  It was a lot of fun getting envelopes of blocks made for me every few months and certainly helped to make this project have not only more variety, but less of a challenge.  :)  She is also the one who introduced me to Triangulations software for making many HST's at once!  Thanks Sandie!!!

Be sure to click on over to JudyL's blog and take a look at what everyone else has shared for Design Wall Monday. It's my favorite place to visit on Mondays! :)  Have a great week everyone!

Love from Indiana!