Winding Ways

Signed it after I took the photo.

Victoria is looking for 6-inch signature blocks, and I found these templates in a rummage through my sewing cabinet. I've had them for years and years, but hadn't gotten around to even making one block. Now I have.

The templates are great. Metal with a sandpaper-like backing so they grip the fabric, and I could use my small rotary quilter to cut out the fabric.

Pinned at the center, a little ways from the end, and at the end point.
The pins through the end dots come out, and
the piece is flipped so the concave piece is on top when sewing.

The instructions with the templates gave piecing and pressing instructions. The curves were easy to piece. I put a pin straight through the end points to match them and then pin. I also pin a bit before the last end point, and in most cases I match the centers and pin. Four pins total. Keep the concave piece on top. That's the one that looks like a cave: (  Sew slow and align the fabric as you go. Curves are not really hard, but sometimes small pieces are hard to handle. 

Oprah was outside my window

More than two weeks ago, (I'm a little behind in my posting) this was the view outside my work window. That little yellow speck is Oprah, who appeared after the audience spent hours learning to dance and watching sound checks for the Black-Eyed Peas (the specks to the left of Oprah's speck), James Taylor, Jennifer Hudson and Rascal Flatts.

This being a quilt blog, we'll now move to something quilt related. My mother sent us kids boxes of stuff from her recently-sold house. She's moving to a smaller place. Among the stuff in my boxes was this quilt she made my dad's mother in 1973.

She had my grandmother's children, their spouses and their children write their names and then she embroidered them on hourglass blocks. My brother, Joey, was four when he wrote his name on the square below.

My mom helped me make this signature quilt for my wedding:

And 10 years later I made this one for my brother-in-law's wedding:

Signature quilts are such fun to look at. I love the drawings the children at the wedding made on my quilt, which hangs in the stairwell so I see it every morning as I head for my coffee. Sometimes my eyes are even open.