Dog Gone Cute Blocks OMG

I needed to keep the October goal simple and sweet because I'm away for a part of the month. I do have another goal to complete by the end of October (a long shot is TWO quilts) but I put them on my Q4 FAL list, so didn't want to double up here. So my goal was to make two 12X18" Dog Gone Cute blocks.

They are going to Karen at kaholly for her to take to Texas this winter. You can read here about the wonderful plans she has to help raise funds for Second Chance Farm who is helping take care of animals whose humans can't take care of them with the devastation of Hurricane Harvey.

I came up with the colour scheme based on our two beloved dogs, Naala

who is a Rottweiler. This one is all batik fabrics except for the background.

I did Dog 3. I've made Dog 1 already.
The second one is for Rocco.

He is grey and white, and when he was a baby, he had the most gorgeous blue eyes. This one uses cottons, the swirly grey is a great one from Connecting Threads, and the eyes are a bit of turquoise left from the Meadow Dance fabric I used in Ribbon Stars.

As a few bloggers have said, these are like potato chips, betcha can't make just one! Lorna sells the complete pattern but you can also find the instructions in her blog posts. Dog 3 is here.

I don't think a week has gone by for some time that my heart swells and I have a lump in my throat (called 'moral elevation' by psychologists, in Option B by Sheryl Sandberg) at the good that is being done in the quilting world. I wish I could do more, but doing the little bits here and there that I can, I know, all adds up, as they say.

Since I wrote this post, just this morning I've learned of another cause, that of remembering the 70 273 physically and mentally disabled people who were murdered by the Nazis between 1940-41.

I had a DrEAMi! and yep, literally dropped everything to make a couple of blocks to send away. You can read more about this project here at The Barefoot Heart.

From pulling fabric to taking the photo, these two blocks took half an hour, a very quick way to help.

On a final note, please send some healing vibes and good thoughts via the big dog in the sky to our darling third daughter, Naala, pictured below with our second daughter, Dayna.

Just a month ago at Dayna's

She was hemorrhaging internally; we came very close to losing her. She had to have an emergency splenectomy on Friday, and although she is such a trooper, doing very well despite her 10 years 7 1/2 months of age and after major surgery, she has a long road ahead. We should know results of the histopathology in about a week, so if you have a moment, please pray she is in the 25% of dogs whose tumours on the spleen are benign.

48 hours after surgery, Sunday morning:

Smiled for the camera though:

Today, Monday, MacGyver is out cutting grass, and Naala cannot, nor does she want to, be left alone, which means I can't sew because my studio is upstairs. So 'If the mountain will not come to Muhammad....'

Lots of rugs on the floors to help with her traction

Reason #333 why I love my Featherweights, this one whose story I have yet to tell you! So I'm sewing in the kitchen, cutting and pressing station set up to the right on the counter!

Love portable sewing equipment.

We've been stalled on the last stage of the kitchen reno for various reasons, this latest, Naala, who must be kept very quiet for the next while as she adjusts to having no spleen, and has to make rather a lot of blood. Her PCV count was dangerously low, but it had risen one point, to 18, the morning after her surgery, so she's heading in the right direction. A high protein diet with extra chicken, liver, etc. is helping her on the road to recovery.

Linking up
Cooking Up Quilts

A Little Stash to Share

A couple of posts ago, I told you that I'd been unable to resist joining in with the Geode QAL with Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts. I've loved floral fabrics forever, bought and also made many dresses, skirts for myself and outfits for my daughters with beautiful floral fabrics. When I saw Bernie's post on Instagram of this fat quarter selection of 'Wild Bloom', bari j's latest line, which she is carrying in her Etsy shop, it beckoned me, floated into my subconsciousness, and then bobbed up into my consciousness whispering, 'you need me'. I'd already intended to buy a rainbow stripe from Bernie for one of my three RSC2017 projects.  This is from Andover, 'And Z' by Kim Schaefer. It needed company on the long trek across the country from west to east right? Bernie also sent a fat quarter gift (aww! she's so sweet) of the text fabric which I plan to incorporate in my Splash of Colour QAL.

Round about Wednesday you can watch for my turn on the 'Winter Games' by Amanda Murphy blog hop on Benartex's Sew In Love With Fabric blog. Here are the fabrics I'll be working with:

I love a fresh take on Christmas colours, and there's just something about turquoises and red with some lime that I find myself more and more drawn to. Check back on Wednesday to see what I make! To be honest, at this point in time, I can't wait to see what I make, lol.

A little surprise for me was seeing that Craftsy (affiliate link there and below) is having a decent sale (up to 50% off) this weekend on kits and supplies (maybe I was snoozing and deleted an email from them? Was not aware...) Just letting you know that one of the kits I bought on a previous sale is back on sale again, along with other kits, and all the Dutch Garden line:

It is really beautiful fabric and a very reasonable price. I am glad to see they have added in the 'what you get' description that the 4 2/3 total yardage is comprised of 5 charm packs and 1 yard. I had planned to make a different quilt, and had expected yardage, but now I look again at the stars one, I'm liking it a lot more!
As always I thank you so very much for using my links to click through as I get a commission if you make a purchase. 🙏 I only am an affiliate for products I do buy myself from companies I patronize.

Linking up
Sunday Stash at Molli Sparkles

Meadow Dance Blog Hop - Baby Quilt Tutorial

A few weeks ago I was part of a blog hop for Amanda Murphy's new line of fabric, Meadow Dance on Benartex's blog, Sew In Love With Fabric. This fabric is so pretty that  I couldn't choose just a few, so, because I'd made this quilt twice already, and had requests for a pattern, I thought it would be the perfect occasion to show off all the fabrics in the line as well as make me write up a pattern. Now that the hop is over, I can share the tutorial right here on my blog. A PDF of this pattern will be soon be available on Craftsy for free download. Just click here to go to my pattern store. (affiliate link)

I was super-excited to be asked to take part in the hop for Meadow Dance. I have been a fan of Amanda's designs and her quilting for some time, and I own her book, Modern Holiday, but this is the first time I've worked with her fabric. And what a line!  Love! The various prints work so beautifully together.  Here is the quilt, Ribbon Stars, on a farmer's fence, in a meadow! Get it?

In case you're thinking, gack! an entire quilt? Rest assured this baby goes together in no time at all because of a very intelligent (if I may say so) construction method that eliminates several seams. The quilt measures 42.5 X 45.5".

Fabric needed (based on 43" of useable fabric width)
Background: 1 yard
Star points: 1/4 yard of each of two different fabrics (Note that the four cornerstones in the border will be cut from the remainder of one of these fabrics.)
Centre ribbon blocks: a variety of prints to TOTAL 1/2 yard, OR if you prefer to do all the centres the same with four colours only, then a 1/4 yard of each colour will do it.
Border:  1/2 yard
Backing: 1 1/2 yards (This means your quilt will just fit across the width of the fabric; if you prefer to have extra allowance along the sides, you will have to piece the backing, so 2 yards will allow for this.)
Batting: a piece that is approximately 45X50"

Cutting

Background
Cut 2 strips @ 7 1/4". Subcut into seven 7 1/4" squares.
Cut 4 strips @ 3 1/2". Subcut into 12 rectangles 3 1/2 X 12 1/2" and four 3 1/2" squares.
Cut 2 more 3 1/2" squares from the remainder of the 7 1/4" wide strips for a total of six 3 1/2" squares.

Star points
Cut 14 squares @ 3 7/8" of two different fabrics for a total of 28 squares.

Centre ribbon blocks
Scrappy look: cut a total of 48 rectangles @ 6 1/2 X 2" which will make 12 centre ribbon blocks.
Matching: cut 12 rectangles @ 6 1/2 X 2" of each of four different prints to total 48 rectangles which will make 12 centre ribbon blocks.

Borders
Cut two border strips 3 1/2 X 36 1/2" (or the width of your quilt centre) and two strips 3 1/2 X 39 1/2" (or the length of your quilt centre)
Cut four cornerstone squares @ 3 1/2" from the remainder of one of the star points fabrics.

Quilt centre pieces all cut! No borders cut yet; might be an idea to wait to check your quilt centre measurements before cutting yours.

Sewing

Star points
Draw a diagonal line on each of the 3 7/8" squares. I like to use my Hera marker. Lay two squares of one colour across the diagonal of a 7 1/4" square as shown below, left. The 3 7/8" squares will overlap slightly in the centre. Sew a scant 1/4" on either side of the drawn line. Cut apart on the drawn line.

Press the seams to the 3 7/8" squares (turquoise in my case). The units look a bit like a heart shape.

Now lay a 3 7/8" square of the second star point fabric atop the background fabric at the bottom point of the heart shape unit. Again, sew a scant 1/4" on either side of the drawn diagonal line.

Cut apart on the that drawn line. Press to the star point fabric. Trim to 3 1/2 X 6 1/2".  You will get two of each orientation as shown below. Make 28 of these flying geese units. (Note that the quilt requires 27, so you will have one extra.)

Centre blocks
Sew four 6 1/2 X 2" rectangles together to form the centre ribbon block. Tip for scrappy: I separated my rectangles into basically cool and warm colours, and then paired them up. Then I sewed the pairs together. This controlled the scrappiness a bit, and evenly distributed the cool and warm colours as well as the prints. The block should measure 6 1/2" square.  Make 12.

Quilt Assembly

The quilt is constructed in columns, not blocks. There are 9 columns. Lay out the pieces on your design wall according to the diagram as shown below.

Sew the pieces for column 1: a 3 1/2" square, a flying geese unit, a 3 1/2 X 12 1/2" rectangle, another flying geese unit, followed by one more 3 1/2 X 12 1/2" rectangle. Press the seams toward the background fabric, away from the flying geese units, or open if you prefer. Place column 1 back on the design wall; you can label it column 1 if you wish with painter's tape or a numbered pin.

Now piece column 2: a flying geese unit, a centre ribbon block oriented horizontally, a flying geese unit, a centre ribbon block oriented vertically, a flying geese unit, and so on, but press the seams toward the centre squares. This will ensure opposing seams nest. Continue in this manner until you have all 9 columns pieced.

Now sew columns 1, 2, and 3 together, pressing the long seams outward. Set this unit back on the design wall.  Now sew columns 4, 5 and 6 together, and then 7, 8 and 9 together, pressing as before. You will have 3 larger columns now.

Finally, sew these three columns together to make the quilt centre. It should measure 36 1/2 X 39 1/2".

Borders
Sew a 39 1/2" border strip (or whatever length your quilt centre measures) to either side of the quilt. Press to the border fabric. Sew a cornerstone to each end of the two 36 1/2" border strips. Press to the border fabric (away from the cornerstones). Sew these units to the top and bottom of the quilt. Press.  Your quilt should measure 42 1/2 X 45 1/2".

Quilt, bind and enjoy!  I free-motion quilted wavy flowing lines across the quilt but switched to vertical wavy lines where the ribbon centre blocks were vertical. I did a simple dot to dot design in the cornerstones. In the floral border I did a piano key motif, but just with wavy lines, not sraight!
It gives a wonderful texture to the quilt and quilts up in about an hour. I used Floral Blender Turquoise for the binding.

Here's the back. I love pieced backs that are fun and give the viewer a surprise. However, for this quilt, I'd intended to use my favourite print, Wildflowers in white/multi as the sole backing, but when I got the fabrics, I fell hard for this one and so I cobbled together leftovers from the centre ribbon blocks to allow me to have the half yard of fabric I saved grow up into a cushion aka pillow or maybe a bag. So I got my fun quilt back after all!

This quilt has so many possibilities. I've got a rainbow rendition on the go (it was my pattern testing quilt) that has the ribbon centre blocks all the same using another Benartex line, Fleurish by Maria Kalinowski. Here it is in the early stages. You can see the column construction technique.

Here are the other two renditions, the first, in soft pastels, for Hands2Help2015:

Ribbon centres have varying widths and numbers of strips as I used scraps.

And the second, for one of my aunt's for her 80th birthday, in blues:

This one has bigger blocks because I used 2.5" strips for the ribbon centres, and two borders.

So you can see there are lots of possibilities!
Have fun, and if you make your own, please send me a photo, ephdra (at) gmail (dot) com, as I'd love to see it.

As for the quilt I made for the hop, it was listed in my Etsy shop with the hope that someone would snatch it up. I had said I was donating 100% of the sale proceeds to the Mosque School of Elul Bayt (link to how to help Syrian refugees in Windsor) who are fundraising to send money to help the humanitarian crisis of the Rohingya people. They are being ethnically cleansed out of Myanmar (formerly Burma) by Buddhist (yes, you read that right) militants. They have had their throats slit, some have been forced to watch that happen to their family members, they've been gang-raped, tortured, starved, houses burned, and are fleeing into Bangladesh, a country who is having a hard time feeding, housing, and giving medical aid to these people who have done nothing wrong but believe in a different benevolent God, and worship in a different way.
Anyhow, since CBC Windsor did a news piece on the fundraiser, I called and am giving them this quilt to raffle off. I hope it brings in more than the  $140CA I'd asked for it!

There is so much need out there right now, horrific fires in California, the hurricanes in Texas and Florida, even worse hurricane and people being not treated the same as TX and FL in Puerto Rico, all the animals in crisis, and Humane Societies needing funds to go get animals and try to re-home them...sigh. Remember the Red Cross is a wonderful organization where you can send money and can designate which cause you want it going to. Quilters have done and are doing so much to help; it makes my heart swell to read of online auctions, block requests, etc. We CAN do good in an often doesn't-seem-so-good world.

As one of my yoga teachers used to say to end his class:

"Go do something good today."

Linking up

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Crazy Mom Quilts (did you see her Emma and Myrtle fabric line at Connecting Threads? -affiliate link - And her bag she made from the fabrics? Lovely!)

Busy Hands Quilts

TGIFF at 

A Couple of Blogging Tips

Here are two tutorials; the first is the tutorial for how to find out some stats on your blog. Normally I rarely pay attention to these, but during giveaways, it's nice to determine whether the person picked actually does follow you if they are getting an extra entry for doing so, right? You know how you can subscribe to favourite blogs by email so you never miss a post; well, as a blogger, how do you find that list of subscribers to your blog? I use blogger, so I do not know if this applies to Wordpress or other blog formats. Disclaimer: I am no tech savvy person! All I know is from Googling stuff or trial and error.

1. First of all, go to feedburner.google.com. You may have to sign in to your Google account. Once you do, you should get a screen like this:

2.  Click on your blog name. It will take you to the Feed Stats Dashboard where there are four tabs. You will automatically be in the Analyze tab (I love Troubleshootize - they have a bit of a sense of humour no? Look at the phrase after 'My Feeds' in the photo above!
Click on the Subscribers tab on the left side of the page.

3. Scroll down (under the green circle) to Feedburner Email Subscriptions and click on it. You will see 'Manage Your Email Subscriber List' pop up. Click on it. The page looks like this (I've scrolled down part way, but cut off the first actual email address to protect that person's privacy):

Note that you can get to this page by clicking the Publicize tab and going to the left menu and clicking on 'Subscription Management' if you prefer. You will see that I have 461 subscribers, but on the first page it shows 385. I believe that is because some of the subscribers never complete the subscription process. You sign up, and then you get an email to confirm your subscription, right? I think some people never confirm it. I'm pretty sure that in the status column beside the subscriber's email address 'unverified' means that the person did not confirm. Feel free to correct me in the comments below if I don't have this right.  Note that you have the power to both delete a subscriber, and to deactivate delivery of your posts to a subscriber. 😮😳

It is pretty easy to scroll through the list to confirm a winner's subscription. You can click 'Email Address' to sort alphabetically, or 'Start Date' to sort by date.

Hope this helps!
To find your followers on bloglovin', go to your profile and click on Followers. Easy! However, there doesn't seem to be a list format, or a sort feature...

picmonkey woes

The day I had to send my tutorial for Let Your Star Shine for publication on Sew In Love With Fabric, Tish texted me to say picmonkey was apparently no longer free.  wtf was my response and panic ensued.  Once I calmed down, and no more bad words were flying around, my thoughts went like this:

There is a way to edit photos on my laptop...😼 ...sigh, but I still have to bring them in from iCloud...

or...can I do it right in iCloud?🔮...

... or wait, could I do it on my iPhone?🙌🙏💪

A quick Google and yip-yip-yippee I could. Yay!!🎉🎊 Now I don't have to rely on a third party, be at their whim as to them suddenly charging me for their service like picmonkey, or suddenly removing the ability to embed a link on a button I make, like photobucket, grrr.

Here is the second tutorial for today's post.

If you are like me, and take your quilt photos with your iPhone, simply do this:
1. Bring up the photo on your phone.  Tap 'Edit'.
2. To enhance the photo, tap the wand icon in the top right. It turns golden.
3. Tap the little circle with 3 dots in it, aka apparently a hamburger. Then tap the felt pen 'Markup' icon.
4. To watermark your photo, tap the +. Tap 'Text' where you will get a textbox in which to write.
5. If you want a different font, tap the AA where you can choose, and you can use the slider to resize it. Tapping the black circle (not a good colour on a black background, right) will allow you to choose the font colour. To write in the box, tap it, and tap 'edit' which will have your keyboard pop up.
6. To move the textbox, simply drag it where you want. Note that you need to touch the textbox to get the little side circles or 'handles' to appear if they have disappeared (ask me how I know) so that you can drag it to where you want it.

You can crop your photos too, very easily. Tap 'Edit'.
1. Now tap the crop/rotate icon at the bottom beside the word 'Cancel'. You can rotate, yes, but if you 'grab' as in put your finger on, one of the four corner frame thingies (great term, remember I'm no tech guru) you can pull in the corners to crop your photo. You can move the crop area wherever you want it by simply dragging it to the part of the photo you desire to keep.

Voilà! (French for 'there or here you go!' or 'here you are!' - I can hear my mother correcting my Canadian English to British English) just please don't write 'Viola!' thinking you've written a French word, because you haven't, that's either a member of the violin family or a flower, take your pick. 😁


One quick fabric tip (enough of the tech stuff!): did you know Connecting Threads (affiliate link) doesn't just sell their own line of fabrics? However, Emma and Myrtle by Amanda Jean of crazymomquilts and Glacier Peak, two new ones I particularly love, keep calling me. Just sayin'... A few months ago, I snagged several lines in the clearance section which I keep forgetting to show you:

As you can see from the one selvage I was sure to show, these are five pieces from 'Hazel' by Allison Harris. Under $5/yard, yes please and thank you!

Here are four pieces of various C&S as well as a Valori Wells, whose fabric I really like, although I don't own very much, hmmm...but this--?! Books! Blue! Into my cart it went in a flash. All under $5/yard.

Always pays (yourself, right?!) to check the sale or clearance section in quilt shops, be they online or IRL. What I particularly like about Connecting Threads is that they ship to Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom free if you spend $75. That's pretty darn sweet.

Splash of Colour Quilt Along

The 150 Canadian Women QAL at Next Step Quilt Designs ends this month, just 9 blocks left, 3 weeks to go as I type and I am right up to date, woo hoo. So what do I do? Sign up for two more QALs.😂 And bought the pattern for a third with hopes of doing hopefully some of the QAL...

Call me Tish.  Did that make you snort-laugh out loud? It did me.  Meanwhile I fell far behind in The Honey Pot Bee with Molli Sparkles, and haven't caught up yet, although I still plan to do enough blocks to make a quilt. Eventually. Oh! And let's not forget Postcards from Sweden, which I hope to do with a few friends before the end of the year.

You know from my previous post that I am joining in with Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl for Wayward Transparency. My second QAL, to which I committed right about the same time as Yvonne's, is with Myra at  Busy Hands Quilts, called Splash of Colour.  (my autocorrect knows I'm Canadian and keeps fixing it to colour with a 'u'.

The magazineyou see below has sat open to this pattern since I set up my sewing room after we moved in. It sits on the top of a rolling toolbox I bought years ago at Canadian Tire to haul my stuff to quilt retreats and workshops. Said toolbox (a terrific purchase btw) is tall enough that is sits to my right and I rest stuff on it just like a little extra table.  When I saw Myra was doing this QAL where you can choose the pattern you want, just has to be black and white with a splash of colour, it was meant to be.

Here's my fabric pull plus the pattern:

I haven't made final decisions as to which fabrics will make it into the quilt, but I'm really liking all of the ones I did pull. You need 24 sets of patches each of lime and of turquoise; you can double or triple up on fabrics, or not. I'm so happy Myra is doing this because I've collected black and white fabrics for a couple of years thinking I'd like to do a black and white quilt. This one, though, with the hits of lime and turquoise (or aqua or teal!) really appeals to me, so better than languishing on the shelf for another two years, they're growing up into a quilt.

What's the third QAL for which I bought the pattern? Why, Alyce of Blossom Heart Quilts Geode QAL, of course! You'll just have to click the link and check out her quilt. I haven't for sure for sure chosen my fabrics, but I have a pretty good idea. I may have purchased a fat quarter bundle of Bari J's latest fabric line from Bernie at Needle and Foot Fine Fabrics. This one goes pretty quick, a step a week, so with October being a bit of a busy month, I'm not holding out too much hope of keeping up.

Not keeping up with a QAL is totally fine, because with most of them, the instructions remain on the host's blog within the posts, forever. Usually at the end of the QAL, the blogger will put a PDF together so that people can buy the pattern and have all the instructions together in one place rather than scrolling through a month or more of posts to find each step. That is what I am going to do with Freefall, the QAL I ran here on the blog in the spring. The instructions will be there forever, the page with all the posts, forever, but the PDFs that have been free on Crafsty (that's an affiliate link, but yes, the PDFs are still free!) will be gathered together into one pattern, which will be for sale. I will leave them up as is, free, on Craftsy until the end of October, so if you'd like to download them while you can, hop to it!

Michele in Arizona did my Freefall QAL on her own after the QAL was done and wow! It's a beauty. She just got it back from the longarmer and bound it, just in time for Fall. I love the borders she added.

I just have to share this other little warm fuzzy I received last month.  Do you remember my Pyramid Pouch that was on Moda Bakeshop in 2015? Well I made one for a giveaway and funnily enough a colleague from my teaching years, Janis, won it. That little pouch has travelled quite the number of kilometres with her! She sent me this photo from a bike and barge cruise they took last month. This is Heidelberg, Germany!

I LOVE it! She also made two of these and gave them to her twin granddaughters, same age as my Brady. Thanks so much Janis, for this.😘

Linking up
Busy Hands Quilts

Q4 Finish Along My List

Somehow I missed joining up for both Q2 and 3, well I know how, major life changes. Moving was the reason for Q2, as our possession was April 1 and we came back home from Florida a week ahead of that, so lots of instability then. Doesn't seem 6 months ago. The reason for Q3 was another major life change, the sudden death of our son-in-law, Brady's dad. Still have a hard time writing that. So here's my little list for Q4.

1. This Craftsy kit I bought last year:

Still not all cut but I did a test block and love the wild crazy of Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably

2.  A quilt for another aunt.

This annoys me each time I look at it because it was not made clear that you were not getting yardage, but five charm packs and one yard to make the quilt. I bought the kit with a different pattern in mind...Jenny Doan to the rescue methinks. The fabrics are perfect for her which is why I've kept it.

3. ONE of these RSC2017 projects; yup! cannot make up my mind.
This one...

Rainbow strings

OR ...

Migrating Geese (a couple rows not shown in this photo)

4.  A quilt for Brady. I have two in mind, both of which I'm embarrassed to say, have been on a FAL list.  It's been over a year since I made him a quilt; he did get his lap placemat for his birthday, but this is not acceptable to not have a quilt a year for a quilt-loving little boy!
This...

A quilt that connects him to his great-grandfather, my dad.

 OR this...

A football quilt, pattern that I bought from Allison Harris of Cluck Cluck Sew.

5.  Finish assembling and then quilt this one:

Not 100% sold that this will be the final layout

As usual, there will be others that crop up/get in the way of me being focused, but I will try my best! i looked back at my Q1 list and I'm pretty pleased to see that 6 of 7 quilts are complete and 1 of 1 cushion. So even though I feel a bit deflated when my finish rate is often 50% give or take, at the end of the year it's worth looking back and seeing all I did accomplish in the end!

Linking up at She Can Quilt

One Monthly Goal - October

Somehow October is shaping up to be a busy month; two weeks ago and I'd have said, na, not much going on...  Therefore, I am keeping my OMG very simple, complete two Dog Gone Cute blocks for Karen at kaholly. For her birthday she has asked for anyone to send her a block. Once she goes to Texas for the winter, she is going to make them into placemats, wallhangings, and quilts to auction of. She plans to send the money to a nonprofit agency who helped keep the pets safe until they can go home with their humans. Details are in that link.

Here's the start, all cut:

Any idea why I've chosen these colours? 🐶

Here is a link to Lorna's blog, Sew Fresh Quilts, where you can find several tutorials for free for these sweet blocks. I made one into a cushion for our dear friend John last Christmas:

Linking up
Elm Street Quilts
Sew Fresh Quilts