New Year & new challenges

Today we had the first thaw since November. It is raining now, and the snowy pavements will be ice and awful for a long time. I prefer -10 C and dry snow anytime between November and March. The apple tree picture was taken a few days ago when the air was curiously red.

I used a lot of fabrics last year, but I hope to use even more this year. I have started with a big plastic bag of strips in any colour, length and width.

 I'm sewing them together to make 10.5" blocks with the QAYG technique, so I can use leftover bits of batting as well. The blocks - 10 ready by today - will go to Jan Mac in Australia. She will join them with other blocks from other places of the world, and deliver them to the Queensland flood area, where families have lost everything.

Jan has a tutorial showing how to make the blocks on her other blog, and her address is on the Oz Comfort Quilts blog. Every block sent to her will find its place in a quilt, every block counts. The postage of a few blocks sent in a big envelope is not too much, if you want to help. Or maybe you have a group of quilters who could share the mailing costs and send more blocks together? They are in fact fun to make, and it takes about half an hour to make a block. It takes 35 blocks to make a quilt.

I have joined another challenge as well already: Anne Marie from Norway is challenging other quilting bloggers to make a Nine-Patch quilt from stash by September 1st. It is not a swap, you can do anything you like with the quilt, and there are no size limits either. Your quilt just needs to have a Nine-patch block or many of them.

Both these projects suit perfectly my efforts of reducing the amount of fabric I have laying around the house, mostly folded in boxes and sorted by colour but also in plastic bags, baskets and just free-standing piles. If you have the same sort of a problem, these are two nice ways to help you towards your goal.

I wish you all a happy new year, with lots of inspiration and lovely projects!