Design Wall Monday 7-25-11

Be sure to check out Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times!

Once again, my quilting and crafting hobbies have come to my rescue. Tuesday I had gastric bypass surgery and am recovering. While I didn't get much done Tuesday-Friday, Saturday and Sunday I sewed a lot. The up and down motion of sitting at the sewing machine, moving to the ironing board, moving to the cutting table, then back to the sewing machine, has helped to alleviate a lot of the discomfort I was having. I purposely left on my "to do" plate several very easy projects. Here they are.


I'm always surprised at where inspiration for a quilt design will come from. Several weeks ago a local boutique published an ad for a sale and the ad featured flip-flops hanging from a clotheslines. Oh my gosh - it was adorable. So I put my own spin on it. The twine line in this photograph will be replaced with a piece of real clothesline. I will also use real wooden clothespins for "hanging" the flip-flops. All I've done so far is the applique - I need to finish the raw edges, add the clothesline and clothespins and, of course, quilt the piece. It's about 18" x 30". And since one of the rooms in my house is named "Just Beachy", I suspect this piece will end up in that room. I also suspect it may get some bead embellishments ...


Scrappy stars - when I got home from the hospital Thursday I had 5 stars made. Now there are 28 - and that will be all because I ran out of white fabric - will buy more this week. The blocks are 9.5" square, so I'll cut 44 plain white blocks for a total of 72 and will randomly place the star blocks. I'll think about the border when I get there. I'm hoping to find a happy color fabric with a star motif, and I'll have it quilted using a star motif as well. Just a fun, fast quilt.


And the bargello from last week's Design Wall Monday - I'm sewing the strips together. Still no real plan for the border - after I get the center panel finished I'll take it to the quilt shop and see what batiks she has. Cotton Fields always has a nice selection of batiks.

Anyone interested in reading about my bariatric surgery, please visit my other blog Sally's Lapband Journey. I had lapband surgery in August 2008, lost a lot of weight but in August 2009 started having complications. In December 2010 the lapband was removed and the weight quickly started coming back so then I had conventional gastric bypass surgery.