Kaleidoscope!

As I mentioned yesterday, the Kaleidoscope quilt I'm making for my dad is going together so beautifully. 

I'm making 9" blocks, and I'm using two fabrics that I purchased at Patchwork Plus in Dayton, Virginia.  The white is really a white with very pale blue fern batik pattern in it.  The dark has a lovely pattern that makes me think of stones at the bottom of a river, with grays and blues and browns.  Here is an image I found on the web which gives an idea of what it should look like when all put together - I love the image of the curves:

Because the pieces are large and I stacked them when rotary cutting them, they go together SO fast.  There was preseason football on last night (Go Ravens!) and it's my habit to let it record on the DVR for at least a half hour so that I don't have to watch commercials when I finally sit down.  I think I zipped together about eight of these blocks in that half hour.  Wow!  I wasn't anticipating have this done as a Christmas gift, but at this rate, I just might!
I did finish hand piecing those Drunkards Path blocks last night - remember them?:

... so now I will need a new hand sewing project for Thursday nights with Kitty and to take to the beach next month.  Assuming, of course, that the house that's been rented for our beach vacation is still standing after Hurricane Irene blows through.

See where that black dot on the red background on the North Carolina coast is?  That's where the beach house is currently standing.  At least my family no longer owns a beach house ... hurricane season was always stressful.  On the other hand, my dad told me last night he's thinking about spending the night on his 43' yacht so that it doesn't break its moorings when Irene blows through his area.  I hope he lives to get this quilt!  Just kidding, he should be fine, especially if his girlfriend is with him - she's writing an autobiography about some of her most harrowing experiences in a lifetime of sailing around the world.

Anyway, I digress.  I wanted to share one of my favorite places on the internet with all the fabric shopping I've been doing lately ... great deals at Green Fairy Quilts (right now, everything is 30% off their already way low prices, including new precuts!) and Burgundy Buttons (a Bigger Big Giant Clearance Sale has me supplementing an earlier order) have me anticipating what beautiful Moda fabrics will be hitting my eager little hands soon.  So I go to Moda's website to download swatches and sample patterns to drool over while I wait.  If you weren't aware, Moda offers all kinds of goodies for their fabric lines, including images to import into your quilting software and swatch cards to view and print.  Many have free patterns to download featuring a new fabric line, and it's laid out so that you can tell at a glance which line has what, as well as sort by name of line, release date, or designer.  There are 405 fabric lines in this chart right now so it's not just the most current releases either!  How awesome!

The weekend is nearly upon us and I hope to spend a lot of it in my sewing room.  If you're in the path of Irene, take cover and take some hand-sewing project to work on by candlelight like generations of quilters before us.  Stay dry!