Widdy Biddy Blocks

For two years, my pal Nancy, near philadelphia (aka nana, near philadelphia) and I have been swapping blocks monthly. We nicknamed it the widdle biddy block swap because our blocks are 4 1/2 inches square. Were we nuts? Probably.

Last week, I finally got caught up for the remainder of 2006 and we have declared the swap finished. Pictured at right are my blocks for July to December 2006. The ones I did for Nancy, that is. Mine are still yet to be sewn, but are cut and the foundations printed. This is going to be a darling quilt whenever I finally get it done.

And....I finished the last row for the final sew-a-row of 2006, the Halloween special! This was such a wonderful project when it came to me, that I had a hard time figuring out what to add. It seemed perfect to me as is, with bat, cats, pumpkins and witches.

At first I tried three dimensional spiders from Liz Aneloski's book Simple Fabric Folding for Halloween, and though they were cute, they just didn't "cut" it. Then I tried paper pieced skeletons from Shirley Liby's More Holiday Paper Piecing Patterns, but they were tooooooo labor intensive and too small.

Finally, I went to a good, but often overlooked book on my shelf, Better Homes and Gardens' 501 Quilt Blocks. The pumpkin row came from that book and possibly the cats, so the ghosts seemed like the perfect thing. And they were.

Now, all I have to do is win this thing!