Red and aqua

Don't you just love the color combination of red and aqua on these buttons? Me too. When my friends saw the color combination I was working with, a lot of them said, "Hmmmm, I would never have thought of putting those two colors together." And I might not have either. But to me it says "Hey, we're both retro and modern. And we definitely belong together."

photo from lilfishstudios

If I would have written this earlier, I would have called it "What was I thinking??" or "Someone please stop me." Why? Because I have so many "NEED to be done" things on my quilting list. Instead, I signed up for an on-line red and aqua block exchange. Just because I wanted to. I didn't really have the time. Definitely not a must-do. Nope. Just for fun.

I found info and instructions here and here. I had plenty of red fabric, but I needed a bit more aqua. With fabric stored in nearly every room in our house, was it even remotely possible that I could do this swap without a few pieces of new fabric? What a silly thought...

So after a few purchases, this is what I started with:

The block is called "disappearing nine-patch." First, I cut a lot of 4 1/2 inch squares:

Laid them out so each block had a different fabric combination:

Sewed them together (I made a total of 25 nine-patch blocks):

Then cut them apart into four equal segments:

Now I mail them all off to a block exchange administrator, 100 of these segments. And in about a month I should get 100 back in the mail. (Is this sounding too much like one of those weird chain letter things??)

No, I'm sure I will get 100 in the mail. And when I do, I think I might put them back together like this.

And look at the socks I wore the day I sewed these blocks, and didn't even realize until I was photographing them. To quote my friend, Tanya, "What, doesn't everyone unknowingly match their socks to their quilt project of the day??"