Who you callin' a fat quarter?

I love Australian fabric/pattern designers/quilters. This bag is courtesy of Shannon Lamden, AKA Aunty Cookie. "You'll find something you like. Or maybe not. No pressure. Your choice."

I'm sure I would purchase way too much stuff from these great artists, but  the postage is usually what prevents packages from Australia showing up in my mailbox very often. I guess that's a good thing...given my fabric obsession.

Fabric obsession...have I mentioned before that I'm fabric obsessed?  Or that I love getting the mail every day? Probably.

So when SewMamaSew had a fat quarter exchange during Quilt Month, you better believe I jumped on that bandwagon. And this is what has showed up in my mailbox this week so far, mostly from the East Coast.

I even got something in my virtual mailbox. Fat Quarterly launched their first issue on Tuesday.

Isn't that border awesome? I already have a quilt planned just based on the cover. Aqua, lots of funky squares, white sashing. Hmmm....I wonder if Aunty Cookie has anything in aqua.

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??"