A Start to Bitch Is Crazy

My friend Marsha, from work is on vacation in Hawaii this week.  She's had to sit next to me for the better part of 2 years.  Yeah, she's had to put up with me for that long.  Can you imagine?  She deserves a gift.  I'm going to miss her now that she's been moved across the room.  So, I made a bag for her to take on vacation.  She seemed to like it a lot.  I liked it a lot.  It almost became M for Mantz instead of Marsha...

My first installment of Bitch is Crazy is sort of done.  I thought I was done but now that I look at it, I think I'm going to have to embroider all the seams instead of just a few.  So, the color scheme is peaches, plums, and nectarines because it's one of the many crops they grow in the San Joaquin Valley.  There is a rose colored block on the far right that is the exact color of carpet I made my mom buy in the 80's.  We were awesome.  I embroidered a peach because my mom's favorite scent of potpourri was peach. Our house always smelled like peaches.  4534 is the street address of the house I grew up in and then later raised my kids in for 7 years.  The rose in the center represents the rose bushes that Rich bought me for every Mother's Day.  I also beaded flowers along one seam because I used to garden in California.  I don't in Illinois because my allergies are too bad.  And, it's humid and gross here...The heart buttons are for the friends I had there.  I miss them tons. So, I guess we can call this the Fresno block.

I was SO inspired by our guild meeting last night!  This lady named Teajuana Mahone came and spoke with us about making scrap quilts.  She was fabulous!  So, this morning I started back on my strip quilt pieces.  I've been saving all my strips for a couple of years so that I can make stuff from Edyta Sitar's Friendship Strips book.  I'm sewing them together by color, then cutting a block for the houses and diamonds for 2 other projects and then the triangle.  I bought the templates forever ago.  So far, the red strips are done.  There's enough to make like, 6 red houses.  Now I'm thinking that if I buy the book for my secret pal, I could gift her some blocks, too.  She could make the same quilt of cut up the pieces to do one of other quilts.

Like I said, I was really inspired by Teajuana.  So, I made this mini quilt out of left over HST from the tree quilt I made this summer.  Also, one of Edyta's books.  I used one of each color and the borders are also left over from another project.  The fabrics are also used in the HSTs.  I love that border.  Reminds me of my mommy.  Imagine that the binding is done.

And, these are the left over HST from the tree quilt and mini quilt.  I'm trying to decide which project I want to use them on.  There are a lot of options.  Should I do the baskets?  Or, the squares surrounded by triangles?  Hmmm.  They're all pressed, de-papered and organized by color.  All I have to do is square them up and sew them to somethin.