do.Good blocks and zigzags

today, a few pics of the quilty things i've been up to this week... *edited to add: and a bunch of rambling down at the bottom there*

a wonky star block for an extra quilt the Heal do.Good stitches circle is pulling together for a member's co-worker who was recently diagnosed with cancer.

my two star blocks for our regularly scheduled june quilt. the first is a modified ribbon star block, and the second my own creation... it started off as an ohio star, but i had a few math problems (read: cut the same blocks four times because i thought i could make it easier. ha!) and i ended up with this. i'm currently working on a quilt design that uses a repeated 16" version of this block and hope to have a tutorial to share with you about that soon post-shorts on the line.

speaking of shorts, did you see the amazing prizes and sponsors list yesterday?? i'm pretty overwhelmed by all of the fabulous our little sewalong has received! the combined value of the prize packages totals nearly $1000! it's certainly well above what i thought we'd be able to offer and i'm super grateful for all of the sponsors (you can see all of their links over there on the sidebar as well), the bloggers that will be posting about their shorts, the guest judges, and all of you who have shared about the event!

in the midst of all of this, i'm also taking a quilting class at my favorite place, sewn studio. we're making zigzag quilts using triangles on a roll, something that i only recently discovered existed. for those of you who dislike the math portion of quilting, it's a great alternative. for me, the math part is actually one of my favorites ;) and it's a little hard for me to let go of that, so this is definitely outside of my quilting comfort zone (which, granted, isn't very big).

i've got four out of nine rows completely pieced and the other five rows are sitting in one-block sections on my ironing board waiting to be pieced together. i'm using prints from Curious Nature and Cut Out and Keep, as well as a few moda bella solids. the solid stripes are moda bella feather, which really looks great with these other colors. these pictures don't do it justice.

what else is going on, you ask? a few random things... 

• i'm working on some graphics for my friend Kara's new blog, me and elna
• i've been tweeting! i know, late to that party... but did you know that there are fun twitter chats? like talkin' tuesdays and fat quarterly's thursday chats. super fun! 
• as a result of said chats, i'll be judging a little competition between Ella of throw a wench in the works and Allegory of {sew} Allegorical for an improv mini. the whole thing was inspired by a discussion of Maureen's fabulous improv scrappy quilt. deadline is july 15, so stay tuned 
• i've received two of my handprinted fat quarters from the maze & vale swap. both lovely!! i need to take some pics and share *add to list*

and now i need to leave my somewhat cool house (a/c set to 80 degrees) to go drive in my air-conditioned car to get to my very cool (a/c set at 72 most days) work. sadly, this will involve being in the sauna formerly known as outdoors for brief moments. why must it be so hot? ok, enough carrying on about the weather.

happy friday, my friends!