Squeaking in 1 last project - Updated photos!

Hallo friends! It's LATE as usual. But I've managed to get 1 more thing finished before the Q4 FAL deadline - whew! I'm really excited not to have to "roll" this one over to next year.
In my previous (non-European) life, I had a sweet neighbor who was a tremendous help in my attempts to learn knitting. She was always available to pull out all my wrong stitches when I'd go visit her with a problem. She was quick-witted enough to not become so distracted by my small talk that she'd redo any section and tough enough not to bend to my begging for her to just "finish my stupid scarf." It is because of Mrs. B that I am 4 inches of my own knitting into a scarf that was started in 2012 and may never be finished. Gotta respect her.
I wanted to make her a bag for her own stitchy projects, and it's been on my to-do list for quite awhile. Mrs. B adores her kitties, so I decided to use the Catvent pattern from Oh, Frannson!

 My cool kid thinks she belongs in every picture taken around here.

I started with a large catvent quilted front pocket with binding, and built the bag from there. The back features a paper-pieced letter "b" and straightline quilting. The fabric is a random assortment of modern charms, Kona ash, and the handles and lining are from a line called Silent Cinema. It has closure ties and finishes about 17" tall by 15" wide. I used light batting and a very light layer of interfacing so it would have a little structure, but I think next time I'll go a little heavier with it.

 I hope Mrs. B and her kitties like it! I should totally send her my lil' scrap of a scarf and see if she can be guilted into finishing it now ;)

Fmt

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Supernova Friendship Block Swap

Hello! It took us awhile, but we got our bundle, divvied it on up and set about catching up with everyone in the Friendship Block swap. July 15 is the deadline for block 2, so we went ahead and made 2 blocks this month. I must say it was tough answering the "25 things you didn't know about me." I was very tempted to give bra sizes and other private info just to get finished. I haven't received my partner's yet and I can't wait!

Anyway, when I got my bundle and started planning the layout of the first block I realized the majority of the prints are freakin' directional. I saw it, but I guess didn't absorb it until I started sewing the block together. Riddle & Whimsy posted a shortcut tute to go along with Lee's tutorial and I set off. Long story short:  if you're using directional fabric, you can't use the shortcut.

A little of this

and a little of this
led to..

Supernova June blocks 

Supernova July blocks

All together now!

 Ms. E and I decided to make identical blocks every month, so we're always making 2 of the same blocks and sending one out and keeping the other.

I got Quiltography for my iPad the other day hoping to get an idea of how blocks would turn out ahead of time. You can upload specific fabrics and try them out which I thought was pretty cool. The only drawback is that the program makes the fabrics appear large so that a repeating theme or print may not be seen within a block, but one can definitely see the effect in general. For July, here is my Quiltography block:

and you can see the real block above.
FMT