Borders Buys and Jo's Little Women Club

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, my husband and I stopped at a Borders bookstore on Halloween night. These are the books I couldn't leave the store without:

Have you read any of these? Marcie's been telling me a bit about Greg Iles, so I had to get his newest book. She says I won't be able to put it down--part of me hopes that's true and the other part of me wonders how I'll get any quilting done!

Okay, here's something else I picked up that I think is pretty darn cool!

I hadn't seen these Somerset publications before, but Borders had four different ones and they were all tempting. Some seemed to have some projects and techniques that overlapped a bit with the other books, but my main interest was in learning some of these crafty techinques so I could adapt them for my own creative projects. I brought the magazine to work and showed it to a couple other crafty friends and they thought it was pretty neat too. Here are a few things from the book--mostly photos from random pages.

(Hey! There are my fingers! Maybe my Day of Beauty program this week should involve some nail polish!)

For years I've been somewhat fascinated by paper arts, but I'm not really "into" stamping my own party invitations (probably because I seldom throw parties!) or greeting cards (too easy to just buy them and keep on quilting instead). I'm not really into doing the memory book thing either--mostly because as you all know, I'm really not into photography. But I like a lot of the little memory book products and decorations and such. So, anyway, I was pretty excited to see some of these supplies and techniques used in other ways. Do you all know about these publications and I'm just the last one to hear about them or what? 'Cause I know many of you are pretty crafty! Now I'm excited about thinking up some creative little projects. I think I might need to get a few more of these publications. If you're like me--living under a rock, apparently--and if you crawl out long enough to make it into a bookstore like Borders, check these out!

Oh, and I know you've all been on the edge of your seats, wondering whether I'd decide to go back to quilting that quilt I was working on last week or bite the bullet and tackle those teeny tiny Jo's Little Women 9-patch blocks. Does this tell you what I decided?

Am I nuts? I think so! These little 9-patches--UNFINISHED--are 2 inches. TWO INCHES! Finished, the blocks measure 1-1/2 inches. Can you tell how small these are?

I need 16 blocks. Well, actually I need more than 16 because I'm supposed to be making three quilts out of these so that no two blocks in a quilt are the same and everything's scrappy. Basically I have a quarter of the blocks done that I'll need to make two of the three little quilts. The one cool thing is that I was able to use a pack of 1800s repro charm squares for these. At this point, I have no idea what fabric I'll use for setting squares and triangles and borders, but I'll share photos with you when I do! Happy Friday, everyone--the weekend's almost here!