January goal met

Woohoo I met my January 2015 goal for Lovely Year of Finishes!  I started piecing my Grandson's I Spy quilt on New Year's day fulling expecting to take a week of piecing. So I was very surprised when it only took 2 days!!  Plus 90 minutes to load it on my frame and quilt it. You can read it's short story here if you like :-)  The grandson's were over a week ago and we played with it a little. The oldest seemed to enjoy looking for the things I asked him to.  We'll have more opportunity to play next week.

I quilted it with Dwirling which is a design from The Pajama Quilter DVD, a very fun easy design to freehand.

Now I better get busy and decide what my February goal will be.

Linking up with:

 http://myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/2015/01/party-time.html

 http://fortworthfabricstudio.blogspot.com/2015/01/fabric-frenzy-friday-48.html

http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/2015/01/can-i-get-whoop-whoop-interlocking-stars.html

Scraps and Retreat

I just got home from a 4 day quilt retreat last night. So totally exhausted but I got lots done and I wanted to show you 3 of those today. I took many easy things along to work on and I managed to finish piecing 5(almost 6). I felt pretty accomplished to do 5 even though some are small(baby or table runner). And I managed to have lots of chat time with good friends :-)
This first one is a scrappy strings one from Scrap-palooza. I was going to make it with red blocks, green blocks and blue blocks, but when I got 6 green ones sewn I decided I liked the look of all green for this quilt. It will be a donation quilt when I get it quilted.  Please forgive the creases, I just pulled it out of the suitcase!

I also took along a bunch of light blue charms I cut from my stash to make these 2 baby boy heart quilts for our local neonatal. Last week I showed the finished pink version. 

Linking up with  Freemotion by the River, Oh Scrap, and Let's Bee Social.

Scrappy Heart quilt

Linking up my scrappy charm heart quilt with Oh Scrap. Cynthia had posted her smaller hearts a while back and a link to the bigger heart using charm squares. So I thought one big heart and a border would be a perfect size of 36" for a donation quilt for our local neonatal unit. So I dug out several scraps of pinks and and my 5" sq ruler and wow in no time at all I had this yummy stack of pinks cut. I layered several to make it quick cutting.  And once I had the pinks done I might as well do the blues too for future quilts. Since there are so many charm quilts one can make I just cut up a lot of the pastels so they will be ready for future projects.

I decided to make the heart look like it is floating in the center so I added a small white border before the outside pink one. This is so simple-try one!!  Here is Cynthia's heart block and The big heart from the FatQuarter Shop.

I am editing this to say check out the link parties I am joining this week along with Oh Scrap there is Freemotion by the River and Let's Bee Social.

EEEK-actual finishes!!

Really I haven't been just sitting around doing nothing!! I just have not had a lot of true finishes lately. Sure I have finished a bunch into flimsy's, but now, I have some totally done as in quilting and bindings, YEAH!
I also have been back to crocheting booties for Bundles of Love, it's so relaxing and rewarding to know I am helping keep 25 babies' feet warm in the cold MN weather :-)  Yes I said 25 pair of booties of various colors. It's a free pattern I found at Red Heart. This is what I do in the evening while TV watching with the Hubbs.

What's that you say?  You wantta see the quilt they are sitting on...   oh OK,

here it is, hehe.  These next 2 quilts are flimsy's I pieced in the last couple months. Monday I quilted them and yesterday the binding's went on. They will both be donated to the local Neonatal.

And a close up of the quilting.  I was trying to just do allovers on these to get them done quicker, but as you can see I couldn't resist doing some custom of one of them! 

Linking up at Let's Bee Social,  Needle and Thread Thursday and Fort Worth Fabric.

New purse for me!

About a month ago I ran across a free bag pattern and tutorial here, and now it is a finished bag for me! Surprise-it only took me a month to actually sit down and make it! Usually ideas/projects are roaming around in my head a whole lot longer than that!  In December I had won 2 patterns from Kansas Troubles and she included a little surprise of some of her fabric scraps. They were just perfect to use in this purse, several were 2.5" strips and some a bit more. Then I added the fabric for the sides, handle and lining. The only thing I did different was to add 2 pockets inside. The size of purse is great for me, the only thing I would change is to make the handles longer to carry on my shoulder. I didn't have enough fabric to do it for this one.  The measurements are 10" wide, 7" tall, and 4" deep.

I am also piecing some donation quilt tops, here is a disappearing nine patch.

 Friday I cut strips for 5 more donation quilts. I will be using an easy pattern from Wood Valley Designs called Criss Cross. Yesterday we had a little modern quilt group meeting for the first time. Then we could stay and sew in the afternoon. So I packed up my sewing machine, these strips and a few other necessities to sew with. We had about 12 of us there, some new to the modern quilt world and just wanted to learn what it is all about. Mostly it was our guild members enjoying sharing the quilt world~we had a great time.  So I sewed up the strips for 3 of the quilts, I hope to continue working on these this week.

Hope you are all having a very productive quilting weekend!

Check out the weekly eye candy at the linky parties on the left. I will definitely be joining in on some of them. 

First finish of the New Year!

On New Year's day I started my first ever I Spy quilt, I modified a free pattern called Stitches in Bloom from Hoffman Fabrics but found at Bear Creek Quilting.  After looking through all the fabrics I had available, I decided on some sizes of blocks to cut, 6x6, 6x8, 6x10 and 4.5x4.5. It was such fun seeing all the different items and arranging them.
Wow but it was so colorful I decided I needed to tone it down with the royal blue and gray, much better. My blue sashings are cut 1.25" wide, I did have to fill in with a larger size on some of the rows to make them all come out the same size. The gray is cut 2" between the blocks and then the long strips are cut 1.25".  I was flying by the seat of my pants with this one making it up as I went, so in the end it was too close to being square and I don't care for square quilts unless they are to be on the wall. So I added 3.5" blue top and bottom borders. I have enough blue to bind it.  I don't remember the exact measurements but around 59x 65 I think. It's all folded up and I am too lazy to go measure!

I finished the neutral strings flimsy on New Year's Eve day-so a last finish for 2014.  The inspiration for this quilt came from Quilting is more fun than housework.  I didn't realize it was Cynthia's quilt when I saw it on Pintrest. I was just over to her blog looking through her gallery, so I had to come back here and edit to give her credit!!  Thanks Cynthia!

 Now I am trying to figure out some projects I want to take on quilt retreat coming up in a few weeks. So many I could do but which do I really want to take. 

You will have to check out the Linky parties on the left side bar this week for some quilty goodness!

I am linking with Oh Scrap, Free Motion by the River and Let's Bee Social.

One January Goal

I have never really liked the I spy quilts until a friend posted one. I made a comment to her about how I liked that one and I should make one for my Grandsons to keep at my house. The next week I got a 'squishy' package in the mail-surprise she says here is the start of your I spy quilt, WOW how cool and thoughtful of her. I also mentioned it to a couple other friends and yep here came a little more fabric. I dug into my stash and found a few prints that would work too. This morning I told my DH I think that is what I will work on today. Here is the start of it.  My goal is to have it all finished by the end of January so I am linking up with A Lovely Year of Finishes 2015.

I modified a free pattern I saw online to fit in with my sizes of fabrics/designs. I am going to add royal blue and gray for sashings to tone it down a bit.  DH comes in and says 'that's not your usual kind of quilt', LOL  Well he is definitely right! But it will be a fun teaching tool for the boys.

A few stringy days

Yes I am working with my strings/strips, trying to get this mess controlled (at least a little bit).  It's all Connie's fault!!!!!  She knows I am just kidding her :-)  She inspired me to get them out and use them by sewing them to phone book paper, I have never liked paper piecing just for the fact I HATE tearing off the paper. But I am here to tell you if you have felt that way try this method as it tears off so quick easy and clean.  I used a short stitch length of 1.7 and a Jeans needle.

I drew a line down the middle of the paper point to point, laid 2 ride side together fabrics at that line and stitched 1.4" seam. I like to press after each strip.

Keep sewing, flipping and pressing until you have the paper covered, and trim. I could only get a 7 3/4" sq. from my phone books.  I started Sunday and was able to whip through 11 blocks, I thought I was doing pretty good for an afternoon of work. Monday morning I was able to do 16 more and 12 more in the afternoon!!  I tore off the papers from the blocks last night.  I now have a design in mind and hope to get it all finished up this week into a lap size quilt.

This is how my design wall looks this morning, I am really liking what I see!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, we sure did, our son and daughter in law came down on Christmas(a day earlier than planned) and our daughter and her 2 boys came over. 

And now we are all onto a productive 2015 very soon, right?

Check out the linky parties this week-located on my left side bar.

Editing to say the inspiration for this string quilt came from Quilting is more fun than housework. I just discovered her string quilt and wanted to give her credit.

Stars and more

You might remember these little stars from this post, I used them all up now! Feels good to make something out of leftovers that I really like :-)  As you can see by adding some sashing, corner triangles and borders I have them both pieced. It just took a little playing around and thinking time to come up with settings I liked.

This little runner got quite long but hey someone might have a longer table since this will go out for craft shows next year.
The leftover triangles is what I had to work with and they needed
trimming to a consistent size and then I added the beige background.
Add some borders and 'tada' all done!

I made this X Block baby quilt back in January and these were leftover cut off's and I just couldn't throw them away! So in a pile they have sat and since I am cleaning up my sewing room they were destined to be in a quilt :-)  After sewing matching pairs together I trimmed into 60 degree triangles.  Added some white tri's orange sashing and borders and another Neonatal flimsy pieced. That 'to be quilted' pile is growing by leaps and bounds. I am planning to spend a lot of time at the longarm in January.

Linking up with Freemotion at the River and Let's Bee Social-links are located on the left side. Be sure to check out all the eye candy this week.

Joining in on Scraptastic!

Over on the She Can Quilt blog there is a Scraptastic event going on. Every month you can link to Scraptastic Tuesday-so I am linking for the first time ever to the December one http://www.shecanquilt.ca/2014/12/scraptastic-tuesday-december-link-up.html. I have lots of scraps to put to wonderful use for some donation quilts. I have finished a few flimsy's this month and lots more to work on. But why I need to join is I have a few tubs that look like this and I need to get them organized. So my plan is after Christmas I am going to pick 5 scrappy quilt patterns out and then start to cutting my scraps according to what I need for those 5.  Since not all quilts require the same size strips I am hoping by picking 5 patterns it won't be so overwhelming-well I can hope anyway, LOL    I am going to bribe a friend to come help me press and cut in exchange for some quilting!

Here is a UFO flimsy I finished up last week.

 This one I blogged about the process on Monday and now it is offically a 42 x 42" flimsy.

I really am hoping to join in the monthly Scraptastic in 2015!!  Wish me luck, haha.

Hats and another UFO in progress again

My daughter wanted me to crochet animal hats for my grandsons-well of course I would do that! I found the cutest patterns on Repeat Crafter Me that she really liked.  A tiger for the little guy and a dalamation for the older grandson. The tiger fit perfectly but the dalmation is a tad big but it still works and he may get to wear it next year too.

And yet another UFO back in the works. Back in January of this year I pieced this X Block flimsy

which apparently I never blogged about. It isn't quilted yet and that might be why I never mentioned it.  Anyways with the X Block you have lots of leftover pieces like this...

 and this...

You are supposed to piece them for borders, but I chose not to, so into a box for a later project they went.  This week is the time to finish it up. So I got 1/2 of them pieced and trimmed. I used my rectangle Bloc Loc ruler to trim, it makes trimming easier and faster. I am not 100% sure of how this is going to look but it will be a quilt flimsy-hopefully before the week is done.

Joining in Freemotion at the River and Let's Bee Social linky's this week-links on the side bar :-)

DRS challenge 151-GLITTER

All things sparkly and glittery is the challenge this week for DRS challenge.  A few weeks ago I was the lucky winner of 3 of their stamps, so I chose to use 2 of them in this weeks challenge(the cabin and the snowy tree line). My glitter is in the Stickles that I put on the trees, roof and snow. The pine spring is another stamp from DRS. I used Tombow markers to color the trees and watercolor pencil for the cabin. Cardstock used-green, white and teal.

Cute little star blocks

This past year I made 3 Day and Night table runners from Eleanor Burns book. There are leftovers that she tells you how to make a bonus runner from. So in the cleaning up of UFO's I dug them out and made the star blocks. Aren't they just stinkin' cute at 5.25"!!

You pair up these slanty pieces'''

 To get this star point...

 Sew four together to get this star

And trim down to 5.25" 

There are leftover triangle pieces and you sew 8 of them together and you get this kaleidescope block, I still need to sew on the outer 4 triangles to finish them up. 

But here is the thing I don't really like the look of the bonus one she shows and I am trying to think of something different-any suggestions?????????

Linking up with Lorna at Let's Bee Social and Freshly Pieced WIP wednesday.

Some new stuff!!

Welcome to December!!  I had to take a teeny break from the UFO world and start a couple new projects. I recently saw a video from Jenny Doan at Missouri Star  for a Tipsy Tumbler. It has a unique construction and I just wanted to have a little fun doing something different. So I created this cute little baby quilt approx. 36" square for a donation quilt for our local Neonatal unit. For now, this will remain a flimsy and be put into the 'to be quilted' pile. I have a orange stripe I will bind it in-the same one as the other quilt below.

I had so much fun with the one above and it didn't take long to do, so I dug in my UFO closet and I had lots of 60 deg. tri's cut from a past QAL. But technically since it wasn't started is it a UFO or maybe it is a WIP-either way it is good to get it done :-)
Another Neonatal quilt is born and it too went very fast. In fact today I will use even more of those tri's in another quilt. Doing only 36" square tops makes you feel really productive since they are so quick to do!! The binding will be the stripe.

Linking up with a few of the linky parties on the left this week. Grab your cup of coffee and go get inspired!!