Diamonds are a girls best friend-Be a diamond blog hop

It's here-my day to blog my diamond project for 'Be a Diamond' blog hop!!  This hop is hosted by Carol of Just Let Me Quilt. There are all sorts of ways to use diamonds in a quilt but when I saw this tutorial at Bonjour Quilts I knew I wanted to make them into a table runner.  Hopefully this will also inspire you to try them.  They are not hard to make at all.

Since it is Kristy's tutorial I won't go into the process but encourage you to check out her tutorial HERE.  You will notice my centers are a little different as I didn't add the third color, I wanted my diamonds to appear see through so I used the background fabric.  By the way these are all Island Batiks that were provided to me for my monthly challenges but I happened to have these leftover from one of the blog hops. 

If one had the half rectangle BlocLoc ruler it would be easy to trim these.  I didn't have the large one but I did have the small one and I figured out a way to work with that.  Here are a couple of pic's showing my method. 

You can see how I laid my small HRT Bloc Loc ruler in one corner and trimmed both edges of this one corner.  

From there I could take a regular ruler and measure my 6.5" x 3.5" and trim up the rest of it.  It's always fun to figure out a way to work with what you have. 

Ahh the perfect backing was just lingering in my stash!

I hope I have inspired you just a little today.  And do remember to check out all the other participants and see what diamonds they have in store for you today.  Thank you Carol for hosting this fun blog hop.

April 22

Needled Mom

Keepsake Moments

Kathy’s Quilts

Kathy's Kwilts and More

Color, Creating, and Quilting

April 23

Ms P Designs USA

Vroomans Quilts

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Melva Loves Scraps

Storied Quilts

Words & Stitches

Clever Chameleon Quilting

Songbird Designs

April 24

MooseStashQuilting

Beaquilter

Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting (that's me)

Creative Blonde 

Selina Quilts

Bumbleberry Stitches

Two Maker Chicks

Quilts By Joanne

April 25

Patchouli Moon Studio

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Hill Valley Quilter

Mageez Room

Websterquilt

High Road Quilter
Seams To Be Sew

April 26

Creatin' in the Sticks

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Days Filled With Joy

For The Love Of Geese

Quilt Fabrication

Stitchin At Home

                                                   Just Let Me Quilt

Linking with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers, Wednesday Wait Loss and NTT

OMG-One Monthly Goal done

Whoo hoo I have met my One Monthly Goal with several days to spare!  

This is a tutorial by Missouri Star called Diamond Dash.  It is a quick and fun quilt to make. 

My goal this month was to quilt and bind-done. I did some ruler work and some freehand work on it.  For the first time I did a freehand woodgrain quilting design in the batik rectangle rows. 

I love the texture on the back.

I will be linking with One Monthly Goal at the end of the month.

Lady bug, lady bug

These ladybug are of the cutest kind!  Gosh I am having so much fun making some new table runners for the spring and summer season.  This pattern by Suzanne's Art House is so much fun.  I was able to get some red with black polka dot fabric at Jo Ann's that was just perfect for these bugs.  I did less applique leaves than on the pattern, I kind of liked the simpler version.  And just think these little bugs are not going to be crawling all over your house!

I appliqued the leaves after I quilted the runner.

 Simple quilting is what this little runner needed.

While at JoAnn's getting the red/black polka dot fabric I found this super cute yellow with lady bugs on it.  I had to get it, I was only going to get enough for borders on one runner.  But there was already a one yard piece cut so weakness overtook me and I purchased the whole yard!  So glad I did as this one already sold and will make another soon. 

Oh and this black with white jumped into my cart that day also;)  It was perfect for this runner.  Don't you love the gingham cut on the bias for the binding. 

 And the black scratches for the backing pulled this one all together.

Linking with Whoop Whoop and Finished or not Friday

Step by Step texture-book review

Do you love texture on your quilts?  If so this book might interest you.  Christina Cameli was kind enough to let me do a review of her newest book.  It is called Step-by-step Texture quilting.  The minute I opened the book I was just intrigued with all the beautiful color throughout this book.  It has been laid out very well, it's just a beautiful book and very informative.

Christina has 65 free-motion and walking foot designs in this book.  All of the designs can be done on either your domestic machine or on a longarm(which is what I use).  Just look at one page of the book and you can see how awesome it is.  She does a great job showing how you can get more texture or less texture on your quilt.


There are sections on how to quilt grid style, free motion style and ideas for borders too.  For easy reference, in the back of the book there are little peeks of each design with it's name and the page number.

I would love to show you more of the book but then you wouldn't need to buy it.  And I know Christina worked hard to give you great designs and ideas step by step!  Yes I recommend this book.  You can get it right from Christina HERE, she'll even autograph it for you.  Or from Amazon.

Disclosure: I was given the book from Christina Cameli to do this review.  Thanks Christina!!

Linking at Midweek Makers, Let's Bee Social and WednesdayWaitLoss

You all left so many kind words about my strawberry runner that I hurried up and quilted and bound it right away.  No UFO or WIP with this one!

 I kept seeing crosshatching in the center because of the angle of the leaves so I went with it. 

 And it seemed natural to continue with it in the checkerboard border.

 The scrappy strawberry received some loops, and leaf shapes in the green HST's.  I just could not get them to show up in the pics.

 And the perfect green and white print for the backing was in the stash, well all of the fabric came from the stash:)

But I didn't stop there, nope I was on a roll yesterday!  The second pineapple runner got finished too. 

 Everything is the same as the first one except for a different gold fabric for the border.

 And the backing fabric was different also.

I hope you will come back tomorrow as I will be posting a quilting book review.  Oh it's a good one you won't want to miss!

Another thing you won't want to miss is the Be a Diamond blog hop starting on April 22 going through the 26th.  I have my project ready and will be blogging on the 24th.  

Fruit basket

Yesterday my sewing room looked like a fruit basket!  I started off making strawberry blocks using scraps of red and green cut into 2.5" squares and HST's to equal 2.5" squares with my Accuquilt.  Two berry blocks emerged.  They were to be a table runner, but once I got it this far I didn't have a clue what I wanted to happen next for borders.

I auditioned a ton of fabrics from my stash and nothing tripped my trigger.  So off I went to eat lunch and ponder it.  Still nothing, so I went on to making more pineapple blocks since the first pineapple runner sold. Hence my room looked like a fruit basket!

While doing that I thought I would text my friend Wendy and get her thoughts.  She got right back to me with her input.  Wendy thought perhaps a 4 patch border in blue/white, yellow/white, or green/white.  The Green and white in a checkerboard fashion caught my attention. I did a test sample with 1.5" cut strips paired together and then cut them into 1.5" strips to form this.  I decided on a small red border to separate the berry from the checkerboard.

Hmm, one strip or two???  Off went another text to Wendy(good thing she wasn't too busy). In the meantime I asked DH and neither of us could decide as we felt both looked good.  Wendy came back with the same conclusion a few minutes later. 

But in the end thought she like two best, so I let her be the deciding factor and I went with two!  Thanks Wendy for all your help:)  I love how it came together.  The strawberry block tutorial came from Skyberries Handmade.

So yesterday's sewing lessened me of a few more red and yellow scraps!

Joining Oh Scrap today.

A UFO done for FAL

I decided to take a couple hours yesterday and get my little sailboat donation quilt done.  It was on my Q2 FAL list so I feel triumphant to have crossed it off my list so early!  OK so it is just a small baby size but a finish no less:)

 I used poly batting and kept the quilting simple with a watery looking design.

The backing was given to me by a friend a very long time ago.  There was yardage of this piece, I still have some for at least one more quilt!

 The sailboat came from using the Accuquilt Go 8" cube.  This sweet little quilt will go to H2H 2019, which makes my third one so far.

Linking with Tish's UFO busting and the FAL at the end of the quarter. 

Accuquilt baby quilt-Island Batik challenge

It's just natural to think Spring when April comes around.  Hmmm, as I write this post Mother Nature is pulling a dirty trick on us by dumping another 5 inches of snow!  As if MN hasn't had enough this year.  But I am not going to let it bother me as it won't stick around long.

Anyway I was thinking about Spring when I started my Island Batik ambassador challenge for April.  The challenge is to make a baby size quilt using the Accuquilt Go ultimate fabric system we were given this year by Accuquilt for being an Island Batik ambassador.  How cool is that!!

After much deliberation I finally decided to make mine on the modern side.  I really wanted to try out these two dies to see how well they made flying geese units.  

I am happy to report they did a fabulous job!  I am so pleased with not having to cut off the dog ears and wow they are the perfect size when I was all done! And just think of all the time you can save since you can cut up to 6 layers of fabric at once.  I had thought from time to time about getting a system but well let's face it, they are not inexpensive.  BUT after using this cutter I am lovin' it and I do think I will use it a lot in the future.  Of course I wish I had even more dies.  I would love to have the 1.5" strip die for sure.  I would use that a lot for the little inner borders I put on my table runners.  Well maybe some day:)

Here is how the 8" cube looks, all cute in their own little folders.  Each die has it's own block design on a card for easy reference.  

Here is what all we received from Accuquilt. Not pictured is a book from Eleanor Burns for making a ton of different blocks with the cube.  

Ok back to the quilt I made using the Accuquilt Go.  I made flying geese in several different colors of Island Batik's Paisley Dot collection.  For the background I used Island Batik white solid.  Yes they make solid batiks in white, gray and black.  I really like their solids!  It is very white, you can see that much better in the close up photos.

Did you notice the pop of color in the binding?  

I really like that I didn't loose any of my points in the geese units. 

This shot is so you can see the texture in the quilting.  I used a layer of Hobbs cotton batting with a layer of their Thermore on top of it.  I really had fun with the quilting, straight lines, wishbones, large pebbles and swirls all go perfectly in modern quilts.  

I used the Accuquilt 2.5" strip cutter to cut my binding. 

I love how a quilt looks all rolled up.

As an Island Batik Ambassador I was given the fabric, batting and Accuquilt Go. 

Linking with NTT, Can I get a Whoop Whoop and Friday Finish.