A scrappy day or two

 Monday got off to a great start playing in the blue string and neutral string bags. Long ago I started a green pineapple block with intentions of doing more. The more happened but in blues instead. I will go back and do green some day to combine these into a quilt for donation purposes. 

It was so fun playing with blues, I don't do a lot with blues except for patriotic fabrics so I was surprised at how many blue strings I have! These five blocks were done using the Creative Grids pineapple trim tool. Did I say so much fun!! 

Tuesday got started with more potato chip blocks.  The last batch I did I sent to Kat for the Covered In Love drive.  I had more bricks cut than I used so when there was a challenge at a longarm online group I am in I decided right away to join and use more bricks up. The challenge has very loose rules, we decide how many we want to make and each week we have a check in and have a finished quilt in October. I made these six for this week. I don't know how big a quilt I will end with and it doesn't matter as it is a donation one so I will decide as I go. Today I will get back to the project I started in the last post. 

The first dahlia bloom for this season.  I used to have these beautiful red dahlia's that my mom had given to me. They kept multipling every year and sometimes it was to many to dig each fall so we let some go. A couple years ago we found they molded over the winter storage in the basement, therefore we lost them all. I was sad.  Then I saw our neighbors had the same ones, I begged a couple bulbs from her. She gave me a few more than a couple.

And our red Bee Balm patch, there is some lavender ones in there too, we didn't plant the lavender! 

Linking with Midweek Makers, Wednesday Wait Loss, NTT 

I love reading your comments, thank you so much, and will be responding to them here on the blog.

Getting back to blogging

 Hello, hello my fellow quilting peeps. While I have really enjoyed my blogging break it's time to get back to posting. Even though I wasn't writing posts I have been keeping busy.  

Many red scraps have been used in making strawberry blocks, four done so far. 

Next up was getting out the gold scraps and cutting many 2.5" squares and some HST's in golds and greens too.  The strawberry and pineapple blocks were all cut with Accuquilt dies from the 8" cube.  Speaking of Accuquilt, I have been accepted for another year as a Go! Getter. I am excited to see what is ahead for this year. 

Also on the agenda has been a little sock knitting in the evenings.  The gray marl Kroy sock yarn was a bit boring so I decided to jazz it up a bit with a variegated purple/blue. It's also a Kroy yarn but it is a different weight but it still worked for the heel, stripes and toe.  I am currently working on the foot of the second one. 

While I did try to read a few blogs here and there I mostly stayed unplugged. I would love to hear what you have been working on!  Tune in Saturday for an announcement!

As an affiliate of Accuquilt they let me know the current sales. 

All month long are MARKDOWNS -- Save up to 65% on select items for a limited time so check those out and see you need want any of them:)

Through Feb. 12th--50% Off Studio Dies & Bundles (use code: STUDIO50)

Linking with Whoop Whoop, Finished or Not Friday, TGIFF, Off The Wall Friday, Beauties Pageant, and Oh Scrap!

Weekly Goals and Finishes

That was a very fast and furious week wasn't it!!  I had quite a list of goals to meet this last week, I didn't do to bad.

Here was the list:

• Sunflower table runner ✅  Yes indeed I finished one of these.  

• Green gingham table runner 👎 Nope not even cut out.
• Strawberry table runner✅  One of these done and blogged about HERE.

• Pineapple table runner ✅ One of these also done and blogged about in the same post as the strawberry runner.
• Continue on embroidery project ✅ Finished the embroidery and will wait until inspiration and time hits to make into a wall hanging. Hmmm that is a really bad photo! 

• Continue on Accuquilt tutorial-✅ made great progress, but I can't show you anything until June 4th or after. 

• Make project for Foodie Blog hop- My day is May 23rd -✅  In case you missed that I presented it yesterday in THIS post

• Attend long arm meeting on Saturday-✅  Indeed I did attend, it was wonderful to see these people again, it was sometime last year when I last attended. We are planning to have Julia Quiltoff come to our little group this fall to teach, so excited!!   Another member brought a couple of garbage bags full of scraps from a quilter that passed away from Covid last year.  She let us all go through it and pick out whatever we wanted. Yes a few pieces came home with me. 

All in all I was happy with my accomplishments for last week.  I kept busy for sure!  

Here are a few goals for this week:

• Finish Accuquilt tutorial-due on Friday.
• Make two runners with some new fabric I bought last week
• Quilt and bind a patriotic runner
• Bind two donation quilts. 
• Make whatever else I want;)

Have a great week everyone!!  And be sure to hop over to To Do Tuesday and check out everyone's accomplishments and cheer them on for next week.

Friday Fruity Finishes

 I have two fruity finishes to show you this Friday.  If you are a regular follower you have seen very similar finishes here often. Both of these table runners have been popular spring and summer ones in my Etsy shop. Their counterparts sold last weekend so I remade them this week.  

I realize now that I should be showing you the backs each time especially when I use different backings, that way you would know I made a new runner!! 

The strawberry blocks are so fun to make because I get to dig into the red scrap bin and cut 2.5" squares with my AccuQuilt Go!  This runner was inspired by a block from SkyberriesHandmade. 

To complete the fruit basket for this Friday is another pineapple runner.  Another great way to use scraps for the pineapple block itself.  I would buy this one just for the backing itself, such cute paisley in gold and greens. I added a bright green to get the length I needed for this runner. 

And to complete the photo I added my gingham plate and black cup for props!  Props make for such a cute photo, it's been fun running around the house seeing what I can use.  Sometimes I pop into the dollar store or Hobby Lobby to pick up something.

There are my two Friday Fruity Finishes my quilting peeps:)  Linking with TGIFF, Beauty Pageant and Finished or Not Friday.

On Monday I will be kicking off the Foodie Blog Hop hosted by Creatin' in the Sticks.  so I hope you will pop back in and see what I have come up with for that. 

Fruit Salad

 This post is all about fruity table runners. You might have seen these before, well actually you haven't seen these very ones because they were all made this week. But you have seen others that look like them:)

First up is this cherry one. I hadn't made one of these in a while so it was really fun to dig out the cherry border fabric and the backing fabric.  The actual cherry block is a tutorial from Podunk Pretties.  One could easily use scraps for the cherries and leaves. 

I might have just squealed a bit when I found this sweet little black and white gingham at JoAnn's last year.  It's smaller than the one I had been using on several other runners last year. 

The backing cherry fabric I found at a great sale price.  Usually I try to use WOF for my table runners, so I needed to add a pretty red in this one to make it larger.  But pieced backings add more interest to the piece don't you think?

Next up is a watermelon table runner.  This time I pieced the entire watermelon, the ones I made before had bias (that I made) for the rind.  In the end I wish I had ran the rind up along the sides of the watermelon, it would look more complete.  Green scraps came in handy for the rinds.

One might think I was hung up on gingham and you would be correct! Oh and don't forget polka dots!!! The red border is the size of gingham I usually can find locally pretty easy. 

Yes I even had the watermelon seed fabric fat quarter in my stash!! 

And a quick pineapple with all scraps for the pineapple itself. 

Today I am linking with Oh Scrap!, Monday with Design Wall Monday, Monday Making, and Patchwork and Quilts

Now if you like to party and are curious about Accuquilt BOB's and Cubes, they have another party coming up which you have to register for.  As always if you are registered you have a chance to win prizes! This event is May 25th at 12PM central time. 

Yummy Pineapple

Pictures are a good thing to have.  I love looking back at all the table runners I have made, it helps me realize what I might need to remake.  My pineapple table runner needed to get remade and in the shop since it is an everyday type, meaning you can decorate with it all year long.  

The pineapple is made using 2.5" squares from scraps.  I have a little bag of gold/yellows all precut so it is easy to whip up one of these one when I need it.  

The piecing was done Friday morning and the quilting followed in the afternoon.  The pineapple block was found through a Pinterest link.  

Linking with Oh Scrap!, Design Wall Monday, and Monday Making

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Yesterday I worked on my blog hop project. May 21st is my day on the Born To Be Wild blog hop, I hope you will come back to see my 'Wild' project.  It might involve this guy... OMG he is soooo cute!  

The hop starts tomorrow, you can find the info and participants HERE.

A pineapple H2H finish

If you are one of my followers you might have seen this quilt make a brief appearance in my To-Do Tuesday post this week.  I thought it would like a post of it's own as a Friday finish.

I believe I started this quilt in the spring last year as a way to use some 30's type fabric.  It was also fun to use the large pineapple ruler from Creative Grids. Nine blocks were all pieced and then left all by themselves to sit and stew as to when I would either add more to the pile or use them in a small quilt.  Fast forward to this year and the small quilt won out;)  Adding some sashing and a border brought this quilt up to about 40" square.  This quilt is my second finish for H2H this year. 

As I went to quilt it I found the perfect size of a poly batting that was given to me last year by a friend that was cleaning out her closet.  She realized she had purchased way to much batting and knew that I did several donation quilts each year.  I assured her it would be put to good use.

I am a lucky girl as another friend gave me yards of fleece and flannel last year too!  There was the perfect blue flannel for the back of this one.  Thank you my friends!  As you can see I kept the quilting simple with a dog bone meander, freehand of course.   

As I mentioned this quilt is for H2H and I believe Sarah is having a check in this weekend to see how we are doing with our donation quilts so far this year.  I still have a few more to quilt up this weekend.  How are all of you doing on your H2H donations.  Isn't it just the greatest feeling to be able to make a quilt and give someone a quilty hug!

Linking with Friday Finished or Not,  Can I Get a Whoop Whoop, TGIFF and H2H check in. 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Welcoming pineapple

If you follow me on IG you might have seen me post this photo of a pineapple table runner while I was doing the longarm quilting.  I love doing freehand quilting that has sharp edges like the pokies on real pineapples in the center of the runner.  The yellow border treatment is what I call pineapple leaves, so much fun and pretty quick to do. 

 The inspiration for the runner was from all the pineapple blocks on Pinterest.

I used my Accuquilt HST finished 2" die and the finished 2" square die to quickly cut the pineapple blocks from scraps of yellow/gold and green. 

A close up of how I quilted the pineapple and leaves. 

My customer was thrilled when I sent her a photo of the finished runner on Friday. Her hubby said to thank me for making his shopping easy this year!  

Last weekend the grandsons came over to help decorate our tree.  There isn't much to it as it is a pre-lit one, but they had fun deciding which ornaments go where.  You can see they thought several needed to go on the very bottom, haha. I am just glad it is up.  

And this weekend I got in the mood to make our Christmas cards, I have a good start.  I have made our cards for many years.  It is such fun and a relaxing thing for me to do.  However, I used to make many different designs each year.  This year they are going to be all one design.

I used my Silhouette Cameo to make the stockings. A punch to make the green loopy garland. The cuddlebug did the embossing on the white paper.  Just like in my quilting, there is assembly line making happening:)   Things go so much faster that way instead of one card at a time. 

Thanks for taking a peek at my projects.  I hope that you will follow along on IG to see what else I might be making;)

Linking with Oh Scrap!

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.  

The work is done and it is playtime!

I finished up the weeks work a few hours early yesterday so I got to play!!!  

First the work...

More purses done and listed in my Etsy shop

Using my design this is #3 and #4 of the 6 I cut out a couple weeks ago.

I won't bore you with the details again. But if you missed the details on this you can find more info on this HERE

I also finished up my Island Batik April challenge quilt which I will show you on Monday!!  Just had to let you know that so you wouldn't think all I did all week were these 2 purses!  I also worked on some fall runners for the craft shows-never too soon to start on those.

So now the play begins. Yesterday I finally decided to try out the Creative Grids Pineapple ruler I picked up at the Quilt Expo in Madison WI last fall.  I recently saw a You Tube video from Jenny at Missouri star using this ruler.  Her excitement is very contagious!  I got mine out yesterday along with my pile of 30's scraps and made this block and got started on 2 more. 

All the while making it I felt like Jenny-I understood her excitement over making this block!! They are just so cute.  Mine finished at a 10" block.  My goal is to make 9 blocks and border it for a neonatal quilt or perhaps 12 for a little bigger one.  We'll see.  I hope to do a couple more today.

Linking with UFO Busting and Oh Scrap