Fast and More Fun blog hop with Villa Rosa Designs

Registration for prizes is now closed

It's here, it's here, the Villa Rosa Designs blog that is.  I am thrilled it is my day to show you what I made for the Fast and More Fun blog hop.  Welcome to my blog, I'm Vicki and I love to quilt.  My first quilt I ever made was when I was 20 and getting my own apartment. Crafting and quilting has been in my blood, handed down from my parents. I have done numerous craft shows over 35 years. In 2017 I started my Etsy shop, which you can find HERE where I sell my table runners and quilts.  Also I have a pattern shop on Etsy, PatternsbyVicki.  Now back to what you are here for...the blog hop!

When I was asked if I would like to participate this year I couldn't answer fast enough, YES, of course!!  First blog hops are so fun, but add in the Villa Rosa Designs that really ramps it up!  Have you ever tried their patterns?  They are printed on Rose cards the size of a post card. And at only $2 each you can try a bunch of them. You can also get them as a .pdf too. These are the five patterns we could choose from for this hop.  You can purchase them HERE if you like or enter into the drawing for a chance to win, info below. 

The Clover table runner is the one I chose to whip up.  And when I say whip up I mean it is really a quick make that has a stunning finish.  I didn't have access to my long arm right now so I wasn't able to quilt it up, that will happen next month.  This measures 17"x 56".

As I mentioned this is very quick since there is very little cutting.  While sewing it I used my little clippies to help line up the seams. 

These are the fabrics I used. But just think of all the possibilities of seasonal fabrics for this runner! 

 Or how about using it as a bed runner. You could easily increase it's length by adding another set of blocks.

But wait I have one more project to show you.  I made this quilt a while back and it happens to be one of the five patterns that Villa Rosa picked for us bloggers to make for the hop. So I thought I would include it also. This pattern is Ebb Tide. Another quick and easy make using fat quarters and a background fabric. This one measures 47"x 61".

I had fun custom quilting this one.

 Thank you Villa Rosa for great patterns and for asking me to participate!! Thank you to all the sponsors who are donating prizes too!

There are 28 participating bloggers, I hope you will hop over and leave them some comment love on their day.  At each blog you can sign up to be in the drawing for prizes and let me tell you the prizes are amazing and there are a lot of them!!  To enter leave me a comment below and be sure to add your email so we can notify you if you win. If there is no email I won't be able to track you down:)  One of our bloggers says she is getting a lot of anonymous commenters, we can't respond to those so please please leave your email so we can email you if you win!  And we also try to respond to each and every comment, but if you are anonymous we can't!  You don't have to follow my blog but I would love it if you did!! Registration for the prizes closes on Sunday March 24th.

You can find more information about Villa Rosa Designs and the hop on their blog.

Registration for prizes is now closed

Thursday, March 14^th

https://villarosaquilts.com

Friday, March 15^th

1.  Kathleen McCormick https://kathleenmcmusing.com/
2. Cheree H  -- http://livelylatte.blogspot.com/
3. Roseanne Nelson  --  https://www.homesewnbyus.com
4. Wendy Tuma -- https://www.piecefulthoughts.com/
5. C&T (Valerie) -- https://www.ctpub.com/blog/

Saturday March 16^th

1. Bernie Kringle -- https://needleandfoot.com/
2. Sandra Walker -- https://www.mmmquilts.com/
3. Linda -- https://www.texasquiltgal.com/
4. Debbie Huber – http://time4stitchn.blogspot.com/
5. SIY (Branyn/Jennifer)  – https://siysewityourself.com/

Sunday, March 17^th

1. Carolyn -- https://quarterinchcapers.blogspot.com/
2. Emily (Norton House) -- https://www.nortonhousequilting.com/blogs/news
3. Gail Shepperd -- https://quiltinggail.com/
4. Susan Slaton -- http://wazoonewsbits.blogspot.com/

Monday, March 18^th

1.  Nann Hilyard – https://withstringsattached.blogspot.com/
2. Jaftex (Jennifer) -- https://scottfortunoff.com/
3. Jan Altomare --  https://www.cocoaquilts.com/
4. Tricia – http://quiltwithaview.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, March 19^th

1. Joy -- https://shout4joy-shouting.blogspot.com/
2. Emily Leachman -- http://thedarlingdogwood.blogspot.com/
3. Vicki S -- https://knitbug2.blogspot.com You are here!
4. Rose Mikulski -- https://somethingrosemade14.blogspot.com/
5. QOVF (Lexie) -- https://www.qovf.org/

 Wednesday, March 20^th

1. Nancy -- https://www.graceandpeacequilting.com/
2. Jocelyn -- https://happycottagequilter.blogspot.com/
3. Tracie -- https://joyfullytracie.com/
4. Daryl Perry -- https://patchouli-moon-studio.blogspot.com/
5. Electric Quilt (Diane) -- https://doyoueq.com/blog/

Thursday, March 21^st

https://villarosaquilts.com

Linking with: Midweek Makers, Wednesday Wait Loss

Finishing up orders

Recently I was asked if I could made a 128" long table runner using the same pattern as a runner in my Etsy shop but using only red and green fabrics.  After figuring out I could only do a 122" because of the block size my customer decided that size would be okay for her.  I picked out fabrics I thought she might like per our convo.  Sent her photos of the fabrics and the schematic I did in EQ for approval.

I then began to piece it and was hoping to be able to get it all done before we went on our little lake vacation last week.  But I ran out of time and finished as soon as we got home.  It takes a bit of time to make a 122" runner!!!  I didn't have room to lay out the whole thing for it's photo.

For the quilting I did an allover freehand design of a lettuce leaf feather with an olive green Glide thread.

Another customer asked me to make a set of 4 matching place mats using the pattern from S.O.T.A.K. Handmade.  I love this pattern, as you can probably tell as I have been using it for a few different ones lately.  Here are hers all done.  She received hers and left me a fantastic review-I love my customers!!

After making the leaf table runners I decided it would be great to make matching place mats for that runner.  And since I had the fabrics out still I made fast work of a set of two. I posted them on my Instagram yesterday and SOTAK saw them and liked them!

Look how cute they are together!  These items are now in my Etsy shop

Stay tuned tomorrow here on the blog, I will be doing an unboxing of my second Island Batik box that I received as part of my being one of their ambassadors.  It's a video!!!  I am scheduled for 6 pm tomorrow.  Hope to see you then!

I love how our geranium is really blossoming now!  We have wintered this guy over for 2 winters now.  When we bring him out in the spring he goes into this very sickly looking mode that makes us think it is dying. After 2-3 months he looks gorgeous.  I would love to know how you winter over yours if you do.

Linking with 

Whoop Whoo

Finished or Not Friday

Foto Fun

Cobblestones table runner

Working with batiks is fun, my grandson is drawn to them also.  When he comes over he runs his hands through a pile of them I have in my cutting table cubbies.  He hasn't learned there are different brands of them though.  And with different brands there is different qualities.  He keeps asking me why I don't use them more often.  While I prefer Island Batik brand, I have decided I need to sneak in a few things here and there with other brands I have in my stash.  That is what this runner is made with-other brands.

The pattern is an easy one to piece, but still very effective in delivering a 'cute' punch.  I love the modern feel while using more traditional fabrics.  But as you look around the internet and at quilt shows you will see batiks making themselves shown in a modern form these days.  I love the versatility. 

With this style of runner I like doing custom quilting to punch it up a notch.  U turn quilting is a favorite of mine for sashings and small borders.  And wishbones in the rectangles, what can I say I love quilting them!  While straight line quilting for borders leaves an interesting effect when they intersect in the corners. 

A nice orange peel design done with a circle template is a great choice for square blocks.  I think the block on the right might be an Island batik after all, see I can't stay away from them!  The cobblestones pattern is designed by Dragonfly Fiber Art(not affiliated, just a happy customer).

What have you got planned for your week?  Our son and DIL will be down to visit for a few days, hopefully our daughter and grandsons will be over also.  But until Thursday I hope to get lots of sewing done.  

Linking with MCM, and Design Wall Monday

Pineapple snowman

Pineapples are so sweet and delicious right?  But I think this cutie is pretty sweet too!


Remember when I made THIS pineapple snowman wall hanging using a pattern from The Cottage Rose?  These snowmen are made using the mini pineapple ruler from Creative Grids(not affliated with them).  Ever since then, I thought about how it would look to make a larger snowman for each end of a runner using the large pineapple ruler. 


Tuesday a friend came over and she dug in my neutral scrap bin and pressed and cut for me while I sewed these 8 snowman blocks.  So awesome to have a wonderful friend that wants to come play with my scraps while we have a good time catching up on chit chat.   Ok I confess I only had 8 bodies sewn when she left mid afternoon, but I carried on and by nightfall I had them all this far.

Wednesday morning I got right to work on making them into 4 table runners.  By noon I had them all pieced!!   After refueling with a quick lunch I quilted and bound them.  After dinner I scurried right back into the quilting room and sewed on the buttons for eyes and snowflakes.  The scarf ties are appliqued on as well as the felt noses.  Oh I had so much fun making these and so happy with the results!  And to think I used some scraps(snowmen)!!

I am only going to show you the one runner as they are all identical.  As I was quilting the border on the first one, I told myself you are not going to do all the borders the same, it seemed like a lot of work.  BUT, it looked so cool I turned right around and did the second one the same, LOL.  It went so much faster since I knew exactly what to do and where to place the rulers etc.

Here it is as I was working with it on my Nolting Funquilter.  The tools I used were a couple of curved ones I just bought from Deloa Jones, the nested circles from Quilters rule, and my school chalk for making tick marks in the center of each border.  I centered the first arc in the middle of the border and then went out to the side with two more arcs.  Next came centering a larger arc on the end of the runner and then filling in with the partial circle one in the corner.  And repeat for all the borders.  BTW, the yellow chalk holder I have had for a long time, but I think, I got it at either Staples or Walmart. 

This runner is now in my Etsy shop.

Linking with Sarah, Myra, Brooke, Alycia and Cynthia

Cherries, celebrating, cards and a deer

How's that for a post title!  What do they have in common, not much other than they happened right here, LOL

First, I had a customer request a cherry table runner last week and I managed to get it done and in the mail already.  As I was working on it I realized I never posted the original one.  They are identical in every way.

The cherry block came from Podunk Pretties, but I did resize the block so it would fit the size table runner I wanted.

 I kept the quilting pretty simple with stippling the background, a large swirl in the cherry and a leaf shape in the leaves.  The piano key border spaced at 1 1/2" finished it up nicely.

As I was working on the runner I looked out my window and saw a young buck curled up in the back yard right by our ferns. You can see how close he was as in the upper left corner of the pic you see the corner of our deck.   I grabbed my camera really quick to get a photo.  You can see his little velvet antlers.  He laid there about half an hour and then he moved back into the middle of the ferns.  I didn't really want him laying in there, but if I opened the door to shoo him away I figure he could potentially do more harm jumping around trying to get out of there so I left him alone. 

The celebrating part was our daughter and our grandsons came over yesterday to help celebrate my birthday! 

 And the cards I made this weekend.  Most of them done on Saturday which was cool, windy and overcast all day.  I thought it sounded like a good day to take time to play around with my rubber stamps which I hadn't done for over a year.  It was so much fun and I kept getting ideas and just wanted to make more and more.  Playing with paper, stamps, ribbon and glitter, relaxing!

And now it's time to figure out what I need to work on this week.  What are you choosing to work on, whether it is just because you want to or something you have a deadline for,  I want to hear!

Since things are messed up with blogger and we aren't getting the email addy's from our commentors, please know that I am still reading all comments and will respond if I have your email address.  As always I do appreciate your comments.  I love keeping in touch with blog friends so I hope they get it fixed soon.

Linking with MCM

Hooks and swirls

I made these three runners up, after I got back from Paducah, using some of the fabrics I bought while there.  The pattern is a GE Design from one of her books.  No affliation, I just liked the pattern.

I quilted the two on the left with an easy, fast allover hook swirl.  Sometimes it was one hook, sometimes two or three hooks. 

As I was quilting them I thought perhaps someone out there would be interested in seeing how I do them.  The person I learned the single hook swirl from was Angela Walters.   Then I went on to add my own thing.   Number 1. shows the single hook swirl.

Number 2 has two hooks and number 3 has three hooks.  Easy peasy right!  Do you use a white board to practice your designs?  If not run out and get one and practice, practice, practice (ppp).   It really does make a difference to train your brain on the white board, your quilting will become easier and smoother.  Really practice making nice smooth swirls.  Smooth lines for the swirl is the key, not necessarily the shape so much.

Here you can follow my path a bit to help you on your way.  Remember to change direction of your swirls from time to time.  It's OK to make big and small designs to fit in.  And one big thing is if you get yourself into a tight spot echo your way out OR throw in a swooping curve like indicated by the arrow in the photo above.   If you decide to add something, just do it more than once throughout the quilt and it looks like you planned it all along;)   If you have questions feel free to ask me.  Now go quilt something, have fun with it!!

Linking with MCM, Monday Making and Linky Tuesday

Hoping everyone has a great week

Shamrock time

I worked up this shamrock table runner in EQ8.  And I dug out my green scraps and cut 2" squares and strips for the 4 shamrock blocks.  Using the Fons and Porter HST ruler allowed me to cut the HST's from the 2" wide strips also.  I love being able to cut everthing the same width.

The borders are cut from stash yardage.

My DH thinks the shamrocks should be a brighter green.  So off to the store I went to get some regular St. Patty's fabric.

 In the meantime, I listed this in my Etsy shop and it sold the very next day, so I made another one today!

Here is the brighter green version with less piecing. Which one do you prefer-the darker or the brighter and lots of pieces or not so many?  

Linking with Oh Scrap

I hope you will stop back on February 7th for my day in the Put a Little Love in Your Quilt Bog Hop

Another crazy week

Sewing like a maniac again this week.  I was desperate to whip up more table runners so I could deliver to the show that opened today.  Somehow I pulled a rabbit out of a hat, or maybe I should say 15 rabbits!  Yes indeed, I managed to deliver to them this morning, 15 runners.  This was done in the last 2 weeks, now some were started before that but needed finishing. I worked my fingers to the bone and I was sick with a nasty cold this week, but I kept plugging away. 

 All of these, except my Gobble It Up runners, were started and in the cabinet waiting to be quilted.  You can find my pattern for the turkey runners in my Craftsy shop.

 It never felt so good to have so many just waiting to be finished up!

But then I had to make more snowmen ones because I had only delivered 3 to them earlier.  So I whipped up a pair of my 3 Snow Dudes from scratch.  This is one of my patterns in my Craftsy shop(link on the right side bar).

And a few more of these new little guys.  I found some red and white stripe that I thought I would try instead of making the checkerboard-it sold while I was still at the craft show this morning!

Then I came home and crashed and basically did nothing for the rest of the day!!  Tomorrow I will be back at it, prepping for the 4th and final show in 4 weeks.  The time sure does fly:)

Now you know why I have been so quiet the last few weeks.

Linking to Sarah, Myra and Amanda.

I'm off a couple seasons

Even though it is still technically spring, it feels like summer here this week.  Saturday it hit low 90's and yesterday higlh 80's.  So I am off a couple seasons with my quilting, which I have to be with the craft shows.  My recent finishes are these fall leaf runners. The pattern was in a magazine many years ago.  I loved making them, all pieced, quilted, and bound in the last few months.

 These are another example of the runners that I piece, quilt and then applique the leaves on. Since these are batik I don't worry about them raveling so I just straight stitch them down using my Janome Horizon 7700.  I didn't use a fusible either, instead I use Elmers School Glue to attach the edges before appliquing them.

 Just a few close ups to show how I quilted them.

I loved how the first one of these wall hangings came out, which you can read about HERE.  And fellow blog friend Beth from Cooking up quilts commented how much she loved it and should ship it her way, so I made a second one to surprise her with!  It worked-she was totally surprised!!  It's so much fun to send a squishy package to someone not expecting it:)  She has lots better pictures than I could capture so I'll let you go to her blog to check it out.  Beth hosts a linky party called Main Crush Monday or MCM for short.  So glad you liked the mini wall hanging Beth!!

A little late to show this picture, since they were done blooming three weeks ago. But we love nature shots with color so I'll still share it.  I love my crabapple tree in full bloom.

Apple tree and crabapple. The blossoms didn't last long because of a rain storm that just had to come through at that time.

The Ground was so pretty with the apple blossoms against the green.

And because you all loved my last Bald Eagle picture so much, here is another.  This one was in 

our yard a few months ago, just sitting in our tree.  I was sewing and heard the crows making so much noise I had to go look.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I spotted the eagle, have never seen one here before.  I admired him a bit then made a mad dash to get the camera and was able to click off a few pictures and then off he flew.  It made my day for sure!

Last week we took the two grandsons( 4 yrs and 6 yrs) to the circus.  They had never been to one and we were not sure if they would sit for an 1.5 hrs-you know focus isn't a strong suit at that age.  They did wonderful. They loved it.  The oldest one wanted to ride a pony, so he did,  but the younger one said no. They both wanted to go in the bounce house, so grandpa took them there while I saved our seats.
The youngest one was so fuuny, when we took them home, he told mommy that he really liked the dancing girls-he loved them he said, hahaha!!  Now imagine a 4 yr old saying that with a very animated voice as you read that plus an emphasis on 'really'.   A good memory to have made with them.

Linking up with MCM on Monday, and Linky Tuesday on Tuesday.