Granddaughter Quilts are the Best

I made three quilts for my new granddaughter.  I am finally getting ready to send them off and I snapped a few pictures for posterity.

Hope little Tori enjoys them.  The top one is backed with flannel, the 2nd voile and the 3rd minki.

Hands to Help

Just wanted to post a picture of the one quilt I have completed.  I have lots of tops done but nothing quilted except this one leftover from my big quilting push in December

I am feverishing pin basting today but I am not sure I will get another completed before the deadline.

Zombie Love

I tried a new quilting pattern that I viewed on Leah Day's site 365 Days of Free Motion.  It is a wavy Matrix.  It was fun and I think it turned out pretty good.

I made this quilt for a friend's daughter for her high school graduation.

She and her sister are great fans of "The Walking Dead."

Happy Chemo 2016

I have not been blogging recently.  I guess Instagram and Facebook have been my posting choices.  I would like to get back to it.  I have pieced many tops but not quilted in a while.  This black and white beauty is my first one in a while.  It is going to Happy Chemo.

Black and White with Yellow Accents.  

Taking photos at dusk does not always turn out but this seems to be the best I can get.  As I get on a quilting binge I will have more to share.

Happy Chemo

I have the first two quilts done and ready to upload the pix to Sarah's H2H site.  One is in the process of being bound.  Had to take out 12 lines of quilting.  Boo.  Tension issues.  Now everything works right.

Yes.  I have Happy Chemo 3 done.  I did some machine binding after I glue basted the binding onto the back.  It worked pretty well.

Back to Blogging

I have been remiss on getting back to blogging.  I finished five quilts over Christmas and do not have one picture to show for it.  That is what happens when I don't have my blogging journal to keep track of all of my projects.  So, I am back.

I am back in Block Swap Adventure and these are my last three blocks.

February Block

March Block

April Block

I have also been trying to tame some scraps.  I got the bow tie accuquilt die and cut away.  I have lots of 4" bow tie blocks.

I also cuts lots of strips and half square triangles and squares. This was only the fabric that was hanging on my wardrobe door and was annoying me.  Still have a medium bin full of scraps to cut.

My husband got me the Accuquilt Go cutter to add to my arsenal.  I already had the Go Baby.  It came in handy when I was making a log cabin quilt for my sister. I stocked up on dies over Christmas when both Accuquilt and Joann's had sales.  Strip dies are very expensive.  I also like the Block on Board dies and they are not cheap either.  I used the Ohio Star BOB die for my March block.

Now I have pictures of some of my projects.  There will be more.  I need to get my log cabin quilt pix off of my phone.  

A Mini-Vacation from Sewing

I have been keeping up with my hexie bee blocks and my Lucy Boston Blocks but not much else is happening.  I did get part of a charity quilt top made and went to a shop hope.  My husband and I have ventured into vintage film cameras and have been having fun buying cheap cameras and seeing what kind of pictures we can get.  This all got started by a trip to our local antique store to look for some end tables.  We got end tables, a wood veneer file cabinet and three vintage cameras.  Who knew where that would lead.

Here is a little pictorial tour of the last six weeks.

First off the blog hop:

I got some cute fabric and some patterns and notecards.

I won a couple things:

1st was my prize for the H2H challenge

And in the same thread mode, I won a large collection of Aurifil thread for making the most charity blocks for our AMQG last year.  Yummy colors.

I got my May, June and July Lucy Boston blocks completed.

Finally, I scored some Michael Miller Cotton Couture in pastels at the Fat Quarter Shop flash sale.

H2H Challenge

This post should be titled "The Joys of Moving" My husband got a promotion to another city which is about 1.5 hours away from Austin.  We took the plunge and moved south so that it is about an equal commute time-wise for both of us.  Between packing and moving not much sewing was done.  I got my quilts pin-basted and my Batik Jewels quilted last weekend when I finished uppacking.  I got the binding done today.  I did some straight line quilting and machine bound it to save time.  The machine binding went well.  This time I used Clover clips and some glue. 

My other quilt for Happy Chemo is a work in progress.  I have it half quilted.  This quilt is from some Moda weaves that I got several years ago and decided to use.  I love the yellow and blue combo. I should have this baby done by tomorrow so I can send both quilts off on Monday.  P.S. This is the new-to-me Juki Exceed 600 that is making my life so much easier.  It is so much fun to quilt on this machine with the bigger throat.  I am almost enjoying the quilting process.

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day

Today is the day for big giveaways.

My reason for starting to collect Liberty of London Tana Lawn fabric is that I decided that I was going to make a pink hexagon quilt out of all Liberty of London Tana Lawn pink fabric.  I have a good start to it with about 500 1" hexagons basted.

Once I started buying Liberty of London Tana Lawn Fabric I could not stop.  I found a couple of sources on Etsy and Fabric.com where I could get some good bargains. I also paid full price for some of the fabric that struck my fancy.  I am a classics kind of gal.  So in the interest of sharing some of my pricing good fortune I am giving away two half yards of Liberty of London Tana Lawn both in a blue color way.  They are 52" wide so that gives you more than your average 1/2 yard.

Here they are up close and personal.  The names of the fabrics are Bourton Blue/Multi and Mark in Eggshell/Light Blue/Light Green.

I am using Rafflecopter to pick my winners.  You can use your email to check in if you prefer not to use Facebook.  I will ship internationally.

The giveaway ends next Monday at noon.  I will have Rafflecopter pick a winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

More Half Inch Hexies

Who knew when I started this hexie journey a little over a year ago that I would be basting a whole bunch of 1/2" pink tana lawn hexies.  I still had cut off's from my 1" die cutting adventure.  Had to use every last little scrap.  Here are about 200 of them.  I still have about 100 to go.  Good way to occupy my 15 minute breaks at work. I do not have a plan for them at this moment but was thinking more in the pincushion/mug rug direction rather than a whole quilt.

I did get my "Gemini" Villa Rosa together.  I used some 2.5" strips I got a couple of years ago on ebay.  They look like they might be Red Rooster fabric.  My oldest was here from Baltimore about a month ago and saw these blocks on the design wall.  He decided the quilt would look great on his family room couch.  Who was I to argue.  

I got my April block done for Jan.  She wanted Shabby Chic.  This was about all I had that screamed Shabby Chic.  I love all the bouquets of roses. I hope she likes green.

I went to an open house at the Quilt Haus a little south of Austin in New Braunfels.  They are starting a new modern quilt guild.  Since I am moving in two weeks just south of Austin it seemed like a good fit.  Hopefully they will get it started up soon.  My husband got a promotion but the job is in San Antonio which is about 1.5 hours south of Austin.  I still work in Austin.  We are moving somewhere almost in the middle until I can find a good job in San Antonio.  I have the sewing room almost packed except for the fixings for some block swap blocks.  I have been trying to do a little at a time.  Not looking forward to the move.  

March Blocks Finished

I finished up my Lucy Boston March block for Rundu.  She wanted orange and gray.

I got my other block swap done and sent off also.

This is my part of my pile of trimmings from my Liberty of London tana lawn hexagons I cut with my Accu-Quilt die.  These were too small to cut 1" or 3/4" inch hexies from.  With fabric that is $36.00 per yard I decided I was not going to waste these small trimmings.  I got some 1/2" hexie paper templates from Paperpieces and I went to town.  I got over 125 hexagons pinned and ready to baste.  

Jan of SewandFarm had a great idea for when you are pinning fabric on to the card stock.  She uses 1/2" appliqué pins.  I got some last weekend and boy do they work well for the 1/2" hexagons.  Thanks Jan.  

My oldest was in town this weekend from Baltimore.  Today we went to see Captain America on the IMAX screen.  I am not normally a fan of 3D but this movie was made for it.  Who doesn't love a good action movie.  Afterwards we went to my husband and my favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner.  It was a fun day.

Get Your Hex On Round Two

Sign up for the Get Your Hex On Round Two and you will be in the pool to win six sets of six Liberty of London tana lawn hexagons ready to sew.  I cut them out using the Paper Pieces 1" finished hexagon template which gives you a nice 3/8" seam allowance

Elita and I are the Get Your Hex On Moderators this time around.  We are planning for a six month bee with two blocks per month.  June will be the first month of the bee.

Those of you who were not in the bee last time please feel free to check out the Sign-Up sheet below and see if you would like to join us.

There is an option on the sign-up sheet for your bee mates to be Europe only, North American only, or you have no preference.  I know postage from Europe to the U.S. and Canada has skyrocketed.  This would be a way to keep postage down.

Sign-Up Sheet

Hope you will join us for some more hexie fun.

The Purple Rain

I finally finished up the binding on my Pantone Radiant Orchid Quilt that I am lovingly calling "The Purple Rain." I used the custom dyed fabric from Vickie Welsh for some of my raindrops, the binding and the back.  I used Superior King Tut variegated thread for the rain.  If I do something like this again the rain quilting will go on first and the raindrops will be appliquéd on afterward.  Starting and stopping the quilting for each raindrop was kind of a pain.  The quilt is 20" X 23".

I loved making this quilt.  The appliqué and the quilting were new techniques.

The Purple Rain

The third raindrop on the left on the top is from the sample fabric I ordered that is the official "Radiant Orchid".

I have some radiant orchids of my own just starting to bloom.  

H2H - Hands 2 Help Charity Quilt Drive

This will be my second year to participate in the H2H quilt drive organized by Sarah Craig.  There are three worthy causes this year to chose from.  I will be contributing to Happy Chemo again in honor of my daughter Emily.  She has passed her one year mark and is doing great.

You can click on the button below to get more information.  Today is the first sign-up day.   Last year Sarah organized enough sponsors so every contributor got a prize. This year I also volunteered to be a sponsor.  It was so much fun to get a prize last year that I would like to have a share in the fun.

I already have one quilt top done and have ideas for another one.  My Batik Jewels is Quilt #1.

The quilts have to be done by June 1.  There are various linky parties to post your progress.  All details are on Sarah's blog posting.

Radiant Orchid Pantone Color of the Year Quilt Contest

I decided I would try something new to me.  Freezer paper appliqué was it.  I had an idea for raindrops on a purple background.  I looked at all the freezer paper appliqué tutorials on Google.  I did the double freezer paper and starch method.  It was not as easy to go around the curves as I thought.  Hmm.  Room for practice.  Points were also an issue especially when I when to slip stitch the raindrops onto my quilt.

I got as far as getting most of the raindrops sewn onto my background.  I am going to have to come up with some awesome quilting to make this quilt come to life.  I did an on-line trip to Sew Modern and ordered some perle cotton.  Hope it is going to work for me.  I also have some metallic and variegated thread from Superior to work with.  It was a cloudy day today so the color is not so great.  I have to have it finished by next weekend so I need to be a speedy quilter when I get back into town.

The fabric I used is mostly from my basics fat quarter bundle from Pink Castle.  I also had some ombre fabric, some Melody Miller linen and some custom fabric ordered from Vickie Welsh.  I sent her the Radiant Orchid sample I got from Amazon. She has an etsy shop.  The radiant orchid raindrops that I made from her fabric are my inspiration.

February Hexie Blocks

I got my February blocks done over the weekend.  I have not made it to the post office yet.  Shooting for today.

First is my Get Your Hex On.  These are large 1 1/2" hexies.

My Lucy Boston block is pastel pinks and blues per request.

The Winner Is

And the winner is:  Gill who said "Gorgeous fabrics"  Gill I am sending you an email.  Let me know your address and I will be sending you your Liberty Charms.


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Liberty of London Giveaway #1

I am on a roll with my Liberty of London tana lawn hexies.  I feel in a sharing mood.  This week I have twenty 5" squares to give away.  These are the various pink florals that I have been using for my pink hexagon quilt.

I purchased my Liberty of London tana lawn from various sources.  This week I want to highlight my favorite Liberty of London tana lawn on-line shop.

My go to for Liberty of London fabric is Jones and Vandermeer.  You get a quarter yard that is around 11" X 53" for $9.00.  They do not have as good a selection as some other on-line shops but you do get more fabric than a standard quarter yard of 42" fabric or a fat quarter and they have a $5.00 flat shipping rate.  You can see all their luscious fabric at https://www.jonesandvandermeer.com/categories/Fabric-Shop/Fabrics/By-Brand/Liberty-of-London/.

The giveaway ends next Sunday, March 2.  You do not have to be a follower to win but if you are a follower you get one more chance to win with a second entry.

Riley Blake Challenge Piece Finished

I finally finished up my Riley Blake Challenge piece today.  I got another pattern from Greta Gamma that I have been dying to try.  The fabric seemed perfect for some bright flowers.

Nothing like waiting until the last second.  I love to EPP and this pattern was a fun one to do.  It finished up at 14" in diameter.

I was a Winner

I got an email surprise from Rachel at "Stitched in Color" a few weeks ago.  I had made a comment on the Westminster fabric page on Facebook when she was participating in a "True Colors" blog hop. Her blog post was all about Anna Marie Horner's "True Colors".  I was the winning commenter.  I have been waiting patiently for my goodies.  Last week when I was out-of-town the box came from Westminster.  I have twenty new fat quarters to drool over.  The best thing, they were free so I technically did not break my fabric fast.  Not that I needed any more fabric, but they are blenders so they will be useful in the future.

Yummy.

When I was out-of-town last week I got stuck in the hotel on Tuesday because the city was iced in.  Roads were slick.  Luckily I brought some work back to the hotel Monday night.  The lobby was quite pleasant but it was icky whenever anyone came in the door.  That 21 degree blast was drafty.  Anyway, that evening and on the way to Abilene, with my associate driving,  I got a whole lot of hexes basted.  See the pretty pile.