A New Idea

I've had these numbers embroidered for a very long time.
Yesterday I came up with a plan to sew them into a project.
Hopefully I can get most of it done by Friday, the day I am posting for the Ho, Ho, Ho Blog hop.

Stay tuned!

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Pile of Pinwheels

I love Pinwheels.  They can look good in anything.

54 Pinwheels soon to be added into my Christmas project.

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Sneak Peak, Sort of...

I signed up to participate in the Ho Ho Ho blog hop that starts this week.
 My scheduled post date is August 9th. On that day I will show off my Crafty Christmas Creation.

In anticipation I thought I could give you a sneak peak.

Well it's not really much of the project, more of the fabrics I will be using.  :)

You can see a list and links of the other participants
on Carol's blog Just Let Me Quilt

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Colorado Beauty - America the Beautiful

Next to the Oregon Trail block is the Colorado Beauty.  The block above is the closest full block on the quilt, even though I did cut off the bottom of the block with my camera.
There is no sashing between these blocks like the Ohio Star and the Carolina lily, but I used consistent fabric to help this block stand out a little better than the Oregon Trail.

Only three more days till I can show off the whole quilt!!

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Oregon Trail - America the Beautiful

I outlined this block in the photo to help decipher the actual block in the quilt. I used so many scrappy fabrics for this section, it makes it hard to see the block if you are not familiar with it. Another reason it may be hard to decipher is due to the shape of this section.
There is only one full Oregon Trail block in the quilt. The rest get cut off by other sections.

Reveal date is getting closer!  I am excited to show off the whole quilt and to see how the rest of the guild interpreted this theme.  I'll share some of those photos as well on June 6th.

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Texas Tears - America the Beautiful

To represent the lower west and the desert states, I used the Texas Tears Quilt block.

You may be able to visualize what the whole quilt may look like by now. But I still have the quilting to show off, which I'll do on June 6th.



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Purple Mountains Majesty

 Scrappy purple mountains.  I went through every purple I had to make these mountains.

Some were scraps that were gifted to me, some came from my yardage where I cut off  a 1.5 inch stripe.

In the top photo I was going for dark mountains in the front with medium in the middle and light in the back to show how things in the distance are always lighter in color to the eye.

I drew these pointy mountains on paper then paper pieced them together.

My goal was to have all the dark fabrics on the left since the sun is shining on the right.

While piecing though, I ended up flipping one around. Whoops!  I left it like it was.

You can see a hint of the Oregon trail block under these mountains.

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Kansas Star - America the Beautiful

This is another block in my America the Beautiful quilt.

It was made for my quilt guild's annual quilt challenge, "America The Beautiful - Home Sweet Home"

For this challenge I decided to make a quilt using my own design.  This section is the Kansas Star block and it represents the Amber Waves of Grain. The block measures 6 inches and I paper pieced it together to get nice sharp points.

I'll show more sections of the quilt every few days and on June 6th, the day of the Challenge reveal, I will show the whole quilt in all its quilted beauty.

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Carolina Lily - America the Beautiful

Here is my version of a Carolina Lily block representing the south.

Hubby said it reminded him of Christmas, which it kind of does to me too, but I wanted the background to be green instead of white since the south is full of green trees.

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Ohio Star - America The Beautiful

Representing the upper Northern half  of my "America the Beautiful" quilt is the Ohio Star block.

Lots of green with some blue to represent lakes.  You can also see a hint of the "Carolina's" Under the Ohio Star. The curve of the river on the left almost makes it look like I used a fish eye lens on my camera.

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Rolling Hills

This is the first section I worked on for my guild quilt challenge, "America The Beautiful: Home Sweet Home". I had a good time collecting all the green scraps from my bins to make this section. They represent the Appalachian mountains that run up the east coast.

You can also see a hint of the sun rays and the start of my flying geese.
It isn't quilted yet in this photo. I'll save those photos for the big reveal in June.

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Guild Quilt Challenge

Every year my guild puts on a Quilt Challenge.
The theme for this year's challenge is "America the Beautiful - Home Sweet Home".
  I have been spent most of my quilting time working on my interpretation of the theme.
The Reveal isn't till June 6th, so until then I can only show bits and pieces.

   Today I want to show off one of my favorite parts of the quilt.
It is the storm at sea section (with a hint of sandy beaches on the left).
I drew out the block on graph paper so I could work with a 6 block.
Then I printed it out and used the templates for paper piecing.  

There will be a total of 8 different quilt blocks in the quilt, along with some other techniques.  I'll show a little every couple of days and then on June 6th, I'll post a photo of the whole thing along with the other quilts in the challenge.

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Dresdens Going Together

I've been spending the week hand appliqueing down my Dresden plates.  I have six more to go.

Halfway done.

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I am glad my kids still like to hang with me when I sew.
I use to give them buttons to play with when they were little,
Now they have upgraded to the pins.
This is what my 16 year old did with my pincushion yesterday.

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Christmas Quilt in February

My Christmas quilt has been on my design wall since December. It has gone from this....

  ...to this.  Everyone denies knocking the board over. They are all blaming the cat.  

With the help of my son we got it back to it's regular layout.  That was about a month ago.

Yesterday I found the motivation I need to get this project rolling-
I need my design board to help design a new quilt.
Nothing like something new to help you move along with something old.  :)

I have all the Half square triangle sewn in pairs, a couple full blocks sewn together, and one whole row done.

Not sure why I picked the third row to sew first, but you can see how much shrinkage there is from layout to finished row.  The plan is to finish the top this afternoon. Hopefully I won't have too many distractions.

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Dare To Dresden

Dare to Dresden Hop is going on this week and today is my day to post.
It has been a weekend of dresdens for me as I prepared for the hop.

First, I had been itching to make a tiny dresden. This one measures 3 inches from point to point.
I turned it into a spiffy pin cushion. For my dresden template I took a small circle, folded in half over and over till I got eight wedges. Then I cut one of the wedges out as my template. Super easy and fast.

I also fiddled around with a 10 degree ruler and made a dresden with 36 plates.
The ruler I used orginally makes a 25 inch circle, but I cut my wedges from a 2.5 inch strip and got small flower petals so my circle measures 10.25 inches. I plan on turning this into a table topper. The wide center circle is the perfect spot to place a nice spring basket.

 I also worked on adding some more wedges to my pastel Dresden Quilt project that I started in September.
I still need to find 8 more pastel fabrics I like to finish up the circle.

It has been fun playing around with dresden plates the past couple days.  Make sure you check out all the other great posts going on today.  You can see them all here:

January 29^th, 2013

A Peach in Stitches

Nancy W @ “that Other Blog”

L3 Designs

Bungalow Bay Quilts

Quilted Delights

Quilt Crossing

Lixie Makes it

A Quilting Sheep

Charlotte's Creations

Quilt-n-Queen
Domesticity and Other Ponderous Things

Sew Much 2 Luv

A Quilt and a Prayer

Amanda Murphy Design

Little Mushroom Cap
Kathy's Quilts

Sandra Kaye Design

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Christmas Crafting

Wow, it has been a busy month.  I didn't get everything on my schedule finished, but I got what was needed finished. First I basted my Starry Night Christmas Quilt, which is on the schedule to quilt during the rest of Christmas Break.

I also basted the last shirt quilt (which I didn't get a picture of) and my Slide Show quilt.

Next on the list was cutting out the fabrics for a new Christmas Quilt.  I asked my brother if I could have some of his beach photos to hang on my wall, (He takes great Ocean wave and beach shots and sells them on his Surf Report Website, Nimbuss Grand Strand Surfing, under the Seascape Photography link.)  He said he would gladly trade me some of his ocean shots for a Christmas quilt, so I picked out 20 red fabrics, and 20 green fabrics and got cutting.

I actually cut out enough to make a couple different Christmas quilts, but for now I focused on making my brother's quilt. 

 I started turning the squares in to Half Square Triangles and was on a roll laying them out and sewing blocks together when my daughter came down with an illness.  We took her to the hospital a day later when we ruled out a stomach virus, but it was too late, her appendix had burst and she and I had an all exclusive 6 day stay in the hospital.

There wasn't much to do for six days in the hospital other than watch TV and play with our tablets and that got boring after awhile, so I brought my knitting needles along and finished up some Christmas presents.  I knitted 10 dishcloths while waiting things out in the hospital.   I had a few already made from the past couple months, and made a few more the last couple weeks before Christmas for a total of 35.  

(The photo below only has 31.  I mailed four before I thought to stack them all and take a photo.)

I made a total of 9 sets that I gave away for Christmas.

And as always, my pets are always close by when I am crafting.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

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Leaf Blocks

The leaf part of my blocks are all finished. I am excited to add the corner stripes, but that will have to wait till next month.  The sewing machine is booked up the month of December with Christmas projects.

First on the list is finishing up Aunt Darla's shirt quilts. They have been in my care long enough and  it is time to push and get them finished in time for her to give them away at Christmas.

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Back to the Leaves

I haven't been sewing much lately because I have been spending most of my evenings painting the upstairs rooms. We have slowly been working on turning our attic into two rooms since we moved into this house and are on the home stretch so I have been excited to work up there, which means my sewing time has been almost non existent  The few minutes I could squeeze in this week I worked on my leaf quilt.

I have most of the blocks sections sewn together.  Next I need to finish the paper piecing sections and make 19 more stems. Then I can sew the blocks together.  

I have been flip flopping between this project and my orange wedges.  Mainly because I am not sure how to finished the wedges. So instead of thinking too hard on that project, I went with easy sewing this week.

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Playing With Triangles

I got all my triangle wedges cut out and laid them all on my design board.
I started out with this...

Then added a few more triangles. 

But I felt like it needed a little something else so I added corners.
Now I just need to figure out fabrics to put in between all these triangles.
All black or more orange? I'll have to fiddle with it.

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More Orange Strips

There hasn't been much sewing going on lately other than the three blog hops I participated in and Halloween costumes, but this week I was able to sneak in some 15 minute intervals of sewing time and got some progress on a couple projects.

 
First I cut and sewed together some more orange strips.

When I originally made my mini quilt for the Wicked Blog hop I had 10 wedges left over.

I played around with the leftovers and added some black sashing.
Then I decided a lot more wedges would make great throw size Halloween quilt that I can use next year.
So I made 6 more oranges strips.  They are all pressed and ready to be cut into wedges.

 
From each strip I can cut enough wedges to make 2 spider blocks.

After I sewed and pressed my orange strips together I got back to cutting out my fabrics for my leaf block.
I cut most of the pieces to make 19 more leaf blocks. 

 

 While I was cutting and trimming I noticed that my Kaleido-Ruler is the same size as the corner strips on my leaf block.  When I made the first block I paper pieced these corners, but I am thinking about sewing strips and then cutting wedges for this block as well.  If I do that though, I will have opposite wedges that don't go in the block so I will have to come up with something to do with the extra wedges.

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