May FNSI

I spent my FNSI working on my Faceted Jewel quilt.  I now have all the blocks sewn together and the two rows on the right sewn together.  I also have the first border, which is 1/3 of the original blocks, sewn on to each block.

I laid out the second row border to get a feel for the completed circles.  I still have to make some more geese for that border though but I didn't have enough wings (I guess they are called wings) for those geese  so I cut out some more this morning.

Everything is coming together slowly but surely for this one.  I could be going faster, but I keep picking out my stitches to fix the points I cut off while sewing.  I have heard the quote, "If you can't see it from a galloping horse it is fine."  But I don't ride horses so I have to fix my points.  :)

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May Schnibble Project

There hasn't been much sewing going on the past two days, but I did get my fabrics picked out for my May AYOS.  I will be working with two charm packs of Friendship by moda.  

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15 Blocks to Go

I got all the "54 40 or Fight" blocks sew together over the weekend.  Then I laid out the alternating blocks on the design wall and have a total of 3 of them sewn together.  This is suppose to be a scrappy quilt, but I have a fear if I just grab colors out of the pile I will end up with the bottom corner of the quilt being all blue.  So I organize it before I sew it all together. I call it my controlled scrappy look.

When laying it all out I realized I am short one Goose.  I either lost it when I was shifting stuff around, or I miss counted when I cut and sewed them all out a while ago.

Here is the full version of my design wall.  I LOVE IT!!  I had been taping a flannel backed table cloth on the french doors, but I kept having to take it down for various reasons.  So I built this design wall.  It is made from two blue insulation boards that I got from Lowes.  I trimmed them down and taped them together with white duct tape to create a wall that measures  6' 8"  x 7'.   Then I put some warm and white batting on top of it, wrapped it around to the back and taped it on.   It is light weight for good portability yet stable enough to hold up all my fabric.  I love it!

Behind the design wall is my shelf of fabrics and my daughter's sewing machine, which she doesn't use (I still have hope that she will get it out and want to sew something again one of these days). To the left, which you can't see, is my sewing machine and computer.  I must admit I spend most of my day in this part of the house.  And now that our TV is broken, thanks to some rowdy boys, the kids spend most of their time in here too.  I must say, it is a nice place to be.  :)

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Jewels in Progress

I decided to pull out my Faceted Jewels quilt and get some good progress on it before I start back into quilting my stack of basted quilts.  I still need to piece most of the those 54 40 or Fight blocks together. I put them up on the board to make sure I didn't end up with all the blues in one block.  

Wow, after a blog post hunt I see that I cut this one out a over a year ago.  Good thing for blog posts or I would have sworn I cut this out only a couple months ago.

As I was was putting the squares up on the design board I kept thinking about Frodo, Sam, and Gandalf.  Probably because when I was cutting out all these small pieces I was listening to the audio book of Lord Of the Rings.  I wonder if I will always think of Lord of the Rings when I get this project out.  Perhaps I should rename it to my LOTR quilt.  :)

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Leftovers are good.

I added some red sashing to my leftovers from my strip tube quilt and got the top sewn together.

I used the same herringbone fabric from the Reunion line.  My daughter says it looks pink instead of red.
 I guess the tiny red lines mixed with the tiny white ones makes it look more pink instead of red.

I wanted to add a blue border from the same line, but the only blue I had left was this one.  It comes across as way to busy for me though, so I haven't sewn it on yet.  Perhaps it would look better as the binding.

What do you all think?  Omit the border and use it as binding? or Keep the big border?

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Strip Tube Top Complete

Sunday I was a little under the weather.  Enough to stay home from church, but not bad enough to stay away from the sewing machine.  I spent all day Sunday sewing most of this top together.  I got all of it done but half the green inner border and the outer border.  I saved that for this morning.

The picture on the tutorial I used only had 5 triangles across, but I had so many extra triangle units I decided to add an extra row.  That makes the top a 78 inch square.  

I used 38 out of the 40 strips from my jelly roll.  That gave me 19 tubes to cut from. 

Each tube gave me 9 squares (4 sets that matched and one odd ball).

I also had a 2.5 inch strip left at the end of each tube, and a a triangle that wasn't quite big enough to make a full square.  I was going to sew the scraps together and add them to the back of the quilt, but after rearranging them on the design wall, I realized that I just need to add some sashing and a border and I have me a whole new quilt!


I also made myself a new design wall on Friday.  I am so excited about it.  I will try to get a good picture of the whole thing later on.  It is huge, and portable, and huge!  I love it!


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May Guild BOM

 Guild meeting was last Thursday and May's BOM was a basket pattern. We were told to use a floral fabric for the basket background, a basket colored fabric for the basket, and a light color for the border.  This is what I came up with.

 Unfortunately, I left my block at home so it didn't get up on the wall at guild meeting.  Silly me, I took it out of my pile of stuff to take to guild meeting to put my name on the back and then forgot to put it back.  I didn't get my name in the drawing this time around, but that is ok.  I won last month so I would have felt really greedy if they picked my name again, but I still want to participate and make sure there are lots of blocks in each giveaway.

We had a low turn out this time around there were only 10 blocks turned in, that includes mine and Frances's, who brought her unfinished block in an envelope for the winner to finish.  :)  

The pinwheel block in the upper right corner is the block for next month.

Hopefully next month there we will be back up to our usually big numbers.

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Binding Complete...

And my Summer Day quilt is now ready to be gifted.

I didn't want this quilt too get too stiff with lots of quilting so I went with the all over swirls. I did to do a wee bit of custom quilting in the two borders though. Nothing too fancy, just something a little different than the rest of the quilt.

I found a great cupcake fabric for the backing and what makes it even better is that it was on sale!

I wanted to wrap it up and mail it right away, but my husband suggested I give it away in June when I can do it in person.

So per the name of the quilt, I will give it away one Summer Day in June.

This makes Finish #13 for the year.

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Lots of Quilting Going On

I spent the past couple weeks busy quilting.  Some of my own stuff and some for others.  A couple of them are for my guild  quilt show in June.  I am so excited to show them off, but I don't want to spoil any surprises so I will only post some teasers of those.

This is the quilt I turned in for the show.  It was a kit from Connecting Threads that my mom gave me for Christmas a couple years ago.  The backing was made from the left over fabric from the kit.  I was surprised and excited to find that there was enough fabric leftover to piece together a backing.

This makes Finish #12 for the year.

This next one I quilted for Martha.  I love it!  Can't wait till I can show more of it.

This quilt belongs to Tish and isn't going in the show so I can show all of it.

She calls it "No More Peas Please".

She doesn't like a lot of dense quilting, so I did some straight lines through the chains and then some loops in the half square triangles.

I also finished all the quilting on my Summer Day quilt, I didn't take a picture of it yet though.  I am still working on hand stitching down the binding.  I have two more sides to go!  Should be done tonight and I will snap photos tomorrow.

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Summer Day Top Done

I finished the top for my April Schnibble last night.  Thanks to the inspiration from Vroomans Quilts, I even added a scrappy border.  

Since this quilt is going to a sweet baby girl, I embroidered her name on the bottom right corner.  I already have it basted and have started with the quilting!  I will show it all finished when I get done with the binding.  I want to do a hand stitched binding so it may be a day or two for the finishing photo.

Can't wait for the Schnibble parade tomorrow!

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Busy Quilting and I'm a Liebster

I have been busy this week working on one of my own quilts.  I am finishing up the quilting on this applique quilt and plan on entering it as my guild challenge piece for the year.  The theme was "Quilting in the Carolina's"  which was difficult for me,  I had too many ideas for it. It could be anything and I ended up spending the year trying to figure out what to make instead of actually making something that really fit the theme.  Time was ticking down though so I decided to go with my flower applique quilt.  The Carolina's have lots of wonderful flowers right?

Quilts are due at the next guild meeting, which is the first Thursday in May.  They are suppose to be secret until the big reveal so That is why I am only showing a part of it.  After the June meeting, which will be held at the Hartsville, SC Museum, I will post the whole thing for you all to see.  If you want to see it in person and live close by, it will hang with all the other challenge quilts at the Hartsville Museum from June to July.

Also,  My Old Quilting Soul nominated me for a Liebster Blog Award!
Thanks so much for letting me be one of your favorites!!

Now it is my turn to introduce you to some of my favorite quilt bloggers who have 200 followers or less.

I follow quite a lot of bloggers and it was hard to choose favorites I like them all!  Plus a lot of the ones I follow have already been Liebster blogs, so today I have picked two blogs to share with you.

Natasha at Scraps A Plenty - I stumbled upon here blog when were were making similar quilts at the same time and have been a follower ever since.  

Janet at Rogue Quilter - I found her blog when I was trying to find pictures of Faceted Jewel quilts.  She had made one from a pattered called Eye Fooler.  I loved her blog and started flowering her right then.

Check out their blogs when you get a chance, they are wonderful!

Here's some more info about the Liebster;

The Liebster Award (Liebster means favorite in German) is for bloggers with 200 followers or less. As a recipient of the award, you have the chance to thank and link back to the blogger who gave it to you as well as pass it along to five other deserving blogs.

The Liebster Conventions say: 

1. Thank your award presenter on your blog and link back to him/her

2. Copy and paste the award to your blog 

3. Present the Liebster Award to 5 blogs that you think deserve to be recognized 

4. Let them know by leaving a comment on their blog

5. Have faith that your follower will spread the love too !

Summer Day

It sure doesn't feel like a summer day here today.  I woke up to 37 degrees.  I was sure the hot temps of the past couple weeks were here to stay, so I was surprised by the sudden weather change.
I still went for my morning walk though, just had to add a jacket.  

In the meantime, I have caught up on my Summer Day Schnibble quilt.  I got my geese grouped together and the sides stitched on.  Next step is putting them all together.

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April FNSI

For April's Friday Night Sew In we were challenged to make one pillowcase for for Conkerr Cancer, who distributes pillowcases to critically ill children.

I had 28 inches left of this cute frog fabric which is the perfect size for a pillowcase.   It came together super fast.  I even did the french seams on it and it was still fast to put together.

Which meant I could use the majority of my sewing time last night for finishing up the quilting and binding on Sara's Turning 20 quilt.

Sara, a guild mate of mine, had been gathering flower fabrics that represented each state where her children were born.  She also added some other fabrics that represented each child and her husband.  The top and bottom border are forestry fabric to represent her husband and his long career in that field.

I did an all over flowery loop quilting for this quilt.

I love all her flower fabrics, they are all so soft.  My favorite is this pink flowered fabric.

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First of the 9 Patch Quilts Finished

 I finally got the binding on this quilt this afternoon.

  That makes two complete quilts for my shirt quilt project. 

 And finish #11 for the year.

  Yay!!

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Gaggle of Geese

I must have some form of Quilters ADD.  I can sit at the sewing machine or cutting table for hours no problem, but I usually end up working on a couple different projects during that time.  Very seldom do I take one project and work on it from start to finish.  For instance, yesterday I started fiddling with my tube blocks, but then I ended up cutting and sewing together all my flying geese for my Schnibbles "Summer Day" quilt this month.  

Luckily this time I didn't' have to spend time picking out fabrics for this project (which sometimes takes me days) because a couple months ago I bought a kit from Quilt Taffy that had the pattern and all the fabrics picked out for me.  So when they announced "Summer Day" as the new pattern this month I got excited since I already had everything I needed.  The girls at Quilt Taffy picked out a Sophie charm pack and some yardage to go with it.  They did a great job, I am loving all the geese in these soft colors.

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