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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Churn Dash Block

The block of the month for my quilt guild's last month was the Churn Dash.  

The only stipulations were that it had to be 12.5 inches and done in your favorite color.  

My churn without a doubt had to be red.

It's not sewn together yet in this photo, but this photo turned out way better than the sewn version.

I also created a photo with some simple cutting instructions for the guild's newsletter which I am in charge.

And here are all the churn dash blocks that were turned in at the meeting.  

I am anxious to see how the winner puts all these together.

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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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More Spring Baskets

I showed my kids the first basket I made and they said they wanted some for their Easter baskets,

so I made three more.

I was picking out fabrics for the basket on the left when my oldest son came in the room to keep me company. He said he wanted to pick the fabrics for his basket so I let him.  His is in the middle.

My youngest son, who is 9, wanted all solid fabric for his.  I tried to convince him to use some patterned fabric for cuteness, but there was nothing I could have said or done that would have convince him to use anything other than solids.

I pulled out the colors he wanted and cut out the pattern.  He kept assuring me it would look fantastic and he was right.  It did turn out fantastic.  He says the solid one is the best out of all four.  :)

My middle son said he wanted one made in all browns. The darker the better.  I am still trying to convince him to go for more Easter colors. We shall see what happens...

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Spring Basket

I saw this basket on the Sweetwater blog and loved it right away.
When I saw they were offering kits in their Etsy shop I snatched one up so I could make one of my very own.

 The pattern called for something called Soft and Stable which I hadn't heard of before. After a google search I found it is a foam type interfacing that makes bags stiff.  I also realized I would have to order some through the internet since I don't have any local quilts shops nearby to purchase it from.  I was really eager to make the basket though so instead of waiting for soft and stable I used fusible fleece instead.  The basket still came out nice and stiff. I do eventually want to try the Soft and Stable just too see first hand what it is like. It will have to be some good stuff  though to make me switch from fusible fleece, I love that stuff.  

I plan to make another basket and already have more fusible fleece cut out, but on the next one I want to make a better knot at the top of the basket.  This one didn't come out as pretty as I envisioned it.  Perhaps I can fiddle around with it to make it more beautiful.

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Civil War Re-enactment

Every year my quilt guild attends the civil war re-enactment of the Skirmish at Gamble's Hotel.  We have a little booth near the main house and show off some of the quilts we have made and offer little demonstrations on hand sewing and quilting.  On the last day of the event we giveaway a quilt to one lucky winner   The event was held over the weekend and I love seeing all the people dressed up in period costumes.  This is on of my favorite photos from the event.

I have been asked to be in charge of making next year's opportunity quilt.
It is a big task, but I am excited to do it and already have some ideas rolling around in my head.

I'll keep you posted.

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Christmas Top Finished

I added the green and red borders this afternoon and now the top is complete. Yay! 

I never knew it could feel this good to be one step closer to finishing Christmas sewing in February.

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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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Triple Zipper and Jewelry Pouches

 All These goodies are now living with my friends in Tennesee.
They had three birthdays in February, so I made a little something for each of them.

The first one is the tripple zipper pouch.

I had been wanting to make my friend a zippered pouch for a while.

When I went to blogland to find the tutorial I found the Triple-Zip Along and joined in the fun.

It is interesting to see this same pattern made in different color ways.

Click on over to the flikr group to see hundreds more triple zip pouches.

For my friend's two daughters I made them each a Jewelry pouch.

One daughter's favorite color is blue.

The other's favorite color is green. This is what the pouch looks like empty

But you can't give a jewelry pouch without Jewelry in it.

So I filled them both with rings, necklaces, earrings, and candy.

The octopus rings are my favorite!

These pouches are super cute and fairly quick to make.

I want to make more and give them to some other special ladies.

Hmm...it might be nice to have one for myself as well. ;)

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Last of the 7

I finally got the binding on today!
The quilt has been waiting for almost two months for binding.
Once I got my sewing motivation back it was quick to finish up.

Not sure why my desire to create with fabric waned, but I can feel it creeping back up.
I finished a couple more projects as well but pictures will have to wait till a certain package arrives next week.

This is my 1rst quilt finish for 2013.

And is the seventh and final shirt quilt for my husband's Aunt Darla.

Here are all seven quilts together.

Time to call Aunt Darla and set up a dinner date and deliver them all.

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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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Covered Notebook

My friend celebrated her birthday last week and I wanted to make her something special.
We are both attending college classes together so I decided to make a cover for her notebook so she can jot down notes in style. He favorite things are tie dye, peace signs, and rainbows.  So when I saw this fabric at the Hobby Lobby, I snatched it up and put it in my cart.

I didn't have a pattern, Instead I measured the notebook and cut the fabric to match with 1/4 inch seam allowance.  Next time I will give myself a little more seam allowance. When I turned everything inside out I lost more than a 1/4 of an inch and the note book fits kinda of tight.

This is my first completed project for 2013.  Last year I kept a running total of my finished quilts only.
Perhaps this year I will make a running list of other projects as well.

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Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

2012 was a great year for quilts around here. I completely finished 18 quilts of various sizes.

I was so close to getting 19 finishes for the year, I only needed to add binding to one more and I would have had it.  Instead I spent the remainder of 2012 playing games with the kids and visiting relatives.  The time was well spent and even though I didn't reach 19 finishes it all works out in the end. I got to visit and create memories and now I am super close to a finish for 2013. Hurrah!  :)

These are all 18 projects. A couple may look like duplicates, but they are slightly different.

Hopefully I can be just as productive for 2013.

I'll keep you posted!

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