English Paper Peicing

On March 6th and 7th, my quilt guild was in charge of a booth at the Civil War Re-enactment of the Skirmish at Gamble's hotel in Florence, SC.  Guild members were asked to help man the booth and to bring some hand work to do while we were there.  So I decided it was time for me to start the Christmas present I was given, a quilt kit titled Litha Park from Connecting Threads.  Most of the design of the quilt is done using the English paper piecing method.  I had never tried that before, but as long as it came with directions, I was sure I could tackle it.  The night before the event I cut out all my diamond shapes from the fabric.  That way I could be all ready to sew.  The re-enactment was a lot of fun and I did get a few diamonds prepped, but not as many as I wanted.  I spent most my time chatting and helping some of the kids make fabric yo-yo's, which was also fun.  As of now though, I have all my diamonds prepped and ready to sew into flowers.  I will need a total of 16 flowers, made from 6 diamonds each.

This is what I have as of today.

I did most of them in the car when I traveled places, and a couple more when I watched a few new shows late at night.   (That is probably why my cross stitched cat whiskers got delayed in the previous post. I skipped right over the evening craft project, and went right into the late night crafting project)  :)

I want to have this quilt done by the May quilt guild meeting since that month's program will be all about English paper piecing.  It would make a great item for show and tell that month.  I hope I haven't taken on something too ambitious with such a short deadline.  We shall see....

My Cross-Stitched Cat

It is finally finished. It had been almost finished for weeks. All I had left to stitch was the whiskers. I kept saying to myself, "That will only take a few minutes, I can do that later tonight...." Well later tonight never came, so I made myself sit down this morning and put on the whiskers.

As I was putting on these whiskers this morning, I realized most of my unfinished projects are classified as almost finished.  So if I sit down and take a couple hours on each one, then I will have lots of finishes this year.  Sounds like a good plan, we shall see if I can put it in action.  :)

Basket full of Flowers

My friends birthday is today and I wanted to send her a special postcard to celebrate and I thought what could be better than a basket of flowers that is always in bloom.  I used my newest toys, two small yo yo makers, to make the flowers for this postcard.  My daughter even came over to help make the tiny ones.  They are fun and easy to make with the yo yo makers and I sewed them up while I waited for my turn at Scrabble on facebook.  :)  Then I added tiny buttons, poked some green leaves around the flowers, hand stitched the basket down, did some free motion quilting on the background and put a traditional quilt binding for the edging.  I love it.  It is one of my favorite cards.

I love collecting craft tools just as much as fabric and even though I haven't been collecting as much fabric lately, I still have been collecting tools.  These yo yo makers are my newest collection item.  I bought two larger circle yo yo makers last summer, and this past Christmas I received a flower and a heart yo yo maker - thanks Mom!  In January I bought the two smallest circle yo yo makers when they were half off at Hancock Fabrics.  Clover, the company who makes these tools, still has more for me to collect though:  the butterfly, the shamrock, the very largest circle (the Jumbo circle), and their newest design, the Oval.  You can see them all here.   If you are interested, Lazy Girl Designs has a wonderful pictorial tutorial on how to use these yo yo makers.

Side Tracked

This past Saturday I went to the Hobby Lobby.  It is one of my favorite stores and I can browse there for hours on end. But the main reason for my trip this time was so my daughter could get some more beads for her jewelry making hobby.   I hadn't planned on buying anything for myself and I almost made it out of the store empty handed, but that quickly changed when I got to the fabric section.  Now, I didn't get any fabric, and I wasn't even tempted, except for that pink paisley which I just patted and walked away from. Instead, I found something I felt I couldn't live without when I went to the discounted notions wall.  Hanging near the bottom I found a cross stitch kit on sale.  Why it was in the fabric section instead of the cross stitch section I don't know and normally I am not tempted with a cross stitch kit, but this one had pretty beads in it and it was a picture of a quilted cat named Scarlett done by Jim Shore.  It was discounted from $15 to $5.  So I snatched it and her friend Petunia up and headed to the cash register.  I halted progress on the three current projects I am working on and have only been cross stitching for the past couple days.  I am so excited to finish this cat that I do believe it will be one of my few projects that gets started and finished without me doing any other projects in between.  Now if I could just do that with all my projects and not get side tracked with new ones, I might not have so many UFO's.

More Mosaic Color Play

These are the three latest blocks I made for the IFQ mosaic color play swap.  For this swap, my partners sent me the center square and I added my fabrics to it in order to create the mosaic block.

The top two blocks were sent to Australia and the bottom went to GA.   As soon as the rose garden block gets received, I will be able to sign up again.  I have a goal to make and receive 12 blocks total so I can make a quilt for myself.  So far I have participated in 6 swaps, so I am  halfway there.

New Rag Quilt

I finished up another Rag Quilt this week.  For this quilt I wanted to use a new layout.  Something different from the previous rag quilts I made.   So I got out my graph paper and drew up a design that looked good to me.  Then I got busy cutting and sewing.  I love the way it turned out and will definitely use this pattern again.

I didn't realize this photo was blurry until I had shipped off the quilt, but it is still clear enough to see the pattern on the back.

Playing with Yarn

Over the Holidays, I did a little traveling. Since I couldn't pack up my sewing machine and fabric stash, I decided to bring a small bag of yarn and some knitting needles and a crochet hook.
The first thing I made were these flower hot pads.  They were super quick to make in the car and I ended up giving them all away before I made it back home.  I made a total of 4, but only managed to get a snap shot of 3.  I have to say, I really love the internet and all the quilt blogs I read every morning.  If it wasn't for them I never would have found this pattern.  I started out by clicking on Mary's blog, which is in my blog roll on the right. In one of her posts she had a link to Gari's Blog, which I clicked on and started browsing.





As I scrolled down that page I saw a picture of some items Gari won in a give away and one of those items was a crocheted hot pad.  I immediately fell in love with the design and was even ready to dish out money for the pattern.  Her blog said she got the items from Terri at Purple and Paisley, but there wasn't a link.  So I copied and pasted "Terri at Purple and Paisley" in my Google browser and sure enough Terri's Blog popped up at the top of the list.  I browsed her blog, which is wonderful and full of exciting photos, and after reading many of her older posts,  I finally found the the post where she had made the hot pads, and I must say the photos of her hot pads are most delicious.  But there was no pattern name or link, so I decided to email her, and she most graciously sent me the link to the pattern. The best part is that the pattern is a free pattern on the net.  You can get to it here.

After I made those, I decided I needed to use up the rest of my cotton yarn.  I had already made 4 dishcloths for a friend for Christmas, three knitted ones from a pattern book I own and one crocheted one from this Basket Weave pattern I found on the net.  These four put me in the mood to finish up using some of the cotton yarn I had in one of my bins.  I recalled making a round dishcloth years ago and wanted to make another one, so I googled round knitted dishcloth patterns hoping to find the same pattern I used years ago.







I didn't find the exact pattern I was I was looking for, but I did find lots of new ones.  I even found a basket weave pattern for knitting that I couldn't pass up. I started with that one first and came up with this dishcloth.  After I finished that one, I worked on the round ones.
 














The pattern I decided on for the round ones was the Crazy Daisy. I love this pattern and I love making round dishcloths.  I have one more already started on my needles, I will have to finish that one later though, since I have some quilty projects that have deadlines coming up soon than need attention first.

Mini Stocking

Here is one of my few holiday creations for this year: A mini stocking, just perfect to hang on the tree. I made this for a swap with Postcard Mail Art.  We don't always just swap postcards in these groups.  Every now and then we get an itching to make something else.  This time it was these mini-stockings. 

Part of the instructions for this swap was to add some "bling" so I added some sequence and beads onto my mini patchwork stocking.  This was my first time ever making a mini stocking.  I think it turned out really cute.  If I didn't have a mountain of other projects, I just might consider making enough of these to decorate my whole tree.

Journal Cover

When I saw the tutorial on the Moda Bake shop for Journal Covers I just knew I had to make one, and I had the perfect person to give it to.  One of my friends loves to draw sketches but she has been drawing them on index cards, so I decided to get her an art journal so she can keep them all in once place.  It also allows you to rip the page out if you wanted to without ruining the book, so it is perfect for her. 

The pattern called for twenty one 1.5 inch strips cut into 4.5 in lengths.  I have a bin just full of 1.5 inch strips. - that is the smallest size of fabric I save. Anything smaller than that goes into the trash bin.  Since I had that bin of precut strips, most of them are leftovers from other projects, I was able to pick out the 21 different strips in no time.  The pattern called for some plain linen for the solid top and bottom pieces, but my fabrics were so bright, I didn't feel like it would go well together, so I added a nice bright yellow for the top and bottom fabrics and boy does it make the cover pop.  I love it! 

For a final touch, I added my friends name on the front. I like being able to add that personal touch to the things I make whenever I get a chance.  It just makes the gift seem so much more personal.

I like this cover so much I do believe I need one for myself.  When the holidays are over, I can get cracking on one of these for my art journal.  :)

Finally back at the Machine

Wow,  I didn't realize how much I use my machine until it broke.  Even though I had my old one to sew on, it just wasn't the same.  It made me realize just why I bought the new machine in the first place.  My old machine was one headache after another.  It sure doesn't like to play nice.  So between house remodeling, and my broken machine I spent almost a month away from the sewing table.  But now everything is back to normal - well as normal as can be around here.  My regular machine has been to the doctor and all is well and the house remodeling has slowed down a bit for now so I was finally able to create some things out of my fabric.  Today I can only post one of them. The other few things will have to wait till after Christmas to be posted.  I don't want to spoil any surprises.  :)

One of the things I made after my machine got back from the repair was another Bow Tucks Bag.  I just love this pattern, and I love the way this bag feels.  It is so nice and thick.  I used pelon fusible fleece as the instructions say - "it is the best", and boy is it right.  From now on I only want to make bags with is this wonderful stuff.  It makes nice stiff handles and a wonderfully soft bag.  This particular bag was made for a special client who told me to pick what ever fabrics I think looked good.  So I went shopping in my own fabric stash and that in itself was fun.  :)

My Newest Project

I had to put my sewing projects to the side for now while I helped my husband build a set of stairs.  This is the bottom half of them.  When you get to the top of these, you will turn and then head up another small set to reach our soon to be new attic room.  We have been working on these for a few weeks to get them done in time for Thanksgiving.  All my relatives will be here for the Holiday's so we had to have it safe for all of them while they are here.  All I have left to do is finish mudding the drywall and then paint.  I want a color other than white, but I am undecided as to which one.  I was leaning towards burgundy, probably because it is in the family of my favorite color, but I don't want to make the stairway too dark.  Maybe I will start with one wall and see how it looks.

I've Zigged, now I need to Zag

I spent the evening last night sewing my Zigs together and now I have 16 diagonal strips hanging on my makeshift design wall.  Now all I have left to do for this top is sew these diagonal strips together and then trim the edges.  This is going to be bigger than I thought so it won't do for a cute baby blanket.  I will have to save it for something else.  I am liking the way it is coming out, but my husband always bunches up his forehead when he walks into the room.  He says it looks like a pink Charlie Brown shirt.....

Zig Zag Progress

Instead of using the yellow fabric I posted earlier for this new zig zag quilt, I decided to use a white tone on tone fabric.  Mainly because I didn't have enough of the yellow.  I was a couple inches too short in yardage to get all the strips I needed.

This evening I cut out all the strips and sewed them together.  Then I pressed them all and cut them all into 5.5 inch squares.  Each stack has 14 squares.  In the next couple of days I will lay them out and and see which order I like the pink colors for my zig zags. Hopefully I can do it sooner than later, but I am helping my husband build new stairs to our attic this week, so it may end up being later.

Starting a new quilt.

I have been itching to try out this Zig Zag quilt ever since I saw it on Crazy Mom Quilts' Blog.   So I picked out the fabrics today and put them on the cutting mat where they are ready to be cut into 3 inch strips.  I want to make this quilt for a little girl, so I decided to make it with various pinks and a yellow fabric as my base.  When looking through my stash, I realized I didn't have as many pink fabrics as I thought.  I barely had enough to pick out the nine I needed for this quilt.  I am a little wary about the pink and silver stars.  Hopefully when its all cut out and separated by the yellow, all the fabrics will play well together.  I haven't added any fabric to my stash for a couple years it has been slowly dwindling.  That is a good thing right??

Rag quilt for a boy this time.

Lately I have  been making pretty pink rag quilts.  So it was a nice switch to make one in blues and yellows for a little boy.  For this rag quilt I put the 4 patch blocks on the back.  So it is almost like a fancy double sided quilt.

I do believe the front of this one is my favorite so far, but then again I am partial to the blue and yellow color combination.  :)