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When I originally made my mini quilt for the Wicked Blog hop I had 10 wedges left over.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

I hope everyone is ready for some spooky fun tonight.

Today is my day for the Wicked Blog Hop. 

I made a spider web quilt block and turned it into a mini quilt.

Which I plan to use as a mini table topper...

Or even a Jack-O-Lantern backdrop.

I had planned on photographing my whole process,

but the camera was quickly forgotten as I got engrossed in the project.

I did get remember to few shots that I can share.

I started out by sewing eight 1 inch strips together.

Then I used my Kaleidoscope ruler to cut out eight wedges.

I sewed the wedges together and added the black border.

Then I couched on some thick black thread on the seam lines.

The couched thread was originally the last step on my drawing,

but as I stared at it, I felt like it was missing something,

So I added some ghosts. 

Then I quilted it up and took it out into the night for its spooky photo shoot.

Make sure you check out all the other Wicked posts for the day

Wicked Wednesday,

October 31st

Beaquilter

Fun Thread Designs 

Stitch, Stitch, Stitch

Made By A Brunnette

Buttons And Butterflies

The Recipe Bunny

Quilted Delights

Sunshine Reflections

Louzeekreativ

Mice In The Mix

Rosemary - That Other Blog

The Fuzzy Hat Quilter

Sew We Quilt

!!!Happy Halloween!!!

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Bev's Scrappy Quilt

With Halloween costumes completed, I was able to get back to quilting and quilted up Bev's quilt.

She used all her scraps from leftover projects to make this beauty.  

To make the top she said she kept sewing one scrap piece to another and when they got big enough she trimmed them up into workable blocks.  

I think it turned out great!  

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Halloween Costumes

Wow! What a busy month I have had.  I didn't realize I hadn't sat down at my sewing machine since my last post on October 5th.  I have been busy getting the house ready for guests, doing my schoolwork (I started back to college), playing at the State Fair, and trying to come up with ideas for Halloween costumes. I ended up making two out of the four this year, but very little was done with the sewing machine.

First I made this viking costume for my youngest.  It was made mostly with my crochet hook.  Something I haven't picked up in quite a long time.  I made the beard first - It is a free download from Ravelry. Then I made the hat to go with it.

My son specifically requested I helmet with a broken horn. Luckily I found a perfect one on Ravelry as well.
The pattern had a few errors in it, but if you are good at deciphering those out it is a nice helmet to make.
Finally I draped him in fake fur and he was ready to go.

Every Halloween my husband's work puts on a Halloween party for the kids. It is usually a week before Halloween. This year they did it a little early and I had to have all the costumes done by the 19th.  My second youngest was still undecided as to what he wanted to be the Monday before the event.  Finally I convinced him to be something that I could make really quick:  A Catcus

I found him some green sweat pants and shirt. I really wanted a hoodie, but wasn't able to find one, so I bought an extra shirt, cut it up, and made him a hat to match

Then I sewed on over 200 white pipe cleaners.
I folded them in half and zig zagged them onto the sweat shirt.
Then I added two yellow cactus flowers to finish it up.

I bought my daughter her flapper outfit, and her friend came over to join us for the party.

We always have the kids pose in front of the door before we head into the party.

It was a great night. The kids had a good time playing games and eating party food.

And to top the night off, the viking was one of the costume contest winners!

He got himself a $10 giftcard to Wal-Mart.

Yee Haw!!

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Leafs Me Happy Blog Hop

Today is my day for the Leafs me Happy Blog hop.

I am really into batik fabrics right now and I knew they would make the perfect leaf block.

I shall name this one "Leaf's Sun"

Heh, I'm no good at catchy pun titles and the only thing coming to mind right now is Leaf Ericsson.

Doesn't have anything to do with leaves, but it sounds good.

I incorporated two different pattern designs for this block:

The corners of Bonnie Hunter's Spider blocks and a pieced maple leaf block I found here.  

The leaf pattern was for a 15.5 inch block, so I had to re-size it to fit in a 8.5 inch square.

I didn't have time to make a whole set of blocks, but I played around with one block in my computer and came up with what could be a finished project in my near future.  I was also anxious to see how the spider sections would come together. 

Be sure to check out all the other great leaf blocks today.

You can see them all by following the links below.

Friday 5

Insanity Defense

Michelle May and the Bunnies

Sparrow In Flight

Quilted Delights

Quilting With a Marmalade Cat

Traveling Quilter

A Stitch in Time

Cherry Blossoms
Tea Time Creations

Moose Stash Quilting

Stitchin By The Lake

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FNSI-September

For the September Friday Night Sew In, I didn't really do much sewing.  Instead I spent the evening doing dome prep work for my dotty Dresden quilt.

 I turned this pile of fabric into a pile of neatly pressed Dresden plate petals.

 I also cut out all the brown circles I will need to finish my quilt.

While I was at it I also decided to press a different set of Dresden plate petals.  I was originally going to use these pastels for my Dots on Dots blog hop block, but I didn't have enough dot fabrics to finish the Dresden plate.  This particular Dresden pate will need 20 petals, and I when I started it, I only had enough dot fabric for 5 petals. I thought about duplicating fabrics, but I really wanted 20 different ones for this project.

 I have since collected a few more pastel dot fabrics, but I am still on the hunt for three three more to finish it up. 

Even though there was no humming of the sewing machine on Friday, I was still very productive.

Now that these petals are prepped and pressed, I can zip them through the machine in no time.

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Dots on Dots Blog Hop

Today is the day I get to reveal my Dots on Dots block!

When I signed up for the blog hop, I only had four different dot fabrics.

I like dots, but I never really knew how to incorporate them into my quilts unless they were scrappy.

So I decided this was the perfect challenge for me.

I had a yard of some lovely red dotted Henry Glass fabric that I had been itching to put into something. 

I just didn't know what that something was. 

When this blog hop was announced, I challenged myself to use my red dot fabric.

After some trial and error, and asking everyone in the family, "do you like it better like this, or like this?" (Any Brian Regan Fans? If you have a few minutes and need a good laugh check him out on youtube) this is the block I came up with.

I am loving the small design board I made from Lori's tutorial. It turned out to be the perfect display for my block. I even bought some blue dot fabric for the edging.

When I first started making my block, one of my original drawings didn't incorporate a center circle on my Dresden plate. None of my acrylic rulers cut a full Dresden petal so I went online to hunt for a template that would allow me to have a full Dresden without a hole in the center. I also wanted it to be small.  I found the perfect template on Shaw K L Designs Blog.  Her template is a full 12 petal Dresden and it finished at 7.5 inches from tip to tip.   

I did end up adding a top circle for my final block but I am still going to keep this template.

I like the look of the full Dresden plate and I already have an idea brewing in my head of something I can do with them.

This is what the block looks like with some buddies. 

Eventually this will turn into a 12 block quilt with four rows of three blocks each and a blue dotted border.

Thanks for visiting!

Make sure you check out the other Dots on Dots blog posts for today:

September 20th

Cherry's Prairie Primitives

Quilts From My Crayon Box  

Sparrow in Flight 

The Slow Quilter

Petit Design Co. 

Geta Grama

Quilted Delights

Di of Snippets 'n' Scraps

Nunu's Quilt World

If you missed any previous days you can see the whole schedule here:

You can also see all the creations on Pintrest

Happy Hopping!

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Faceted Jewels Completed!!

After more hours than I care to count I am finished with the quilting.

I quilted in the ditch around most of the quilt.

The only thing that didn't get ditch stitching was the smaller geese triangles.

Then I did freehand feathers, loops, and swirls.

The first time I ever saw this quilt was on Thelma's Cupcakes N Daisies blog and Instantly fell in love with it.

I have since seen this patterned also called "Eye Fooler" by Quail Valley Quilts.

It is my new favorite quilt.

So it was a little hard for me to put it in a box and mail it off to Asheville, NC.

It will hang in the 30th Annual Asheville Quilt Show September 28-30, 2012.

I'll go visit it on the Saturday though and I will get to take it back home with me on Sunday.

This makes finish #15 for the year.

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Cats and Deadlines

There I was, making good quilting progress on my Faceted Jewels quilt when along came Jasper.

He plopped himself right on top of my quilt and rested his head on the side of the machine.  

What is up with this crazy cat.  Doesn't he know I am on a deadline...

Or perhaps he knew I had been at the machine for a couple hours and that I needed a break.

Yeah, I think that was it.

Cats are smart like that.

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