Orca Bay ~ Top Done

The Ocra Bay top is finished.  Now it is on to the quilting.

I am really in love with this quilt.   It will be the opportunity quilt for my quilt guild. Unfortunately based on my previous luck at having my name drawn, I feel my odds at winning this back are very slim.  So much so that I see myself cutting more red, white, blue, and black fabric in my near future.  

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Twist to the 60's with Batiks - Blog Hop

Flower Power!!  That is what comes to mind when I think of the 60's.

I wasn't around in the 60's so I don't have any memories of the era, but I can definitely appreciate the music, movies, and art from that time.  The 60's were full of color which makes batik fabrics perfect for this hop.

I stitched together lots of flowers from some of my brightest batik fabrics
and to go along with the flowers I made a few pouches.

The first pouch was made using a technique similar to the cathedral window technique.

You can find the process tutorial at Patchwork Notes and can use any pouch pattern you like.

I found the perfect spinning flower charm at Hobby Lobby and

my daughter lovingly attached it to the zipper with an extra long chain.

I hand sewed my zipper/lining to the front section because I was sure I couldn't line up the stitches on the front without having it look like a disaster.

It took me a little longer, but you can't see the stitches on the front of the pouch and I am digging the small blue hand stitching in the inside.

I used the Clover Kanzashi Flower makers to make all my flowers.

I used two different styles: the small Daisy Petal and the Large Orchid Petal

These tools from Clover are awesome!  I have made these flowers by hand before and now that I have the plastic tools by Clover I will never go back. They make it so much easier and the petals come out perfect every time.  I bought my flower makers at JoAnns when they had them half off.  I will definitely be going back for the other styles!

This next pouch is called Suzy's Sack, the pattern is by This and That and I bought it from Connecting Threads. It only cost $4.50 so it was easy to add to my cart when I ordered some fabric and thread.

The pattern called for 1/2 inch d-rings and a claw clip for the handle, but I couldn't find either of those at Joanns or Hobby Lobby. I will have to look online to find them.  

 The bag is a small and is meant to hang off or inside a larger one, so the clip would be nice.  The pattern also gives instructions if you don't want to use the clips, which is what I did, but it looks like I can alter it easily when I get the clip and D-ring.

Last I made an Ear Bud Pouch from Erin Erickson's tutorial, but this time I used her Heart Shaped Tutorial.

These are for ear buds, but you can put anything small in them.  My daughter uses hers as a coin purse.

I had a great time sewing up all my creations, the flowers in particular. I sewed them up while watching Dr. Who on Hulu, which coincidentally originally aired in the 60's.  

Make sure you check out the other 60's Batik hoppers today.
Click on the links below to see all the goodies for today.

September 30

Seams To Be Sew
Words & Stitches
Banks of Frog Creek
Quilted Delights  - ME  :)

For a full list of the blog hoppers Visit:

Twist to the 60's with Batiks Schedule

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Time to Sew Rows - Orca Bay

I placed all the sections on the design board to make sure nothing of the same butted up next to each other.  It was fairly easy since there are so many different fabrics.
All I have left to do now is sew the rows together.


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Adding the Red and Blue Strings

I am on the home stretch! My goal is to have the top finished by the next guild meeting, which is October 3.  I already had the blue string blocks finished and today I put them on the design board with the Ohio Star Blocks. This morning I finished up the last of the red string sections.  

Phew, these red triangles took the longest and there weren't even as many of these as there were Hour Glass Blocks.  I definitely know that chain piecing makes things go faster.  I wasn't able to do that with these string blocks though. I took my time finding strings that were just the right length - I hate to waste fabric, even string fabric.  Now that they are done, it will be a breeze to add the "wings" (which I have already started).  Once the wings are on all I have to do is piece the rows together.  I even have the borders ready to go.  I Can't wait to see it all together.  I am totally in love with this quilt!

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Lots of Ohio Stars

These blocks would make a great quilt all by themselves, but they are going into something else.

I have been asked to be in charge of the Opportunity Quilt for my guild and I have decided to make an Orca Bay quilt.  It was Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt a couple years ago.  I didn't do the mystery at the time but every since I saw the finished quilt I have always wanted to make one. I figured this would be the perfect time to do it.

I used a lot of my own scraps and also asked the ladies of the guild to donate their red, blue, black, and neutral fabrics.  Then I went out and bought some fat quarters to fill in the rest of the scraps.   I wanted to have a lot of different fabrics in the quilt.  Each Ohio Star block has a different red fabric center.  That is 56 different red fabrics!  I love it!

I'll finish up the colored string blocks this week and then I will add them to the Ohio Star Blocks.  I am getting really excited about this project.  I may have to have my husband buy a bunch of tickets so I can increase the chances of it coming back to my house when it is finished.  ;)

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Quilting for Beverly

I finished quilting two quilts for Beverly this past week.
She wanted an all over desgin on both of them.  

This is her "Love Quilt".  It is made with love for her husband.

She used up a lot of her scraps to put this one together.

I think it turned out wonderful. I love scrappy quilts!

This is the second one she asked me to quilt for her. 

I am loving the red centers surrounded by all the different shades of blue.
I makes me want to make a quilt like this.

I bet this design would look fabulous in Christmas colors as well.
It is a beautiful quilt.

Thanks for letting me work on your quilts Beverly, they are both spectacular!

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Busy Quilting - Tish's Pastel Quilt

Wow, based on my blog posts this summer it looks as if I haven't been at the machine.  That is quite the opposite though.  I have spent most of my time at the machine this summer quilting for others.  Unfortunately  I have to wait before I can show the quilts I have been working on since they are surprises.
I do have one that I can show now though.
  

This is a Quilt I partial pieced and quilted for Tish.  Since she was able to show it off at our guilds UFO Challenge meeting I can now show it off.  She had given me three large 12 inch pieced blocks (the two on the bottom, and the top left) and the large Dresden block in the center and asked me to do something with them. She gave me her pastel fabrics to work with.  After a couple different layout decisions I came up with this.  I had to make another large 12 inch block, the green and yellow Dutchman's puzzle, and then I made four smaller 8 inch pieced blocks to go in between the larger blocks. I surrounded everything thing with 2 inch alternating squares.  I really love how it turned out.  For the quilting, since Tish doesn't like a lot of heavy quilting, I did a loose meander for her.  It turned out lovely.

For the back Tish gave me a large pieced flower block.  I want to say this is a version of the Carolina Lily block, but I am not certain.  I added the yellow corners to it then added enough borders to make it match the front of the quilt.  It makes a nice double sided quilt.

Tish also had me quilt a small table runner for her, but can you believe I didn't get a photo of it!  It has been a long time since I have forgotten to take a picture of a project.  I sure don't want that to happen again!

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4 Small Quilts

Sometimes you just need a walking foot.  I made the tops in the spring for my guild's charity project and they have been patiently waiting for me.  With the September Guild meeting coming up I lit a fire under myself to get them finished to turn in. I spent my labor day at the sewing machine and got them all finished. (I wasn't the only one inspired, we had over 15 donation quilts turned in during the September meeting.)

 It took me less than an hour per quilt to get these done.  No fancy free motion quilting, just straight lines with the walking foot and they turned out great.  Sometimes all you need is some straight lines and in the ditch quilting.  They measure around 24 x 36.

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Ready for Quilting

Yay! Borders are on.  Phew.  It took longer that I thought to get all those Economy blocks sew together.

I was working on quilts for other people (which I can't show right now) at the same time though, so that might have added to my delay.  I am keeping this one hanging on the design wall so I make sure it gets quilted in time for Christmas!

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End of Summer and some Economy Blocks

Summer doesn't officially end till September,
but for us School starts tomorrow, so it is the end of our summer vacation.

We spent our last week of summer at the beach.

We only had two good days of sun.
The rest of the week was rainy.
But that didn't stop us from going to the beach.
We went every day of the week.

Rain or shine.

We had a great send off to summer even with rain.

One of my favorite places to go is to Huntington Beach State Park and walk all the way to the jetties. It rained on us a little on our walk that day but after that the clouds decided to let us enjoy the beach without having to squint through the rain.  Even though it was cloudy it was still warm.  That is the good thing about summer rain.  You can play in it and not get cold.

Huntington Beach state park also has access to the marsh.  They have some nice boardwalks to walk on where you can check out the local wildlife.

You can't tell in this photo, but the sun actually came out for a good 30 minutes while we walked the boardwalk.

I think I dread summer ending as much as the kids.
I really enjoy having them at home.
I will be sad to send them off to school in the morning.
I may just cry.

I have plenty of things to keep me busy though.
The are house chores of course, but I also need to finish up my Christmas advent calendar that I started for the Ho Ho Ho blog hop.

This is what the finished quilt will look like.  Last week I had all but the border done.  Some people told me it looked good just the way it was but I really want to add the small border. I did the design and coloring in EQ7.  I got the program for my birthday in May, but it isn't as user friendly as other software so it took me a little while to get the hang of it. I still feel like I am trying to understand it and that is not like me, I usually pick up software pretty easily.   The company is nice though, I emailed them a question when I just couldn't find the answer anywhere, and they were friendly and polite and answered my question pretty quickly. 

  The outer border needs 52 three inch Economy blocks.  With blocks this small I prefer to paper piece.  It gives me nice sharp points every time.   I sewed two sample blocks to make sure I had the right size fabric triangles. Then I printed out 50 more papers and the rest of the fabric I need to finish the rest of the blocks, which I will chain piece. 

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My day for the Ho Ho Ho Blog Hop

For the Ho Ho Ho blog hop I wanted to make a Christmas pinwheel quilt.

I made the one to the left, a much smaller version, years ago and gave it away.  Since then I have wanted one for myself.  This blog hop was the perfect motivation to get my sewing machine humming with plenty of time for me to finish this up before Christmas.

This is what a pile of pinwheels can look like.

 I can't wait to get it quilted and bound in time for Christmas.

Another project this hop inspired me to work on was my advent quilt.
I still want to add a 3 inch border before I call this one complete.

 I embroidered these numbers over 10 years ago.  Each year I planned on making some sort of advent calendar with them, but I always spent too much time sewing holiday gifts and never got around to sewing the numbers together.

  I would always tell myself I can do it in January when the festivities are over, but by the end of the Christmas season I was ready to move on to other projects.  So I am glad I decided to participate in this hop to get my personal Christmas sewing started early.  

The pockets are kinda of small, but I plan to put Christmas quotes, scriptures, or riddles inside.  Possibly mini scavenger hunt clues for the kids.  A clue a day, or a clue to where bigger sweets are stored. We can have a small adventure each day till Christmas.

This tiny candy cane was the only holiday decoration I could find in July.  It fits perfect.  ;)

Click the links below to see all the other bloggers who are posting today.

August 9

Moose Stash Quilting

Cathy’s Chatter

Darlington Delights

Life in the Scrapatch

Quilt n Queen

Forget-Me-Not Stitches

Quilted Delights  (ME)

AnnieOak Designs

Sew Peace to Peace

Wips & Tuts

Just Keep Swimming

Sew We Quilt

Happy Hopping

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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Family Tree Quilt Complete

The family Tree quilt is finished, has been picked up, and will soon be on its way to Canada

for a 60 year anniversary party.

The piano key border really helped bring all the leaves together.

I tried to quilt the main part of the trunk so it would have a little bit of texture.

I think it turned out pretty well.

I added names using the same bark fabric and green lettering.

This sure was a fun project to work on.

It was interesting to see all the family traits pass on from generation to generation.

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