Happy Holidays everyone! For those who celebrate Christmas, I hope the day was lovely. I think this is probably the smallest gathering we have had for Christmas but you know what? It was great. Julia, Ray and I were together and we enjoyed it very much.
Knowing it was supposed to snow on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we invited my parents over for cookies and coffee on the 23rd. Mom and Dad live at a higher elevation than us and thus get quite a bit of snow. Once it snows, their part of the highway is often impassable. They ...
As I mentioned the other day, I came across a quilt top from my guild’s Community Service team. Nothing like an impending move to get me going on this top. It took no time at all to get it basted and stippled.
Colorful Chaos!
This scrappy quilt is one crazy flurry of color. Most of the prints are from the 1980’s and 1990’s as far as I can tell. Lots and lots of novelty fabrics were used. The person who pieced it alternated rows of seven inch squares with rows of 3 1/2″ squares and rectangles ...
It snowed this week!! Years ago, it seemed like we got a snowfall every year. The kids would get the day off of school and it was a treat for all of us. With climate change, we rarely see snow. But this week we got about two inches and it was wonderful. Prior to this we got rain, a lot of rain. Living with drought and fires like we do, nothing is better than rain. Anyway, we are enjoying this wintry weather up here in Northern California.
Taken after the snow started to melt off, this is a peek at ...read more
I am in good company as I join in with Leanne at Devoted Quilter for the 100 Day Challenge, WIPs Be Gone 2021. Her thought was we should all gather together and use the last 100 days of 2021 to finish up some projects that have been languishing for whatever reason. I have plenty of these so it makes perfect sense to use this as a way to get some momentum going. Technically this challenge started on September 23rd but I am just now writing a post about it.
This is my list of unfinished items I will try to ...
Hello there! Life is still quite busy here. The fabric sale continues and customers are keeping me busy. I am happy to say the stack of empty bolts is still growing and the shelves of bolted fabric are shrinking. Thank you all for supporting me as I clear out the shop in anticipation of closing it.
In between shipping orders, we have had a lot going on. I haven’t been able to get a ton of quilting done but I do get to the machine now and then.
I am working on my blocks for the Positivity QAL. The ...
Today I want to share the finish of this pretty coin quilt. This quilt started out on a whim one day a couple of months ago. I was cleaning my sewing room and attacked a pile of scraps, cutting them into rectangles measuring 2 1/2″ x 4 1/2″. I decided to concentrate on specific colors and then use the rectangles at a later date for a coin quilt. Green, yellow, pink and blue were the colors I selected.
Yes, the quilt has a bit of an Easter egg vibe but who doesn’t love Easter eggs? I chose ...
It is the end of the month and I scrambled to get a few things done for April. Seems the April came to a close much sooner than it was supposed to as I wasn’t really ready.
Yesterday was a housecleaning day. The obscure chores just get pushed back until finally the oven stinks whenever it is heating up and there is no choice but to clean it. That was not a fun chore but it is done and the oven is all ready to go again! I also had to give some of my houseplants a bath. The ...
I think this is the first coin quilt I have made and I love it. It is simple, pretty, and has lovely color. This project consumed a nice pile of scraps, most of which were given to me by my sister.
In January I spent some time cutting pink, green, blue and yellow scraps into strips measuring 2 1/2″ x 5″. Then I made myself put them away and finish a few other projects before playing with these. When I was ready to sew the coin quilt, it was great to just pull the bag of strips off the ...
Remember the chicks Julia raised last fall in the laundry room? Well two of the four turned out to be roosters, Pete and Jack. This was somewhat disappointing as that obviously reduced the number of eggs we thought we would be getting. However they were very handsome birds and we got over our disappointment. Then we went up to Washington to celebrate the girl’s birthdays and those naughty roosters had a party of sorts.
When we left, the roosters were about five months old. We thought this was still young that they wouldn’t be fertilizing eggs yet. Oh ...
Like the really creative title says, I finished up the mini I shared with you earlier! It is so cute. When I was piecing the Mosaic Mystery Quilt (yet to be finished) I had loads of bonus HST’s – you know, the bits that are left over when you make a flying geese block? Luckily, I stitched them as I made the blocks so they were all ready for me to use.
Making this mini used only a small portion of the little 2 1/2″ HST’s. I saw the idea to incorporate a friendship star with the fussy ...
Look another little quilt headed to Jack’s Basket! As a result of my cleaning efforts in the sewing room, I put some scrappy nine patch blocks together that had been sitting in a pile for quite some time. It felt so nice to use up the blocks and make this sweet little quilt.
It is so bright and cheerful. I quilted straight lines on the diagonal. At first I was stitching across the wonky stars but it looked funny so I took that out. I think the stars look best without any quilting. The lines were just freehand with ...
I have a pretty finish to share today. I was waiting for it to be received by its new owner before I shared it with you. I made a scrappy jelly roll quilt, using the pattern by From Bolt to Beauty. Michelle calls it the Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt and the name is accurate!
For some time now, I have wanted to make a quilt for my (first) mother in law. I have posted in the past about my first husband. He passed away in 1994. Since his death, I have stayed close to his mom. When she retired ...
Know what I mean? I keep pulling bins and zip lok bags out to sort and organize. Then I find something fun and ditch the cleaning process and start sewing. I suppose I am kind of cleaning up but if you look at my sewing room, you wouldn’t really know it. Hahaha. Surely this is not unique to me. Cleaning up a mess usually means making a bigger mess temporarily. However, the inability to overcome the temptation to play with little bits here and there is certainly slowing down the process!
Just a sampling of the blocks I found ...read more
Oh my goodness – time is flying by. Nothing like a pandemic forcing all of us to stay home day after day to make a person busy, right? In March when all of this started I thought I would accomplish this huge to-do list due to being stuck at home. I created a list of blog posts to catch up on, pictured myself scrubbing the kitchen and bathrooms till they sparkled – it was going to be such a productive time. Ummm, what the heck? I have hardly posted here and it took me until yesterday to force myself to scrub one ...
So I started another quilt. It was an accident... really...not planned at all.
Remember those vintage scraps and old blocks that I was organizing? I remade the friendship star blocks and put the 16 of them together as a future quilt center. Well, I was thinking about it at night and thought, "what if I cut up all the scraps that matched the stars and surrounded my center with a huge star. This was about midnight...couldn't sleep. I pulled out my laptop with my EQuilter program and started playing with ideas. Long story short... About 3am I ...
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Hi everyone – somehow about two weeks have passed since I have posted. I am unsure if it is because I don’t have much to tell you or I have been busy or what? One would think with the shelter in place rules, I would have tons of time to write blog posts but it hasn’t happened.
So much to pack up and bring back home!
Actually, lots has been going on – a few days ago we drove to Julia’s university to clean out her dorm room. They decided for sure the students will not return to campus ...
Happy Saturday Everyone. It is National Quilting Day so I really hope you each find a few minutes to work on a project or at the very least look at fabric and plan the next project!
I got my two monthly scrappy projects done for March! For RSC2020, the color is teal and I decided to make a smaller Dresden plate. I will combine it with the larger orange one I made in February and likely need to make one or two more before I put them together into some sort of wall quilt.
I have a couple of small projects to share today. Both happen to involve kitty fabric which is totally coincidental. Which one do you want to see first? Oh, the linen project? Ok – sure.
I have been selling a line of cotton linen blends made by Andover for as long as I have had my fabric shop (which is just over three years now – can you believe it??) I love these fabrics and try to always keep a few choices in the shop. I have also used them to make a lot of custom Chemex covers and French Press cozies ...
I started the month off by working on two scrappy projects. Kind of nice to play a bit and use up a few pieces from my scrap bins. Besides what else was I to do while the Super Bowl was on??
The first block I made is for the 2020 Monthly Color Challenge. The color is blue and the block was a quick make. Coincidentally, I used polka dots again this month (I used them last month too, but in yellow).
These look so happy and it is making me wonder if I should try to go for a polka ...
