Christmas

 Hello All,

I've been busy making Christmas gifts. A few bags, a few place mats. An ornament and mug rug. Little things to let  friends and family know I'm thinking of them. I didn't get pictures of most of them though. Sometimes I forget the camera when I'm getting gifts made, wrapped and ready to send.

I had a lot of fun with this gift. It's a little family tree for my Mom. I have three sisters, so our names are in the trees. Then our children, and the few great-grands are on there as well (no names showing for privacy). This pattern is in a Country Christmas book from years ago. 

The embroidered names was all my idea, it's not in the pattern. And the saying above the trees I changed. I had such fun with this project!

I started learning EPP this year also (Carol, if you haven't opened your gift yet, don't look at the next picture 😉 ). I put this together for Carol, the two flowers are EPP. I had a lot of fun with this one too and will be doing more EPP in the future.

Now that the gifts are made, I need to find a new project. I cut out a few more of these flowers and I'll see how many I get made this year. Maybe I'll do a bunch and make a quilt like this one, we'll see.

And now I'll wish you all a very...

And a wonderful New Year!

Thank you for stopping by and giving me an occasional comment.

Dorian

Happy Thanksgiving

 Wishing you all a very Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your day is filled with good fellowship and good food.

Have a wonderful day, and thanks for stopping by from time to time.

Dorian

Yah, a finish!

 Hello All,

I finally have a big finish. I've been really lax this year in the sewing room. Have gotten a few small finishes in here and there and made a few tops. But I haven't done a whole lot else.

Then I decided I needed to get one of my very good friends a quilt. We've been 'online' friends for many, many years and she's never received a quilt from me, so I thought this will be the year. I had decided this a month or so ago.

So I dug thru my quilt tops and found this one. This was a swap on my quilt forum, QATW. 

We each made some blocks, and sent one or two of them to everyone else, and had a few of our own as well. 

Then I found this top, one of my favorites. It's Calico Rose from Wedding Dress blues. And I thought it would be a good fit with the swap quilt top. 

This one was a bit smaller, so I had to add some borders to get it up to size. This white is perfect for my friend, as those 'balls' are balls of yarn and B is a crocheter :)

What I didn't realize, until I had taken these pictures, is that some of the stars are so light that they fade into the background SIGH~ There is such a big contrast between the dark ones and the light ones. Oh well, it's a scrap happiness, right??! 

The reason I put two tops together, is because of B. The recipient of this quilt. She encouraged me to put two tops together and make a double sided quilt. She has been saying I should do this for quite a few years now. Every time I mentioned how many tops I had. She would say, "Instead of buying backing fabric, put two tops together." So when I wanted to gift a quilt to her, I decided to make it double sided, just for her :)

And I am so glad that I started quilting this when I did. B was in much need of a quilty hug. When I started quilting it she wasn't, but halfway thru I knew she needed it now, and not at Christmas when I first planned to give it to her. I hope it's given her some comfort.

Have a great day All, thanks for stopping by.

Dorian

Summer time projects

 Hello All,

It's been awhile I know. I have not been sewing a lot, but still spending a bit of time in the sewing room. Mostly working on UFO's.

I saw these blocks over at Jos Country Junction. It's a Bonnie Hunter pattern called Garlic Knots.

As I had quite a few black squares and strips in my stash, I thought a darker quilt would be interesting and out of the box for me. I put 4 of the blocks together like this.

Then added sashing. The border is more of the same blocks, ones that I didn't have 4 of to make a block.

Sigh, when I sewed my rows together, I did notice that I put one row on the wrong end of the quilt, so my bright yellow + blocks in the sashing don't match. So I put it aside and went out of the sewing room. When I went back in a day or two later, I forgot about the mistake and put the border on....So now I have to spend some time frogging.

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This top started out as a swap on QATW. We sent our partner a panel or 2 or 4... depending on the size of the panel and what you wanted done with them. You could have table mats, wall hanging, full sized quilt, whatever. I sent my panels to Candice and asked for a wall hanging. This is what she made me.

The day I received this back, I had these blocks on my table.

And when I put the two next to each other, I figured it was Fate. The colors match so perfectly. 

So, I got all the split 9 patches put together in a small quilt. I cut on both diagnals. Then sewed them onto the sides of the panel quilt.

Now I need to figure out what to put on these sides, to turn it back so that my sewing machines are sitting upright. I had intended this to be a wall hanging. But when I saw what a great job Candice did with the panels, I decided I wanted it as a bed quilt where it would actually been seen sometimes (I don't have any wall space! LOL)

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This next quilt I am calling Jewels. It is a Corey Yoder pattern, well the blocks are her's. She calls it an 8 point star block and she made it in a pillow. The pattern is in the Fall 2018 Quilts and More magazine. But the setting is all mine. 

They look like sparkling jewels to me. Since I had black on my table with the Garlic knots, I thought what about black as the setting triangles here, then I also needed an alternative block. Most of the HST pieces are leftover bits from doing stitch and flip corners on a quilt. I don't usually do stitch and flip, as I hate wasting these little triangles. So I kept all these and made this pattern. The HSTs are 1.5", so tiny. But after making the 8 point star blocks, I still had some leftover, so I came up with this alternative block. I think it worked out well. I am not sure if I'll put a border on or not, it's on the back burner 'stewing'. 

And that is what I've been up to the past 3 or 4 months :) Just getting a bit done here and there, and pretty soon I had some pretty tops. Now maybe the quilting fairy will show up and make them into quilts for me :)

Thanks for stopping by!
Dorian

Panel swap fun

 Hello out there,

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the change of season. We had a lovely, wet, cold winter. And now are having a nice, fairly wet, cool Spring. Lots of lovely flowers are blooming. My favorite is the Redbud, which is in full bloom right now. I love their purply-pink color.

In the sewing room, some friends and I on the QATW forum, decided to do a panel swap. I sent Candis this fun panel of sewing machines.

She cut them apart, added some pieces, and made me this lovely wall hanging.

So cute! Candis did a fabulous job.

Verla sent this pretty panel to me.

Verla requested a bed quilt (I had asked for a wall hanging, thats why the difference in sizes). So I had a lot of fun making different flower type blocks. I made two of these posie blocks.

And I made two of these pretty rose blocks.

Then some windmill/sunflower blocks and some tulips. Put it all together....

The green and blue blocks are pathways, in my imagination, lol. I've never made a quilt with various sized blocks, fitting them in here and there to make everything line up. So I had a lot of fun making this. 

And after we made the panels into quilty things, we sent them back to the panel owner. This was my first panel swap, as panel aren't something I normally buy. But I had my sewing machines tucked away, a gift from big Sis :) and thought it would be a fun challenge. 

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I'm just playing with scraps right now. I want to get some quilt tops quilted this summer, but have to wait till next month to buy some backings. So playing with scraps keeps me busy, but it's also easy to just set aside and do something else, or just choose not to go in the sewing room.

Have a lovely afternoon all, and thanks for stopping by.

Dorian

It's snowy outside....

But sunny inside... at least in my sewing room...

 Hello All,

Our February and into March was very snowy. We haven't seen this much snow in quite a few years. But now the rain has come and the snow is starting to melt. We had close to 2 ft at one time. Now we have a bunch of mud.

These fabrics are some of my very favorite, Sunkissed and Spring Chicken, both by Sweetwater. I just love the cheerfulness of the lines, the sherberty goodness :)

Those swirls are my favorite.

I'm also working on some sweet hearts.

The fabrics for the hearts comes from a jelly roll. The fabrics are vibrant in real life, more of a jeweled tone. The quilt is going to be a chain quilt.

And I'm working on this scrappy table runner.

Using a few of those jelly roll strips as sashing and border.

So while the rains come and go and the ground gets muddy and wet, I'll be in my sewing room, enjoying the Spring colors and flowers :)

Thank you for stopping by,

Dorian 

Things I'm working on

Hello Everyone,

I hope your January has gone well. Can you believe it's over already? The days are flying by. Our January was very wet, and we have lots of lovely snow on the mountain tops. So that is good news! Hopefully it will help keep things a little less dry this summer.

I have 3 different projects I'm working on right now. The first is this cute little mystery quilt we did on the QATW forum. It called for 3 fabrics, light, medium and dark. I chose these 3.

I've finished the top. It's only around 40 inches square. A fun little mystery. I do like chain quilts :)

As I did on the previous mystery from Cheryl at Meadow Mist designs, this next mystery I also saved the clues and then took them out a few weeks ago and started putting it together (Cheryl starts the mystery in the summer and it goes till the following Spring). This is the Melodic mystery. The layout clue comes out on Thursday, can't wait to see how this goes together :)

I've been wanting to use this beautiful rose fabric for awhile now. I know the pink is a little light, but I really wanted to use it and the blue. Its' a little subtle, but nice I think. I hope that Red isn't going to be overpowering.

And lastly, I pulled out a charm pack of my favorite line ever, Sunkissed by Sweetwater. My best quilty buddy, Pat at the Scrapatch, sent me a charm pack. She and I both love this line. 

I was very happy when Sweetwater came out with their line Spring chicken. As it uses the same beautiful sherbert colors as Sunkissed, along with the lovely gray. So I took out an almost full fat eighth
bundle of it. Along with some yardage and bits and pieces of Sunkissed.

I cut up everything I could into 5" squares, and then had to cut up some into 2.5" squares. So that I can make another Pat's Gems quilt. It's a pattern I designed to use up charm packs. This version I am making I am changing up just slightly, like I did for the one I made last year. You can see that version HERE.

I can't wait to see this one pieced. Those  cheery colors just make my day :)

So I am keeping myself busy, what with snow outside and cold wind blowing, it's best to stay indoors ;) 

Thanks for stopping by!

Dorian

A New Year... and some finishes

 A Happy New Year to everyone! I hope this year is a wonderful one for you all.

I just squeezed in one finish for last year. This star quilt I quilted up in late summer. Then I set it aside to start on the next quilt, without binding it. I actually pieced this quilt about 13 yrs ago! It's been sitting long enough.

I don't know why I did that, I'm usually so good at getting the binding done right away. But, I wanted to get it finished, so spent some time on Fri and Sat getting it bound. 

It's called With this Ring, and the pattern is found in the book "Beeni Harper's quilt albumn". I love the stars in the corners.

I quilted it with varigated brown and blue thread. Making flowers and leaves all throughout.

This was going to be a gift, but I made so many mistakes with it, I would be embarrassed to gift it, so I'll keep it. I do love the varigated thread though. I've never used it before, but I think it looks so nice.

I wanted to get these twin baby quilts finished too, but I ran out of steam and didn't get them done on Saturday. But I did finish them on Sunday! They only needed to be trimmed and bound.

When my friend first told me she was pregnant, she didn't know she was carrying twins. A mutual friend of ours is also making quilts for the babies. Kelly showed me a picture of the cute mushrooms and leaves that she was going to put in her quilt, and it made me think of a squirrel quilt I saw at Lorna's shop. So I decided to make it. But then when I was looking at her shop, I saw these adorable baby animals, and decided to do them instead.

These animals are pieced using the flip and sew method. Lorna has great directions. I came up with the setting. It started with this adorable fabric line, Little Fawn Celebration by Dear Stella. I thought that was perfect for welcoming some twins into the world.

I bought a FQ bundle of the fabric and started putting these animals together. 

About half way thru the quilt, my friend told me she was expecting twins, I am so excited for her! But, that means I needed to make another quilt. So I bought the panel that goes with this line and used 4 of the animals to make another quilt.

One quilt I quilted butterflies and flowers, and one quilt I quilted stars and butterflies.

Alike yet different, just like the twins are going to be :) The babies are girls and I hope they get a lot of enjoyment out of these quilts.

Take care, and have a lovely day!

Dorian