A mystery quilt and another scrappy quilt

Hello Everyone,

I hope your Summer (winter) is off to a good start. We've had Tstorms going thru here about once a day, but sunny and warm other wise. Its good for the garden and the water tanks, so I'm not complaining.

As I finished Big Brown Bear and don't have the right fabrics to finish some UFO's, I decided to make yet another scrappy quilt. This is another one by Deanna at Wedding Dress Blues. It's called Irish Stars. As I love Irish Chain quilts and I still have quite a bit of precut squares in my scrap bin, I decided...why not??!

Here is flying geese for the stars and the center of the stars. The white with orange dots is part of the background. I dug into my treasured Sunkissed Fabrics by Sweet Water for this quilt.

I choose to use darker/more vibrant hues in this quilt. I think these are all the colors I want to use, although when I do the chain blocks, I might have to add some other shades, as there are 25 squares in each chain block. At least it will wipe out all my 2.5" squares in the scrap bin :) 

Now really, I am not sure what made me choose this pattern, as I ALWAYS have issues with flying geese.. Sigh~ I guess the chain part won out this time. No matter what method I use, I usually end up ripping and resewing quite a few of the geese.

This time, I followed the directions of Deanna and used a 2.5"x 4.5" rectangle for the background and 2.5" squares for the 'wings'. Using the stitch and flip method to put them together. 

You put one square on the end of the rectangle and sew diagonally from corner to corner. I don't draw a line on little squares like this, I just 'eyeball' it.

Then I cut the corner off, using a 1/4" seam.

This time, I want to keep the triangle with the background triangle, so I sewed them together right away, chain stitching them, doing one color at a time (there are 7 colors).

Then you sew the other square to the other side, cut with a 1/4" seam.

Now I get to redo almost half of them. SIGH~ BUT, it used up a bunch of scrap squares, so all is good.

I also have started a new mystery quilt over on my forum, Quilting around the world. My long time readers will know how much I love a good mystery :) Here are the fabrics I am using.

Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Big Brown Bear is a finished quilt!

Hello Everyone,

I hope you are all having a great Saturday. I wanted to pop in real quick and show you my finished Bear quilt. This is my own design, putting together a few different blocks. The Bear and the cute paw print border comes from Lorna's Bear pattern. 

 This is the back. My future BIL is ex-navy, he served for 10 yrs and I thought I'd give a nod to him with this eagle, flying in the forest. 

My Sister and BIL live in the forest in Oregon. So I think this bear quilt will fit in their home just perfectly. They love the woods. ( On a side note, I find it fascinating that out of 4 of us girls (me and my 3 sisters), 3 of us married a man who had something to do with boats and water. Ken is ex-navy, as is my honey, and my other BIL Marc comes from a family of boat builders/sailers.... Of course, all three of our men came from California, where there is water right there LOL! so maybe that explains it :)

Back to the quilt.... Here you can see the quilting a bit. I used a mixture of loops, swirls, stars and hearts.

One last picture.

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

Quilting the Bear and other progress

Hello Everyone,

Having a good Spring (Winter)? We had some lovely days after many days of rain, that was really nice, but now we are getting some more rain...which we need, so I am not complaining. The garden is growing fast, the Iris's are in bloom as are the roses :)

And inside... I've been quilting the Bear quilt (pattern from Lorna). Loops, and stars, swirls and ... hearts :) Because, it is a wedding quilt, after all ;)

I've gotten most of it quilting now, just have to do the borders. So, I think I will make the August deadline at this rate, yah!!

Another project I've been working on here and there the past few months is this one:

Sorry for the glare... Island Sunrise by Judy Niemeyer. It is a paper piecing pattern. I bought this quite a few years ago, not sure how many exactly. I would work on it for a bit, then put it away for a few years, then bring it out again. I don't do PPing very much.  But I am now to this stage,

The paper piecing is all done, now I am just putting on the corners.

I need to buy some tone on tone green and blue, in order to finish it though.

So, back it goes for however long... one day it will be finished :)

Have a lovely day All.

Progress on my scraps and a little finish.

Good morning all,

Hope you in the States are getting some Spring. Things here are starting to bloom, bringing allergies with it. But the sun, when it comes out, is nice. We are typically pretty wet this time of year, with pops of sun here and there.

I've been working with my 2" squares. Getting a lot of mileage out of them ;) I started out wanting to make the Scrap Jar Stars quilt. Here are my stars:

If you look closely, you'll see that I did the corners wrong! So I wanted to do a sashing or something between blocks and when I was looking at more scraps quilts, I found the Calico Rose quilt pattern.

Perfect to use with my scrappy stars. I have the middle of the alternate blocks done, but  I need to get some more background fabric before I can continue.

Then I pulled out these colors for a boy quilt.



Here is my progress on that. I need background fabric for it too.

I decided against making the spools quilt I had thought of doing. And instead, used up some small 1" wide fabrics for these Golden gate blocks. You can see that post here.



And this is the finished wall hanging that came of those.

Here is the progress on my Cornerstones quilt I am making for my middle son. This one won't have the same layout as the previous one, I'm doing it  a bit different. Need more fabric though, before I continue.

Block one, all but two of them will have different animal prints.

Block 2:

I also have my Bear quilt sandwhiched. I started quilting on it yesterday... just to find a bunch of snarls and mess with the bobbin... sigh~


So today I will look at my machine and figure out the issue. At least I can see I've made some progress from last month though.

Have a great day all!

New Fabrics and some WIPs

Hello All,

We are finally getting some sun today, it looks so nice! As much as we needed alllll that rain and snow we got, it's nice to see the sun after weeks of it. I hope March is a sunnier/warmer month, as April and May are usually quiet wet.

I've got a little bit of fabric therapy in :) My middle son has always been an animal and nature lover. And as he is 5'10" already, he has outgrown his old quilts and is in need of a new one.

I let him pick out the colors, I was pretty sure what they would be and figured they would go along with the wildlife panel I had picked out. And I was right :) These are all Shadow play by Maywood. I got them at a decent price at Somewhere Sewing. The wildlife panel is by Robert Kaufman.

I am making lots of geese with these fabrics, using the 4 geese at a time method. The Spruce Crafts have a nice chart, so that you know what size squares to use.

Take a large square, put two smaller squares on top, right sides together. Mark a diagonal line thru the smaller squares and sew a quarter inch on both sides of the line. Cut apart between the 2 sew lines. Instead of marking a line, I just fold my smaller squares on the diagonal and finger press. Makes a nice line that goes away without a wash.

Open up the triangles and add another square. Again, mark a line along the diagonal, sew on either side of it, cut on the line.

Open up, and you have your geese. Full instructions here.

I also got some backing fabric for my Bear quilt. A bear needs to roam in the woods :)

I got a great price on it at Thousands of Bolts (love this store). This quilt is a gift, so I need to get it quilted.

I've also been working on my embroidery wall hanging. This is my March project, so I work on it a little bit everyday. I added the blocks from this post as a border (Marcia calls them Golden Gate blocks.), then put in a second border. I decided not to use the log cabins. 

I have plenty to keep me busy in the sewing room :) Hope you are keeping busy and enjoying some warmer, or cooler, weather.

Have a great day!

Log cabins and ?

Hello All,

 I've just kept on playing with my scraps. I see these little pieces of favorite fabrics and just have to do something with them.

 I have these log cabin blocks.

And here is a few that are smaller.

Then I did these blocks. I took a Greek Cross and added an extra bar to it. Not sure if these have a name or not.

And here is some in pink.

I really like these blocks. They are 4.25", so you know I used some small pieces.

I have scraps out for making 4 more of these blocks. I am going to surround a piece of embroidery with them and then make another round using the log cabins. Not sure if I am going to make more log cabins, or do something different and use the big ones in the corners. We'll see when I get there.

We've had snow, rain, sun and more snow. It's been an interesting February for us. But the mountains are getting a great snow pack, and that is so important to get us thru the hot summer.

Have a great day!



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more scraps and chains

Hello All,

We have had such lovely weather lately. It's been nice after all the rain we got, with more to come this weekend. This time of year is typically sunny and warm, but we really need the rain, so I am glad we've been having it.

I have been playing with scraps more. I dumped out my scrap box and started sorting and trimming. I love the pile of trimmings :)

Here is what I ended up with. 

LOTS of 2" and 2.5" squares!

I sorted thru the 2.5" pile, getting out 8 different colors (it's for a boy quilt, so I wanted specific colors).

 So that I  can make the quilt below.

That quilt is made by  Deanna, at Wedding Dress Blues. She has a LOT of great tutorials for scraps. 

For some reason, I couldn't throw away this pile of little's.  Mostly scraps that are between 1/2" and 1" wide. I just love them!  Some little squares I'll figure out something to do with...

And you know what?? Deanna has a tutorial for them too! For this spools quilt.

AND, when I want to play with more scraps, she has a great Irish Chain star quilt I want to do!! 

Thank you Deanna, for all the lovely tutorials!! I'll be sure to keep cutting up my scraps into, mostly, squares. I DO have a baggy of triangles to use in that star quilt too ;)

I love chain quilts. I recently finished this Irish chain top. I'm not sure if I'll do a border or not.

And on my quilt forum, we were doing a mystery quilt, and turns out it was a chain quilt too! Here are my blocks for that.

Yes, another pink quilt. I do like pink :) I need to get off the computer and start putting these into a top.

Have a great day ya'all!

The Irish Chain

Hi Folks,

Chain quilts are my very favorite type of quilt pattern. And the Irish chain is my favorite chain quilt. Here is one I made and gifted to my Aunt. I love this one :)




So, I had a 10" layer cake of  Butterflies and Berries by Riley Blake designs.
  and I thought it would make a darling Irish chain quilt. Here is what the fabrics look like. I love the heart butterflies :)

                     

I had a jelly roll of Red Simply color by V and Co. I love this line, have a jelly roll of orange too :)

Then I found some red hearts on white background and some greens to go with it all... And my Irish chain quilt is underway.

This is going to make a darling little girl quilt.... now I'll have to find a little girl to give it to :) lol

Have a great day.