fun shopping

I've been watching for sales on fabric that will fit the bill for the 2008 noodle swaps on about.com quilting forum. Here are my most recent purchases.

two purple batiks, one black on black and five white on whites to start with


two sets of brights


Three more blues, which brings me to a total of 6


a pastel


and a paisley


My overflowing noodle swap fabric bin


On another note, I finished the last round of the dahlia and applique'd it to a background. Now to add borders and quilt it.


Here are some fun little flower blocks I've been making. I think the pattern is from Pattern Basket pattern company, it is intended for charm square packs

I used stash fabrics though.
Here is a close-up, I loved the little flower buttons in the centers

I guess that is about all I've been up to this week. Not much exciting here.

Hand Pieced Dahlia

While camping this past 10 days I hand pieced this Dahlia. I used the pattern by Becky Davis, quiltpox.com, I had fun making it. I had taken a hand piecing class from Becky in March 2007 when in North Carolina.

Noodle Swaps

Along with being addicted to swapping quilt blocks, I am also addicted to noodle swaps. Deb hosts a monthly swap on the about.com quilting forum for 2 1/2" wide strips of fabric. Each month is a different theme. She posted the swaps she is planning for 2008 the other day, and I hit the sale at my lqs. They had a bunch of discontinued fabrics marked down to $4 yd. If you finished the bolt you received an additional 20% off, which brought it to $3.20 yd. Ya just can't beat that. I ended up buying the end of 2 bolts, as they were neutrals, and you can't go wrong with that. All in all I bought 14 7/8 yds of fabric for a grand total of $53.20, These were nice fabrics from timeless treasures, benartex, etc. Here is what I purchased.

Fall colors


paisley




creams/neutrals (Deb, if these are too dark let me know and I will get some different ones)



Blues, although the blue on the far right, might end up in the pastel swap, depends on what I run across between now and then.

Doll Quilt Too much fun to stop

I have joined a doll quilt swap on the about.com quilting forum. We received our swapper's name and information today at noon. I already had decided on a pattern to use, based loosely on this pillow I have from my paternal grandmother. (I love this pillow)



Here is the fabric I chose. This person likes civil war reproduction fabrics.



I had originally purchased a fat quarter bundle of civil war fabrics, and it came with this strange little fat quarter, likely a piece of a panel. I figured I would eventually chop it up really small and use it in a scrap quilt, but today it seemed just the right thing to use on the back of this little doll quilt.



To make the center of the quilt, I sewed strips of fabric together, and then sewed the strips into tubes, and then pressed, and cut them the opposite way to make these little strips of squares. Then you unsew them at certain intervals to make the pattern. I really hate unsewing. Especially when I sewed some strips together wrong, and had to re-sew them. Oh well, these things happen.




Here is the first quarter of the quilt



The two halves, one is sewn together, one still in strips


The center of the quilt all together


The first border



The second border


The quilting on the back


The completed quilt, binding sewn on and hand sewn down.


I love how it turned out. I will be mailing it out tomorrow on my way to work. I had lots of fun making it, and I hope the recipient likes it also. Cross your fingers, this is always the scary part for me.

October lotto blocks

I almost forgot. I also made these blocks yesterday for the block lotto on about dot com's quilting forum.

Global Warming?

Friday they were calling for up to 3 inches of snow in the valley where I live. I decided this called for chicken noodle soup. I made up a huge batch, minus the noodles and froze it up for good eating this winter. (I think winter is here though) I woke up Saturday to snow again! This is the second weekend in a row. Its way too early for snow. I got on a cooking kick and made up a huge batch of beef barley soup, and also a pot of gypsy goulosh (hamburger soup) I froze them up into meal size containers (actually 2 meals in each container these days). My freezer is full. I didn't take any pictures of the snow this week, but I would guess we ended up with about 2 inches in my backyard. It is melting off a bit today though. Too depressing to think of winter already. If this keeps up next weekend, I'm making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

Mini quilt

I made this mini quilt last weekend to brighten my day from the snow we received. I have joined a swap for doll quilts and this was a tester. I made it with the itty bitty hst's leftover from making snowball blocks. Its done in purple and yellow fairy frost fabrics. It turned out too small for the swap, so I will keep it myself.

Say it Isn't SNOW

I could not believe my eyes when I looked out the patio door this morning. Unbelievable!!!!
I'm so disgusted with the weather.

Maple Leaf Quilt

I won these maple leaf blocks on the about dot com quilting forum many moons ago. I finished putting them together and quilting the quilt a couple of weeks ago, but ran with the quilt and hung it on my office wall. I finally remembered to take a picture today. I found the blue border fabric half price, and loved it. I think its one of those blues that a person could just stare at and be calm.

Purple posies

I quilted the second purple posie quilt tonight. Here are some pictures.





I'm still learning on the quilting, but I'm slowly improving.

My Weekend Fun

Here's a recap of my weekend. I actually started my weekend early as I finished up at work early. I came home and set to work finishing up this quilt top made for my Dad. It is made with flannel charms with trees, camping equipment, bears, etc. Just up Dad's forest service guy alley.



Friday night I cut up a bunch of florals so I could make more blocks for the penny pincher 8 swap. I sewed them together Saturday day, and then watched a movie and worked on the hand sewing part of my brother's Christmas quilt (shhhh Al might hear). Here are the finished blocks for the swap



Today (Sunday) I finished up the last seams on the swap blocks. Then I started playing with the purple posie blocks I won in the July block lotto on about dot com's quilting forum. I added some pretty lavender florals and some lavender tone on tones, and sewed it all together and ended up with this. I hate to do it, but I will give it to Grandma Hamburger for Christmas. She likes purple, we all know that as she has painted Dad's living room purple. technically I guess its her living room too. Anyway, here it is. I like it a lot and will have a hard time giving it up.




I was hoping to start the quilting on the purple posie quilt, but we were hit with a huge thunderstorm, with lighting and hail and the whole bit. So, I decided not to turn the handiquilter on, for fear I would have Janet's bad luck and get hit by lighting, boom there goes the handiquilter computer. (I don't trust the surge protector).



So, instead I sewed a bunch of batting leftovers together to use for Dad's quilt (in true Mr. Depression era Dad fashion, use what ya got theory) Then I started scrounging around for fabric to use on the back of Dad's quilt, and found some great National Park flannel. I pieced this back together. I like it as much as the front, I believe.



Here is a close up of the National Park flannel. Now I know this is nowhere near as impressive as salvaging an entire house worth of wood, and cramming it into your garage for future use, but hey, I didn't go to the fabric store once today to purchase more fabric, and that's using what you got at its finest, even Dad would maybe agree. Okay, he wouldn't but its my best work today.

Don't let the pineapple block get ya down!

Sophie has started a campaign of sorts to collect blocks for our friend Kate, who has recently lost her father. We are going to put together a comfort quilt for her. Kate and Sophie put their heads together and came up with a pineapple block made with browns and tans for the outside rows and centered with a pink block. Sophie referred to this as chocolate covered cherries. We will be using black for the corners of the block. We were given a link to a paper pieced pattern, which of course intimidated me. I ended up having time alone on my hands last night, and decided to try and figure out how to make this block in traditional piecing. I did it! And amazed myself. I took notes and pictures along the way, and Sophie is going to double check it all this weekend, and then we will share with others who are more comfortable with this type of piecing. Here's a picture of the block I made.

Its Fall Y'All

Seems like summer flew by this year. I didn't even go camping once this summer. Disappointing, but we are going Steelhead fishing next month for a week, and that is always fun. Maybe this year I'll actually catch one of those elusive buggers. I got out Mom's fall decorations, specifically the scarecrow, and put it out on the front door. It was there for about 1/2 hour when a big thunderstorm rolled in and I had to bring him back in. I can't get the window on the storm door to shut, and he would have gotten all wet.


I started with the scarecrow, and then ended up re-arranging the living room. I had recently moved to glider rockers from the living room into Nellie's old bedroom (now turned tv room)



Notice the geraniums, I'm hoping not to kill them this winter, and still have them next spring. I'm terrible with plants though, cross your fingers.

Cody's Quilt

Last year when I made Nellie a scrap coin quilt, it was about the same time as we were swapping black and white noodles on the about dot com quilting forum. Cody saw the noodles and thought they would make a cool quilt for him, in the coin style. So, this is his design technically. I finished quilting it last night. I backed it with soft soft black minkee fabric, and didn't use any batting in it. I think it turned out great.



Here is a close up of the quilting:

Another fun Little Quiz from Dez

What color is your soul painted? Blue Your soul is painted the color blue, which embodies the characteristics of peace, patience, understanding, health, tranquility, protection, spiritual awareness, unity, harmony, calmness, coolness, confidence, dependability, loyalty, idealism, tackiness, and wisdom. Blue is the color of the element Water, and is symbolic of the ocean, sleep, twilight, and the sky. Click Here to Take This Quiz

Quizzes and Personality Tests

Christmas Sampler Quilt

Last night I finished the quilting on my Christmas Sampler quilt from the swap last year on Quilt Shoppe Forum. I'm still getting the hang of the quilting itself. I did a stipple in the blocks and sashings, in green and white, respectively. Then did feathers on the borders. I think it turned out okay. I have a long way to go on the learning how to quilt the quilt part though.

They loved it!

Here is a picture of Rachel and Asante with thier welcome to Pocatello quilt.

Happy Scrappy Houses

This morning I quilted up the second quilt top from the Happy Scrappy Houses Swap. This one is going to my niece Rachel and her guy Asante. They moved to my town this week.
Welcome!

It is fire season!

Here is what I see out my back window today.

Yummmmy Pie

Lately in blogger land I've been seeing that someone has been making a lot of yummmy looking pies. There have been peach pies, and chocolate fudge pie (my fav.) something called icebox pie, strawberry rhubarb pie. Elsewhere in blogger land they have been making yummy stew, recipe by George. You get my drift. Beautiful food. I don't eat like that. As I was eating my oh so healthy dinner tonight, I was thinking of those yummmmy pies. Now generally I don't have the watermelon, just the frozen dinner, so truly this was healthier than usual for me. But, as I was eating the "individual size" watermelon, well half of it anyway, I was thinking..... Do watermelon seeds count as a whole grain? Most everyone who knows me well, knows I don't like "green food", I was also wondering...... Does watermelon count as green food? And, just to clarify from the start here. Yes, Stormy I did eat the green beans in that delicious looking frozen dinner by Marie Callendars. Yum! Gotta love Marie Callendars and PIE! LOL

Sixteen Patch Quilt

I finally got around to making the quarter square triangles for this, and sewed it all up today. I will quilt it tomorrow. It will be a gift for Christmas for my father in-law. Thanks Sophie for the help with the qst's earlier. I kept all those e-mails for info., and I like how it turned out.

Spring Fling Sampler

This past spring I participated in a block swap on MSN Quilting Around the World Group. I made 2 flying geese blocks for each participant, and received the rest of these blocks in the swap. I backed it with very soft minkee, and quilted away on it. Its definately not perfect, but for my hmmmmm 4th quilt on the machine, its not bad. I'm planning it as a gift for my ds's girlfriend.



Flower pot up close


close up of border feathers, my first.

Fun cat in the bird house.

Close up of bird.

Matt's Quilt

I have a guy friend, Matt. We've been friends for quite a long time. Matt is the guy who will drive across town to change the lightbulb I can't reach in my stairway. Or prune my tress, cut down dead trees, pretty much anything I need help with, Matt is always there for me. He's been wanting me to make him a quilt for a while, and I've finally finished it today. Here is first a closeup of the quilting. This is the 3rd quilt I've quilted on my new HQ-16. Then there is a picture of the entire quilt. I quilted into it, For Matt from Colene 2007, but was unable to get a good picture of it.