Crumby Hot Pads

Well, I hope they aren't crummy, but crumby is true. I made these funky little hot pads with crumb blocks I made using Bonnie's instructions on quiltville.com. I think they are fun! That is what I did Thursday, between making Thanksgiving dinner, and eating, and cleaning up, and laughing and having fun with my kids.



Then Friday, instead of shopping (Yuk!) I stayed at home with dh (it is our 2nd anniversary today btw) We did go out to breakfast, and to the post office, but otherwise, just hung out at home. I finished putting this quilt top together, and then quilted it. (pattern Chunky Churndashes from Bonnie Hunter, at quiltville.com)



Here is what I hope is a good pic of the quilting, I was trying something new. (paisely, sort of)


hmmm not a great picture, maybe tomorrow the lighting will be better outside. BTW this quilt will be given away to one of my clients at work in a drawing at our annual Christmas party.

Charity quilt from the guild

Each month at my quilt guild there is a lady who brings tops she has made from donated fabrics. She is prolific! Anyway, I always try to take a couple each month and quilt them. This month I only got one, but I love it. Its Purple! I had fun with the quilting too. Something new I tried. I snuck a couple of kitties into the quilting as a surprise for the child who will receive this quilt.




Here is a close up of quilting, with the kitties.

Flower Power

I made this cute little quilt from a pattern by Flower Basket Quilts. It is geared towards charm squares, but I used stash instead. I love how the top came out, and can't wait to quilt it. Now for a quilting idea....... hmmmmm
p.s. Don't ya just love the cute little buttons in the centers of the flowers? I do!

And no sooner than I finished one swap

I was joining another. Well, I hope I am anyway. I've requested to be included in the Four Seasons Quilt Swap. I haven't heard back from the hostess yet, but I've got my fingers crossed.

Yippee Skippeee!!!!!!! Its Here!!!

I'm so excited! Today in the mail, along with her swap blocks for pp9 swap was the little doll quilt from the Doll Quilt Swap. Ginger had my name, and she did an awesome job making a little doll quilt for me. I'm just thrilled with it. Honestly its completely perfect for me with purple, green, blue and black batiks with itty bitty pinwheels. I love it. Everybody knows I love purple, but few people would suspect I love it with green. My office is green, my living room is green, and of course there is purple everywhere! Thanks Ginger its perfect!

Here it is



Here it is on the wall with the start of my wall of little quilts

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: