WiP Wednesday - #15

Hello Wednesday, weren't you just here yesterday?  

Finished:
- I am proud to say I have delivered my Compassion Quilt.  My friend was so surprised and LOVED the quilt and the Bible verses quilted into it.  I pray she finds it comforting.

In Progress:
- I am sewing my sashing and cornerstones onto my Summer Sampler quilt.  I was so happy this weekend when my youngest daughter asked me if that quilt could be for her.  Of course it can be for you precious!  She wants me to put her name on the back of it.  I know how her brain works.  She wants to make sure no one else can ever lay claim to that quilt.  Smart little cookie.  I think this would make a great birthday present for her and that's coming up in October.  I just have to make a backing for it and then I'll send it off to be quilted.

- Bottled Rainbows - I didn't get any other blocks made for this one yet.  Very anxious to get back to it though.  Now I see why so many people joined up on that quilt along.  It's very addictive.

New Projects:
- Neptune - I won a charm pack of Neptune from Kate  (thanks, Kate!) so I'm going to use it to make a boy quilt for the 100 Quilts for Kids.  She posted a really simple and cute charm pack quilt that lends itself perfectly to that fabric.
- I need to make a sample block of this gorgeous paper pieced pattern called Circle of Geese by Beth Maddocks.  The Sometimes Crafter used her block and made a tutorial for the block.  She made this one.

image from http://sometimescrafter.blogspot.com/2009/08/tutorial-paper-piecing-block.html

Gorgeous, right?  There was a time that I would have avoided that block like the plague simply because of the paper piecing.  But thanks to the Summer Sampler quilt and all the paper pieced blocks in it I have broadened my horizons and don't have to be scared of paper piecing anymore.  Now I can do it!

At the quilter:
- Loulouthi - yeah!  I made the backing over the weekend and am very happy with it.
- I started and finished a quilt top for 100 Quilts for Kids over the weekend.  It is a sweet little baby girl quilt but I want to wait and show it when it is completely finished.

On the Bubble:
- Heirloom Quilt - I am shocked I haven't started this one yet!  At least I decided on a pattern though.
- Rubik's Crush

Begging for Backing &/or Binding:
- Hooty Hoot - Would somebody have a boy already to give me a reason to put the binding on this quilt?  I want it to go to someone I know.
- Single Girl - I need to get a backing made for this and sent it off to be quilted.

I'm off to see what my other quilting buddies are up to today over at Freshly Pieced.

Sewing Good Times

Happy Monday!

I had a wonderful weekend of sewing and it wasn't even planned, it just happened by accident.  My oldest daughter came home from school on Friday feeling kind of puny so next thing I know both of my girls and myself were on the sofa and fast asleep.  That never happens!  Well, it happens for me all the time but not the girls.  That meant I got to stay up late Friday night and sew my heart out.

I literally did sew my heart out, my heart is so full of compassion and love for my friend with pancreatic cancer.  I prayed and prayed for her while I attached the binding to her Compassion Quilt.  It looks great.  The Grandmomma did a great job long arm quilting it for me.  Thank you!  I'm hoping to get it delivered to my friend today and I pray it keeps her comfortable, cozy, and content through her sickness.

I hope she likes it as much as I do.

Then on Saturday my daughter was still sickly so she hung out on the sofa to rest and I sewed in between playing nurse maid to her.  Good thing my sewing room is my dining room and I'm right in ear shot of anything that goes on in the den.  I was able to get the backing made for this Loulouthi quilt.

I also made a girly and very precious quilt top for the 100 Quilts for Kids campaign that Kate is sponsoring.  Here's a sneak peek at it.

That was a fun quilt to whip up!  Now it is off to The Grandmomma (aka my MIL) for her special quilting magic to be put on it.

Have a good day!

Quilting - It's in my genes

My grandmother, Minnie, was an avid quilter.  When I think of Grandma my first thoughts are of quilts, chickens, and pound cake.  She lived in a small town in Florida and raised chickens in her back yard.  She also made the best pound cake in the world.  I don't know how old Grandma was when she started quilting or how she even got started quilting.  All I know is that quilting and Grandma were one and the same.  Little did I know I would be bitten by the same quilting bug that bit her.  I'm just glad my bug bit me after the invention of rotary cutters and Omnigrid rulers!  My grandma used plain old scissors to cut her fabric, pieces of cardboard to make her templates and made her patterns from newspaper.  She pieced her quilt tops on a treadle sewing machine and quilted them all by hand, always using the baptist fan pattern.

This is Grandma in 1977 sitting at her quilting frame.  She was 74 when this picture was taken but lived to be 100 years old!  Her quilting frames were in her main sitting room and were suspended by ropes from the ceiling.  She would just wrap the ropes around the corners of the frame and it would go up high enough overhead for people to walk through the room.  When we would go visit Grandma the first thing we would do after hugging her would be to see if she had a quilt in the frame and look for her cake plate to see if her famous pound cake was under the cover.  I have her quilting frames in my attic and I hope one day to frame a quilt in them to hang somewhere in my home.

Grandma made this double wedding ring quilt for me in 1978 for me to have when I got married.  At that time I was far from old enough to get married but definitely old enough to love and appreciate this quilt and recognize the sentimental value it would hold one day.  That day is here.  I have finally retired this quilt from being used on our bed.  It is getting a little worn and frayed and I want to protect it from any further damage.

Grandma never made binding for her quilts.  She always just folded the backing over from the back to the front and sewed it down.  I've often wanted to make my binding the same way but I see now that it just doesn't hold up well after years of use if it is made that way.

Being a lover of white backgrounds I am so happy this quilt has white in it.  Thank you Grandma!

The backing is a sheet with some sort of Holly Hobbie looking doll printed on it.  Grandma used sheets as backing fabric almost exclusively.

This is Grandma and Grandpa at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration.

I just hope Mr. LLQ and I are still this giddy about each other after we've been married for 50 years.  I mean, look at the joy in their faces.  And finally, here I am with my sad interpretation of a Dorothy Hamill haircut and a pale face pretending to be hand quilting at Grandma's frames.  

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Feathers

When I was in junior high school I would have given anything to get my hair to "feather" like Farah Fawcett's did.  Oh, just look at her feathers.  

Well, now the girls are wanting a different type of feathers in their hair.  Look what happened to my girls this week.

Don't ask me what it's all about because I don't really know but I figured it wasn't anything permanent or disfiguring so what would it hurt, right?  It's cute for now and be out of fashion in the blink of an eye.

Little turkey heads.  What will they come up with next?  I'm scared to ask.

I won!

Yippee!  I won a charm pack of Neptune fabric from Kate at Swim, Bike, Quilt.  She is hosting the charity quilt event 100 Quilts for Kids.  I was actually in the process of cutting the fabric for the crib quilt I plan to make to donate to this event when I happened to check my email and found her note saying I had won.  Isn't that something?  I think that was God telling me to use that Neptune fabric and make a second  baby quilt to donate.  So I will.  I have a local pregnancy counseling center in mind that I could give the quilts to but I need to call and talk to them and make sure it's the right place.

Thanks Kate! 

WiP Wednesday - #14

Wednesday has rolled around again and so it's time to lay my projects out and see what I have accomplished in the past week.

Finished:
The purple quilt for The Grandmomma is done! See full post here.

In Progress:
- Make sashing and cornerstones for Summer Sampler quilt.
- Bottled Rainbows blocks.  I can't wait to make more of these.

- Start 100 Quilts for Kids quilt.  Fun!
- Start Heirloom quilt.

Make backing for:
- Loulouthi quilt.
- Single Girl

Make and attach binding for:
- Compassion Quilt - is in the air on the way back to me from The Grandmomma in VA who quilted it.
- Baby Hooty Quilt - get it done already, please.

Happy Wednesday.  Be sure to check out all the inspiration going around today on Lee's site. Also, take a minute and go vote for Lee in the Quilting Fabric Design Contest.  Her design is so cute and I've got my fingers crossed hoping that she wins!  Her design is called "Flourish" and is in fourth row on the far right.

This would make such a great focus fabric.  I love all the different colors in it. Good job Lee!

I love my Quilt Guild!

Last night was the monthly meeting of the my local quilt guild, Common Threads.  I couldn't hardly wait for last night to get here so I could introduce the new quilt along that we will be doing for the next few months.  We are going to use Rachel's Bottled Rainbows tutorial for her ticker tape quilt along.  Thank you, Rachel, for giving us permission to use your quilt.  I am so happy with the number of ladies that want to participate.  I think we have around 50 members in the guild and so far 20 ladies are going to make the quilt!  I think those are great odds.  So very exciting!  I am looking forward to next month so we can swap our scraps with other members.

I made the cerise block to take as an example for those who weren't familiar with this quilt.  I love this color!  I am a new convert to the color cerise.  I didn't know what my world was lacking without it!

We also had a lady there that was selling fat quarters for $1.25 - amazing, right?  She had some good stuff.  I couldn't resist these.

and these...

and a couple black and whites...

and a little Katie Jump Rope, too.

We also played Quilto last night.  It's a quilter's version of Bingo.  We each could pay 3 fat quarters and have 3 Quilto cards to play on.  The prizes were a 3-pack of fat quarters for each game until the big mambo jambo game where we had to fill up all the blocks on the whole card.  The prize for that was 27 fat quarters.  Guess who won that?  Not me!  Melinda won it!  That girls wins more prizes than anybody I've ever met in my life!  So happy for her.  She was sweet and shared 1 of her fat quarters with me.  I'm not sure but it might have been because I was drooling all over that fat quarter.

All of this was just to say - I love my quilt guild!  The ladies are all so talented and sweet and just so much fun to be around - each and every one of them.

A Finish for The Grandmomma

Happy Monday!

I completed the quilt top I was making for The Grandmomma (aka my MIL).  This quilt is her birthday present (isn't today March 18?) and also a great big THANK YOU for all the wonderful longarm quilting she does for me.

My girls and I visited The Grandmomma for spring break back in April and she took us to a brand new quilt store that had just opened in Phenix, VA called Threads Run Thru It.  Very nice store that rated a big thumbs up from my girls (ages 7 and 5 at the time) because the shop has a little cafe area in one section and the owner spoiled them with cookies and chocolate.  Anything involving chocolate earns a 5 star rating from those two girls of mine.

The Grandmomma picked out all this fabric and the pattern she wanted.  She's in the process of building a new house and will be using this in her new house.  yeah!  The pattern came from Amy Ellis' book Modern Basics and was easy as pie to make.  If you haven't thumbed through Amy's book you should.  It is chocked full of easy modern quilts to make and her directions are clear and easy to follow.

Happy Birthday Grandmomma!  We love you with all our hearts!

Friday Flickr Favs - For the love of Solids

I love solids.  I love looking at quilts that have been made using only solid colors.  It's Art Gallery's fault. Their solids were a dream to work with on my Modern Summer Sampler Series quilt and now I just can't seem to stop ooohing and aaahing over all the quilts I've seen made from only solids.

Here's some recent finds of other gorgeous quilts made from solids.  Gorgeous!

1. City Park and Seaside Liberated Strings quilt tops, 2. kaufman kona quilt, 3. Peeps Color Quilt, 4. Bento box gigante (WIP), 5. Kona solids quilt finished!, 6. Plainspoken - baby quilt for Big Al and Jen, 7. bright solid quilt, 8. Rainbow Cabins Quilt, 9. Wonky Solids Quilt

So much to sew, so little time!  Have a great weekend!

WiP Wednesday #13

It's Wednesday so you know what that means...

Finished:

-Block #12 for the Summer Sampler Quilt.  I'm so in love with this quilt.  I can't wait to make some cornerstones and sashing and get the top all finished up.  Those solids were wonderful to work with and I can definitely see more of them in my future.

I kind of goofed up on this block but I'm satisfied with it anyway.  I meant to make the center circle all pink and the outer circle all aqua but as you can see, NONE of the inner circle is pink and the outer circle is alternating pink and aqua.  How I did that I will never know.  I thought I had it all planned out but even the best laid plans go awry.

-Compassion Quilt is complete and will be sent off to The Grandmomma for quilting soon.

In Progress:

-Purple Quilt for The Grandmomma is now in full swing and almost up on the design wall.

I have 35 of these blocks to sew together and then the top will be complete.  I love a quick and easy pattern every now and then so this was especially nice to work on after finishing some of the more complicated blocks in the Summer Sampler series. Yes, I'm talking about you blocks #7, 10 & 12. ha!

- Bottled Rainbows Ticker Tape Quilt Along - I've spent the last few nights sorting through all my fabric totes looking for scraps to use for this ticker tape quilt.  Boy that can eat up some time but it is oh so fun!  As you can see, I have a lot more sorting to go through before I get enough scraps to fill up the blocks.  It wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit if I had to go shopping and get more fabric!  It's for a good cause.

cute little toes are courtesy of Mr. LLQ

New Projects:
Heirloom - This fabric makes me want to shove all my other fabric and projects into the corner and spread this out all over the table and roll around in it.  Gorgeous fabric! Sorry other projects that were going to be next, this fabric is calling out to me!

On the Bubble:

Rubik's Crush - 

100 Quilts for Kids - coming up soon! yeah!

Thanks Lee for making me accountable to myself and keeping organized!  I'm off to see what the other quilters are up to this week.  Happy Wednesday!

Compassion Top

I am happy to have completed my compassion quilt top.  I used the Urban Cabin pattern by Atkinson Designs and the potpourri palette of Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush fabric line on Kona white.  

The pattern is very easy to follow and goes together quickly.  I can see myself using this pattern again.

I have the backing ready and I will be sending it off to The Grandmomma for longarm quilting next week.  She will add more love and care to this very special quilt.  I am giving this to a friend of mine who has pancreatic cancer.  I hope she will like it and share it with her family.

Happy Tuesday!

WiP Wednesday #12

Happy Wednesday and welcome to...

Finished:

-Blocks #9, #10 & #11 for the Summer Sampler Quilt.  I'm almost finished with my Summer Sampler quilt top.  I made three blocks this week and I only have 1 more left before finishing all 12 of them.  

This one was the funnest to make.  It may not be perfect but it's mine and I love it.

Last month my quilt guild had a Christmas in July theme and members brought in patterns or ideas for quick little handmade gifts to make for Christmas presents.  Pam brought this idea for towel hair wraps made from hand towels.  My girls are always trying to wrap our big towels around their wet hair like I do but the towel is too heavy and won't stay on.  These work great and were a breeze to make!

New Projects:

- ConKerr Cancer pillowcases - my quilt guild has already made 80 of these cases and we're hoping to make over 100 for the children who are battling cancer across North America.

- Bottled Rainbows Ticker Tape Quilt Along - I'm going to lead this quilt along for my quilt guild.  Rachel was kind enough to give us permission to use her quilt along in our guild. yeah!  I'm excited to have a fabric swap within the guild for each of the colors we need. 

- My 5 year old wants a case for her KinderMat at school.  I'm kind of hoping she will just cover up with her quilt and forget about wanting the case.  Who am I fooling?  That child doesn't forget about anything.  It will just be like making an extra long pillowcase and I think I can handle that.

In Progress:

-Cool Compassion - Top priority - must finish this over the weekend.
-Purple Quilt for The Grandmomma - sorry Grandmomma.

Begging for a Backing:

-Single Girl - tired of seeing this one listed on here.

-Loulouthi - maybe next week.

Begging for a Binding:

Baby Hooty - hasn't gone anywhere.

On the Bubble:

Rubik's Crush - 

Fifi & Fido - 100 Quilts for Kids - getting close to starting this one

On the lookout - I've got my eye out for the perfect fabric to make:

Swoon - auditioning fabric on a daily basis - still looking.

Chopsticks - looks like this would be fun to make.

And last, but not least, Project Back To School is complete.  The girls went back to school on Monday and so far everything is going well.  Now every afternoon I have to figure out a way to find out about their day without acting like a detective or asking questions that only get answered with a "yes" or "no".  Bedtime seems to be the best time to get info out of them since the girls are all snuggled under their quilts and ready to chat a little before lights out.  I just wish I could be a fly on the wall and see what they get to do all day.  God bless them and their teachers!

Thanks to Lee for hosting the Wip Wednesday.  I love looking at what everyone else has been working on.  There's a lot of amazingly talented and creative people out there in blogland.

Fabric Swap - Fussy Style

I hope I'm not too late to join in this swap.  I just love little squares of fussy cut fabric. Amy is hosting this fun little swap so pop on over and sign up.

Back to School

Two little girls were VERY excited to get back to school today. I just can't believe I have a 3rd grader and a kindergartener. Time flies!

Thank goodness my kids are the first stop the bus makes or they would never let me take this picture. Good luck girls, I can't wait to hear about your first day back.