Saturday, September 30, 2017

Wrapping up the Back to School Blog Hop

Well, we've officially made it to the end of the Back to School Blog Hop with Island Batik!  Did you follow along?  If so you got to see the awesome Spring/Summer lines that will be arriving at your quilt shops over the next few months.  Make sure to let the places that you shop know what you would like to see them carry!  As an employee at a quilt shop, I can tell you that we love your input - we really want to stock the fabrics that you are interested in working with.


Time to announce the winner of my giveaway!  Congratulations to Thunder, whose entry for visiting my facebook page was chosen as the winner.  I've e-mailed you for shipping information, so let me know and I'll send these beauties your way on Monday.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This is the last day to download my Pacific Tote pattern - if you want it for free, make sure you pick that up today : 


Now it's time to get into the sewing room and finish up my row for the Christmas Caroling Row Along!  Here's a peak at my fabric - these were provided by Northcott and are going to make my row look fabulous.  They are from the Santa Claus is Coming to Town line.  I have a picture somewhere on my computer, but it seems to be hiding, but I will share that later when it turns up! 

Wishing you a good weekend, hope you find the time to do some stitching!




Friday, September 29, 2017

Just a Quick Note

I just wanted to remind you that this is the last day for the Island Batik Back to School Blog hop!  My giveaway will be ending tonight, so tomorrow I will be drawing for the winner of two awesome Stash Builder rolls - plus Island Batik is giving three lucky people the chance to win a fat quarter bundle of some of the wonderful fabrics that are just now shipping out to your local quilt shop!  Click on the link below to see my post from last week and enter both drawings:

Back To School With Island Batik


Good luck!  I am off for one more day of working at the quilt shop, then next week I will be back with the usual quilty posts.  Monday is a new month for the Quilter's Recipe Box, Tuesday is my day for the Christmas Caroling Row Along, and I will have some progress to show on my current custom quilt!  Here's a little eye candy to see you through....and I am so glad it's Friday!

This lovely quilt is off to a new home this week - someone is going to be cozy this winter :)

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Whack A Mole

Today I am catching up on some design work!  I need to have three fall quilt block designs and so far I only have one that is finished!  This is the block for the Oktoberfest 101 quilt run:

Now I need to work on the block for the quilt quild November block of the month to present next week, and another one to add to my shop!  I keep thinking I will catch up on all these things, but it seems like as soon as I have one thing under control another one pops up!  Kind of like Wack-A-Mole around here.  Speaking of moles, my poor husband is going to have to deal with one in our yard.  Mr mole has popped up several new mounds over-night.

Anyway, if you want the pattern for the Fall Basket you will have to come to Threads That Bind in October!  But it will be worth your while because while you are there you can register for the giveaway :)

I read a good blog article today:  How Quilts Saved My Sanity.  My house is full of quilts and it really does help with the sound levels!  I love the different posts that Adele comes up with, her blog is definitely on my list of favorites.  I thought you might enjoy reading this as well.

Speaking of favorites, I'm linking up with Connie for Linky Tuesday today - come join in the fun.  I spotted lots of gorgeous projects being shared today!

Monday, September 25, 2017

Quilter's Recipe Box, Unit 9 alternate block - Rolling Squares

For the final alternate block this month I decided to use a version of the Flying Geese unit with only one flying geese (or goose?) instead of two.  As you can see, this gives yet another dimension to this unit!


Here is the breakdown for cutting out this block (9 inches finished)  Fabrics are Dotalicious by Island Batik!

One 3 1/2 square of a medium print for the center.  Four 3 1/2 inch squares of dark for the Square in a Square units plus twelve 2 inch squares of the background fabric and twelve 2 inch squares of your lightest fabric (eight of them will be used for the flying geese).  Four 2 x 3 1/2 inch rectangles of a medium light fabric for the solid half of the flying geese units, plus four 2 x 3 1/2 inch rectangles of the background fabric.

Make four flying geese from your four background rectangles and eight of the light 2 inch squares.  Sew each of these so that the point of the goose is pointed toward the solid medium light rectangles.  These will go on the sides of your blocks as shown above.

Sew four Square in a Square units using the dark 3 1/2 squares, each one will use three background 2 inch squares and one light 2 inch square.  Place them in the corners of the block with the light triangle toward the center.  Place the medium square in the center and sew to complete your block.

We are now up to 36 total blocks, and 3 months to go!  Welcome to all my new followers - if you want to catch up on the previous blocks, check out the Quilter's Recipe Box tab at the top of my blog - all the downloads are still available and you can go through the blog posts to find the blocks.

Next Monday I'll be back with a new unit and more blocks!  Enjoy!

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Slow Sunday Stitching - personalizing a journal cover

This week I had an opportunity to enjoy some hand stitching - it's been a while since I did any embroidery and I thoroughly enjoyed working on this piece!

The gold lettering is hard to photograph, but it says "Kitty and Jerome's Amazing Recipes"  Since the journal was already complete I had to make sure I didn't catch the flap on the back in the stitching, but it wasn't really to bad.  The gold thread was a bit difficult to work with, but it was so pretty that it was worth the effort.

I had to really stretch out of my comfort zone and write the letters out on the cover myself - I printed out the font as large as I could on a piece of paper, then practiced on that before writing on the journal.  My chalk pencil wouldn't show up, so I took a deep breath and used a very fine point pink gel pen....but it went just fine, and I figure a little imperfection on a hand-made item is to be expected, right?

I really enjoyed working on this, it makes me eager to think of some more hand stitching projects!  I do have a quilt that is basted and ready to start quilting that I should get to working on - I think I'll pull that out this evening and challenge myself to get that finished.  Cooler nights are coming and this quilt has a lovely wool batting that will be super nice to snuggle under!

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching - stop by and see who else is linking up this week!


Slow Sunday Stitching

Friday, September 22, 2017

Catching up and Slowing Down

I feel like I have been running at a breakneck pace ever since we got back from our vacation and now I just want to slow down a little.  I never had a chance to share about our trip, so I want to show you some of the fun things we got to do!

Number one was go see the U of O Ducks play a football game!  It was so hot out, and smokey from the nearby fires, but well worth sharing this fun time with our family!
'

Riding the shuttle to the game was fun (long line to get on afterwards, though!)
Our little cheerleader did a great job and ended up way past her bedtime, but was still happy and in a good mood.

Go Ducks!

After that we had a good couple days of downtime, then it was off to the airport!  My sweet DH hates to fly, but didn't want me to miss time with my family in Colorado, so off we went.  Our flight was very nice, in fact thanks to TSA precheck it only took us 15 minutes to check our bags and get through security!  Hurray for that!

We loved the wonderful warm Colorado weather!  It was really great to see my Sister and Brother as well as Mom and Dad, it's been 8 years since we were all under one roof.
Most of our time was spent just sitting and visiting, but we went for a lovely drive on Saturday and found this picturesque little park in Silvercliff, CO.

Lovely view of the Sangre De Cristo mountains.  Many of the 53 Fourteeners (mountains over 14000 feet) can be seen from here.  Did you know Colorado has the most of these high mountains (53) of any state?  This is one of the things I love about my home state!

Unfortunately, Irma was making my Brother and his wife nervous about their home in Florida, so they decided to go home the next day, so my Sister and her husband scooted on down from seeing their Grandkids in Denver so we could spend a little time together with Mom and Dad.  Here we are - sorry for the bad living room at night picture, but it's the best we got!
The two cuties at the bottom are my Grand-niece and nephew.

On Sunday we had a great trip to the Pueblo Zoo with the kids - my dad kept saying that he thought the adults were having more fun than the kids, so he must have enjoyed it himself.

This little girl loves Zebra's!  And she found that her Great-Uncle was happy to pack her around for a while :)  Loved our visit there, the zoo has sure been improved since I was a kid.

Lots of shady pathways, so even on a hot day it was a pleasant outing!

After they all left, we had a couple days remaining with not much else to do, so we took an afternoon drive out to Lake Pueblo.  They were just building the dam when I was in high school, so it always seems like a new thing to me!  They've really built up that area with tons of campsites, so it's a booming recreation area.  The swimming area we used to visit when our girls were young is closed now, so we were sad to see that.  

One of things I had hoped to do when I was visiting was to find out more about my paternal Grandmother.  I did get this picture of her, and a little more info, so maybe I can track down some of her family history now.

 Before we knew it, it was time to leave.  We got up early and headed for the airport in Denver for our flight home, which was as nicely uneventful as our first flight.  We were super happy for TSA precheck, so no messing around with shoes or unpacking our laptops.  And what a delight to be greeted by the smiling faces of three of our grandchildren when coming out of the gate!  We spent the rest of the afternoon resting, then got to see Soccer practice.  This little sweetie knows how to be prepared to entertain herself while her brother has practice.


The next day was our drive home.  Was it ever great to get home and sleep in our own bed!  I pretty much hit the ground running at that point with all I had to do, but I think at this point I am ready to slow down a bit and get back to a somewhat normal routine.  I'm antsy to start a new project, but I am still working on some older ones, so am trying to be disciplined.  For sure, getting back into my blogging routine is on my radar for the future!

If you didn't catch my post on Wednesday, go read it and enter to win the Island Batik giveaways!  And don't forget the rest of this week's posts:

WEEK 3

Monday, September 18 – Seas the Day
KISSed Quilts • Whispers of Yore
Tuesday, September 19 – Vineyard
The Inquiring Quilter • Inchworm Fabrics
Wednesday, September 20 – Abalone
PamelaQuilts • Yellow Cat Quilts
Friday, September 22 – Captain’s Anchor
Purrfect Spots Designs • Beaquilter

Also, the Christmas Caroling Row Along is still going strong!  Make sure you go read the posts, the free downloads only last for a week on many of the blogs, so you don't want to miss them.  Here are this week's posts:


I think this catches me up on the first part of September!  I'll have to write another post on what's been going on since I got home, because this post is already long enough!  Congrats if you stuck with it all the way through :)  



Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Back to School with Island Batik

Hurray!  It's finally my day for the Island Batik Back to School Blog hop!  I really do love this time of year, I think one of the main reasons is that it means that fall is just around the corner.  Even here on the Oregon coast where the seasons aren't quite as dramatic as other places I look forward to the leaves turning color, the nights getting cooler and the fact that it's a great time for quilting (of course - because the kids are back to school!).


The line I got to work with is Abalone.  It's a beautiful beach themed line with loads of gorgeous color and fun prints.  There are Stars, Sand Dollars and even Lobster prints.  I really had fun playing with this set of prints, and was super happy that I had enough of the lovely pink-orange print (Carnation) for the background.  Setting the other prints against it made me think of a lovely fall sunset at the beach, so I call this quilt Sunset Glow.


Aren't the colors amazing?  Here are all the fabrics laid out before I washed them - so yummy!


My quilt features two different blocks in an alternating setting.  One block features the Butterfly Unit from last month's Quilter's Recipe Box.  This was my original plan, but I ended up switching the blue swirl fabric for another fabric from Island Batik's Basic collection - Pool.

For the second block I used a big triangle to show off the anchor print.  I also changed this block, moving the purple print to the inside of the block instead of the outside.  
I finished the top back in July because I knew that August was going to be a little bit busy, but I had no idea how crazy it was going to end up!  Luckily, that still left me with time to get it quilted, even with the extended trip we ended up taking at the beginning of September.  I was able to get a wonderful match to the Carnation fabric from Aurifil (2420 in 50 wt), so had fun doing some over the top quilting on the background.  I used 1248 for the dark colors, then for the border 5009 was the perfect shade!


I used some ideas from Angela Walters Book "Shape by Shape Collection 2"  Lots of really great ideas in this book!


The border quilting features a ferny looking vine pattern, but I used a thread that blended in so you don't really see it much.  I wanted to let those lobsters shine on their own :)
The inner border is another fabric from the basics collection:  Bluebird.  I am really delighted with how this quilt came out - it really is quite stunning, don't you thing?  It even looks lovely against a gray and gloomy sky - we are thankful for some rain at last, but I did hope for some sun for a picture.


And what would a blog hop be without a giveaway?  Island Batik is having a big giveaway, and if you love the Abalone collection as much as I do, you need to enter because they are giving away a bundle of this as well as two other collections!


a Rafflecopter giveaway


In addition I will be giving away two Stash Builder Rolls myself!  These are a favorite of all the Island Batik Ambassadors - four strips 5 inches by the width of fabric.  That comes out to 20 inches of fabric in each roll - plenty for a variety of projects!  You can enter my personal giveaway below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I thought this fabric was so much fun that I wanted to make another project from it as well.  I used my Pacifica Tote pattern to make a large tote for my daughter:

Don't those lobsters make a great bag?  I added a pocket using a piece from the newest box.  If you like this pattern, you can purchase and download it from my Etsy shop:

Download Pattern Here!
Here is the schedule for the rest of the hop - make sure you check out the other blog posts and collections - lots of giveaways and great projects, you will enjoy every stop!

Island Batik Back to School Blog Hop
Monday,​ ​September​ ​4​ ​- Beaujolais – Quilting Affection, Fun Threads
Tuesday,​ ​September​ ​5​ – Country Dozen – Cheryl Lynch Quilts, Inspired Layers
Wednesday,​ ​September​ ​6​ ​- Bonsai – Little Bunny Quilts
Thursday,​ ​September​ ​7​ – Sakura – Masterpiece Quilting
Friday,​ ​September​ ​8​ – Empress Garden – Desert Bloom Quilting, Slice of Pi Quilts

Monday,​ ​September​ ​11​ ​- Fresh Pick’ins – Kissed Quilts
Tuesday,​ ​September​ ​12​ – Lotus Blooms – Kathy Bruckman
Wednesday,​ ​September​ ​13​ – Olivera – Moose Stash Quilting, Knit Bug 2
Thursday,​ ​September​ ​14​ – Rise & Shine – Den syende himmel, Sally’s Quilting Corner
Friday,​ ​September​ ​15​ ​- Diner Days – Ark Angel Creations, The Quilt Rambler

Monday,​ ​September​ ​18​ – Seas the Day – Needle & Foot, Kissed Quilts
Tuesday,​ ​September​ ​19​ – Vineyard – Inquiring Quilter, Inchworm Fabrics
Wednesday,​ ​September​ ​20​ – Abalone – Pamela Quilts, Yellow Cat Quilt Designs
Thursday,​ ​September​ ​21​ – Batiks Go Retro – Webster Quilt
Friday,​ ​September​ ​22​ – Captain’s Anchor – Purrfect Spots, Bea Quilter

Monday,​ ​September​ ​25​ – Cherry Berry – Free Motion By the River, MaryMack’s Blog
Tuesday,​ ​September​ ​26​ – Lobster Bake – Seams To Be Sew
Wednesday,​ ​September​ ​27​ – Solstice – Bejeweled Quilts, heARTS Creations
Thursday,​ ​September​ ​28​ – Sour Apple – Seams Like A Dream, Kauffman Designs
Friday,​ ​September​ ​29​ ​- Zen – Lizard Creek Quilting, Quilt’n Party


Thanks for joining us!

Monday, September 18, 2017

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Monkey Around

I had a hard time picking another quilt for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, but I finally decided on this one!  This is a fun baby quilt made from a line called Hello World by Abi Hall for Moda.  This is a pattern I designed that I usually make with a light background fabric, but for this one I used a dark fabric and I think it came out looking terrific!

One of my favorite things about this quilt is the two different sizes of Monkey Wrench blocks (also called Churn Dash).  I just think it really adds to the fun look.
I fussy cut the animals for the centers of the small blocks, and they are so cute!

So fun!  I think this would be a great quilt for a little boy.  I quilted swirls all over it - fast and easy.

Thanks for looking!  If you like my pattern it is available in my Etsy shop - just click the picture below.
Click here to buy this pattern!

Make sure you go check out the rest of the posts for the Blogger's Quilt Festival - and add your quilts to the fun, too!  You might find a new blog or two to enjoy as well as lots of gorgeous quilts!

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Cool Curves

It's hard to pick just two quilts to enter for the Bloggers Quilt festival, but I knew that this was one that I really wanted to share.  I call it Cool Curves.  I made this as an Island Batik Ambassador challenge, so the fabrics are all Island Batik, and I used a big variety of colors and weights of Aurifil thread in it as well.


I love this photo because you can see the luscious quilting in it!  Each color band is quilted in a different quilting design.  This really stretched me to think of new ways to fill in the different sections.

I used the Quick Curve ruler for the piecing and fell in love with how easy it is!

The only thread I had any difficulty with was the 12 weight.  That didn't work so well for free motion, so I used my walking foot and did echo quilting with it.  I also used it for quilting the outer border.  I found that the 28 wt thread is awesome - shows up nicely and stitches well.  I think one of my favorite quilting patterns is the wishbone in the pale yellow - easy and moves quickly once you get the motion down!

This quilt ended up as a keeper, it looks lovely in my guest room with light purple walls!

Make sure you head over to the Bloggers Quilt Festival, link up with a quilt or two of your own, and look at all the other wonderful quilts as well!

Flying Geese - Burst Block for Quilter's Recipe Box

Greetings!  I know my blog has been really quiet lately - turns out that we had no access to wifi during our trip to Colorado so it made it a little difficult to keep up with posting here except for last week's block.  I'm glad to be home, and hopefully will get caught up quickly with all the things I am behind in, like blog reading and instagram!

This week's block is a fun one - I call it Burst.  

To make this block you will need three different colors plus background fabric.  Cut one 3 1/2 inch square plus eight 2 inch squares for the center star, four 2 x 3 1/2 rectangles and eight 2 inch squares from the second fabric, and four 2 inch squares and four 3 3/8 squares (cut in half diagonally for half square triangles) from the third fabric.  From the background fabric cut four 2 inch squares, four 3 3/8 inch squares (cut in half diagonally for half square triangles) and four 2 x 3 1/2 inch rectangles.


For this block I'll be making two different colors of flying geese that will go together to make a chevron shape.  Make four geese from color one rectangles and color two squares, and make four with color two rectangles and background squares.


Sew them together so that the color two units form the chevron.

Make sure you don't cut off your point when you sew them together.


Lay these out to form a star in the center that is echoed by the chevrons.
 Next, sew half square triangles from the 2 3/8 inch color three and background units.  Use the color three and background squares to make a butterfly unit.  Place these at the corners facing out.

Sew them together and you have this stunning block.
This block would make a fabulous quilt - I love the way it radiates out from the center.  Next week I have another great block - I love how versatile the Flying Geese units are - very fun to design with!

I'm getting ready for my Wednesday post for the Island Batik blog hop - can't wait to show you my quilt.  I just have to quilt the last border, so it will be ready just in time.  I am glad I had the top done early because the last few weeks haven't been very productive for quilting.  I am looking forward to fall and getting more time for sewing and quilting - and more to blog about!

Are you ready for fall, or sad to see the end of summer?