Disappearing act

I didn't meant to disappear for a month - but just haven't been very inspired to post. I have been sewing though! This first quilt has a long story. About seven or eight years ago, my grandma Mimi gave me a walmart bag with these pieced blocks inside. The fabrics are vintage. I don't know if she had made the blocks or if she had somehow inherited them from someone else. They sat in my project closet for a year or so until we started to pack up to move from Indiana to Alabama. I decided life was too short for these "ugly" blocks - so I passed them on to Nina. Nina has an amazing sense of color. She put this top together and packed it away in her box of tops to be quilted. A couple of years later, I am visiting and we are having a little show and tell. She shows me the top and I fall in love, but she won't give it up. A couple of more years pass - I visit again - and we have another show and tell - and the top is still sitting there. This time I managed to talk her out of it. We even managed to go out and find a backing and she quilted it up for me. Check out the amazing free-hand quilting. Now the quilt has been sitting in my project closet for a couple of years waiting for me to finish the binding. Yesterday I had a friend come over to practice on using my quilting machine - so while she did that, I put the binding on this quilt. I love that it is finally finished!




My neighbor hired me to make a quilt for another set of neighbors who were expecting their first baby. The quilt turned out to be bigger than your normal baby quilt - but that way she can use it longer! The middle squares are the fabrics the mommy-to-be chose for her nursery. I hope the baby likes bright colors!


I am working on a Christmas quilt right now - all shades of reds and greens. The pattern is from American Patchwork & Quilting and is made completely out of churn dash blocks. The blocks range in size from 16 inches down to 4.5 inches. I am loving it!

While surfing through my bloglines the other day, I fell in love with another Christmas quilt. Go ahead and click on the link - but be prepared to fall in love! I ordered 7 of the main prints from a couple of shops on Etsy - My Heart & Sew and Spiceberry Cottage . I gotten the fabrics and I love them even more than I did in the pictures! They are silky smooth! I am hoping to visit a couple of local (45 miles) quilt stores very soon and get the rest of the fabrics - so I can get this done before Christmas. This year we get to be at our home for Thanksgiving and Christmas - so I am looking forward to decorating!

Flea Market Fancy

The fabric is all gone now! Good job!

Yesterday while shopping in a small local fabric store, I came across an almost full bolt of the polka dot fabric in the middle of the picture. If you are in need of some of it (at about $9 a yard), email me and I will get you the name & number for the shop.

What happened to my free time?

The kids started back to school last Monday - which should have left me with more time on my hands - but I am still waiting for that to happen. Last Monday we also had to say goodbye to my husband's first full-time employee. She has been with us for over two years. She is now going on to grad school. She loved the quilt I made for her. Her grandmother is a quilter - but Cayce says her quilts look like "Grandmother" quilts. She loved this quilt because of "the cool fabrics".


After giving Cayce her quilt, I had to turn my attention to finishing the latest baby quilt. The shower was on Saturday. As usual, the mother loved it! There was also much talk about my new "one quilt" rule. Everyone said that they would just have to hire me to make their additional quilts. Not really what I was going for, but it might be an acceptable alternative. My mom said it might make them realize what a precious gift I have been giving out.


For the backing, I used the left over fabrics and cut it into 10.5" squares (Bonnie Hunter's suggestion!). I love the patchwork look on the back!


This week I am working on quilting my birthday quilt. I am a member of a birthday block lunch group in my guild. We meet once a month to celebrate someone's birthday and we each make them a block of their choice. My birthday celebration was in July. I love the variety of fabrics the ladies used in their blocks. The quilt is loaded on the machine and will hopefully get quilted tomorrow. I am hoping to have it finished by Thursday to take to the guild meeting for show and tell.

Have a great week!

Latest finishes

There hasn't been a whole lot of sewing going on around here but I have managed to finish a couple of things. This quilt is for a girl that has worked for my husband for the past two years. She graduated from Auburn and started working for Stacy right away. We have loved having her here. She is quite the Renaissance woman. She loves to make up recipes and is a wonderful cook. She makes her own peanut butter and caramel! She also coached Maddie's basketball team this past spring. Anyway - she is leaving Auburn to go to grad school in Texas - so I thought she deserved a special going away gift. Since Stacy only has one full-time employee - this isn't a dangerous precedence to set!

I found these fabrics at Jo-Ann's over spring break and knew they were the perfect thing to make Cayce a quilt.

Aren't the little trees adorable?

I hate having little scraps of left over fabric and since I am not much of a scrappy quilter, I like to use everything up! I pieced the leftovers into the back with some cream fabric from my stash. And I had just enough of the brown fabric to make the binding.

This next quilt represents the end of an era. I have mentioned before that I have made a baby quilt for every new baby born to someone in our congregation. I have had a very busy six years. This quilt is the THIRD quilt I have made for this family. There is another family I have also made three quilts for. I decided that I can not keep up this pace. I don't have time to do any quilting for me! My new rule is one quilt per family. I can do a gender specific quilt or a gender neutral quilt (so future babies can share). This one is for a baby boy due in September.


Again I decided to use all the leftovers to piece the backing. I love the stripes!



I just went back and counted - I have made, at the very least, 26 baby quilts for people from church in the past six years. That averages out to just over 4 quilts per year. I know there have been more than that but I haven't really kept a list. Things should slow down now with my new rules!

My First Quilt

Camille over at Simplify and Carrie of Miss Rosie fame are hosting a look at our first quilts. They want us to post a picture of our first quilt and our most recent quilt. So here goes!

My first quilt was started in the spring of 2000. A couple of ladies from church were going to teach the rest of us to quilt. We met once a week for a couple of hours. I almost gave up on quilting until someone explained how to butt opposing seams against each other. Since I was making a Irish chain quilt, that one little hint was priceless! I managed to finish that quilt and have been hooked ever since! My mom hand quilted the quilt.

This is my latest finish. It is a baby sized quilt made from Bonnie's pineapple blossom pattern. In the last almost ten years I have learned to be more adventurous in my color choices. And I have learned how important it is to be accurate.

So now it is your turn - go out there and post pictures of your first and most recent quilts. And then go back and leave a comment on Camille's or Carrie's blog so we can all go check them out!

Bags-O-Bags

I haven't been quilting much this past week - but I have been working on UFO's. Over two ago Emily over at What's that gonna be? posted directions on how to make a cute little tote bag out of two dish towels. So I bookmarked the page and started keeping my eyes open for cute dishtowels. I found some on clearance at Kroger and stuck them away, waiting for a moment to try it out. Here it is over a year later and I needed several little birthday gifts. So I dragged the towels out and got to work. They are so quick and simple! You can make a single bag in less than half an hour. Now did I take any picture of the 6 bags I made out of the dishtowels? Nope. Forgot.

But all these dishtowels got me thinking! My sweet sister bought me 4 Orla Kiely place mats and some cloth napkins from Target for my birthday last week. I immediately sat down and whipped her up a bag out of two of the place mats. This bag is bigger than the dishtowel ones and stiffer since the place mats were much stiffer to begin with. She had bought three place mats with a blue backing and one with a brown backing. Thus began our wild goose chase to find more of them. Her hubby went back to the Target where she had bought them and found one more with a blue back. He also checked out another Target near by - no luck. Last week when me and Naomi headed back to Nashville, we hit four more Targets. No luck. Oh well - at least I have enough to make me a bag too!



All this sewing got Naomi thinking I could just whip her up a bag out of anything so she went out and bought fabric. The bags are reversible - the picture shows the bags and there reversed insides. Yes - four more bags. I also made my 4 year old nephew Joey a CARS bag. I think I have had enough of these bags for a while.

Today I am trying to get a lap sized quilt quilted up for someone. She does good work - but this time her backing was wonky with a capital W. After squaring it up, it was no longer big enough. So I had to add strips of one of her other fabrics to the sides. Next come adding some strips to the batting! Wish me luck!

Two more done!!

Today was another banner day! I got TWO bindings done. Nina knows how I feel about doing bindings. Both of these quilts have been sitting in the closet waiting for the binding for an entire year. Sad, isn't it?

This first one is going to be a wedding gift for a sweet couple. The wedding is Saturday afternoon. I love this pattern and will definitely be making another one. (All the pictures are clickable for a larger view!)



This second one is an extremely belated college graduation gift. It is only two years late! Oops! This is the famous Yellow Brick Road pattern. So quick and easy. This is the third or fourth quilt I have made out of these green fabrics. I think they were multiplying when I wasn't watching!


Tomorrow I will get the labels on these and they will be ready to go. Today I also got the hall closet reorganized (again!) and got the fabric storage boxes put away - so there are no more piles of fabric sitting around the sewing room. My cleaning focus needs to turn to the kids' rooms. Some major dejunking needs to happen. My sister and the cousins are coming in a week so we need to get busy!

Things I have forgotten!

Last week when I started working on the Strip Twist QOV (see the post below), I started wondering where this other quilt went. This is the Star Struck quilt I made in Bonnie's workshop back in October. I couldn't remember finishing it and I couldn't figure out what had become of it. It is so sad to get old! On Thursday as I was trimming the other quilt, it finally came back to me - I had given this quilt to my cousin, who was just getting back from a tour of duty in Iraq. Looking back through the blog, I never even posted about it! Here it is finished. I love this pattern and I may have to make another one.


Friday I quilted this top and got it bound. Saturday was a quilting day for our local guild to work on charity quilts. I dropped this quilt off to the coordinator, along with blocks to make a green and yellow version of it. Two UFO's out the door and gone to a good cause.

Plans for this week? I have had a pile of quilted quilts sitting in the closet, just waiting for the binding. Waiting, waiting, waiting! We are going to a dear friend's wedding on Saturday and I am hoping to get one of these quilts finished for her. There is also another quilt in there that was meant to be a graduation gift for one her bridesmaids - so maybe that one will get done too! Usually I don't give quilts as wedding or graduation gifts, but these two particular girls have a special place in my heart! Definitely don't need to start any new traditions! I am already over run with making baby quilts!

What are your plans for the week?

Summer!

I have been sewing a lot this week. The kids are home for the summer and we have been being lazy! I sew for a while, then we go to the pool until I get too hot, then come home and take a nap!

This quilt pattern is from Bonnie's site. The pattern is called :Strip Twist". A friend of mine, Kathi, from the local guild quilted it for me on her Gammill with the Statler Stitcher. It is amazing! We did a eagle with its wings spread in the triangles around the edges. In the center I did a free-hand stars and loops. This week I finally got the binding put on it and mailed it to Kathi's step-son. He is a solider and has been to Iraq several times (if I am remembering it correctly!) - Click for bigger pictures!




I have declared this the summer of the UFO. I am determined to finish up some of these unfinished projects that are sitting around here haunting me! Today I quilted a quilt that will be donated to our guild's charity group. I also have some blocks that I am going to donate to them. Two down - lots to go!

A lovely rainy Saturday

Yesterday was rainy and overcast here in Alabama - a good excuse to hang around the house and be lazy! I was able to finish the binding on this baby quilt in time to take it to quilt guild meeting Thursday night for show-n-tell. The baby shower was on Saturday. Lots of yummy foods and good friends. Summer loved the quilt.


This was the first quilt where I attempted to change thread colors. I couldn't find a thread color that looked good with the brown, blue and green - so I used three colors. The blue and brown thread blended into the blue backing but the cream color thread really stood out and made a cool design. You should be able to click for a larger picture.

I also made these yummy cupcake bites for the party. The inside is chocolate cake crumbled up and combined with chocolate frosting. The outside coating is almond bark. For more yummy edible ideas, check out Bakerella at www.bakerella.com .



This is me and the mommy-to be. Her due date is June 14th - but I am trying to convince her the 17th is better.


Have a wonderful weekend! The kids are done with school so let our summer of fun begin!

Ready for the mail man....

I have finally finished the birthday challenge that was due last year on our birthdays. Oops! I changed my mind on this at least 5 or 6 times. My first idea was a folk artsy applique pattern - but then I decided I was kidding myself thinking I would ever get an applique done. Another idea was using some of my hand-dyed fabrics in a sort of amish setting. I got far enough on this one that I was trying to machine quilt it on my little machine. It wasn't turning out well. There were some other ideas thrown in there too but I can't remember them all. I hope Nina's mom likes it. I am sending along some other goodies for her too. I actually made this table runner twice - the first time I used a slightly lighter green and wasn't as thrilled with it - although I do like it. This darker green is better.

I am working on the binding for the green/blue/brown baby quilt. It is sewn onto the front - just need to flip it to the back. Hopefully it will be finished tomorrow.

Only four more days of school! This summer will involve lots of travel. Hopefully I will get to quilt some!

Don't tell anyone....

but I have been sewing some the past few days! Nina actually showed me up by getting our last birthday challenge mailed off to my mom before me. The challenge was to make a table runner for each other's mom. Too bad it has only taken us only two years to get this done! Every time I would sit down to work on mine I would change my mind about what I wanted to do. It's done now and will be quilted next week and then into the mail.

This baby quilt has been awaiting borders for a month now. As you can see, I went with the green on the inside. I love how it turned out. I finally put the borders on tonight and it too will hopefully be quilted next week. The shower is on the 23rd.

I am waiting to hear about a last minute commissioned quilt. The lady wants a good sized lap quilt done in cream colors and using some sort of yellow-brick-road like pattern. We will see if my price quote scared her off!

Have a wonderful weekend and a lovely Mother's Day if you are here in the States!

Green or blue

These are the 4 blocks that will be my next baby quilt. I need to ask the mom if she wants it to seem more green or more blue. I am going to add one more round of strips, then some sashing between the four blocks and then some sort of border. These greens just seem to scream spring!

Yet another baby quilt

Yes, another baby quilt. This time I am done early - the shower isn't until Saturday! I love this one - all the soft pinks and browns. The baby's name is going to be Anna Grace. Isn't that such a beautiful classic name?

The next quilt that I am making is for a baby boy who is due right around my birthday in June. The colors for this one will be a chocolate brown, bright blue, and a not quite lime green. I am hoping to make it to Columbus and JoAnn's next week so I can get going on this one.

I also have several quilts sitting here, just waiting for bindings. Nina knows how much I LOVE doing bindings.

What are you making?

Spring Break and the plague

My children have a knack for getting sick the week before spring break. We decided to pass on our planned trip to Washington DC and stay home and rest. It's a good thing we did because hubby and I have both come down with the plague this week. Lots of laying around, watching movies, napping, and some sewing!

This is the next baby quilt I needed to get done. The shower is April 4th. This is my attempt at a blended quilt -very hard to photograph when all the colors are so pale and close in color! I like how it turned out! The pattern is called "Seeing Stars" from American Patchwork & Quilting, December 2008. Can you see the stars hidden in there?


I have also spent some time playing around with the charm pack I got last week. I had also been admiring Judy's latest stash project. So I combined the two into these blocks. I had to alter the sizes a little bit so I could use the charm block - but it turned out cute. I can make two blocks from each charm square. I think I will use the blocks to make matching lap quilts for my daughter and my niece. I don't think I am going to set like Judy suggests, but am going to put some white sashing around the blocks, ala Crazy Mom Quilts.

What else might I get to work on this week? Hmmm....

Help me!

Yesterday I was roaming around some blogs I read and came across Allison's post about some cute fabric she had found at JoAnn's. Very cute! I happened to need to go and get some batting so we sweet talked hubby into driving down to Columbus with us and went shopping. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it!) the nearest Joann's is about an hour away. Anyway - here's what I got!

This first group is going to be made into a lap quilt for my husband's employee. She will be leaving us in August to go to grad school in Texas. She was #1 in her graduating class and we are not sure how we will ever replace her. We have been lucky to have her with us for two years. Anyway - I wanted to make her something special as a going-away gift.


And then there is this lemon fabric! I love it! It is an Alexander Henry fabric and it is so bright and cheery! It has a nice weight to it.

These last two are from Hobby Lobby. They remind me of the Orla Kiely stuff at Target.


This is a little peak at three lap quilts I am making for the sons of a friend of ours that passed away suddenly last week. The boys are 15, 12, and 9. They will have a long road ahead of them without their mama - breaks my heart. My stomach is still in knots whenever I think about it.

We were supposed to be in Washington DC this week for spring break but Ian came down with a bad cough last week so we decided it wasn't wise to go off like that. Now me and hubby are getting so throats so it is just as well that we are at home. Gives me lots of time to sew though!

Burned a hole in my pocket

Last week Judy was kind enough to choose the cake recipe I submitted when she was looking a recipe for Vince's birthday cake. I won a gift certificate for $59.09 to The Fat Quarter Shop!

Judy announced the winner on Thursday morning and I managed not to spend the gift certificate until at least 8 p.m. that evening. I would have spent it sooner but there was so much beautiful fabric to choose from, I couldn't narrow it down!

I finally came to some decisions. The picture above is of the SWANKY charm pack by Chez Moi for Moda. So bright and cheerful.

The four pink fabrics all have the Eiffel Tower on them and will eventually make their way into Madeleine's Paris quilt. The others were just pretty browns and greens that I couldn't resist.


Thank you again, Judy! I am glad your family enjoyed the cake!

Oh - did I share our plans for spring break next week? My brother-in-law and his family live in DC and we are going to spend the week with them! And do you know what is between Auburn Alabama and Washington DC? Mary Jo's Fabrics in Gastonia North Carolina. Last time we went to DC I remember seeing it from the interstate - this time we WILL be stopping! I had better start taking my self-control pills today!

Last minute finish!

The star quilt is finished and given to the expectant mama. The baby shower was on Saturday and she got tons of wonderful things. Including a wet quilt! I was so proud of myself for getting the top quilted over a week and a half before the shower. But when did I get around to putting the binding on it? In the two hours between Maddie's tea party and the baby shower! No problem - except that I decided to wash the quilt too. The white background fabric was being difficult and was showing the little holes where it had been quilted. I threw it in the washer on the express wash cycle - it should have taken about half an hour. Fifty minutes later it is still not done - I stood there watching it spin and spin and spin - and it wouldn't count down past 5 minutes left to go. I gave up and took it out of the washer anyway - and it was still soaking wet. Into the dryer it goes - with some already dry bath towels. 30 minutes later the quilt is still wet - and I am half an hour late for the shower. Out of the dryer comes the wet, label-less quilt and off we go. When I get to the shower everyone is still snacking so I sneak the quilt into the hostesses dryer. By the time everyone finished eating and the mama-to-be had opened most of the other gifts, the quilt had finally dried to a slightly damp condition! I had to bring the quilt back home to put the label on it but it was returned to the mommy the next morning at church. And isn't Shelby Mae just the most southern name you've ever heard?

I am almost done with my sewing room and closet reorganization extravaganza. We are hopefully having some company this weekend - so it needs to get done today - along with the rest of the house. But this "company" knows our normal low standards and is just happy for a bed to lay her weary head down on, so I am not too worried! She will leave her white gloves and magnifying glass at home.

How did it get to be March?

First things first, today is my sweet Madeleine's 10th birthday. We celebrated on Saturday with a tea party. Lots of fun! All dressed up - eating petits fours,
chocolate covered strawberries, and sugar cookies and
drinking punch out of my tea cup collection.

Today I decided to reorganize my sewing room. It needs it badly. There is an empty white dresser in Ian's room that I decided to switch out with the little bookcase in my sewing room. Got that part done but now my table and the floor underneath are covered with stuff that needs a new home! I think my next job will be cleaning out the hall closet where my stash is hidden, err.... I mean, housed! I am hoping to find room for all of my quilting books in the closet - since they don't work so well in a dresser drawer! Anyone out there a professional organizer? Help!

This is my quilting thread collection.
I just love all the colors!