Sneak Peek!

Yep, that's a whole pile of blocks all trimmed and ready to put together!  Can't wait to get back to that one but I have a couple of others that have deadlines, so I had to box up my Birdies for now.

Just lucky around here lately!

So just a few days after mom won an awesome giveaway, I did too!! When I saw that I had won these AWESOME fat quarters from Kristina at Sew Domestic, I squealed. Loudly. Besides never having won a giveaway before, even though I feel like I have entered a gazillion, I LOVE this fabric! Especially those little trees. How can it get better than cute little trees? Now to figure out what I am going to make, and getting myself to cut into these!
I actually got them in the mail last week, but things have been insane here the last week, what with school deadlines that affect entry to next year's program for my husband...

Thank you again Kristina! You made my day! Or week...or month...

Trash to Treasure?

One week a month, we have bulk trash pick up in my neighborhood.  You can put any large items by the curb and by the end of the week, they will magically disappear! Sometimes, it's the garbage truck that makes the stuff disappear and sometimes it's just crafty neighbors!

Here is what my neighbor thought was trash!

But I knew it was a diamond in the rough!  Can't you just see that stacked full of fat quarters?  Yep, me too! 

A couple of coats of white paint, a little cutting to take the bottom "stand" part off the shelf, some cute shelf brackets to hold it up on the wall and Voilà!!!!
 

A place just right for fat quarters and other fun stuff.  And it just cost me the paint and shelf brackets!  It's one of my favorite things in my sewing room.  More pics of the sewing room to come later.  It's a work in progress.

Bugs!!!

 When Kirsten first introduced me to our favorite LQS, they had this fabric.

I think it's called Dancing Bugs.  It was so fun and colorful and bright.

So I made this.

I used the disappearing 9-patch pattern and it was so much fun to make.  It doesn't have very good contrast between all the fabrics and it was a really good lesson for me in learning more about contrasts, but it's a fun quilt and perfect for throwing out on the grass or on the floor or just for snuggling up with.  This was also my first attempt at quilting swirls and it is pretty awful.  I did really heavy swirls in the purple fabric and then just did straight stitching around the inside of all the buggy squares. It was a good practice quilt.

The pictures make it look like a rectangle, but it's really square.  It was too wide to get out of a width of fabric, so I pieced in some of the scraps from the front.  And the pieces on the sides of the big square in the middle are pieced in and I think I did a pretty good job of matching up the stripes!

One of these days it might even get a label :)

Hexies

I'm not one to sit and be idle.  Even if I'm watching TV, I like to have something for my hands to do...something creative.  It might be genetic because I never saw either of my Grandmas or my mom just sit with their hands idle.  There was always crocheting, counted cross stitch, needle point, or some other kind of hand work going on while they relaxed.  So, when I saw a tutorial somewhere out in blogland about hexies, I thought it looked kinda fun.  One day, instead of going home from work, I decided to go to Kirsten's to play but I didn't have anything with me to "do", so I hit our favorite LQS and picked some fabrics from their FQ 1/2 price bin (it's sorta like the candy shelves at the cash registers at grocery stores!)  Then I went next door to the grocery store and picked up a roll of freezer paper and the next thing I knew, I had these...

And those have grown into these...

I pretty much just take my hexies with me everywhere I go and when I have a few minutes I pull them out and keep adding to them.  I think they are going to be a doll quilt for Zoey.  I don't love all the fabrics, so I want to finish up this project and then start on something else with hexies.  I really love doing these, they are so addictive!

Diamond Quilt Finish!

I really should get more creative at naming my quilts...ANYWAYS, this one is done and in the shop!

Super cute pinks and purples in this one. It pretty much SHOUTS girlyness. I quilted 1/4" away from each of the seams to outline the diamonds, and then it made a fun diamond pattern on the back.

Speaking of backs, I think I have outdone myself on this one! I  L O V E it! These are my 4 leftover diamonds from when I had no idea what the top would look like and just started cutting. Well, when I went to cut the purple fabric for the rest of the back (inset diamonds was already the plan), my mind would NOT wrap around the math to figure out the cuts for this! I don't know what was up. So, I gave up and decided to hand applique the diamonds on so they would line up just right! Probably took 3 times as long as it would have, but dang do they look good!

And it gets better! I managed to line the front and back diamonds up EXACTLY, so the quilting would match front to back. Yeah, I'm good like that :) Not gonna lie, it looks AMAZING!

Well yeah, you can see that :)

When I went down to have a photo session outside, suddenly it was windy! Ugh wind is soooo not fun! Leaves kept rolling into the shot...once a plastic bag whirled by...But I thought I got some good ones. Then I went upstairs to check them out on the computer, and there was a little stick thingy right on my closeup of the back!! So, back down for more pictures, because I was NOT having some bit of leafy stick thing in the middle of my favorite shot! So there!

I made myself some new tags for quilts that are going in the shop, as this one is. I think they are cute :)

And then there is the super cute pink flower binding. It makes me happy.

Quilt finishes at 31"x36". did I mention this one is in the shop?

Here's one for the boys.

Right after I found out my niece was having a baby boy, I was at my favorite LQS and they had just gotten in Animal Alphabet by Cheri L. Strole for Moda.  It was soooo soft and I immediately fell in love and so this sweet baby boy quilt was "born".

Two charm packs were perfect for a quick finish baby quilt.  It finished at about 40" square, so I used a solid piece of one of the prints for the back.  I just love the stripey fabric for the binding.