baby quilt progress

Here is my progress on my SLEEP baby quilt.  I decided to make a 'story book village' on the back of the quilt...all the houses have text prints or number prints...I tried to make it a 'wordy' quilt back...and at the last minute I decided to make a girl for the center vs. another house....Im a bit perplexed by how to fill in the spaces...but Ive dug thru my stash for small dots on white fabric and came up with a few that I think I will use to piece the back together.

and yes...my sewing room is usually this messy...much to my dismay....

I also received this star block this past week as part of my Around the Bend and Across the Pond! bee. Ann has hinted that she would like stars and that she doesn't typically use such a pastel palette...so I plan on working on stars this week...and have laid out some fabrics for this on my design floor.

Have a great week!

my week in fabric

Monday morning started off on a high note...I got an email from Nancy Jewell of Free Spirit fabric telling me I won a bundle of Jane Sassman fabrics from their blog,  Is there any better way to start a week?  And the fabrics arrived just a few days later.  I think these big florals will be fun to fussy cut and my daughter has already snatched the purple prints for herself!  I am thinking this is the year I finally get a picnic quilt done!

And then...Friday evening I got an email from Amanda Murphy letting me know I won the giveaway on her blog for her great new pattern, Bejeweled and...a 10 square pack of .... Modern Whimsey!!!!! with some extra leftovers from her own quilt!  So now I get to see ALL the modern whimsey circles!!! plus all the other prints...really excited!!  My daughter wants to make the quilt pattern in a rainbow of colors for her bed...so that could be my next project!!!

And lastly, I popped into a quilt shop about an hour away from home this morning for their semi annual sale...have you seen this Foundation by the Yard fabric?  It's by Benartex....they had it on 50% clearance...a few designs like flying geese, log cabin...but I chose a panel of New York Beauty.  Ill get to it someday!  And since I drove all the way there...I picked up a few other goodies for my stash....

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!sorry, exclamation overload this post.

fabric shopping online

Have you ever bought fabric online and it was other than you expected?

I *love* the Mingle circles on the far left...with those few green circles...*love*.
I haven't bought much Metro circles (middle) and I don't know why...(I can hear everyone who lives in this house right now say...."Cause you don't NEED them!!!")  they are pretty great.

and now...Laurie Wisbrun has offered up these Modern Whimsy circles (far right).  great, right?  ... well, they photograph in a very deceiving way.  They are much smaller in person...which is fine, but I'm not sure I love them...at least not as much as I wanted to love them since they come in lots of great colors.

You can check all the circles, and other prints from the Modern Whimsy line HERE
I think I need to get some in Daffodill just to make sure!

So...what about you?  Has this ever happened to you?

weekending

I had big plans to sew this weekend...but the snow had other ideas!

 Instead of sewing...I was sledding...and ice skating on a wet patch of grass that is always in our common grounds...this year was wet enough before it got cold that we have a sweet little ice patch to play with!  It took us a few minutes to find it and shovel it off...and its only a few feet in either direction, but it's a lot of fun...and no fear of falling into the water!!

 I did manage a few house blocks...I'm working on a baby quilt...and I'm not exactly sure what direction I'm going in...but having fun getting there.  My house blocks all have letters or numbers in them...and that has been fun cutting into my text prints!

 Obviously I have NO IDEA how to make a patchwork A-Frame house...can't win them all I guess....

We are off to my dad's house for dinner...and some sledding beforehand of course!!

Christmas sewing

Guess what?  I find that if I save a few pictures in post drafts to do at a later time, I seem to blog more regularly!  I uploaded these pictures to Blogger a few days ago, and here they are waiting for me to write about!

I did do some Christmas sewing.  Both my mom and dad are hard to shop for.  Neither of them ask for, or need anything...so that makes them perfect candidates to craft for in my opinion.  My mom recently redecorated a guest bedroom in her house...

I decided to make 4 dolls for the bed...representing me and my 3 sisters.  Each doll a little different ... each having some characteristic of each daughter.  I am always always cold...especially at my mothers old farm house...so I am #3 ... wearing socks and long sleeves!  Mom loved these dolls, I plan to get more (better) pictures of them next time I'm to her house...I forgot to take pictures once they were all done!

I found the pattern for these dolls HERE

And for my dad...I made a scrappy tumbler quilt.  I had a friend cut these on her Accuquilt cutter (Thanks Patti!) and it helped me use up even more scraps!

And the back fabric was also all from stash!  One of those bargains from Fabric.com I just HAD to buy...well, I finally used it up!

OK, so time to put a few posts worth of pictures into blogger again!

Neutrals quilt

I previously posted about my cut-a-thon of scraps...5 inch squares and 2.5 inch squares...well, this quilt started it all.  I focused on using mainly 'neutral' 5 inch squares and every small scrap I came across.  I was not picky, I used whatever I grabbed from the bag of scraps.  I love sewing this way.

I had a local long-armer quilt it in Baptist Fan pattern and am very pleased.  This quilt currently lives on my bed.

And in my blog reading I found a new quilt a long I don't think I can avoid...especially since it gives directions for using gobs of 5 inch squares if you opt for the 90x90 size quilt.  You can check it out HERE. 

I love Sarah Fielke's fabrics and quilts so it really makes sense to just DO IT.

Have a great weekend.  Winter has finally found us so we might just cozy up and stay inside the next couple days.

2 more

 The past few months I have taken some time to cut my scraps into squares...and I should say...SOME of my scraps into squares.  I now have thousands of 2.5 inch squares and 5 inch squares.  Its been fun seeing fabrics from sewing projects of the past resurface...

The one downfall is that I have really done a number on my cutting board and there are now some serious grooves cut into it.  oh well...

I needed to make my niece another Nook pouch since the 2 I made earlier are not big enough.  I hope she will like one of these two...I'm guessing she will go for the dots over the vintage, but Ill give her the choice.  I used the last of my stabilizer on the dots pouch, and I'm surprised by how much nicer I find that one over the vintage fabrics...

These are fun to make...especially when you have a few thousand squares pre-cut!

Around the bend and across the pond

So...I joined a group on Flickr called Around The Bend And Across The Pond

It is essentially a Round Robin except I chose the 'free form' category so my group will not necessarily be doing a full round each turn on the starter block...more exciting that way, right?  Here is my starter block:

Liberated Baskets...some of these I made during the class with Gwen Marston, but others I did to fit into my starter square.

My group did not set a size for the starter block, but I have a feeling I'm pushing maximum limit at nearly 20 inches square.

And another item of note is that I sent a small quilt top off to be quilted by Krista Withers!!  If you have not checked out her work please stop by her flickr stream and do it now!!

I have not blogged about this quilt top, or my amazing 4 days of classes with Gwen Marston...but I will.  This was so much fun...the class was called Abstract in Solids.  My jumping off point was a rail fence quilt and I just kept going...abstract....with mostly solids.  I really really love this one. 

Im super happy to be starting the year off with 2 projects from my Gwen Marston classes!

A fresh start

I am back.  And hopefully a little more regularly.
thanks for keeping me in your reader or whatnot.

I have been sewing quite a bit, just not blogging about it. 

Ill start slow with these two Nook cases I made.  I made 2 because my first attempt was too narrow.

I followed a tutorial by Amber at One Shabby Chic.  She has some great tutorials, so make sure to check her out!

These were really simple to make, and great for scraps.  I particularly like the button closure since I have yet to figure out zippers!!

Best wishes to you all in the New Year!!