Spring fabric postcard swap

Several weeks ago Sandi (@quiltcabana) who can be found at  quiltcabanapatterns.com/blog announced on her podcast that She's organizing a fabric postcard swap again, this time to celebrate Spring. As we all know that most of the country got a lot more snow this winter than we are normally used to, and I have to say, where I live we're still dealing with below freezing high temperatures during the day. I happily signed up since I really enjoyed the swap we had for Christmas. 

My swap partner was Sandy (@sandyquiltz) who is blogging and podcasting at http://quiltingfortherestofus.com/ 

She sent me this fabulous card which I loved!

As some of you may know orange is my all time favorite color so I was so happy to see that She used so much of it in the card :) The texture is really cool, the center of the flower has some really sparkly stuff, which always make me smile :) She has a tutorial of how She made it on her blog. Check it out, it's a REALLY nice technique!

I know She's really artsy, and I wanted to make a card for Her from one of my photos which I took either last year, or the year before, of a daffodil that just opened it's petals. Needless to say, I didn't find the picture on my hard drive, and decided to go for a less original method of looking for drawings in EQ7. I printed the pattern and wanted to try out Beth Ferrier's machine applique method using freezer paper. I modified my technique a little bit, as I didn't have to take the freezer paper out at the end, so I appliqued the tulips on a background fused to timtex to give the postcard some stiffness. It was fairly easy to make after I decided which pattern I wanted to do. Next I just glued all the tulips and leaves on the background (which I picked out thinking about blue skies) and stitched it down with somewhat matching thread I could find in my thread "collection" :)  Last, I wanted to satin stitch around the edges with yellow thread to represent sunshine, which Sandy very rarely have where She lives.

Here is the card:

I wrote the message on the back, took some photos,  and sent it in an envelope through the post office. I didn't want to risk sending it "bare" because I was afraid it'll get wet and the writing will run on the back. She really liked it which makes me happy. The little joys of life, right?

I am looking forward to the Summer swap which is coming up next, are you signing up? You better! You can go to Sandi's website to email her, or She's @quiltcabana on Twitter. Hope you will join us!

'Til we blog again! :)

Star Crown block

Hi Dear Reader,
Welcome back!

I've been away for a little while, working on some things here and there, and also made progress. Unfortunately no pictures, since nothing is finished :( I don't want to bore anybody with posting the same pictures over and over again with very little change.

There's one thing I finished, which is the Star Crown block for November of the Lucky Stars BOM 2013. This is the last block of the year, I mean last year :)

All is left to do is to assemble all of them into a quilt top. It's gonna be interesting to do since I think I want to put sashing around all of them to eliminate the paper and bring them all to the same size. I will lay them out on my design bed and put sashing on every other block. I can't wait to see what it will look like! Right now they're all hanging nicely on hangers on my sewing room door knob :))

Since I don't read directions with paper piecing, I had miss-cut the fabrics and did not reverse some of the units I was supposed to. As a result I got a pinwheel background instead of 4 squares. Oh, well, I will not redo it. For sure :)

The block was supposed to look like this:

And instead, partly because I didn't have a lighter gray fabric, and partly for the mistake, mine came out like this:

I truly like this one, the colors go together so well. I had to dig into my Christmas fabrics to pull the reds out. I store those in a separate box.

I am still working away on my Celtic Solstice top. I have the first 2 borders on, will have to cut the third, green border to attach and the top is done. 

I have so many ideas in my mind, and about 4-5 tops that would need to be basted. I feel like I can't make serious progress because I always want to start something new instead of basting the ones I have. I know once basting is done I can finish it quickly because I'm always excited for the quilting part.

Also still have to make my Spring post card for the swap I signed up for. Lots to do!

'Til we blog again!