Bloggers Quilt Festival

Welcome back Dear Readers!

It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival again, hosted by the super Amy Ellis @amyscreativeside.com. This year I'm entering the Dresden Quilt I made for my friend's daughter's 1st Birthday. It's made with pink and white fabrics so I will enter it in the two color quilts category. If you really like the quilt I'd appreciate your nomination :)

I finished the quilt in August, 2012. It was machine pieced, hand appliqued, and machine quilted by me. The little cute pinwheels in the corners are 3-D which I'm really proud of :) I really loved making this quilt and even did a tutorial how to do the Dresden plates block and a perfect circle. The blocks are 12" finished, there are 2" sashings with cornerstones, and the borders measure 4". The finished size of the quilt is 48" x 60".

Here are the pictures I took, enjoy!

I had some "blades" leftover which I pieced into the backing

Close-up of the quilting on the back

The 3-D pinwheel in the corner

Thank you so much for looking and hope I'll see you quilt in there, too!

'Til we blog again! :)

All caught up

Yes, that's right! With my yesterday afternoon marathon sewing I am all caught up with the Lucky Stars BOM 2013. Hurray! :)

The block for October is Chaos Star:

Uh-huh, the name says it all. When I printed the pattern and looked at the fabric requirements my eyes just popped out :) 9 different fabrics for each section. That means 72 pieces in this 1 block. It took me a while, but it was all worth it. I had all the fabrics picked and cut out to shapes on Saturday, so all that was left was sewing for yesterday. I'm glad I'm caught up so I can move on to other projects, like finishing quilting and assembling my Christmas quilt, and I'd like to start the Chain of Stars mystery quilt I signed up on Craftsy. I'd watched a few lessons and selected the fabrics I wanted to use already, but have not cut anything just yet.

What are you working on?

Hope you're having as nice a day as we do here in the Northeast!

I'm linking up with  Marelize at Stitch by Stitch for Anything Goes Monday.

'Til we blog again! :)

September - Windmill Star

Hey everyone,

Since my last post I finished another block for the Lucky Stars BOM. If you're interested in joining Elizabeth has next year's BOM up on her website already and you can join 2013 and 2014 for a discounted price. I really like her designs, sometimes change the colors when I don't have the fabrics She's using in her sample.

The star of September is the Windmill Star

I had a busy week so it took me a few nights since I could only work on it minutes at the time. It's finished, and that's what counts :) I'll be picking out the fabrics for the October block and then I'll be starting a new quilt top. The boys are fishing this afternoon and I will have a few hours of sewing time before they return.

Since last week I also finished 2 books. The first one is The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys. The story is set in 1941 in England while WVII is going on. I have to admit the story was a bit slow (specially after those mystery stories I was reading lately) and I was eager to find out what happens with the lady it is about. I really liked reading about restoring gardens, it took me to a different place while I was reading.

The other one was a quilting novel called The Quilter's Apprentice by Jennifer Chiaverini. What a lovely story! Loving hand piecing myself I really enjoyed how things went along. I only read one other book written by her, but I will buy all the Elm Creek Novels in sequence this time :) This story is set in modern days and has flashbacks about a quilter's life. I can highly recommend it to any quilter who enjoys reading. 

Since I'm on a roll I will be reading the last book in the Chet and Bernie series I mentioned last time. It's called To Fetch a Thief.

Now I'm off to pick those fabrics while I can!

'Til we blog again! :)

Ahhh,so good to be back!

I am finally back after a long hiatus and it feels great! 

As some of you know I had computer problems and finally my laptop died (R.I.P). I tried to keep up with reading the blogs I follow on my tablet, but it didn't always work. It gets frustrating after a while when you're trying to leave a comment and make a mistake, try to go back to correct it and then you pull the page down too much and your comment disappears when it goes back to the previous page. I couldn't sync my camera with the tablet so uploading photos was out of the picture. And what is a blog post without photos, right? I had a friend tweeting her confession which said She doesn't always read the blog posts when they have no pictures. Boo-hoo :))

I used my computer-less time for reading some books which I really enjoyed. I started a series of books by accident when I was watching my friend's house while they were on vacation and I found a book where the title was Thereby hangs a tail... There's a dog on the cover and I know She loves dogs. I gave it a try and it was a nice surprise. Specially when I found out that it was a series of mysteries. Since then I bought the rest of the series and been reading all of them. Of course out of order, because that's how I roll :)) The stories are not building on each other so each book makes sense on its own. If you like mystery and humor from a dog point of view I can highly recommend them. They were written by Spencer Quinn.

I was not sewing terribly too much, but made progress here and there.

I was catching up on my Lucky Star BOM blocks, I made a few of them in about 2 days. They're all paper pieced and take quiet a while to make.

Here's my May block called Spotlight Star

The one for June is Sunlight Star

And July is Dulcet Star

Finally here's August which is called Pinwheel Star

Note:The spots that look like dirt are glue underneath which will come off once I removed the paper which is after the blocks are connected into a quilt top.

I also finished piecing the top for my Easy Street quilt. I have not found a name for it yet. It was funny when I wanted to start piecing the rest of the blocks together and my machine didn't want to wind the bobbin. I haven't used that machine since maybe Spring so it wasn't surprising how it resented me. I gave it a VERY good cleaning and it was working perfectly again. 

I know I will be quilting it and bought a special wool batting for it which I can't wait to try since I've never worked with wool. I just need a big enough space to spread it out for basting. Someone suggested to go down to the local church, but I'm not sure how they would receive my request since I don't belong to any of them. We're not big on church in this house. Do you think it's not too embarrassing to ask? I would appreciate any feedback on that.

I'm also planning on making the September and October paper pieced blocks so those pictures are going to be coming soon. Right now I'm working on the binding on Easy Street which you can guess what color it's gonna be :))

Oh, and I was asked to make some baby blankets for a local co-op where the blanket maker moved away and they don't have anybody to take her place. I ordered these super cute fabrics from the Fatquarter shop and they were here in 2 days. I am really happy with how they look. What would be a good backing besides flannel? I'm just making the simple pillowcase style where they're sewn right sides together and then turned inside out and stitched on the edge with maybe a zigzag or some kind of decorative stitch.

That's all for now, I'll be back soon with the September block.

'Til we blog again! :)

Inspirations and food

While I was away from the blog I kind of didn't feel like sewing, but was reading instead. I made progress on my Game of Thrones series (still on book 4, but hit 65% which is a big step) and read Between Heaven and Texas by Marie Bostwick. I really loved the book, it made me cry several times. I mostly read at home so it was not a problem. At least the kitties didn't complain :))) It had such a huge impact on me that days later I was still thinking about it.

I made a new recipe for Memorial Day weekend, it's a cheddar-chive scone, recipe provided by epicurious.com. (What you can see on the picture is 1 batch.)

It is a super easy recipe to make, I made a double batch, taking half to the party, and left half of it at home. I even put some in the freezer, they freeze very well. The salad on the left is called Fiesta quinoa salad. If you need the recipe for that let me know and I can email it to you.

I also whipped up a shopping bag from plain duck cloth and thinking about decorating it with some embroidery. I went to the local quilt show a month ago and saw a quilt that I'm still thinking about. It had a nice pattern with lazy daisy stitches (?) and I really liked that. Here's what it looked like:

And the bag itself:

Last weekend we visited the Flea Market which we decided will do regularly, and I mean about once a month. It was the hottest day of the season with a whopping 91F for the highest so we finished fairly quickly. No worries, I was wearing plenty of sunscreen and didn't get any sunburn. Regretted not wearing a baseball cap at least, but there's always next time, right? 

There were a few things we looked at, and right at the beginning I found and African person selling African textiles and my Fiance pointed out he had wooden stamps. I was pumped. He wanted $5 for each, or $20 for 5 of them which option I took. I started to dig into the basket and my hands were black by the time I made up my mind. There were so many to chose from and I tried to limit my selection to the ones that were not damaged at the carvings. 

I selected these and I'm really pleased with my choice:

I also spotted a marvelous embroidered sun umbrella at a booth which about took my breath away. Fiance was kind of ahead of me already, but I just had to stop to snap a picture from up-close and personal :) I only had my phone, but I think it gives back the inspiration that I just had with all the colors and texture.

Isn't it stunning? The only mistake I made was not asking for the price. Maybe next time it'll still be there! There's always hope...

My sewing room needs a serious clean up because I just can't get myself working on anything right now. I wrote down my project on post-it notes and stuck it on the box in front of me so I can see them every day when I sit down to my computer. I need to start working on stuff to get them done so I can do the things I want to do. Hard isn't it?

I'm saying goodbye for now and I'll be blogging soon with updates. Hopefully :))

'Til we blog again! :)

Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring, 2013

Welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring, 2013! The Festival is hosted by Amy @Amy's Creative Side every year while the real Quilt Festival is going on, this Spring in Portland, Oregon.

My entry is N Blu, a baby quilt I made recently with the blocks I sewed while taking the Craftsy Block of the month 2012 class.

This quilt is 44" square, quilted by me on a Singer 201-2 vintage sewing machine after taking Leah Day's Free motion quilting a sampler Craftsy class. 

If you like this quilt a lot please nominate it for Favorite baby quilt here. Thank you so much for looking and hope you entered one of your quilts for others to see!
Thank you so much Amy for organizing this wonderful event!

'Til we blog again! :)

I'm a winner!

Yes, you read it right! And no, I didn't run the race I was planning to just in case you were wondering :))

BUT! Sandy @Quilting...for the rest of us had her third Podcast-a-versary this March so She was hosting a giveaway. She had 5 packs of Aurifil thread samples to give to 5 lucky people, and one of them was me :)) I was really happy when I got the email from her with the good news. If you're not a listener you must download her podcast, it's so much fun and full of information about quilting and creativity.

So here's the pack and I'll say below what's inside:

Sorry for the yellow pic, but it's raining outside and super dark inside :(

From left to right the pack includes:

Mako 12wt variagated  (3840)

Mako 28wt red (2265)

Mako 40wt aqua (5006)

Mako 50wt gray (5004)

Wool 12wt dark beige? (8324)

I'll probably use them to free motion quilt some pot holders or other small projects. I've never worked with threads other than 40 or 50 weight so it should be an interesting experience :)

Thank you so much for the giveaway, Sandy!

As far as my WIP-s go I'm marching along Easy Street again, started to make the 3.5" units for the blocks I'm missing. I'm making good progress, I have all the 4 patches and brick units done, and the pink/purple part of the flying geese. I'm making the purple/black&white flying geese today and then join the 2 kinds together.

I also have to make the May block for the Lucky Star BOM, but since I need black and white fabric for the background I have to finish the Easy Street units first to make sure I have enough b&w fabrics. I don't want to use up what I have for the BOM just to find out later I didn't have enough b&w for Easy Street. Does it make sense? Hope it does!

'Til we blog again! :)