County Fair Time

The county fair was this past weekend.  Last year, I entered a few quilts/quilty things in the Home Arts department and walked away with one honorable mention.  The judges were helpful and left constructive criticism on the back of each of my tags which basically boiled down to:  LEARN TO BIND CORRECTLY!  The good news is, I have learned to bind correctly thanks to a kind neighbor.  And, this year, I reaped the benefit with two second places and two third places.  Not too shabby!

However, the big surprise was I entered a few jams and pickles in the canning division and the outcome was much better than I anticipated!

 

So apparently I make pretty delicious strawberry and blackberry jam.  Bea peeled the skins from all the tomatoes I canned, so that blue ribbon for canned tomatoes is hers, too.  She was pretty thrilled at the prospect of winning first!  The only downside is that since everything is tasted and left in the building for 4 days, you have to be willing to part with an ENTIRE JAR OF PICKLES if you want to enter them. 

Here’s a snapshot of my canning pantry in the dining room after my efforts this summer:

And here are two gratuitous photos of my kitchen helpers:
Esther making her world famous fruit salad and Veronica helping fill the dishwasher.

One quilt finished, and progress on another

I finished this quilt as a gift for my cousin’s son.  He turned three recently and I made him this quilt:

It is the first plus quilt I ever made, and it was inspired by this quilt by SOTAK Handmade.  I didn’t want to cut up a bunch of squares to sew them together again for the long part of the plus, so I contacted Holly of Bijou Lovely when I saw her plus quilt on her blog.  She kindly explained the math to me, so I was able to cut just 3 pieces for each plus instead of 5.

The back is pieced with two pieces of soft flannel and my custom fabric label from Spoonflower.

It worked out nicely and I am definitely doing this design again with some Amy Butler and Heather Bailey fabrics I have earmarked for this project.

I am also making steady progress on my second Greek Cross for the Across the Sea Quilt Along.  I didn’t wait for all the directions to be published before I finished my first version of the quilt, and this time it looks like I won’t follow them to the t either.  Esther wanted a lot of heart fabric in her quilt, so I am going to end up with lots of leftover cross blocks after I add in the fabrics she specifically picked last time we went to Joanns together.  There were a few she picked from the rolled up fat quarter bin.  I am going to piece the back and incorporate the extras, but I’m not going to follow the quilt along directions for the back because of that.  Oh well, I plan to make one more version with blues and greens, so maybe I will actually do it the way it was planned by the lovely ladies who set up the quilt along.  Here are some of my fabrics:

I am using some cute deer, hedgehogs, mushrooms, polka dots, and of course those foxes!  It was supposed to be for Esther’s birthday, but with my 2 week sabbatical from sewing, it looks like she’ll be lucky to get it on her bed before the weather snaps.

All sorts of swaps

I have officially entered into a few swaps lately—the Pink Stitches fall swap and the Block Swap Adventure—and then several informal swaps with blog and Etsy friends.

Just recently, the proprietress of Needle Little Balance swapped some fabric with me.  I sent her some mostly blue floral fabrics in exchange for some fabric she picked up on a holiday in France.   She also sent some goodies immediately snatched up by my two older daughters, some stickers and the cutest little sheep keychains that Esther promptly told me she “loved.”

Two of my closest friends were over the house the other day, oohing and aahing over the fabric.  It is very pretty, and I love the polka dots!

And, I received a package from Australia from Kat of Mumma's Time to Create.  It had a great assortment of some of the Aussie DS Quilts prints and other pretties:

I was on Flickr a few weeks ago looking for fabric that coordinates with a line of fabric my daughter Bea adores, Hanky Panky by Ro Gregg.  I happen to have some of it in my stash, but I was looking for any other pieces and lo and behold, I found a person with a blog and contacted her, hoping to purchase anything she had leftover, even scraps, just to have a few other prints to choose from.  She graciously sent me these fabrics from Canada for free!  Thank you, Jocey!

Finally, sometimes I sell leftover fabric on my Etsy shop.  A nice lady from WildOliveKids contacted me looking to buy some yardage of a DS Quilts fat quarter I had listed.  I ran out to my Joanns to get some yardage for her, and asked her to swap a dress from her shop for Bea for this Christmas…so this should be on its way to Bea’s closet next week:

I’d love to learn to sew garments, but my personal feeling is “too many quilts, too little time,” so maybe when I have grandkids…

Will I ever have time to sew again?

Veronica started crawling two weeks ago…and I haven’t sat at my sewing machine in two weeks.

Tons of stuff going on here.  School, dance, gymnastics, husband on travel, husband out with buddies visiting from out of town on my birthday and me up with a baby who wouldn’t go to sleep for hours, husband working all day Saturday, roller skating on the weekends…

Birthday party rained out, rescheduled for today…

Esther liked the bounce house and slide…

and so did I:)

Here are some of the zombies (it was a Ghostbusters theme):

Looks like next weekend won’t see much sewing either.  It’s county fair time!

Finished Greek Cross Quilt

Since I decided to make two more of the Greek cross quilts from the Across the Sea Quilt Along, I went ahead and finished up my "trial" quilt over the long weekend.  I didn't wait to put the border on it or the fancy pieced back because I plan to make a 4 x 5 block quilt for Esther by this Saturday morning for her birthday, and then another larger quilt for myself out of the latest two

Denyse Schmidt Joann's collections. 

I wasn't sure how I was going to quilt it because normally I would just do some free motion quilting all over it. But you see, someone has given me a HUGE roll (literally a bale) of polyester batting.  It is the perfect size for a baby quilt, so anytime I make a small quilt,

 I try to use it.  Let me go on the record and say I hate this polyester batting and its poofiness.  So, I peeled off one

layer from the batting and went for it.  It was usable, but certainly not ideal.

The back looks good.  I just winged a box in a box (no tape to guide me) and then straight lines using the edge of my

walking foot as a guide.  It's bound with the stripe print from one of the cross fabrics.

Here's an up close shot of the quilting.  You can tell my squares aren't perfectly centered or symmetrical, but I just

needed to get this quilt done so I could move on to the next one.

I've got some of the blocks done for Esther's quilt and hope to share a pic of that soon.

Addictive Quilt Along

I joined the Across the Sea Quilt Along.  I am in love with this quilt!  At first I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to commit, so I decided to make a baby size quilt with some random cute Connecting Threads fabric I got on clearance. 

I also decided to use various background fabrics for each cross just to make it a little brighter and kid friendly.  It came together so fast and looks so adorable, that I immediately got to cutting out pieces for two more Greek cross quilts!  The next two I am making are tweaked a little in size to make it a little easier for me cutting it out quickly. 

Esther is turning 3 next week, so I am going to make her a quilt using the fabrics on the top right.  I bought those little foxes just for her.  They are a Monluna Anika print.  I am going to use Ash for the background.  And I plan to make one more in a combo of Denyse Schmidt’s new lines pictured above on the top left.  I am going to use Aqua for that background.  And the bottom left…these are some prints I ordered online (with the exception of the blue floral and red tile above it).  They are from a few lines (Amy Butler & Heather Bailey mainly) and I can’t wait to make something with them!!!

Thank you, Tanya!!! And Little Forest Quilt Along

I received my swap package in the mail yesterday.  In it was a beautiful handbag, a box of pins which I can definitely use, and a little zipper pouch.  Everything was so lovely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And color coordinated!  My husband really likes the houndstooth check on the bag.  And I love the butterflies on the pouch.  Thank you, Tanya!  I loved being a part of this swap and can't wait to do another in the future.

I have joined another quilt along, too.  It's called the Little Forest Quilt Along and information for it can be found here. 

The Little Forest Quilt Along quilt is really modern looking.  There is a Little Forest Quilt Along group on Flickr and it seems like many people have chosen bright, non-green colors for their trees.  From what I gather from the pattern on the Purl Bee website, it was originally a very small wallhanging, but I am hoping to make it into a lap size quilt for the couch this winter.  But this picture here from the Little Forest Quilt Along looks much bigger than the original on the Purl Bee.   Here are the fabrics I selected.

They are from Connnecting Threads and are currently for sale right now.  Here is a close up of some of my favorites.  I love the red flowers the best.

30's reproductions are my favorite fabrics, but I don't normally like the traditional 30's style quilt patterns.  I think this will be a nice marriage between 30's inspired and modern.  Is anyone else doing the Little Forest Quilt Along?

Swap Goodies

I participated in a swap sponsored by Pink Stitches.  My partner has received her package, and although I’m pretty sure she doesn’t read my blog, I wanted to wait to share a photo of everything I sent.

The apron and key fob turned out great (brown & pink and black & white are her two favorite color combos), but I’m a little skeptical of the mug rug.  First of all, I guess it’s smaller than most.  It only measures about 4 x 6 inches.  I have never seen another mug rug in person before, so I thought they were pretty small, like a coaster for a mug.  It was a challenge getting the binding on.  I had to cut off the first faux binding that I attempted, so it probably would have measured about 5 x 8 if the first try had been successful.  I bit the bullet and put on traditional binding the second time.  It still is cute.

I think I will make more mug rugs in the future.  They are fast and fun to make. 

The pins came from Michael's. Many quilters have mentioned them on the Farmer's Wife Sampler Yahoo group.  I thought I'd give them a try and bought an extra box for my partner.  I do like them, but I like regular pins too.  I might not be an experienced enough piecer to make an accurate comparison.  They sure do get easily lost in my carpet though, because the glass pin heads are so small and translucent.  I've never used the no-melt pins with the cute, bright flowers on top.  They will be next on my list:)