Harvest Hills

I absolutely HEART Sandy Gervais!  I have  hoarded collected many of her fall fabric  lines—Fall Back in Time, Pumpkins Gone Wild, and Awesome--and Grand Finale is no exception.  I bought two charm packs this past summer, and when I found out I’d be hosting Thanksgiving this year, got them out and got busy!

With three little ones at every meal, tablecloths are definitely out.  I wanted to make something a little fancier and more substantial than a tablerunner, so I came up with the idea of making a largish table topper that could be used for the Thanksgiving meal.  In fact, I added Insul-Bright to the batting to make it heat resistant, so many of the fixins can be served straight to the table.

After making the quilt sandwich, I asked my husband if I should do straight line or squiggle quilting.  He opted for squiggles.  I am kind of glad he did.  Sometimes I don’t have the self-control patience to keep my lines evenly spaced and neat.  Now that my squiggles are getting better, I prefer free motion quilting to straight lines.  I used green thread and love how it really “pops” against the purple. 

The Insul-Bright makes the quilt sandwich a tad thicker than  just the Warm & White, so I increased my binding from 2.5 inches to 2.75 inches.  That little increase seemed to work perfectly for machine binding.  All in all, this tabletopper required almost 2 charm packs, 1 yard for backing, and 1/4 yard for binding. 

Fall Tablerunners

 

I’ve made quite a few tablerunners lately either as gifts or for swaps.  I bought a charm pack last year and have managed to make 4 tablerunners out of it.  I can’t remember the name of the line, but it’s a Moda fabric by Sandy Gervais.

It’s backed by a brown polka dot and bound by a fantastic modern dot fabric and machine attached.  I am loving the zig zag stitch!

I made another identical runner and backed it with a great large scale fabric that I might like even better than the actual top and bound with my favorite zig zag fabric.

And here’s a view of the back—it could be reversible.

The backing was a great find at Joanns.  I only paid $1.80 a yard for it during one of their 1/2 off red tag fabric sales.  I love it!

   

I’m working on another tablerunner with the latest fall line by Sandy Gervais (of course!) called Finale.

I can’t wait to get this one done.  Hopefully in time for Halloween!

In the doghouse…

I guess my husband thought he was in trouble at home.  He brought these lovelies home on Friday, complete with a funny card.   Can you believe they actually make this card?

Truth is, my husband wasn’t in the doghouse.  We’ve just be plagued by colds and lack of sleep, so I’ve been a bit crabby.  We got out all our Halloween decorations today which improved everyone’s moods.  Esther was thrilled to hang bats and spiders on our front porch.  We don’t happen to have a mantle above our fireplace, so our piano is where I put a lot of our holiday stuff.

See those pumpkins in the bowl?  My mom and dad had a reunion yesterday and used a ton of mini pumpkins for decorations.  Trouble was, my mom wrote all over them with permanent marker.  So the girls and I spray painted a few with metallic paint we had in the garage and put glitter on a few of them. 

The fabric in the tablerunner is Pumpkins Gone Wild.  It is definitely my favorite fall fabric line of all time.   I have made several tablerunners either for swaps or gifts recently.

Sneak Peek

This June will mark my daughter Bea's third dance recital.  Yep, you heard that right.  She just turned five, but she already has two dance recitals under her belt.  Sometimes I feel bad that Esther didn't get to do as much as Bea did when Bea was 2, but I guess that's the nature of the beast for the middle child.  Her day is coming anyway, because Bea will start school this fall and then she'll be the top dog during the day.  Bea's dance song is "You've Got a Friend in Me" (your blog's first song, Donna!).

As far as the tumbler quilt goes, I am piecing it together this morning.  Yesterday I met my sister-in-law and her 9 month old for lunch in Leonardtown, and we stopped by the LQS shop called Olde Town Stitchery.  There's a basket with older fabrics in it marked 45% off if you buy the remaining fabric on the bolt.  I bought that Oz floral on the bottom right, a little less than 2 yards, for $9 yesterday.  I think it would make a good binding and I can use it for part of the backing as well.  Once I had that picked out, I thought the quilt needed a small dose of magenta and a few more larger scale prints, so you can see the other fabrics on the right auditioning for the part.  They all made it!  Hurray!

So I'll show you the new and improved fall tumbler quilt when I've got it all pieced. 

Fall Tumbler Quilt

 I saw this quilt over at Cluck Cluck Sew last December and really wanted to make one like it.  But I was 9+ months pregnant at the time and not motivated to cut out a gazillion tumbler blocks.  I had barely enough energy to stay up after my two girls went to bed and watch old reruns of Law and Order and eat Bruster's ice cream:)

Since I saw Allison's quilt, I started collecting some fabrics I thought would look good in a similar quilt.  I've picked up a few fat quarters here and there and then last week I bought some 1/2 yards on sale at fabric.com and a few on Etsy.  I think I've accumulated just the right mixture of colors and scale to make this quilt beautiful.  Here's what I ended up with:



These fabrics were a departure for me.  I am partial to buying all the fabric in a quilt from the same manufacturer and line.  I've never used Joel Dewberry, Amy Butler, or the Japanese imports before.  My kids and I laid out all the blocks this morning and I am hoping to have it pieced by the end of tomorrow morning!