FNSI

I have been sewing the past hour and will stay up a little later to get more of my Aneela Hoey fabrics made into quilt blocks.

I will also have an hour in the morning to myself when my lovely hubby will take all three girls to gymnastics…woohoo!

Linking up here at Handmade by Heidi.  Can’t wait to see what everyone gets accomplished!

Overindulgence of the best kind

No, I’m not talking about Jamaican Me Crazy at Bruster’s Ice Cream.   The mail lady just dropped off three parcels for me!

The yellow in the upper left is for a Rainbow Charm swap I joined, and I just joined another one but haven’t gotten my color assignment yet.  The fabrics are Half Moon Modern and I already used a charm pack of them to make something, but I can’t remember what!!!

The fanned out fabric is a fat quarter pack of “Hello Pilgrim” by Lizzy House.  And the yellow in the upper right corner is a cute coffee cup print (although I only drink tea so I like to think of it as teacups) and I think the other is called Metro circles.  I was on a yellow kick after searching for yellow fabric for the charm swap.  And I got a yard of Kona melon pink.  It coordinates really well with Ruby.

The Walk in the Woods fat quarters are to round out the fabrics for a quilt I am in the process of making.

The pattern is called Twirling Around and it’s designed by Melissa of Sew BitterSweet Designs.  Double the purchase price is being donated to a charity that helps mothers in Haiti.  When I saw that, I had to buy the pattern!  I am using a Little Apples charm pack, a Walk in the Woods charm pack, and some scraps I bought on Etsy of Sherbet Pips.  I just love the colors!

This quilt top is going together amazingly fast.  I got myself organized and have chain pieced everything, which I have never done before.  I’m not sure why I waited this long.  Wow does it work!!!  So that is my new thing I have tried this week. 

And then this arrived today too.

I’m not exactly sure why I bought them, if just to have a piece of quilting history.  When I first started reading blogs regularly, I saw the “Flea Market Fancy” quilt on Crazy Mom Quilts and really thought the fabrics came from flea markets.  I had no idea there were “lines” of fabric out there!!! 

So, would it be heresy to mix these fabrics with my all time favorite fabrics, Alexander Henry’s “Farmdale?”

Don’t they look good together?????!!!!!  What kills me is that my Joanns sold all the Farmdale floral prints for a long time and I never bought any.  Instead I paid about twice as much for them months later.

Finally I picked up this pattern for a new pincushion. 

My green tomato pincushion has never turned up.  I did, however, find a tap shoe filled with pins in the drawer of the bedside table in our guest bedroom.  How did that happen?  Esther is my best guess.

I can’t wait to make this turtle!  If it turns out nicely I plan to make this as part of my “Pay It Forward” debt (lol).

My sewing room is almost completely reorganized and painted.  It will probably be another month until it is ship-shape and I’ve painted the ceiling.  All the walls save for a little alcove are painted, my desks are put back,  my stash is in its place, and my machines are plugged in, so I am ready to go for the Friday Night Sew In.

Bea has been home sick for the past 3 days, so I haven’t been able to get out and buy any white thread to quilt my Flora charm quilt.  Now that we skipped completely over spring and it’s summer in full swing here in southern Maryland, I won’t be needing that quilt anytime soon anyway.  My plan is to finish up all the blocks for my Aneela Hoey fabrics quilt and do my two bee blocks.  I’ve been talking up “movie night with dad” all day to get the kids excited about spending tomorrow night out of my hair.  How about you?

I’m linking this post up to Trying New Things Thursday.  Melissa has a great tutorial on making lazy HSTs, which came just in the nick of time because one of my bee blocks requires an awful lot of them, and I love to be lazy!!!

Charmed Prints Quilt Top

Last night during the Friday Night Sew In I finished up the quilt top for the Charmed Prints Quilt Along.  I am really proud of this quilt top! 

It’s not perfect and has some visible errors—two of the pieced blocks on the end of a row were a little too big and points had to be cut off to accommodate the sashing.  But most importantly, I used stash fabrics to create this quilt (the backing and binding are yet to be completed):

• charm pack I won two years ago and forgot the name of
• polka dot sashing I bought on clearance from Connecting Threads
• floral “Whimsy” fabric for the border
• blue Heidi Grace (from Joanns) fabric for the binding
• Kona aqua solid for the backing

It is true that I ordered the butterfly and heart fabric from Fabric.com the week of Thanksgiving, but overall I did a good job using up fabrics from my stash.  And what’s most important is I think they look good together.  There are some projects that I’ve made that I’ve never shared on my blog because they are just…not blogworthy!  Using fabric from my stash is sometimes a real challenge for me because I like the look of all the prints from a collection and am usually less than satisfied with the outcome when I try to pull different fabrics together. 

The sashing is actually while with tiny aqua polka dots, which I like immensely!

Luckily, the quilt does not need to be completed until 12/20, so I’m going to be putting it away for now and working on a few Christmas gifts that I need to get done. 

Computer Woes, A Wreath, & A Quilt Top Finished

Baby Ronnie pulled my mini laptop off the kitchen table earlier this week.  At first there was a line running vertically down the screen and I thought the computer would be okay.  But pretty soon, a quarter of my screen was lines, and then a few hours later, two thirds of the screen was obscured.  It was time to say good-bye to my pretty pink laptop and hello to a new computer.  My hubby ran out to Best Buy the next day and bought me a HUGE laptop.  At first I was kind of sad it was so big and was going to return it and get another mini, but then he told me it might be better for blogging and reading blogs since the screen is so much bigger.  Good thinking!!!  

Esther and I made a pretty felt flower Christmas wreath today while Ronnie speed-napped for 35 minutes.  I saw this beautiful version on the blog Cut to Pieces.  I didn't even have time to Google how to make felt flowers so we just made it up as we went along.  My roses didn't turn out as pretty as the roses on the original (mine were too tightly wrapped), but for a quick project to do with a three year old, they turned out good enough!  I used some pinking shears to cut concentric circles and Esther glued the sparkly puff balls in the center of the flowers.  I used my fall wreath form--just took the orange, brown and cream flowers off since they were only hooked on using alligator clips--and replaced them with these felt flowers and a Christmas-y ribbon.  I'm already looking forward to doing something with hearts for Valentine's Day.

I am linking up to the Friday Night Sew In.  I woke up this morning at 4:30 and sewed for two hours, almost piecing together all the rows of the Charmed Prints Quilt Along quilt.  I just finished them up and added the borders and will post a pic tomorrow after I take a photo when the light is better.