Mod Mosaic Quilt Block

I just made this block from Elizabeth Hartman’s tutorial found here.  It was fun to make and I enjoyed picking scraps for this block.  Sometimes I have a hard time sticking to just using scraps for a bee block project, and usually end up cutting into my fat quarters and bigger pieces, but this time I stuck to only scraps and I’m quite happy with how it turned out.

Today was 1/2 price at the “Treasure Store” (aka The Salvation Army Superstore).  My daughter found this cute clock for $1.

A little bit of paint scratched off on the 3 when I removed the price tag, but otherwise it’s in great condition and works.  I have a little beef with the way the price tags are attached to everything in the store.  It would have been way better to stick the tag to the back of the clock, and many times the clothes have permanent holes from the price tags.  But it’s still a fun and cheap shopping trip.

Friday Night Finish

Our Beejeebers queen selected this beautiful half square triangle block for the month of May.  I procrastinated until the last possible days and got the block finished a few minutes ago.

And then, as I was writing this post, I noticed the bowties in the top rows are backwards, so I just unpicked and restitched {again} and it’s fixed now.

It was fun picking through my scraps to find bright colors and prints I like.  My cat Oreo also had fun rolling in the scraps…

Overall, it took a long time to put together, kind of like a puzzle, but the end result is very pretty.

Thanks, Ursula, for picking such a beauty!  I hope you liked the colors and fabrics I picked.

Up next month?  Semi trucks.  I already have a few ideas spinning around!

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!!!

Block updates

Well, the stomach bug took me by storm.  I always welcome it because I know I’ll get it at least once in the winter and might as well get it over with, and it guarantees a few pounds easy weight loss that I don’t have to work for!

Earlier this week I finished up my first UFO for the new year—the Charmed Prints quilt—but  I haven’t had a chance to photograph it.  I have a hard time getting pictures taken with the kids outside.  Our holly trees have dropped a billion berries on the ground and Veronica is as fast as lightening trying to eat them.  I did snap a photo of all the Farmer’s Wife blocks I have finished so far:

I had to take the photo on our bed because as I was laying them out, Ronnie would pick one up in each hand and high-tail it out of the bedroom, so I had to put them somewhere she couldn’t reach.  (Yes, I have cat flannel sheets and they are super soft and comfy!!!)

I also received my first block in the mail for Beejeebers.  Lindsay from For the Love of Cotton sent me this adorable sock monkey in his house block

and an amazingly generous pile of “scraps” for the wonky log cabin blocks.  I hesitate to call them scraps because there are some really big pieces and some beautiful charms!!!  Thank you so much, Lindsay!!!

On a personal note, Bea turned 6 on Wednesday.  It is hard to believe my baby is already six years old!  (And has already lost 2 baby teeth!)

My sister sent her some Shrinky Dinks for her birthday, which she absolutely loved.

Have a great weekend!!!

Starting the new year off with a quilting bee

I accidentally joined two online bees this year.  I meant to join one, but somehow I found myself as the January block person for a different bee too!  I thought they were the same bee, but in fact, they are hosted by two different people on two different blogs.  How did I let that happen?  Children, I’m sure.  Not being able to focus for more than a few seconds before somebody needs me!  Anyway, this should be interesting!

So I was really sweatin’ my fabric choices for January since this is my first bee and I’m the first to pick.  Then, this beautiful quilt came across in my reader and I was smitten!  It is made by Melissa Burt and posted on the Connecting Threads blog, Notions.   The quilt is called “Wonkytown.”

I went ahead and bought some fabric for the border and back since it was still technically 2011 (for 2012, I have resolved to spend less time looking at fabric online—and buying it—and more time sewing). 

The fabric is by Anthology.  I think it’s called Woodlands. 

I made three tree/house blocks just to see how easy/difficult it was and give better guidance in my preferences for the block.  It was a bit of a challenge to make the blocks,  but I am pretty happy with how they turned out.  I did my first ever embroidery (if you can even call it that) on the sun’s rays in this block:

When I showed it to my husband, he said, “Isn’t it a little asymmetrical?”  Ha ha, men just don’t understand!

Then I tried another tree block, and this time made it night.

The fox sleeping in the bush isn’t quite what I envisioned.  The two snow-ball corners of the bush got cut off in the seam allowance, but overall it is an acceptable block.  I plan to put it in a pieced back.

Then I made a house block:

This one turned out pretty good I think.  I tried to make it on a hill and that’s how it looks to me.

I can’t wait to see what my other bee members come up with!  Melissa, who made the original quilt, hung it on the wall in her daughter’s bedroom.  I was thinking that might be a nice thing to do with this quilt as well since Bea and Esther are moving to a new bedroom this year.  It is much bigger than their old one.

On a personal note…I have been having unbelievable urges to have another baby!  I joke about it all the time, but there is literally a jumbled pile of exersaucers, bumbos, boppies, and a swing at the bottom of our stairs by the front door ready for me to pass on to another person…and it’s been sitting there at least 2 months!  I guess I am not ready to call it quits yet.  The only problem is that I have been having trouble sleeping lately and now take a prescription to sleep.  In November my husband went on a business trip and was gone about a week.  I literally did not sleep for almost 4 days and had to go to urgent care when he returned to get medical intervention!!!!  It turns out that I was taking real Sudafed for a cold, and whatever the active ingredient is, it was making me jittery and unable to sleep.  So, since then I’ve been taking Ambien.  A few nights I haven’t, but usually I am so nervous when I go to bed that I won’t be able to fall asleep that I can’t fall asleep unless I take the prescription.  It is such a dumb problem, but I certainly don’t know how to get around this.

I counted, and I have 7 quilt tops finished that have not been basted or quilted yet.  I am going to see how many I can get finished in January.  I am not going to start any new quilts until they are all completed.  They are:  Greek cross, charmed prints, Chinese coins, Valentine’s quilt, my dad’s flannel quilt, my mom’s denim quilt, and a new one I have almost completed, Little Leaves.   Oh,  and I just remembered,  I have a flannel quilt I made for Bea two or three years ago that I never got around to finishing.  This quilt is huge!  I think it will need to be tied instead of quilted.  So, that makes 8 quilts to finish up first!

Here’s to a happy new year!