I’ve been in the Promises Circle at do.Good Stitches for a year, and I’m the leader for the month of July. Our group takes June ‘off’, so I posted the July block I’m planning on early. I chose something simple and quick because summer is crazy at our house and I’m guessing it’s the same with the other ladies as well.
My color inspiration:
Alyssa at Pile O’ Fabric pulled the perfect fabrics for my bundle…
And here are my finished blocks…
Can’t wait to see what everyone sends!
We went to ‘Star Wars Night’ at the Milwaukee Brewer’s baseball game with some friends on Saturday, and on our way ‘home’ (ok, yes, it was 15 miles in the opposite direction), we stopped at a couple of quilt shops. The first one had moved but the info on google hadn’t been updated, so sadly I missed out on that one. The next one we went to was a nice little surprise. It is Patched Works and they have a lot of ‘my style’ fabric…lots of Sweetwater (all of Holly’s Tree Farm, some leftover Elementary), and tons and tons of solids. Like every darn color you can imagine.
I picked up this great Kate Spain print and a couple of solids for the Hazel I’m going to put in my cubicle at work. They cut fat quarters of the blues for me which is always a nice surprise – my LQS won’t cut FQs. After we were back on the road, I realized that I bought enough of the solids for a ‘regular’ sized Hazel, not for the super-sized version, so I’ll have to decide if I want to go big or just do the small one.
They also have this big selection of comic book fabric – Betty Boop, Pokemon, Archie (Archie!!! We had to explain that one to the kids), lots of Star Wars, and Super Heroes.
I was elsewhere in the store and my husband came to find me holding this bolt and told me I had to buy some…
Wonder Woman is ‘my’ superhero. I have her on my keychain, a little stuffed one on my desk at work, and I’m seriously contemplating a tattoo. So yeah, I totally bought a yard of it. Along with some Pokemon fabric for The Blue One. He has requested a pillowcase.
They also had ‘Gretchen’s’ fabric – lots of Tula and some Ghastlies, and I spied the Tula ribbon as well.
I’m glad we stopped at that shop today. My husband is pretty great and very indulgent when it comes to my quilt shop side trips! Thank goodness for him!
Happy week, everyone!
Linking up to Molli yet again!
I realize I’m a year behind on this, but I’ve just gotten started making Hazels, and I gotta say…I heart Hazel! It all started about 3 weeks ago when The Blue One went to the quilt shop with me. He spied some lime green fabric that he ‘had to have’. I had no immediate plans to do anything right away, but I finished a couple of other things (teacher gifts x4) and the baby boy quilt top, so I decided to make something small. I whipped up the first set of Hazels last week and I wanted to add the glasses, but the kids wouldn’t let me. How rude!
Here are the first set of Hazels:
I had decided to make pillows out of them, and decided a plain back is just too…..plain. I had a ton of extra fabric from the first set, so I made another set to be the pillow backs:
I’ve decided that the Hazels on the ‘back’ of the pillows are MY Hazels, so…
When I showed the kids tonight, they both decided that they liked the glasses (of course they would!), but I’m not adding them to their Hazels. I love how they look, but I am not a fan of doing applique! My edges aren’t perfect, but heck…nothing I ever do is ever perfect, so I’m OK with it.
It’s going to be a super busy week and I’m not sure if I can get the fronts quilted and the entire things turned into pillows this week, but I’m well underway.
I’m thinking of buying the pattern for the big giant Hazel and making a wall hanging (the baby-sized version) to put up in my cube at work. That one would have hot pink glasses, because I have some that I wear sometimes! How cute would that be?
The Blue One decided to run errands with me today because there was ‘nothing to do at home’, and the LQS just happened to be one of the stops I needed to make. When The Pink One joins me for stops at the LQS, I can’t get out of there without having to buy fabric for the quilt she insists we’re making for Parker – one of the neighbor girls. I keep reminding her that Parker’s mom can make her a quilt, but regardless, we seem to be collecting random FQs of fabric for this mythical quilt.
And even though I expect that from her, I certainly didn’t expect The Blue One to pick out fabric he wanted as well. I was in the solids section grabbing a green for my May bee blocks when he found a solid green that he thought was just too cool…Kona Sour Apple, so he decided we should buy it. I have been planning to make Hazel Hedgehogs for the kids, but hadn’t bought fabric yet. He decided on the green for the ‘spikes’, a royal blue for the body, and white for the face.
I knew better than to come home without fabric for Hazel for The Pink One, so we picked out a bright pink for the body, light pink for the face, and a purple for the spikes. For some reason the colors are a bit off in this pic, but you get the idea.
I also picked up the bright turquoise solid below to match the scrap of Elementary (from Sweetwater) that I am going to use for a teacher gift. I’m planning on making zipper pouches for the kids’ teachers this year. This is going to The Blue One’s math teacher – appropriate, eh?
The entire purpose of the trip was to get greens for the bee blocks, and I didn’t even manage to get a picture of them! Whoops! I’ve got double block duty this month because I’m making for myself and one of the other ladies. She graciously offered to make for me one month when the blocks requested called for turquoise/aqua and I had none of either. I was grateful to not have to go buy a bunch of fabric that month, so it’s my turn to send for her. This month’s blocks are flying geese and they’re 1/2 together already. It feels good to be ahead of the game for once!
Linking to Molli today…
And just like that, the top is done! I really love it – it turned out great!
The initial project plan was to do the reverse of Vanessa Christenson’s Hopscotch, like she did here. I posted about adding extra rows to this quilt to make it large enough to be used for a few years and to use up as much of the fabric as I could. I don’t need leftovers sitting in my stash until who knows when! Also like Vanessa’s, I’m strongly considering quilting this myself with straight lines. I REALLY love how hers turned out so I think I’ll give it a go.
The top is 58.5×49.5″.
It appears that I REALLY liked her Hopscotch pattern. I purchased the pdf download version from her site last week and when I tried to move the file to a different location on my laptop, I got the message that said, ‘hey lady…you already have a file with that same name…want to replace?’ So, yeah…I bought it twice! Whoops! I have no idea when the first time I bought it was.
Baby boy quilt is well underway. The final layout uses almost all of the fabric I had, and that’s a very good thing!
I was having a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do in order to make this quilt larger. I started with nine 9-patch blocks and added from there. I knew I had plenty of fabric, but I just didn’t know which direction to go, and then hubby suggested putting a single row of blocks between each of the sets of 9-patches. That helped use up more of the squares I had already cut which is a very good thing. I didn’t want to have any leftover fabric, and I wanted this to be a decent sized quilt so it would be used for several years.
It won’t be long until the top is finished. It has come together pretty quickly, but sadly it will be a while until I can get back to the longarm machine – we’re just too busy through the end of August and I don’t know when I will carve out the time to go.
2015 Finish #4!
By the time I finished the binding it was too late to take a picture outside – will try to do that tomorrow. I put it on my bed and it just slightly hangs over the top of my king-sized mattress (it’s 88×88). I’m so happy with how it turned out!
I LOVE the daisies, and the blue thread was a perfect choice.
Turns out that it is the PERFECT size for snuggling with a little someone special under!
For once I’m not feeling blue as I bind (my least favorite part of the process), but instead I’m seeing blue. Lots and lots of blue because of the binding and the backing fabric.
I was rather confident when a friend asked me what I was doing tonight and I said, ‘I’m going to cut all the extra ‘stuff’ off my super awesome trucks quilt and get the binding on it while I watch the Wild game…at least that’s the plan.’ And I was oh so close! I would have finished it tonight but I didn’t have the right color thread. Bummer! Now I’m watching the Wild and they’re not doing well which is another big bummer!
I should be able to make a quick run for thread tomorrow and then hopefully finish it up before Friday. I can’t believe I’m THIS close to my fourth finish of the year and it’s only April! I only finished two in all of 2014 so I’m pretty dang impressed with myself!
I really love this quilt and can’t wait to snuggle under it. It’s a big one (88×88) so I can snuggle WITH someone under it!
I had to do a bit of shopping this week because I didn’t have what I needed for my April bee blocks for the Promises Group at do. Good Stitches. Diane requested colors based on Sweetwater’s The Boat House, and I was happy to oblige! I have two Boat House layer cakes and no idea how to use them, and I think a quilt in those colors will be fantastic. I don’t have anything in my stash in the same colors so off to the LQS I went. I didn’t have a ton of luck matching solids to the colors, so I ended up with two solids and four prints:
Earlier this week I hit a shop about an hour from my house – Quilter’s Haven. It’s a very nice shop and I’ve bought something each time I’ve gone in, and this time was no exception. I found this fantastic VW bus FQ and a couple of other fabrics to coordinate with it (the bottom blue matches much better in person!):
I also scored 4.25 yards of Lucy’s Crab Shack (Sweetwater, 2012) from their clearance section. Can’t beat fabric at 50% off!
I have a kit and two layer cakes in this print in my stash that I should REALLY put to use! I do love this fabric!
Anywhoo….I actually made something with most of these fabrics I picked up this week, which isn’t usually the case! This morning I made my bee blocks so I can send them off to Diane this week:
And then I whipped up a cinch bag that I’m also going to be dropping in the mail this week to my sister-in-law in Texas. She has a ‘thing’ for the VW bus! I hope she loves it!
My original plan was to use the peach for the casings, but then I had the perfect amount of the bus fabric for those, so I changed the plan. Then I figured I could use the peach for the drawstrings, but really couldn’t be bothered to make them so used some off-white ribbon instead. I didn’t box the corners on this one because I really hate that, and don’t feel that it’s often necessary.
Hard to believe, but I used everything I bought except the Lucy’s Crab Shack, and that will go in the project box with the rest of the fabrics in that line until I get in the mood to get that project started.
It’s another lazy Sunday at our house. Kids outside playing, hubby building me a ‘quilters pressing board’ (those are the terms I searched on Google when trying to find photos to show him what I wanted). And I’m alternating between reading on the couch, making myself mochas (I’m on #3), and putting things away that have cluttered up the living room….yet again.
Hubby is building me a nice big rectangular board to fit on top of my regular ironing board. I just love how at retreats I can fit the whole WOF on the board. I’m excited to have one of my own at home. He’s also going to re-cover my small one that he built for me a few years ago. The current one has water damage from an issue we had here at the house a couple of weeks ago and I won’t use it – it needs to be re-done.
I went to JoAnn to pick up some of the silver ironing board fabric and all they had was the quilted stuff, and I didn’t want that, so I began a search for something heavier – canvas, duck cloth, something. I found the HGTV fabric section with the upholstery fabric and knew I found what I wanted to use. They didn’t have anything that matched my sewing room, so I picked up this one:
It looks like a quilt pattern to me. It’s ‘outdoor fabric’ and I think it will be great on my boards.
Have I mentioned that having a handy man has come in rather handy? He’s pretty great!
Also this week, I picked up my first ever fabric through Instagram’s #thegreatfabricdestash. It’s Super Heros by Michael Miller.
At just over 3 yards it will be a perfect back to a ‘someday’ quilt.
That’s all for today. Happy Easter to all who celebrate it!
Linking up to Molli…of course!
Wanna-Be-Quilter 