Lots of Red White and Blue Fabrics

A generous donor dropped off 18 yards of vintage red, white, and blue fabrics over at Quilts for Kids. The QfK group did not want the fabric so they offered it up to me for my veterans' projects. It was all new fabric, still in the packages. The first thing I did when I got home was wash it and hang it out on the clothesline. It is a lot of fabric. It is definitely older, some of the selvages are dated in the 90's.

I got out my Villa Rosa pattern cards and started looking for patterns that would work well with three colorways. There were a few good choices so I picked the one that used up the largest cuts of fabric.

I quickly whipped up the first quilt top. Once I had one top done, I realized I will be able to make many quilt tops. I didn't even put a little dent in that fabric stack. 

The pattern I used is called Olympiad. These Villa Rosa pattern instructions are well written and easy to follow.

When I got tired of looking at red, white and blue, I moved on to longarming. I quilted a baby quilt for a client. She likes high loft batting which gave this little gem a nice puffy, soft look. How cute!

One of my favorite parts of spring is watching my lilac bush bloom. It's too bad it only lasts a little while. I always take photos of the lilacs in bloom, they are so beautiful. And the scent is amazing. Every time I walk by I have to get as close as possible to take in the scent. It certainly makes the walk to the clothesline more enjoyable. Haha!

Flea Market Flowers Sew Along

I started the Flea Market Flowers quilt along back in spring but I didn't get very far. I was interrupted by the need to make a wedding quilt. Once I completed that I was spent on quilting for a while. I hate to make excuses so I knew I had to finish this one and my goal was to get it done before the end of the year.

This quilt pattern is free on Lori Holt's blog. Each week we were to make a Dresden block. It's nice that I can go back to each week's instructions and work the project all the way through even though the quilt along is done.

                             

There were so many flower petals to make. In fact, I counted them. There were 480 Dresden flower petals in all and there were also 68 leaves. 

Even though I did not make the end of year deadline, I did have the quilt top completed by New Year's Eve. That in itself was quite an accomplishment considering my recent appendectomy. But again, no excuses!  These poor lonely quilt blocks have been hanging on my design board all summer long. Not to mention all of fall too.

I finally loaded the quilt on my longarmer on January 3rd. 

I used a pantograph called Citrine for the quilting design.

I sewed the rick rack and the binding on during the week. And I finished the quilt label yesterday. 

Yay! All done...

My Sister's Friend Sue's Projects

I get a lot of requests for sewing projects from my sister's friend Sue. Sue has eclectic taste and is a very nice person, which is a great quality since she is a teacher. I love to help her change her keepsakes into new and usable things. There's been children's pajamas turned into a quilt, little baby t-shirts turned into tote bags and zipper pouches, to mention a few. 

Sue gave my sister a bag full of things to repurpose. There was a baby shirt to turn into a Christmas ornament, an embroidered baby shirt to turn into a pencil pouch and a few other baby t-shirts to repurpose. Besides those, there was a 2-yard piece of fabric that she wanted a table-runner out of, and she also requested that if there is any leftover fabric to make a few little things.

There was a little problem with the request. She made the request in spring, my sister forgot about it and here we are at the end of November when she remembered. Grrrr. I agreed to do the best I could. I was smack dab in the middle of making football themed totes when I got the request and I couldn't sleep thinking about it. After all, it wasn't Sue's fault the work wasn't getting done so I didn't want her to be disappointed. So I got to work.

This is the first table runner. The fabric is Christmas themed with lots of glitter. I purchased some matching grunge in pink, green yellow and brown to match. The fabric looks good as the gift wrap part of these gift blocks. 

There was so much fabric left that I made another table runner, This one is simpler and fabric print is easier to see.

There was still lots of fabric left. So I made some zipper pouch stockings, some mini tote bags and some Christmas ornaments. 

And here is the ornament from a t-shirt and the pencil pouch from the embroidered t-shirt.

The baby shirts are now zipper pouches.

I still have a small piece of the Christmas fabric but for now I'm pretty burnt out from all these. I will just have to revisit it at a future date. For now, Sue will get these just in time for the holiday season. 

Large Print Fabrics - One Pattern, 4 Quilts

My church group received a very large fabric donation this past summer. Us ladies spent some time going through all the beautiful fabrics. I prefer to be the last one to dig in since I have plenty of donated fabrics from other sources that I haven't worked my way through. What was left for me were large print fabrics in 3 yard cuts. I held onto them wondering if I would ever think up a good way to use them. Then I found a pattern called Sidelights by Mountainpeek Creations.

I knew this would work on the large prints. It didn't matter that I wasn't using a panel like on the pattern cover, with a 3-yard piece of fabric I could cut a chunk the same size as a fabric panel and have some fun making the blocks for around the side and bottom.

For the first one I fussy cut the flowers that went in the side and bottom blocks. I also used a large piece of green fabric that was donated to the senior center to make the background.

I fussy cut trees and snowmen and placed them alternately in the side and bottom blocks. What fun!

I fussy cut different parts of the scenery in this safari print. I like this one the best.

After I finished with the church group's fabric I remembered that I had this collection of batman fabrics in my Quilts for Kids fabric bin. I immediately dug out the fabrics hoping I could use this pattern once again. By now, I didn't need to read the instructions. I know the measurements by heart. Ha! I used the biggest print for the panel piece and the coordinating fabrics for the side and bottom blocks. There was enough to make the nice border  and with all of these quilts, the leftovers are on the backs. I love when I use up the stuff that was donated. 

Charity Quilts

A member of my church, Lisa approached me and asked me if I would like her mother's fabric. Her mother recently moved into an assisted living center and gave up sewing. I find it so sad when that happens and I want to honor her mother by making some nice quilts for the church to give away. Here is the first quilt I made from her fabric collection.

There were two full boxes of fabrics. When I got them I sorted them into groups where I gave some away to the senior center, gave the large pieces to the church sewing group to use for quilt backings and kept the rest. I washed all the fabrics and folded them in groups by color. Besides making this quilt, I cut 3 more quilt 'kits' in different color ways. I like to have 'kits' to take with me on sew days at the senior center so I am happy to have these ready to go.

I will save up the quilts for the blessing of the quilts at church in fall. I think Lisa will enjoy seeing them on that day.

New Fabrics

It's a crappy, rainy day today which makes me feel like cleaning my sewing room. Earlier in the week, the weather was fabulous. I started cleaning out my garden and looked forward to keeping on going. Since I can't be outside today, the sewing room is a perfect place to be. I just finished making some cute quilted bags that contained teacher appreciation gifts for my granddaughters' teachers. Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photo of them before they got delivered to school.

Before cleaning off my sewing table, I took a photo of my purchases from last weekend.

 

Last Friday I went to a sale called FabricPalooza at a local quilt shop. It's a great sale where selected fabrics are $5.99 per yard. That's a really good deal for some high quality fabrics. And the selection is amazing. My friend, Sue and I got there a few minutes before the shop opened and we left there almost 2 hours later. It's a very popular sale so there were lots of people there enjoying the deals. I went there with the intention of buying fabrics for quilt backs. I have 3 finished quilt tops and now I have some pretty fabrics to make backs for them.

Sue and I also attended the It's a Stitch Quilt Guild quilt show at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School in Jackson, Wisconsin on Sunday. There were so many quilts on display that we spent more than a few hours there. It was a nice, relaxing event so shopping the fabric vendors was easy. I must admit, I spent way more $$ than I had planned. But it's always nice to touch the fabrics and get the opportunity to shop with vendors that come from further away from home.

Serendipity Woods Etsy Shop

I ordered some fabrics and patterns from a new shop. When I say new I mean new to me, not that it hasn’t been around for a while. I really wanted to get a pattern called Churning Fourteen and this is where I found it.

I absolutely had to peruse the shop once I had the pattern in my cart and I ended up with a few fabric bundles. I love the color combinations and the way I could buy many smaller pieces for my scrap quilts. The bundles are so very cute. And just look at the packaging. It’s so pretty I hated to have to open them.

But of course, I did open them. In fact, I couldn’t wait to tear into them. I love the bundles. They are full of so many cute prints I look forward to using them in my Jen Kingwell quilts.

Missouri Star Disappoints

The Missouri Star Quilt Company's black Friday special was $200 and get a bolt of fabric free deal. I thought holy cow, that's a lot of fabric. Then my husband challenged me to get to $200. I did that easily and I placed the order. That was on the 24th of November. During the first week of December I got an apology email from them stating that they are way behind on filling their orders due to the volume and their inadequate inventory system which was being upgraded.

They did not waste any time in taking the money from my account back in November for my order.

On December 15th I received a notice in my email that the order had shipped. I got a notice that the box was left on my porch but it was not there. A few hours after that my neighbor called to tell me my package was left on their porch. Grrr!

When I opened the box, there was an apology note stating that this was a partial order blaming that bad inventory system. The packing slip only listed the items that were in the box. So I waited for the rest of the order.

Last week I got tired of waiting and I contacted the company to ask where the rest of my items were. I called the company during regular business hours and I got a message stating that I should call during regular business hours. Feeling somewhat frustrated, I sent an email. 2 days later I got a response saying sorry but your items are out of stock and that I will be getting a refund for the missing items. The refund came 2 more days after that.

It sure would have been nice if they offered me the opportunity to order something else in place of my missing items. But now if I want to order more, I have to pay shipping. More Grrr!  And what if I never contacted them? Even though I did get some really pretty things at great sale prices, I'm not sure I will order from them again after this experience.

New Fabric Baskets - Just the Right Size!

I think I've found the size of fabric baskets that will work for me (right now). I cut each of the sides 19" x 11" and boxed in the corners so the baskets end up being 6" wide.

The finished baskets measure 12" x 6" x 7" tall. They are perfect for all my scraps. I put my leftover little scraps in one, medium size scraps in another, and everything else that is too small to fold up in the third one.

For me, I never really know how something will work until I actually use it so I'm not 100% sure that my scraps will stay in these.

I do love the fabric. It's a twill-weight, just a bit lighter than canvas that I bought a few years back at Ikea. I used Pellon 809 Decor Bond interfacing fused to the lining. They stand up nicely and look great with the gray/black/white color scheme of my sewing room.

Winter Quilt Show 2017

I have 4 quilts entered in the Winter Quilt Show in West Bend, WI. I've never entered quilts in a show before. I was very surprised to see all 4 of my entries on display. My husband was so proud of me that he had to snap photos of me in front of each and every one of the quilts. I'm posting the photo (of me) that I like the best.

Besides my 4 quilts, my modern quilt club entered our group project called "The Quilt that Made Milwaukee Famous". We all decided to make a quilt block that represents a Milwaukee landmark. We had a few rules. We had to all use the same color palette and our blocks had to measure at a finished size in increments of 8 inches. My block is 8" by 16". After the block were completed we spent a Saturday morning laying the blocks out. It was a great group project. We had one of our members sew the sashing around the blocks right on the spot. There was going to be no guessing after the layout was agreed upon, we were completing the top that same Saturday morning...well early afternoon by the time we were done. The quilt was sent out to be quilted and then completed by another member of the group. It sure turned out great.

Of course, the day would not be complete without a little shopping. Me and my friend Sue enjoyed stopping at every vendor booth and perusing all the wonderful fabric selections. We were both on a mission to find specific things and Sue found what she was looking for but I did not. That did not stop me from shopping anyway! I love fat quarters so I added many to my stash at great prices. I can't wait to start another project.

I won a giveaway!

I love entering contests and giveaways provided by online quilters and quilt shops. I've been very very lucky. I've won fabric bundles, thread packs, patterns and even quilting tools. On December 29th I entered a giveaway from Bungalow Quilting and Yarn's Instagram account. Sadly, I don't go on Instagram as often as I should, especially since there's plenty of quilting inspiration there. Not to mention giveaways.

Last week I went on my Instagram account only to find out I won that giveaway from back in December. I immediately contacted Judy over at Bungalow Quilting and Yarn to give her my address. The prize was $90 worth of fabric called Adventures by Amy Ellis for Moda. The gift included a jelly roll, charm pack and layer cake of the same collection. The fabric is fabulous and I am thrilled. I hate to sound ungrateful but I have won a few batik fabric bundles in the past and I am really not a fan of batiks. So I shared those fabrics with my girlfriend who was thrilled. So I did pay those forward. But this fabric collection is right up my alley!

Thank you so very much, Judy for your generous giveaway.

Happiness is . . .

My daughter gave me an Etsy gift certificate for Christmas and it took me 4 whole days before I spent it! I also had some money in my PayPal account since I sold my Tutto case. I think the $$ were burning a hole in my pocket.

There are three fabric shops on Etsy that I call my favorite(s). They are all wonderful and unique and I hope they are all around for a very long time.

Normally I'm not very spontaneous when purchasing fabric but my husband was in the hospital having a 5 to 6 hour cardiac procedure and while sitting in the waiting room, I made the purchase. Long waits in hospitals make me do crazy things. This was sort of crazy. I didn't need any fabric and after cleaning up my sewing room earlier this week, I was feeling even more guilty for being so impetuous.

Today the postman delivered my new fabric selections - some were from the clearance section of the Etsy site so that really gave me more bang for my buck. Just look at these little beauties:

As always, there's some Sweetwater fabric in my purchase. I'm not sure what I will use it for, but I can guarantee, it will be used. What fun to add to my stash!

Happiness is . . . new fabric.

Black Friday Deals

I went to the Jo-Ann Fabrics Black Friday Sale at 6 this morning. I really did not plan on going but I couldn't sleep.

I decided that 70% off flannel was a worth-while shopping trip. Since we have a large Jo-Ann's to the west of us, the one east of my home doesn't get much traffic. So even though it is a smaller store, I am happy to head east where there should be shorter lines.

I got to the store at 5 minutes after 6. There was plenty of parking and many available carts. And there wasn't even a line at the cutting table! I was in heaven. I could leisurely walk all the store aisles and take my time getting around. I even had 3 people all cutting my fabric selections. I asked why it was so quiet and they said they expected the real rush to occur tomorrow when all the fleece is 70% off. I hate fleece so I didn't care about that so good for me that I got a quiet day.

Since I felt little stress to get into a long line I ended up purchasing more than I planned on. I found t-shirts priced 5 for $10 so I got my granddaughter the rainbow of shirts for all those spirit days at school where they want the kids to wear a specific color. She will now have that covered. And I found the most adorable 2017 planning calendar so with an extra 25% off the sale price, I could not resist.

The sale included quilting supplies at 60% off which is so rare I got a rotating cutting mat and a large ruler that I always wanted. So Merry Christmas to me!

What's on the design board?

Here we are in the midst of summer, and I have to admit, I have not spent much time in my sewing room. I have an organic garden to maintain and I recently had a landscaping project in the works. I really love spending time outdoors in the summer so I never feel any angst about not sewing.

I have been working on a special project over the past few weeks. It's a cute little tea dress that has some paint stains on the front that won't come out. So I am modifying the dress into a pretty party dress. The colors of the dress are quite unique. The dress is not quite red and not quite pink or peach. It falls in-between the standard color wheel in such pretty tones that they are not easy to match. So instead of looking for a specific type of fabric I let chose what was available in the shades that matched the dress. I was pleasantly surprised at what I found.

The colors are soft and muted just like the stripe in the original dress. And since it will be a party dress, I found a nice shade of tulle to go over the top of the skirt. So so pretty. I love the drapey feel of the fabric. It has a nice soft feel to it as well. That will definitely help keep the scratchy tulle layer away from a little girl's skin.

For the entire month of July I don't expect to have anything on the design board, there's just too much to do outdoors. However, I can't wait to put this little dress all together.

Wisconsin 2016 Shop Hop - Day 1

The Wisconsin 2016 Shop Hop started today and I went to 6 different fabric shops. All the shops were near the Madison area.

While out on our little tour, we stopped at our favorite Wisconsin winery, Botham Winery in Barneveld, WI. It has the best white wines in the entire state.

Hands.down.the.best.

Here's the loot I scored on day one of the shop hop! I can't wait to plan my next route to get to a few more shops...or maybe not. I am feeling quite burnt out already.

Happiness is . . .

Happiness is . . . fabric shopping.

I finally took a little time for myself after the funerals. Between volunteer work and other obligations, I needed the time. I even got a haircut.

I did some selfish shopping at a few of my favorite local quilt shops over the past few days. I did not realize how much shopping until I put it all in one pile.

What fun! I'm not sure what I will use it for but it is pretty to look at.

Patchwork Quilt Top

I came across a simple quilt block pattern. All it took was 35 10-inch squares of fabric cut into 2 pieces. Those pieces were then mixed up then sewn to another piece. Then those blocks were cut in half and mixed up to sew two different halves together. Then the fun began. The blocks were arranged and re-arranged until they made a pleasing pattern.

Since I used scrap fabrics to make the 10-inch squares, I don't think the results made a very pretty quilt top. It is really scrappy which was my intention and even though the colors coordinated, I'm not so sure about the result.

I think I will set it aside and make another attempt using the same pattern. It took less than a day to put it all together so I don't mind trying again. Maybe with the next one I will use more muted colors. I certainly have plenty of scraps to make plenty of 10-inch squares.

What's on the design board?

I've had this charm pack of shirting fabrics for quite some time. It was given to me by a friend who had a large stash that she was purging.

I thought I would use it to make a lap quilt for the Veteran's group but now that I've sewn them together, I found there weren't enough squares to make anything substantial in side.

So now I'm thinking it might make the beginnings of a cute tote bag...or maybe I can find more shirting fabrics and put a few borders around it and it could be a lap quilt.

Right now, it's just going to hang out on the design board just because the colors are soothing.

Black Saturday

I did not plan on doing any Black Friday shopping. I was successful in that endeavor. Then came Saturday morning. It was 5:45 am when my husband asked me if I was heading out to any stores. I think he secretly loves Black Friday but he will never admit it. After all, he came home yesterday with tons of "deals" he found as he went out and about. I told him no, I was not planning on doing any shopping at all.

I don't know why, but I thought Joann Fabrics opened at 6 am today. After I told my husband I was not going shopping, he mentioned that I told him that quilting fabrics were 60% off which is very rare. And that's why he figured I was going to head out today. Like I said, he secretly likes shopping so I think he is disappointed that I don't enjoy it like he does. Then a funny thing happened...I looked at the clock and it was now 6:04 am and I got this crazy panicky feeling and a big sense of regret.

I hopped in the shower and told myself to get over it, there will always be another sale. I got dressed and headed back downstairs for breakfast and took out the newspaper. There was that darn Joanns flyer staring at me. As I looked at it I realized that the top of the Saturday page stated that the stores open at 9 today! I did not miss the sale at all. In fact, I am dressed and ready. As my resolve to stay home faded away, I got in the car and headed out just in time to be the third person in the door when they opened at 9. None of the other shoppers were after the quilting cottons so I had first pick.

It was a nice relaxing shopping experience, in fact everyone in the store was cheery. After having my giant pile of fabric cut, I perused the store for a very long time. After all, a deal is a deal. So here is my new stash items along with a $5.99 iron. I figured I would use that iron for fusibles. Even with using the protective pressing paper, sometimes I get goo on my good iron. Now maybe I can keep that iron cleaner.

Wisconsin Shop Hop Fabric Table Topper

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law are die-hard University of Wisconsin Badger football fans. To top it off, their son played the tuba in the Badger band. That made their Badger football experiences even sweeter. So needless to say, I'm pretty certain their favorite song of all time is the University of Wisconsin theme song, "On Wisconsin".

This year's shop hop fabric line has a print with sheet music that says "On Wisconsin" on it. And although the fabric colors are a little muted from the University of Wisconsin colors of red and white, it seemed obvious to me that I had to make something for my sister-in-law out of this fabric line. Since she is coming to visit at the end of this week, I figured I better get started.

Since I work at a local quilt shop, I decided to take their free shop hop block and turn it into a table runner. I bought the last quilt block kit at the shop and added some extra yardage to it, especially the sheet music print. I thought a table runner would look good on either their coffee table or their dining room table and it would make a nice conversation piece when people looked at the print up-close. I hope she likes the finished product.