Certainly scrappy - my Jersey Girl quilt

Well, I'm glad its done!

I love this pattern and I had high hopes for my fabric choices for this quilt.

About halfway through the process, I started wondering what I had been thinking.

I was thrilled when I read that Carrie's pattern for Jersey Girl called for light charms along with dark ones.

I had been saving a Road 15 charm pack and a Reunion charm pack for a quilt that needed a light scrappy background because I liked the lighter fabrics in these lines so much.

I think the text fabrics in these lines are really fun, so I was determined to use them in something and then along came the Jersey Girl pattern.

Once I started sewing together the two inch squares I had cut, I started thinking that there wasn't enough contrast between the light and the dark fabrics and that my light fabrics were just too busy for a quilt with such small pieces.

I hadn't thought about that before.

I don't know why.  It seemed pretty obvious at that moment.

.........Insert big sigh here.......

I was wishing I hadn't used these fabrics in this quilt.

I put it down for a few days.

Then I decided I might as well finish it up. 

All that fabric cut up and some of it sewn together.  Why not just finish it?

As I got farther into the pattern and the blocks were coming together, I started liking it more and more.  

The pattern wasn't standing out as much as I had imagined it would, but my fabric choices for this quilt weren't as bad as I had originally thought either.

 The more I sewed the better it was looking to me and by the time I got the borders on, I was pretty happy with it!

The darker parts of the blocks don't stand out as much as I as expecting and it doesn't have the same look as some of the other amazing finished Jersey Girl quilts I've seen so far, but I do like the look of it.

It was definitely one of those quilts that didn't turn out like I expected it to, but I guess that's part of the fun of it!

It's growing on me.

In a few days Sherri and Sinta will host the next Schnibbles parade.

As always, I'm looking forward to seeing the wonderful variety of quilts that can come out of a single pattern.

It's so inspiring to see the differences in what everyone chooses!


This weekend you can find me at the soccer fields every day for my son's regional tournament.

Luckily, this one is close to home.  Maybe I can even sneak in a little sewing in between games!

At home of course, not on the field!

    

Pressing on

I've been busy with school soccer games the last few weeks and not much sewing has been happening, so not much blogging has been happening here either.

I thought I'd just show a quick picture of what I have been working on the past few days.

 Surprise, surprise........ it's this month's Schnibbles project, Jersey Girl!  

This picture is a few days old.  I've made more progress on it by now.

All I have left to put on are the borders!

I went to do a post a few days ago with these pictures and all I got were error messages, but so far, so good today.

The day I was planning on originally posting this, we had some yummy chicken noodle soup.

This picture was taken before the noodles and chicken were added during the last hour of cooking.

It was soooo good I wanted to share the recipe with you.

You can find it here if you'd like to have some on a chilly day!

What are your favorite winter comfort foods?

Detour

I'm taking a detour from my original plan of sewing the scalloped binding on my Paganini quilt this week.

Okay, maybe I'm procrastinating. I've never done a scalloped binding before and I'm a little concerned about how its going to turn out..........

And I'm having some trouble deciding on the binding color.

So instead, I've been working on my Jersey Girl Schnibble.

  

Sweetwater's Road 15 and Reunion fabrics are all over my dining room table right now.

Wow, there lots of half square triangles in this one!

One hundred forty four if I remember correctly. I've only got a few to go.

I love a pattern that let's you trim your squares to size!  They come out so nice and square that way.

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced on this WIP Wednesday before I get back to trimming! 

The quilting

The quilting on my Schnibbles Paganini quilt is finished! 

I went back and forth about what I wanted to do with the border, and swirls was what I came up with in the end.

A smaller swirl pattern is in the center of each block too.

I thought that this would connect the blocks with the border, and it would also contrast to the large circles that I did around the center of each block.

I did all the swirls freehand without marking them, so the center of each block is different, and the border is done in a random way.

A paper plate that I had was the perfect size to use for the circles around the blocks.

I traced the paper plate with a purple vanishing marker, one block at a time, and then I used my walking foot to sew each circle.

Doing this one block at a time was necessary, because the vanishing ink was vanishing so quickly!  

A few times I even had to retrace the circle to be able to finish quilting it, because the ink was vanishing so fast.

I didn't want to use the blue water soluble marker for tracing these circles, because sometimes I have a hard time getting it to disappear completely when I'm finished with the quilt.

However, I did use that blue marker on the scallops for the border, since it was necessary for them to remain on the quilt for awhile.

I like to use lots of different tools for marking, sometimes even on the same quilt!

Well, I'm going to go bury the threads on this quilt right now, and believe me there are lots of them. 

I was hoping to do that this afternoon, but we spent it getting ready for the cold weather that's coming through, even here in Florida. 

If it's coming your way I hope you're ready too!  Stay warm!