The Minis and More Parade Holiday Edition

Here's what you've been waiting for, the Christmas in July Minis and More Parade!

Yes, it's August now and back to school is just a few weeks away for my kids, since we live here in Florida.

I can't believe it!  We've had a great summer, but wow has it been hot!  I'm always happy to have summer arrive, but I'm usually not sad to see it leave.

Looking forward to cooler weather, we have our Christmas in July Parade today!

Hopefully you baked some Christmas cookies and thought snowy thoughts as you sat inside in the air

conditioning and worked on some holiday related projects or gifts!

This Jingle project belongs to Patty of Elm Street Quilts.  She used some red Kate Spain scraps and her own Chunky Alphabet Pattern to create this cute mini.  Patty even drew the holly leaves freehand and added some extra batting underneath to make them pop!  Beautiful!

Mary from the blog Needled Mom sent in this cute Popsicle table runner inspired by our Minis and More Parade a few months ago using the Mini Popsicle table rummer pattern by Fig Tree and Co.  Mary used bright summery colors and she sent in a picture of the cute back of her table runner too!  

Mindy made an adorable Joy Mini for her Christmas in July Parade entry. Aren't the packages great?  I love the fabrics she used, especially the aqua and the light green border.  She's got a head start on the holidays!  Beautiful Mindy!

 And now, even though I didn't get it done in time for the Parade I'm going to show you what I've been working on for Christmas in July. Although it's not done, you're getting a quick peek anyway because I really wished I would have finished it and I'm so excited about it!  Using some leftover charm squares that I had from previous Christmas projects, I made a few wreaths using the Mini Cheerio pattern by Camille Roskelley and hopefully soon I'll get them and a few more into a mini quilt. 

The September Parade will feature the new Handmade Mini pattern by Camille Roskelley.

Sherri and I think this will be a super fun project!

It includes the possibility of some embroidery at the bottom which looks like fun.  I've never tried to embroider much of anything before, so I'm excited to try my hand a something new.  The Handmade Mini would be cute without the embroidery too if that's just not your thing.

I borrowed this picture of the pattern is from Camille's shop called Thimbleblossoms and you can find the Handmade Mini Pattern in her shop by clicking here.  Right now, she has both the PDF and paper versions of the pattern available.

Send in those pictures of your Handmade Mini to Sherri or to me before September first to be in the Parade and to be entered in the drawing for next month's prize!

Now don't forget about the rest of the Parade on Sherri's blog A Quilting Life.

I can't wait to go over there and see what everyone else has been doing during Christmas in July!

Acreage Blog Tour

This summer I've been having a great time sewing with a brand new fabric line that will be released in September.

It's from Moda designer Shannon Gillman Orr of Eva Blake's Makery and its called the Acreage Collection.

Today is my stop on the Acreage Blog Tour, so I finally get to show you what I've been up to with these fun, cheery fabrics!

Acreage has such great prints with adorable fabrics featuring clothespins, different types of flowers, and of course my favorite fabrics in the line, those amazing bikes!

And they come in so many beautiful colors!

Using the largest amount of Acreage fabric that I could in my quilt for this blog tour was important to me, so something bigger than a mini quilt was a priority here.

I love mini quits, as you know, but I wanted this one to be big!







The pattern that I liked the most that would put the pieces of fabric that I had to good use was the Schnibbles Domino pattern by Carrie Nelson.

But as much as I love Schnibbles patterns and as much as I wanted to make the Domino pattern, since it's one that I'd never made before, it just wasn't large enough to include all of my Acreage fabric.








So, with a little help I changed up Carrie's Domino Schnibble pattern.  My version is larger in size and the placement of the fabrics is different than Carrie's, which gave me the ability to use as much of those cute Acreage prints in my quilt as possible.

As far as the background goes, I really wanted to make the bright Acreage fabrics stand out, so I decided a dark background was the way to go.

Acreage paired up really well with Moda Grunge, which happens to be one of my all time favorite backgrounds to use.  It adds a textured look to the background without standing out too much.  

Espresso was the color of Moda Grunge that I chose.  It sounds kind of brown, but it really looks more gray and black.  

 It made the Acreage fabrics pop and that's what I was going for!

It's even what I used for the binding!

I do love using any kind of white fabric as a background, but I try to think out of the box as much as I can and give other background colors a try. 

The big, bright buttons that highlight Shannon's fabric were a fun addition!

After I completed the straight line quilting, putting buttons in the same colors as the Acreage fabrics in the center of the Moda Grunge seemed like a good idea, so I went with it!

I figured I could always remove them if I wanted to, but I love the look and how they go with the breezy feeling of the fabrics.

I don't remember ever adding buttons to a quilt before and they weren't part of my original plan, but I love how they look against the Moda Grunge and how they pull the whole thing together.

Making this quilt with Shannon's Acreage fabric was a fun summer project for me this year!  I had a great time with it and I fell in love with all of the beautiful prints in the process.

You'll be sure to see more of her fabrics in my upcoming projects when I can get my hands on more
Acreage fabric!

Don't forget to visit the other stops on the tour to see more creative projects using Shannon's new fabric!

Monday July 4th Sally Keller of Sally’s Angelworks

Monday July 11th Anna Marks of Crazy8Farms

Monday  July 18 Brooke Sellmann of  Silly Mama Quilts

Monday July 25th Melissa Shields of Quilting Room with Mel

Monday August 1 Michele of Island Life Quilts  You're here right now!

Monday August 8 Jayme Christensen of Finding Sweetland

Monday August 15 Briawna Hugh of Purple Poppy Quilts

Monday August 22 Peta Peace of She Quilts a Lot

Monday August 29 Lani Padilla of Simply Fresh Vintage

Monday September 5  Loryn Litchty of  Sweet Sassy Strong

Monday September 12 Jemima Flendt of  Tied With a Ribbon

Monday September 19 Anne Boundy of Said with Love

Monday September 26 Staci Barrett of A Vintage Fairytale

Monday October 3rd Blog Tour wrap up by Shannon Gillman Orr of Eva Blake’s Makery