AYOS fans get ready! Minis and More starts on Monday!

Hey! I'm stopping by this weekend to give you a quick update.

It's great news!

The group formerly known as 'Another Year Of Schnibbles' is back, with a few fun changes, starting on Monday!

Sherri of A Quilting Life and I will be co-hosting 'Minis and More'.

We'll be doing all kinds of mini-quilts, including Schnibbles patterns, possibly larger quilts too, and we'll be adding in some other fun projects in along the way.


This is a picture of a past favorite of mine.








Here's how it works.

We'll let you know about the project we'll be doing on at the beginning of the month, then when you're finished, you send one of us a picture of your project and a link to where it was posted in your blog.

No blog? No problem!  Just send in the picture.

The pictures and the links will be posted in the monthly 'Minis and More' parade at A Quilting Life and here at Island Life Quilts for everyone to enjoy and we'll tell you about the pattern for the next month.

Check back on June 1st to find out what pattern we'll be starting with.

As always, everyone is welcome to participate.

See you on Monday!

Spring 2015 Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's time for the Spring 2015 Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side!

My entry is Mini Shine.

 It's a wonderful star pattern created by Sherri McConnell from the blog A Quilting Life.

This pattern is fast, fun, and addictive!

I'm planning on making the full size version someday.

Of course this one is an entry in the Mini Quilt Category.

I made it with the Another Year of Schnibbles group in December and I quilted it and put the binding on in time to enter it in the festival.

You can read more about it in one of my previous posts.

The fabric is Nine Dots by Carrie Nelson and the background is called Confetti Dots by RJR fabric.

I love how the pieces of confetti on the background fabric jazz it up a bit!

Perfect for a quilt entered in a festival.

I am a fan of white backgrounds, but using other colors or something a little different for the background fabric is something I try to do to add some variety to my quilts.

Mini Shine is quilted using a scallop stitch on my Bernina.

The scallops are staggered and the spaces between the rows are varied for a different look.

The Recipes For Success backing fabric and my absolute favorite kind of binding fabric, complete this cute little quilt.

It's difficult for me to bind a quilt without using stripes!

Enjoy the Blogger's Quilt Festival until May 29!


There will be so many wonderful quilts to admire in lots of different categories.

Thanks to Amy for organizing another amazing festival!

Farm Girl

It's time for my Farm Girl Vintage Sew Along update this week.

Here's the Autumn Star block that I finished yesterday.

I love the citron and pink triangles in this one.

Since I'm making the 6 inch size block, some of the pieces are pretty small!

Now, the Baby Chick block.  It's so cute!

Yes, I know he has no legs.  I do need to work on that.

Hand embroidery or machine? I'm not sure what I want to do here.

I've got my fabrics picked out for tomorrow, Farm Girl Friday!

Short and sweet

My Apron Strings block is finished for the Farm Girl Vintage Sew Along.

I'm ready to start the next two blocks tomorrow.  Hope to see you there!

A Beeutiful week of quilting ahead

It's going to be a fun week!

It's the beginning of the Farm Girl Vintage Sew Along.

I've never participated in one of Lori Holt's famous sew alongs on her blog A Bee In My Bonnet and I'm excited to be starting my first.

The month of April was spent debating which fabrics to use and pondering different background choices.

Pre-made bundles or totally scrappy?  That cool, new Gardenvale line? Low volume backgrounds or solids? The choices were endless.  

So endless that I almost gave up!

You see, my experience with sew alongs hasn't been the best in the past.

Once a long, long, long time ago I was stuck close to the end of a sew along, a few blocks away from the finish with only fabrics left that I didn't like.  

All the blocks I had made were from a line that wasn't available anymore, so I was at my wits end. What to do?? 

I never did finish that one. Those blocks and that extra fabric went into a box never to be seen again.  

Well I take that back, I have seen them again, only out of the corner of my eye.

I just glance in the other direction and quickly close that box.  I'm determined not to let it happen again.  Thus, the stressing about picking out the fabrics for this whole thing.  

Last week finally I thought, "Good grief, get it together! If everyone else can do this, you can too!"

Part of my trouble was that my time spent cutting up so many charm squares, you know I love them, has left me with very few scraps appropriate for this sort of thing. 

You don't get too many scraps leftover after using charm packs, so some fabric purchasing was in order and I had to get the book too.  Can't complain about that!

    

In the end I went with a bunch of brighter scrappy bundles, some from single lines, and some that are a mix that I plan to going to combine, so I don't back myself up into a corner at the end.  

I figure this will allow me to easily add new fabrics to the mix if I need to, instead of being locked into one fabric line, that may or may not be readily available by the time I finish.

Now I'm excited about it!

I wasn't planning on dragging you through my whole thought process on this.

It was just going to be a cute little, "I hope you are doing this sew along too" post, but that's not how it turned out.

Sometimes I put more thought into picking out the fabrics for a quilt than maybe I need to. That's just how I do it!

See you at the sew along on Farm Girl Friday!

   

April Showers

Only when I started thinking about writing this post, did it occurred to me that it was really timely to be starting this quilt right now.

A few weeks back I started cutting April Showers fabric to make Camille's Puddle Jumping pattern.  Definitely a great pattern and fabric line to be working on when April begins! And with all the clouds and rain we've been having, Puddle Jumping is what we've been doing lately.

I loved this fabric line and this pattern from the beginning. Maybe so much so, that I hesitated to start it for fear I'd mess it up.  Does anyone else do that?  It sounds silly as I'm typing it, but sometimes I put off doing the things I'd like to do, because maybe they won't go as well as I think they will, or because I want to have something great to look forward to working on.

I decided this quilt was going to the top of my to do list no matter what, and I'd start cutting in-between completing a few UFO's.  Cutting is my least favorite part of the process, so I figured cutting some of it here and there would make it less painful for me and sure enough, before I knew it I had most of the quilt cut and ready to go!  

And now we've come to the block above, my first one!  I was planning to be able to show you at least two completed blocks, but in my haste to get the other finished and photographed last night, I sewed it together wrong and ran out of daylight. Ugh!

One picture of one block will have to do for today!  I'm looking forward to making more.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is the AYOS And A Little Bit More Parade coming up in the next few days.  Although I didn't make the Sampler quilt designed by Carrie Nelson that was chosen for the AYOS pattern this month, I can't wait to see what everyone else has done with it!

Visit the blogs of both Sinta and Sherri to see the entire AYOS parade in the next few days.  I'm eager to see what these kind ladies have in store for next month's pattern.

Maybe you'll join in too! 

February

What a quick month! And not even a blog post over here!

I was thinking I would do a post today and give you an update on what I've been doing.  

When I went to take the pictures off my camera, I realized that I've hardly been taking any.  I need to catch up!

Anyway, this month I've seriously cleaned up my quilting area and I've decided it's time for me to tackle some UFO's.

Then I finished a big UFO quilt that I needed to put borders on, and I quilted my Mini Shine too, but I haven't taken pictures of either one yet.

It's dark and rainy out right now, too dark for decent pictures so I'll have to wait to show you those until the sun comes out again and I'm just not sure when that'll be.

Here is some of what I did have on the camera from this month. 

Look at his amazing flying geese infinity scarf from Target!! 

Run, don't walk over to Target and get one if you can.

With so many colors in it, it goes with everything.

On last check, my Target still had some, maybe yours does too.  What better accessory for a quilter?

And now here are a few pictures of my totally completed Dimestore Schnibble.

I did show some pictures of it quilted but not bound, a few posts back, so if you're tired of seeing this one, I understand.

Just know, I like to post totally finished quilt pictures at some point so I can refer to them later, so this had to be done.

The label is on and everything!  Sadly no label pictures here.

Also know, that the binding on this quilt is straight, even thought it looks wonky in this picture.

Trust me its very straight.  I probably spent way too much time making sure of it.  The lumpy grass was just not my friend here.

Now that I've thought about what I need take some pictures of, the next sunny day I'll be sure to get that done and fill you in,

What did you work on in February?