Summer sewing

We're enjoying summer here!

School's been out for awhile and we've been doing plenty of biking, camping, eating fun foods, watching movies and all that other great summer stuff!

  

 As far as summer sewing goes, right now I'm catching up on blocks for the Summer Sparkle Quilt Along by Faith Jones from Fresh Lemons at the Bernina blog We All Sew. 

 My house is covered in stars right now!

The ombre fabric by V and Co. has always interested me, but I never quite found a project for it until now.

These clean simple blocks and fabrics called out to me and I was quick to get started once I saw this fresh summer quilt.

Will I have it done in time to actually use it this summer?

Well, maybe not, but I'm sure giving it a try!

I did have a recent finish, quilted, bound and everything and I'll be back to share it with you soon.

eXactly what I was going for

I chose to make a big one this time!

This month's Schnibbles pattern could be found in Carrie Nelson's book Schnibbles Times Two. 

 Each quilt in the book has a pattern for both a small version, made with charm squares, and a larger version made with layer cakes.  

Since it's been awhile since I made a large quilt, I chose to make it big!

eXtra large in fact!

Well, not yet......I'm debating about whether or not I should still add the borders to it.

It's pretty big without the borders, but I do have plenty of leftover strips and layer cake squares that I could use.

I think I'll leave it alone for awhile and see what I think about the border later.   

The Layer Cakes I used were from the Circa 1934 fabric line by Cosmo Cricket.

I love the numbers and letters in these fabrics.

Oh, and the dots too!

The background fabric I found is cream with subtle swirling lines and dots that I thought went well with the dots in the Circa 1934 fabric.

I love it when things work out that way!

Sometimes I agonize over my fabric choices.  This is one just came together easily. 

You'll find plenty of amazing quilts in the Schnibbles parade on Sherri's blog and on Sinta's too in the beginning of June, just a few days away.

This will be the only Schnibbles Parade for a few months, so be sure to stop by and visit!

We'll be taking a break from the parades to work on unfinished Schnibbles projects over the summer.

Carrie has so many new, amazing patterns coming up! 

If you've been thinking about joining us, I hope to see you when we start sewing Schnibbles again.

Enjoy your weekend!   

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Hey everybody!  I'm here today to tell you about my entry in the Mini Quilt Category in the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side.

I've decided to go with a small quilt that I recently finished.  It's my Mini Swoon designed by Camille Roskelley from Thimble Blossoms.

I love quilts that use text as a background fabric, but I haven't made many myself.

I thought this pattern with these bold fabrics could look nice with a text background, so I thought I'd give it a try.

The text fabric I used was from Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater and the other fabrics I used were Atomic by Michael Miller.

Part way throughout the process, I started wondering what I was thinking using the text as a background. I wasn't sure that there was enough contrast, but now I'm really pleased with the results!

The straight line quilting that I did was inspired by Debbie from A Quilter's Table.

For a few more pictures and details about this quilt you can read more about it in my recent post, Mini Swoon. 

I had a good time playing with this one and I'm happy to be entering it in The Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Thanks for stopping by!

Grad gift

This bag is part of a graduation gift that I was able to mail off yesterday.

I thought I'd share a quick picture of it with you.

I know I make lots of these Lollipop Bags, but they are just so cute, fun to make, and they're great gifts too!

The pattern is a Terry Atkinson Design.

I love the pink and purple batik fabrics in this one!

May Madness

I can't believe how far we are into May already!  Time is flying by! 

Only a few more weeks left of school here, then summer truly begins!

In the past few weeks I've been doing some quilting on the frame, trying out some new things.

I've found that the wooden sticks that you get to stir your paint with, work well to keep the edges of my quilt straight when it's on the frame.

I've also discovered that using painter's tape to mark the area of the quilt that I can reach while quilting a section, works better for me than using a disappearing marker.

The tape can be reused on the next row and there are no marks to remove later.   

I'm putting the binding on this one now and soon I can call it a finish!

I'm also in the process of working on this month's Schnibble's project and making a graduation gift too. 

With any luck, I'll be able to put some time into all of these today before we put some spiced cheese stuffed burgers on the grill this evening.  It is a beautiful day with highs in the 70's!  Pretty low temperatures for this time of year here in Florida.

This is kind of random but I've been meaning to ask......Did anyone else notice the commercial for tax help last month that said something like, "You accomplished a lot last year,"  and had someone holding out a flying geese quilt top?  I thought that was pretty neat!  I think they were saying that making a quilt top was accomplishing a lot! I just thought that was interesting to see in a commercial!

In other random happenings, some of the comments that have been left on my blog are not making it to my email and I have no idea why.  From what I understand, I'm not the only one that this has happened to recently.  So if you've left a comment and I haven't responded, I do apologize.  I've also had lots of comments I've left on other blogs get kicked back to me.  Hopefully, this issue has been resolved.

In the next few days I plan to put an entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side. I hope you do too! So I'll be back soon with my entry post.

Enjoy your weekend!     

Mini Swoon

My first Swoon quilt is mostly finished!

True Confession- The binding is not actually sewn on the back of the quilt in these pictures, it's just pinned.  You see, it was supposed to rain lots tonight, so I knew even if I had a chance to sew the binding on today, I wouldn't be able to get a good picture.

And between college son coming home from school for the summer, and just the usual craziness going on, I figured the time was right this morning to get a good picture.

This is as close as I've ever been to being totally done on a quilt before the Schnibble Parade so I'm happy about that.  Usually, I've just got the top done!     

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I was able to quilt it so quickly, because I was inspired by Debbie from A Quilter's Table. 

I read her post a few weeks ago when she explained how she did the quilting on her Mini Swoon.  At the time I didn't know I would be making a Mini Swoon, so the quilt pattern she had used didn't stick with me, but the quilting sure did.

I kept going back to it in my mind when I was thinking about how I would quilt my Mini Swoon.

Finally, when I went back to her post to reread it, I noticed she had done her cool straight line quilting on a Mini Swoon!

Since she was kind enough to share how she came up with her quilting design in her post that you can read here, I figured she wouldn't mind if I tried the same type of design. I used a thin metal yardstick to make my rectangles and my placement is not quite the same as Debbie's, but the look is the same.

I love the chevron - like pattern it creates!

I'd love to try this again and throw a few more zig zags in there!

And yes, I did say that this is my first Swoon project.  I just don't know why I didn't make one before!

Camille's Mini Swoon pattern is now one of my favorite blocks!  Soooo fun to make!

I went a little crazy and used some text fabric for the background, I believe it's from Sweetwater, and I used a few fat quarters that my sister gave me from the Atomic fabric line by Michael Miller.  I threw in the black solid from my stash.   

 On the back, I used the leftover fabrics from my blocks to create a pieced backing.  I used the remaining fabric to make the binding too.  I love it when things work out like that!

The parade on Sinta's blog and on Sherri's blog too, features Camille's patterns this month so be sure to stop by and visit Sinta and Sherri and see what everyone chose!  I hope you'll join us!

Label love

I love labels!

I don't consider a quilt done until it has a label.

That's not to say that they're aren't any quilts around here without labels......I'm not that good...... I just don't consider those quilts done yet. 

I label my quilts so I can remember when I made them........because sometimes I forget.

Well, maybe I label them so my friends and relatives will have information about my quilts many years down the road to preserve their history. 

That sounds better.  I'll go with that reason. 

Knowing that I'm always on the search for labels, my friend JoAnne from the The Patriotic Quilter was sweet enough to send me this amazing package of labels that she collected while attending a quilt show.

I was so thrilled to receive them!  Thank you so much JoAnne!!!

Then on top of that, she was sweet enough to text me recently and ask if I had any of the new Sweetwater labels in my collection, as she was in a quilt shop looking at a panel of them.

How sweet is that? So thoughtful of her!

It certainly brightened my day to know she thought of me.

Thanks again JoAnne!

Blog friends are amazing!

After I'm done writing this, I'm going to get finish up my mini Swoon for the parade next week.

What pattern are you making for the parade, if you're joining in this month? 

The month of April certainly got away from me. I can't believe this is my first April post. "Yikes!"

Next thing we know it'll be summer!