Works in Progress Wednesday

Yes, that's snow in the background.  We still have lots.

I thought I would take one last picture outside in the snow,

before the rest of it melts.

Even though we're all pretty sick of winter,

I love how photos look with snow in the background, so crisp and white!

I've been working on bottled rainbows all week.

I decided to make them a little smaller (these measure 10 3/4 inches square),

because I already had a stack of batting cut into 11 inch squares,

for a project I started several years ago.

(It's amazing what you find when you clean out your sewing space!)

This project is going to be a wall hanging for my sewing space,

so I don't want it to get too big.  

Still working on these rainbow scrap pennant blocks, too.

I haven't made any more, but I did FMQ the white portions in a small meandering design.  These are a bit of work to piece together, but quilting them is fun.

I'll need A LOT more, though -- as this is headed for a quilt for Lexi's bed.

She LOVES rainbows.

My biggest work in progress has been cleaning up and organizing my sewing space.  Here's a sneak peak of some progress:

I had this crazy idea that in order to completely organize everything,

I needed more pincushions.

It would be IMPOSSIBLE to organize my pins without new pincushions, right?!

These are Heather Bailey's Square Deal pincushions, free pattern found here.

Making these was a bit frustrating.

The button drove me nuts -- I used a "no tools" kit for this, which made me see very clearly that I do need a button making tool -- I'm assuming these exist?!

And trying to pull ribbon through the center of the pincushion was a crazy idea,

even with a pliers and "some patient wiggling" as the pattern suggests.

But anyway, I'm happy to have them done,

and I think they look pretty cute on the shelf.

Hopefully I'll finish up the re-organization tomorrow!

 I've made very little progress this week on my double hourglass (hand quilting)
or the paper pieced goldfish in bags.
But once I get the sewing space done, it's back to work on these WIPs!

Have fun checking out other WIPs here:

Tumbler Quilt

I finished up what I'm calling my Tumbler quilt this weekend.  I used Amanda Jean's pattern (or "recipe") at Moda Bake Shop.  This is a great pattern, easy to piece, fun to put together, and it was fun to quilt, too.  I originally had planned on doing straight line quilting, but then changed my mind and tried wavy line quilting.  I love it!

 

Most of the time I don't have the energy left to make a pieced back for my quilts, I usually just get lazy and use one fabric, maybe two, or a sheet that I found on clearance somewhere.  But this time I decided to throw some coordinating fabric together and I love how it came together.  It's so much more interesting than a plain back!

Mode Bake Shop is having a monthly contest in March for quilts made using charm packs, so this one is perfect to enter!  I used 4 charm packs from Moda's Wee Woodland line, plus a few pieces from my stash to make the quilt just a bit bigger.



Linking up to:

Check out all the creative projects at Megan's Blog!

Vacation Photos

Amazing and Beautiful!

On the balcony of our hotel room (see the ocean in the background?!)

Hawaiian ladies

Holly at the black sand beach

Hapuna Beach

The pool at our hotel

Ready for Sunset Watching

Hanging out at the airport with a new friend they met at the pool!

Lexi with her "masterpiece," a picture for her teacher

Letters and leaves, for the bugs who may visit our balcony

It's hard to return from vacation . . . . 

we had so much fun enjoying the warm water,

the sunny weather,

and spending our days together.

Works in Progress Wednesday

We're back from vacation, a week in paradise.  I think that sewing makes it easier to come home -- as soon as we got on the plane, I started thinking about all the projects that I was looking forward to working on!  (more vacation photos, coming soon)

 I had started on this project before we left, and I finished it up yesterday.  I found the idea here.  I had been wanting to try wavy line quilting for the longest time, and this was a cute little project to try out lots of different types of quilting.  The wavy line quilting took me awhile to figure out -- it didn't work to just elongate the zig zag stitch on my machine --this just gave me bigger zig zags!  But I figured it out by using a "decorative" stitch that I'd never tried before, and I LOVE how it looks!

finished with an invisible zipper

I had been planning to quilt this "tumbler" quilt with straight lines, but after falling in love with wavy line quilting, I changed my mind.  I finished quilting this after the girls were in bed last night.  Unfortunately I had to order fabric for the binding (I have never made a quilt using charm squares, so I didn't think about binding until it was nearly done!), so I won't be able to finish it until that arrives in the mail.

Oh, I almost forgot, I picked out fabric for the Supernova Quilt Along at Freshly Pieced!  I think this Fat Eight Bundle of Sugar Pop will be perfect.  Now I just need to decide if I should use aqua or snow Kona for the solid.

Linking up to:
 

New Quilt Along

I'm so excited about this new quilt along with Lee at her blog Freshly Pieced:


This is such a pretty quilt pattern, I can't wait to get started!  A quilt along is really a wonderful way to make a quilt.  It's fun to get to tackle the steps together, with other quilters, and get to share progress along the way.  Join us!

Happy Friday!

Lexi, at 7am, saying "I'm a Leprechaun, Mommy!"

It's been a good day!

When I should have been packing for our trip, I whipped up these cute little bags this morning.  I thought some of our travel games needed a little pouch.  And it was so much more fun to make these than pack!

I made an extra large one for my Scrappy Swap Partner (Sew Sara's Swap) to stuff with scraps -- I thought it would be much more fun to find the scraps in this than in a zip lock baggie!

Kristen sent me a note this morning that she nominated me for a blog award.  WOW!  How fun!  Thanks, Kristen!  What a happy friday!

I love Kristen's blog (K*D Quilts) -- she does beautiful work with bright, cheery fabrics.  It's always fun to see what she's up to!


Ok, this is so terrible of me . . . but I don't have time to pass on the award like I'm supposed to!  There are so many great new bloggers out there that I don't have time to decide on just 6, and contact them today!


It's time to get on a plane, we're heading to warmer weather!
And hoping that our snow will be melted by the time we return.
I'll be back in a week or so . . . . .

Works in Progress

First, a finished project!

My tiny double hourglass pillow is done!

I made up this smaller version of a double hourglass quilt to try circular quilting.

I wanted to see how I liked it prior to quilting my large double hourglass.  

Blogged here

Conclusion:  I love the circular quilting on these squares.

And I have fallen in love with hand quilting.

So I'm going to go for it on the big quilt  -- 1 square done, 55 to go!

Thanks to everyone for your advice last week about the circles and hand quilting.

I've been working on these pennant blocks, too.

I decided to QAYG after reading Rachel's recent post on Stitched in Color.

So I did some FMQ stippling in the white portion of the blocks.  

When I piece the entire quilt, I'll do some straight line quilting on the borders.

I made up 2 fish blocks with these dots, so far.

I'm trying to teach myself how to paper piece.  I fell in love with this block from Poppyprint (pattern found at Quilters Cache), and MUST make this someday!  The paper piecing pattern on this site is free, and they have a beginning lesson/tutorial that they recommend that you try first.  It was not nearly as difficult as I had imagined.  These cute little blocks finish at about 4.5 inches square, so either I'm going to need alot of these, or I'll add some borders.

Last project (that I have photos of!): the charm square tumbler quilt from Moda Bake Shop.  A great little project.  Fairly quick to piece, and I think it will be fun to quilt.  When I get around to it!

Check out some amazing projects at:

A New Pillow!

I used #8 pearl cotton to hand quilt
concentric circles in each block.
I think I'm in love with hand quilting!

Invisible zipper closure

On the back I made a large hourglass, and quilted the white portions.

I think Lexi (and Sheepie) are happy with the new pillow!

Check out all the other amazing pillows at: