Round 15 Giveaway....and a Peek!:)

Yep!!  Old Red Barn Quilt Along will be starting Round 15 on April 1st and you know who will be leading it!:)

It will be totally stash happy...totally scrappy happy and if you have some yardage of a collection and didn't know what to do with it....this could be your ticket!:)

So far I have pieced seven sample tops and I have another one at the sewing machine because this Round is SOOOOoo easy!:) The possibilities are endless and I can't wait to see what you all do with it cause I know you are going to blow my mind!!

 I am so happy to be doing another Round at the ORBC I thought we'd get more excitement going with a giveaway!  Go to the ORBC Flickr group to enter....I'm asking everyone to tell me their fav song of the moment and you can see mine!:) Giveaway is open to ALL!

Here is the promised peek....figured it out yet?:)
Go tell your friends!!!

~d

Story of a Twenty Year Itch

Finally Scratched!!

 Twenty years ago, when our girl was seven and our boy was five,  I took a class at the local community center on quilting....hand piecing to be exact!

A trip to the local Joann (no quilt shops about at that time) and eight calico prints later (yes calico!) I was learning the old school way of tracing templates and pinning corners to help keep my stitches straight.  It was taking forever and I lost interest and time.

About ten years ago I unearthed the unfinished blocks and got to it again.  Got as far as sashing and basting to batting and back.  Since I hand pieced the whole top I figured it deserved to be hand quilted as well.  That stopped me in my tracks and once again it was packed away!

Last year while sorting my stash I uncovered this UFO.  While it has been languishing my confidence in my skills had improved AND I discovered quilting with Perle cotton. Yes!!

Twenty years later it's done. 

 Six foot square with silly cornerstones in the middle. I don't know why I didn't do it in all the corners of the sashing.  Must have wanted the top done!!!

After twenty years I still love the colors if not the calico prints!:)

In other news we had a lovely day last week and the garden needed expanding. After relocating the blackberries and blueberries inside the fence to save them from the deer we needed more space for veggies.  Two big post, leftover wire, two huge holes later an additional 7' x 20' was created.  

 Over the new addition went compost and black plastic.  Hopefully that will speed up the decomposition of the grass and we can till it under in a couple of weeks.  Left the two posts tall to have a place to put birdhouses and garden gewgaws. 

I think lights and a bunting would be great!!

 This morning we are enjoying the sunshine...before the snow that is supposed to come tonight!! Sometimes I think Spring will never come but you know that in several months we will be groaning about the heat!

Right now my newly finished twenty year old quilt is coming in handy!:)

~d

Baby Stuff and a Scramble

My pal Sandie is going to be a grandma. 

I already showed you the Steggie and taggie made for grandbaby.  Having quite a bit of fabric left I decided to play again. A little chevron bucket came out of playtime and with the leftover HSTs Steggie got his own mini quilt!

 Steggie loves it, especially the squirrels and bunnies on the backing fabric!

The girl made the expecting couple a wonderful scrapbook with artfully decorated pages for each month of baby's first year and came up with the idea of baby business cards.  These can be kept in the diaper bag and when baby does something for the first time or some other adorableness her parents can record the memory on one of the cards and stick it right in the scrapbook.  I made the little case to hold the cards. I think it's a brilliant idea. Wonder if we could sell these?:)

Couple days before the shower I decided to buy this growth chart panel from work. I did a little quilting with perle cotton around the tree and critters. Bound it with some green swirls and stuck it in the wash to get that crinkly goodness. 

Wish we had one of these when our two were babes!:)

Now I'm trying to get some applique finished.  Here are four 12 1/2" squares that need finishing....unfortunately they are four of forty-eight!!

With that much sewing ahead I need fortification in the form of good food.  The boy and his girl took care of that with a marvelous tofu scramble, french toast, roasted fingerling potatoes and avocado.   Goodness it was good!  

I'm excited to announce that at Old Red Barn Co.Quilt Along I am getting ready to host Round Fifteen!!! 

Want an idea of something quick and easy you can make right from your stash? 

How about twenty 4.5" width of fabric strips?  

Stay tuned!!!

Slate is excited!!

I think he's dreaming of all the snow melting!

~d

ps...Ann P....this is for you!;)

Hexy MF is in the HOUSE (after a photo shoot in the snow!)

Gosh, when did I start this?  I think it was June 2012 fresh after meeting Katy (i'm at ginger monkey) at the first Fat Quarterly Retreat in London.  I'm so inspired by that girl!

 Katy wrote us a bang up tutorial and you know with any quilt pattern, you do as much or as little as you want.  Only thing I didn't do from Katy's pattern was the vine-like stem. 

 Added a few more smaller flowers and leaves around the edges. The flowery fabric with the brown center is leftover from a dress I made for the girl when she was around six or seven!

The backing fabric is my fave Grunge!!  

 After sewing all the flowers (85!!) together and appliqueing them to the backing we were supposed to leave the backing behind the flowers but I couldn't stand the thought of my favorite fabric back there sort of wasted so I trimmed all the way around and got it out of there!:)

 My pal Linda did the quilting because again it was way too big to drag through my machine.

 Plus there is just no way anything I could manage would do it justice.  This quilt deserved superior quilting! Besides....I hand piece the entire freaking thing. Figured I could give myself and my hands a break!!

 Linda and I had a little miscommunication resulting in some fabric I added to make the backing bigger to fit her machine being quilted and it was UGLY fabric! 

I fixed that by adding a wider binding to part of it. 

Guess I could have taken a photo without a shadow across the binding!

Sooooo much snow and now we are supposed to get rain.  

Noah, where's the Ark?!! 

Oh, that's right-we have a boat in the basement!;)

~d

I had to share this Valentine's Day Story

Our girl wrote this story after making some snow people yesterday.  

She is the maroon truck in the story!

It's amazing she had any energy after three hours of snow people and shoveling.  

We had over 17 inches of snow then a couple more last night and more is coming tomorrow. 

 We need to go back out and shovel the rest of the drive or we are going no where!!

Happy Valentine's Day to all!!

~d

FAL # 4 Polaroids Forever!!!

Who doesn't love a Polaroid camera? Instant fun at any gathering. Big white-framed magic! Selfies on celluloid.  Then someone had the great idea to use cloth!

Yep, another fun swap, the Polaroid Swap group over at fun filled Flickr!

It all started at the Bitty Block Committee as a side swap but was so popular it branched off to a separate group.  The larger Polaroids are from the BBC so unframed they started as 3.5" blocks.  The smaller ones are from the side swap and new group so with frames were around the same size.

 All sashed up they ended up as nine inch blocks for a finished size of 54"x 63".  How about that wonderful flannel backing fabric. It's a Riley Blake for only $7.50 here!!!  I had a hard time picking because of all the wonderful choices!

Another reason for the multitude of mini blocks was a great package I received from my pal Sooz....she asked if I would like her blocks....of course I said yes and soon this fantastic package of tiny goodness arrived. I pulled out what I wanted and the remainders went to Laura in California to make a quilt for her granddaughter....paying it forward!:)

Thanks to all the gang at the BBC, Polariod swap and Sooz...couldn't and wouldn't have done it without you all!!

FAL #5 is all pieced together and going to my coworker Kathleen to be longarmed.

This puppy is 70"x 84" so I'm not wrestling it through my machine!!

Need to ironed it first.

I need a bigger ironing board!

~d

ps- Yes, we still have snow and are supposed to get more on Thursday!

FAL #3 Sew Fun Bee Blocks Together Forever!

Fifteen months....that's how long I have had these blocks.

 I asked for 15 1/2"low volume blocks and the gang at the Sew Fun Bee came through!

 One of the SFB peeps sent me a little extra piece of fabric so instead of making a block my self I put it in the center and hand quilted the whole thing. I SOOOO love it!!

Found a couple hunks of fabric in my stash for the backing.

Binding is from the collection Close to Home.  Looks like pebbles. I really, really like low volume quilts.  I have a couple of other ideas peculating in my head. 

By the looks of my jelly cupboard/stash storage I seem to have a lot of possibilities for low volume!
Thanks so much Sew Fun Bee Gang!!:)

~d