9 p.m. Winner

My fairy (fabric) godmother sent me some lovely prints for me to play with!
What? Never heard of her?
Well, I am blessed to have one, and she sends me goodies every now and then.
I recvd a package this week with the red yellow/black yellow fabrics, another red that I used in the outer blocks of the mini quilt above.

Some cool old New York fabric, and a bunch of whites for my ON POINT quilt!
What a doll! Thank you fairy FABRIC godmother!

I did these other African inspired quilts a year ago after seeing a show on
African textiles at the MET...
Fabulous!
I've started hand quilting both of them, but, SIGH, they are ,
not done.
yet.
one day.
I'm hoping now that I've posted them AGAIN, perhaps I will finish them...
Wishful thinking??

Now I am seeing patterns everywhere....

*****

One more Xmas gift done. My godson, O, loves down hill BMX, he likes to ride his bike around with a helmut on, like the BIG GUYS.... He's 5. ;-) So I did this drawing of a bike flying through the air... cut it out like a stencil, taped it on with PAINTERS tape... (ha! very fancy stuff here..) and free motioned in the details... over a gray piece of fabric...

Here it is! I think he'll love it... Now I have to do that Star wars shirt...

******

Oh! Canada~
And last but not least, BRENDA, of scraps and strings was the name picked out of the hat by B, she will be getting the box of scraps!

Thanks for making my bins a little emptier! ;-)
Thanks everyone, for your nice comments!!

HAPPY FRIDAY

Ok, Family quilt top done.
My indecisiveness came from my daughter wanting just the opposite of what i wanted yesterday.
Darn Mommy guilt.
I wanted one big family quilt, she wanted one for each of us...
I also want just the log cabins... Mom is winning this one... ;-)


MOST of the Sis Boom POW! Blocks are done and in! I think I am just waiting on two people's blocks... Can't wait to find a good home for this Charity quilt.

Don't they look Fantastic! I look forward to putting these quilt together.

CLEANING, CUTTING, DE-CLUTTERING....

I've gone through two more bins in my de-clutter my scraps binge...

I have a nice box full of larger pieces that I have a lot of scraps for.

not really crumbs.. fat 1/8ths and strips mostly.

Any takers?

send me an email today only.

I'll draw a name at 9pm tonight.

If more than one wants the box, I'll pick a name out of the hat...

(the photo is not the box in reference)

Have a great weekend!

decisions

Circles and Stripes top is done! Yippee! I've wanted to do a nice stripe quilt for ages... So I finally got around to it... I might not want to let this quilt go... I just love red.


So indecisive today!
These are family blocks that me, B, my mother and niece made.
My original idea was to put one of each blocks into lap quilts one for each of us...
The fabrics I had chosen, once I made them, I really disliked them. So they sat in a box for a year. Then as I was cleaning up my stash I had this yellow/brown weird fabric,
(I'd always wondered why on earth i bought it) then it struck me, those old blocks!

So I dug them out, and decided to punch them up with some solids. I will use the stripe for borders. But now that I have a bunch of the blocks all scrappy and wonky, I kind of like them all in one big quilt!!!!
so now I don't know what to do... 4 lap quilts? or one big one? (I'm leaning for one big one)

Then, I did this snow boots, hats scarves ear muffs gloves and snowball applique a week or so ago. And I had decided to use up my swap Xmas blocks, like in the first picture, but finishing it off with a nice red border ALL around...

But then again, I could just make TWO MORE blocks and put them all together with a red border ALL around... and put the applique in entirely something else.... !!!!!!!

argh!~ this one I really can't decide what to do with....

what to do, what to do...

I lean towards all log cabins, as the applique picture thing is so not me, it hit me one day as a fun project to try to machine applique, but I have hand appliqued them... The red dots are actually ear muffs if your wondering I just haven't gotten around to putting the strap on it in the photo...

Becky was giving away some scraps, so I offered to swap some scraps with her so I'd have some new goodies to play with... here's my stash! And a few cute little holiday ornaments!
Thanks Becky!

productivity

Look what I got in the mail yesterday! my BEE!!! Thanks Shelly! I Love it!
ha! She appliqued my little Bee from my old logo, which I put on all my packages!


****

One commenter had many questions how I can get so much done... asked if I have a housekeeper, husband around etc...

here's my answer...
I work fast and in a particular, (scattered way!)

I sew during the day while my daughter is at school. Mondays are baking days, and I make many meals that can be eaten as leftovers. I do not have a nanny.

I do have a regular babysitter for Thursday eve's only,
so I can have a date night with my hubby. This event does does not have any affect on my sewing time...
My lovely husband is home every night for dinner. I pick up my daughter from school everyday, and we have family time til she goes to bed...
then I hand sew things as I watch my favorite shows on Tivo!

It's not perfect. Sometimes dinners are very simple because I can't tear myself away...
But we make it work.

Laundry is in, dishes are in the dishwasher...

I work fast to get the ideas out of my head and then I go back and
work on them when the time is right...

For instance the tile quilt. All the blocks were slightly tacked,fused so
that now I can work on a block during the evening while I watch my shows. The borders are cut, so once I have the blocks all appliqued, then I whip the borders on, and wallaa!



Or cutting up all those squares out of my scraps.
I did this for an hour last night after B went to bed...
I see another red quilt in my future!

My studio is right next to my daughters room, so I don't run the machine once she goes to bed.
So it is all about planning it out, and leaving things to work on in the eve or things I can take with me while B is at gymnastics for an hour, or take to the house on the weekends...

Part of this is the reason why I have so many projects going at once.
Sew sew sew all day, hand sew in the eve...

here's the pool table in our loft. It's taken over as my layout table...
These are: a stack of finished quilts, the alphabet "B" project , B's Buddha wall quilt, the ON POINT Quilt blocks, which will be on hold til I do my swaps with some of you! two quilts for binding, the scrappy happy quilt and the Black and gray windows Quilt, otherwise known as the BOB quilt, the Tile quilt blocks, Xmas log cabin blocks,
(ALL evening sewing work)
And the recently finished Parsley Patch quilt...
**

Also, I like to keep you guys on your toes... if I keep showing you the same project for a week you'd get bored and stop reading my blog! I find the blog to be as enjoyable as sewing. It's inspiring to me to put down my projects, and think about them in a different way. And I like the idea that I might inspire a few of you... I get inspiration from you all, so I like the idea of full circle moments...

Does that explain it? Others call it quilters A.D.D.... Take your pick! I don't mind!

scrap tile Quilt

I am so tired of my scraps.
I put this tile quilt together recently to get rid of some of my scraps. Of course I still have more!
I didn't even know there was a name for this kind of quilt, until I saw this post on Barbara's blog.
I can't wait to see that book... It looks interesting!

I began going through bin by bin of my scraps to cut them all down into squares,
so that I can rid myself of 15 years worth of scraps...
I have 5 bins of regular color coordinated scraps.
Another for batiks,
another for solids
and another for vintage scraps...

Like I have time to do this?!!? But it does feel good when I make my way through a bin...
and they look so nice cut into squares!

2", 2.5", 3" 4" and 5" depending on what i can get out of piece of fabric...

One thing I don't have enough is, are lights with white...
I've used up many of what I had to make these flower applique squares on point blocks...
But I just don't have enough fabrics with white in them.

Can anyone swap me some 4" cut blocks with whites in them for lights? I need to make 4 more blocks to finish my quilt top....
in oranges, purples, rusty browns, pinks.
13 blocks in each color way.
cut at 4"

Like this block below...

The red circle stripe quilt is ALMOST done...

It just looks so cute... I love it.

And one more binding done, on my Parsley Patch...Scratch another off that horribly long list!
I thought I had a lot of bindings to do, but guess how many LABELS I still need to make!!!! sigh. to many to mention...

Shoot me an email if we can swap some 4"er's...
;-)

thanks!

weekend.

Pick up sticks is done! I can scratch that off my list of things to do!
Yippee!!

And I don't have to date it, Since it has 9 (IX) for September, and 2009 (MMIX) in the bottom right. It was a fun quilt. And I love all the browns in it... Definitely has some favorite fabrics in this quilt.

I've gotten a lot done over the weekend. I have 3 here left to bind. And hope to get them done this week, although only ONE is a rush for Xmas... So i may procrastinate on the others...


I go the flowers all appliqued down on the first 4 or 9 blocks for this quilt.
They are going to be one big quilt all together... Each of these blocks are about 24" square.

I'm also working on two tshirts for my godson... He likes hand made things! ;-)
Last year he got the Oliver quilt, hmm, I think I might not have posted a completed picture of his quilt! Anyway here is some machine quilting i did on it, with the help of B last year...
I didn't think a little tyke would be so excited about a quilt for a gift, but his mother just told me he'll be sleeping with it until college... He loved it when he opened it last year, and I got to hear him on the phone happily exclaim how much he loved the camouflage on the quilt!
So this year my little buddy is getting a star wars shirt and a downhill bmx shirt... Just trying to figure out if I should paint it on or machine stitch it on...
He's a boy who knows what he likes, so I know he'll love these shirts...

I am going to be very busy this week. So I hope to plow through a few bindings, and finish up my red circle quilt top. I swear I will not start a new top this week.

I have enough to work on...
my dresdens are still begging me to finish them, but I am just not jumping up and down over them yet...
Where are you inspiration??
(can you wait til at least Thursday? I have to much to do here)

PIXIE DUST DONE!

The Pixie Dust Quilt is done!
Washed and fabulous.

It's a beauty. You all did such a beautiful job on your blocks!
Thank you Stacy at Pixie Dust Fabrics for donating the fabrics.
(Please go visit her and thank her!)
They were lovely and so fun to work with!

Now to figure out a way to sell it!

61" X 81"

Anyone interested in buying it outright, please send me an email.

Easy peasy.

In honor of a dear little friend of mine, I'd like, if we sell it,

a check made directly to the JDRF
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

I've also sent JDRF an email to ask if they can just take the Quilt to raise money themselves,
if we are not able to get a price I feel is fair for it.

If you are someone who is able to set up a raffle, or put it in your shop window to help us.
Let me know.

I'm working on a couple things here to try to make this happen.

Front View

I'm working on a couple things here to try to make this happen.

But first! Some Better Pictures To show off it's beauty!
Back view


Have a lovely weekend Everyone.