Early this week I finished up the quilt and bunny and got them into their new owners hands.
Bunny Pattern and Quilt Tutorial
I really like how both of them turned out. Now I am daydreaming about how I want to make my next quilt. Something for Christmas maybe??
The bunny is done, back is pieced and basting is complete; now I just need a window of time to get started on the quilting. 
Posted in family life, quilting, sewing on November 5, 2015|
The top is complete. Once I figured out how to keep all the blocks in order and turned the right direction, things sped up and I finished it that same afternoon. 
For the pattern I used this tutorial. This is not my first time making this quilt but it is the first time I used her suggestion for color balance and I am really glad I did. I love how this turned out.
Later that evening we ALL went out trick or treating. Well Dave and I just walked with the kids. But the big kids went trick or treating too. At 17 and 14 the big kids are getting pretty old but I really enjoyed doing this activity as a family this year. And I am pretty sure it will be the last year for at least one of them.
Becasue I still haven’t decided on backing fabric and still need batting for the quilt, I decided to make a Jack Rabbit with the scraps to go along with the quilt. She is all stuffed now but needs her head attached. As soon as I make it back to the store to pick up some floss for a face I will get her all put together. I still can’t decide if she needs a skirt or a dress though. We shall see.
Posted in quilting on October 31, 2015|
Happy Halloween!!
This Halloween day is pretty quiet. All costume prep is done, a simple dinner is planned and ready to go and so I am spending a little time on my new project.
A trick?
Well I discovered that if I mark my blocks with a washable marker I can keep track of my rows and columns much easier. When assembling a quilt top I mess up the order of the blocks frequently. I have tried taking a picture of the blocks all places in order and referring to it as needed in the past but with this quilt and with many of the blocks looking so similar I was getting fustruated by it.
I sure wish I had thought of this before.
Posted in quilting on October 30, 2015|
It has been quite a while since I cut into fabric for a quilt. I am pretty excited.
Posted in quilting on April 22, 2014| 1 Comment »
I am getting excited to get going and finish up these quilts. I’ve got the first top and back pressed and ready to go. To be honest this top is my least favorite. So, to get it out of the way, if you will, I am quilting it first.
There is an orange fairy costume that comes before I will let myself even baste this one. Oh and I still need to get some batting. Details
Posted in quilting on April 14, 2014| 2 Comments »
My free time at home is pretty limited. Having only one kid at home during the day, a busy toddler no less, really sucks it all up. If any time presents it’s self I have to choose between so many things I want to do. A nap usually wins. (Early morning seminary and late evening Dr Who episodes with my husband, makes for a tired mama.) However, I have had a few days with extra free time. I would set a 30 minute timer for the nap and wake up and sew or read a book.
Right now I reading a David A. Bednar book called Increase in Learning. My mom sent me an early birthday present of this and two other of his books.
For sewing, I’ve been working on my last penny patch quilt. I have all the squares completed and am hoping for some extra time so I can sew them all together.
Once I get the top and back done I can measure all the quilts and figure out how much batting I need to get. I think a 40% off coupon to Hobby Lobby will be helpful with this purchase.
Posted in family life, quilting on April 7, 2014| 2 Comments »
We enjoyed a simple conference weekend. As of now we have not maintained any traditions around this twice yearly two day event. Well other than the actual gathering and watching it as a family.
This year we had an active, mobile, noisy toddler with us. I don’t remember Hollis being much of a disturbance in October but boy things were different this time. There was the normal happy toddler noises but also the desperately trying to get your attention, throw a toy at your head things too. At one point he was dive bombing people from the couch. Ouch.
Funny Hollis Story
I am pretty sure he assumed that each person speaking was simply give a very long prayer. When he noticed the person talking on the computer he would fold his arms and close his eyes super tight and start mimicking what the speaker was saying. Slowly we’d see his eyes start to open and then he’d shut them tight again, continuing to mimic what the speaker was saying. After a few moments he would get bored and wander the living room and play until he noticed the speaker again. Quickly he’d close his eyes and fold his arms and repeat.
Such a cutie.
By the end of each two hour session he was pretty crazy and loud. I wondered more than once why we were even bothering watching conference. I always concluded that it was well worth any disruption. If not for the message it’s self then for the tradition of gathering.
Today I revisited the Sunday morning session and listened to it while I did some sewing. David A Bednar’s talk was very enlightening. (hmm, how did I miss this talk? Maybe it was the crazy toddler insisting on riding my leg like a horse) I had one of those, this talk was written just for me moments. If not, it was something, I too, really needed to hear.
So about these quilt blocks.
These belong to my last Penny Patch quilt made from my scraps. I am really loving the yellow, purple, and grey combo. I didn’t give much forethought to this or any of the other penny patch scrap color combos. These were just what I had left. My hope is that I can continue to find time to revisit conference, during Hollis’ nap time, down in my little sewing nook. I am itching to complete this top so I can move on to quilting. This one will make 5 quilts that will be ready to be quilted. Three penny patches and two baby quilts for gifts. I suppose the baby quilts should be done first since those little girls will be born in the next few months but the kids are hoping I get to work on the penny patch they have claimed for themselves.
Posted in quilting on March 17, 2014| 1 Comment »
Today I had a go at triangles again. The last time I tried triangles that didn’t get sewn into squares was with this quilt and all I remembered was that I sat in front of the tv for a few hours ripping out quite a few rows of triangles after giving up for a couple years.
I knew there was something I need to remember about sewing with triangles but I couldn’t remember what. I had a go at some scrap triangles and definitely needed some instruction. So, to the internet I went.
In the end I followed the sewing instructions with this tutorial. FYI-I followed the cutting instructions found here, making my triangles 6 inches high and 6 inches at the base.
I gathered and arranged some of the extra triangle and sewed together this doll sized top. This time it went smoothly and am looking forward to getting started on the big (just a baby) quilt.
Tomorrow the kids go back to school and we will get to officially transition into day light savings. I am not looking forward to my 5:00 alarm for early morning seminary at all. I am looking forward to a little more routine though. Yet I will miss my productive me time.
This week I completed the front and back of my red, pink and green penny patch quilt, sewed a St. Patrick’s Day shirt for Bron, and got a new quilt cut out and prepped for sewing. When I’ll have time to sew is another issue. I am nervous to tackle triangles again and am not super anxious to get started on that part. So I will take it as it comes. Here is the lay out.
Posted in family life, quilting, sewing on February 26, 2014|
I took advantage of nap time and got a bit of sewing in yesterday. I’m a little more than a third of the way done with my pink, red and green penny patches. Yay!
I am so glad my little boy is napping again. He had us scared there for a week or so. I did have to wake him though, to get the big kids today and his cheeks were rosy. Hopefully he isn’t getting sick.
On the note of picking up the kids- It started snowing a few minutes before I left to get them. Upon arrival, one didn’t take my advice and had bare red arms and the other was bundled up appropriately. I love that I didn’t have to say a word and can know that my point had been made. A little silent I told you so smile, if you will. Ha!
Posted in quilting, sewing on January 31, 2014| 1 Comment »
Penny Patch quilt number two is all prepped and ready to start sewing.
(not so) Funny thing happened.
I cut all the way through my cutting board. Right along the ten inch line. Right onto the table. Never thought about that happening.
Posted in quilting on January 19, 2014| 1 Comment »
My goal while in Nebraska (only 5 months or so to go) is to go through all my scraps and make them into quilts. I don’t imagine I will finish the quilts but I do hope to have things organized and moving in that direction.
I have completed the most annoying task to organize all my little scraps by color and then cut them into 6 in, 3 1/2 in, and 2 in strips. As it turns out for the pattern I wanted to start with I needed 6 1/2 in cuts instead but I’m trying not to think about that too much.
Right now I’m working with the blues, browns, and oranges.
This quilt top is now complete and I’m cutting into my large scraps to make the back.
I am following this Penny Patch tutorial and really like how it came together. I think I am going to use this same tutorial for the other quilts as well. Unless I change my mind that is.
If you are considering making your first quilt, this is a great tutorial for beginners. Actually, being self taught, I learned a ton from it and highly recommend it.
That’s all for now but I suspect there will be more scrap talk in the near future.
Posted in give-away, quilting, sewing on April 23, 2013| 27 Comments »
I had plans to make 3 Tunnel Vision pillows but didn’t plan very well when I purchased my supplies. I only had enough to barely make 2. I’m actually pretty glad it worked out this way. I am so happy with this next present. The colors and prints are so happy and cheerful. If I make pillows for my couch, mine will look like this.
Again, this pillow is 18×18 inches with a zipper in the back for easy cleaning.
I hope you love it.
Posted in give-away, quilting, sewing on April 22, 2013| 32 Comments »
Hooray, I have finished presents to show you.
Pillows!
When I got my hands on my copy of the book Modern Quilting I fell in love right away with both the Tunnel Visions Quilt (you can see a pic on this post) and the pebble quilting on the cover. So glad I got to try them both out. I didn’t follow any specifics from the book but used it as inspiration. I love love love these. I think the family did too. Each voiced their disappointment when they realized that they wouldn’t be on our couch. I might have to make a couple for us.
But these are for you!
They both are 18×18 with a zipper in the back for easy cleaning.
I hope you like them.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 19, 2013| 21 Comments »
It’s funny how things work out. I worry and worry about not being able to get any sewing in. I finally turn things over to God and what do you know? My time consuming 7 year old gets sick and only wants to take a nap or watch a movie and my baby sleeps for 3 hours.
As soon as chores were done, I got to work and started quilting. Pebble Quilting. Loving it.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 17, 2013| 15 Comments »
I feel like I’m running in place. Working hard, sweating even. If your running like that, it’s not a waste. Your heart rate gets up, your burning calories, your taking care of that all important body of yours, but if you’re trying to do something completely different at the same time like paint a picture, something will have to give.
Don’t know if that makes any sense but what I’m trying to say is that it is hard to balance family life and sewing. Family is totally winning, and that’s the way it should be, but I really want to be sewing. I thought I had set things up so I would have plenty of sewing time but life keeps getting on the way.
So, I’ve decided to let things go and stop trying to steal time. I’m not super worried, and I bet I’ll still get some of the items on my list of projects finished this month. I even had a guilt free hour today and worked on my next project a bit.
Crossing my fingers that more time drops on my lap, but if not, I’ll make sure I’m still having a great month.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 16, 2013| 33 Comments »
Hooray, I got this quilt photographed today. It took two tries since it was so windy. The top pic is still flapping a bit in the wind but at least you can see the whole front. So here you are. I hope you like it.
I haven’t measured this one but it is about the same size as the last one. Maybe a bit longer and more narrow. I am really happy with how the front came together. I was a little nervous about “just going for it” with the sashing. I just picked up either a cream, white or parsley color for each side of the blocks and crossed my fingers that it would all work out. I do wish however that I had chosen a different color for the back. When I chose this color I hadn’t chosen my sashing color(s) yet. That part just came together last minute.
Well, like all my gifts this month, if you would like this quilt for your very own, comment on any or all of my April 2013 blog posts and you’ll be entered into the drawing. One entry for each post commented on.
Posted in give-away, quilting, sewing, Uncategorized on April 15, 2013| 23 Comments »
Happy Monday! We are halfway through the month. Crazy!
Hope you all had a good weekend. I spent Saturday cleaning and sewing. Sunday was church all day. Regular services in the morning, a session of General Conference in the afternoon, break the fast at 3:00 and then another session of conference from 5:00-7:00.
Since we were out of town last week we have been playing catch up with General Conference. Just two more sessions to go.
The second quilt is finished and is just awaiting a photo shoot. I also started my next project, a small version of this quilt.
I’m excited to get going on my other projects. Hopefully some time opens up in my scheduled week so I can work on them.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 10, 2013| 21 Comments »
I just don’t like it. I never ever seem to.
I don’t know what it is about a finished quilt top, I find it so discouraging. I have learned over the years to just trust my initial instincts in my quilt planning and to just ignore this stage. I know that as soon as I start quilting and am seeing it come together I will love it again. But for now…grrr
I am a little torn. I really want to move along on with this quilt tomorrow and get the quilting going but I also have some other projects I want to get started on. This month already seems to be zipping past and I’m afraid that if I don’t start the next project soon, I may run out of time. We’ll see what I’m up for after a good nights sleep. Crossing my fingers that that gets accomplished.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 9, 2013| 18 Comments »
After having a nice chunk of day to get some sewing in (the early start due to fire alarms going off at 4 in the morning sure helped), I think the next quilt for my Birthday Give Away is coming right along. For this second quilt I used up the rest of my stack and slash blocks and instead of squaring them off I added a border of bone, white or parsley or a mix of each and then squared them all off to 10 inches. Now, they are all ready to sew together into the top for my next quilt.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 4, 2013| 35 Comments »
I’m so excited to show you this quilt that I wont wait until I get some better pictures.
I wish I wrote down all the colors of Kona solids I used. For the prints I used a layered cake (10×10 in squares) of Wonderland fabric by Momo. This is one of my favorite collections and I with it wasn’t out of print. I found my layered cake on Etsy. For the piecing I used the stack and slash method as demonstrated by s.o.t.a.k handmade. My squared were 10 x 10 inches and I used 3 solids and 3 prints with each of my stacks. When finished, I had 70 something blocks and I divided them in half and used one half to make this quilt. The other half will be used on the second quilt. For these blocks, I squared them each off to measure 7 inches and made an off center 5 x 5 square on the front and a line of the extra squares on the back.
So….
If you would like this quilt for your very own, comment on any of my April 2013 posts and you will be entered in my Birthday Give Away drawing.
I hope you like it.
****
Dave’s schedule opened up a bit and so we are going to take advantage of spring break and have a little family vacations. I don’t know if I’ll be able to but I do hope to bring an easy project with me, if I get organized. We shall see.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 3, 2013| 14 Comments »
It’s spring break here. The kids and I are at a cabin with some friends. Everyone is in heaven.
This morning I got up early and finished sewing the quilt and brought it along to weave in all those loose ends.
I think I may just have this ready to show you tomorrow.
Posted in give-away, in the shop, quilting, sewing on March 5, 2013| 4 Comments »
Hi everyone.
I’m happy to back here in this space and am getting very excited for this years, my very last, birthday give away.
Today I headed out to Gautier, MS to visit a new to me quilt shop, Block Therapy. After walking around a few minutes I came across a beautiful wall of colorful solids. After inquiry, I found out that this little gem of a shop carries the entire collection of Kona solids.
All of them!
Needless to say, I was thrilled. I may or may not have hugged the shop owner.
I picked out this pretty stack to coordinate with some of the prints I’ll be using this year. Isn’t it pretty?
So, don’t go too far, April is just around the corner. I’ll have my official announcement on April 1st about how things are going to work this year.
If your new to this blog check out last years April 1st post to see what this is all about.
P.S. Everything in the Etsy Shop is half off for the month of March and all income will be used to support this years birthday give away. On April 1st the shop will closed for a while and will reopen with a new project to support.
Posted in quilting on September 28, 2012| 2 Comments »
Look at this, two posts in the same week. Thank goodness for delayed publishing. I wrote this post while Bron was in Art/PE. I wrote this post along with feeding Hollis, checking/reading/replying to emails, reading my book, and editing photos. I guess I can get quite a bit done in those two hours.
Back to the quilt.
In my last post, I talked about not sewing since May. Well this is one of those projects. This was made for my newest nephew. I had high hopes to make one for Hollis with a plus design as well but it didn’t get made and I’m not going to add it to my list of things to do. Maybe after our next move when Hollis enters a big bed, I’ll make matching quilts for Hollis and Magnus’ Room.
For this one I used prints and coordinating solids from Aneela Hoey’s line Little Apples. This is such a cute line and I love the colors. Red, turquoise and grey are one of my favorite combinations right now. The plusses came together just wonderfully. I opted to make them with two squares and a rectangle in the middle instead of 5 squares. I would definitely do it again with this method since it saved me some sewing. For the batting I used, my new favorite, a piece of flannel. I love how it folds/rolls up nicely and adds warmth without all the extra bulk.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 17, 2012| 34 Comments »
Hurray! I am so happy to have this quilt done. I am really loving the back too.
Finished measurements are a touch bigger than 76 x 62 in.
Here is the front ( I love the blondie blue peeking out)
The Back ( oh look, I caught her back side on this one. And someone’s toes too. )
And a few more pics.
If you’d like to have this quilt for your own, leave a comment on this or any of my April 2012 posts. Both quilts are part of my random drawing this year.
I hope you like it.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 9, 2012| 19 Comments »
by Kate Spain
I really appreciate all your thoughtful comments on my maternity pics. It means a lot to me, so thank you. I’ve also enjoyed all the love on my Chevron Quilt. I’m sad I only have one to give away.
But… I did start my next quilt.
Here is the finished top of the second quilt for my Birthday Give Away, all ready for quilting lines. It’s made from my February delivery of Pink Chalk’s Charming Solids Club, adding in more yardage of the solids and some gray and snow as well.
Nothing too exciting but I really do love patchwork these days. I’ve drawn on lines in a chevron pattern and think it will make it a little more interesting to look at. The back is pretty simple too but has more of a modern feel to it.
****
We are getting ready to head out of town for a few days. So, I’ll have to put things on hold for a bit as I get ready for and then enjoy a small vacation. See you soon.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 7, 2012| 51 Comments »
The first quilt for my Birthday Give Away is complete. It was a bit of a hassle to work in those stripes of red. Even though they are not perfect I think they add so much and am glad I included them.
I don’t have any words in my head today so I’ll just get on with the pics.
This finished size is appox. 51 x 67 inches. The fabrics are Silver broadcloth, Kona Cotton in Red and Snow with a few triangles of Kona White that snuck in for the front. Kona Red for the back with Silver for the binding. The quilting was done following the Chevron pattern at about two inch intervals.
If you’d like to have this quilt for your own or any other of the items I showcase this month, comment on any of my April 2012 posts.
I hope you like it.
Posted in give-away, quilting on April 6, 2012| 10 Comments »
Today is too windy to get a proper shot of this finished quilt top for my Birthday Give Away. So, I just snapped this on my kitchen table before it got all marked up for quilting.
Posted in give-away, quilting on March 31, 2012| 2 Comments »
This is a blankie for a baby boy due later this spring. For it, I used up one of the charm packs and the solids from my March Charmed Solid delivery. I love the colors and prints from this line of fabric. I think it works perfectly for this blanket. Again, I used muslin for the batting. I just love how light weight it is and think that this will help it to be used more frequently here in the hot south. It rolls up so nicely and will travel easily in a diaper bag or stroller basket. I need to remember to make a bigger one, like this, for my summer baby.
Knowing that I wouldn’t have time in April to work on this project, I squeezed it in just in time.
Tomorrow is April!!!
I am so excited about a couple of projects for my give away next month. A little hint for two of them is that you’ll be seeing more patchwork. In this line for one project and in another line for a quilt.
Be sure to stop by.
by small means 