Quiltworx Infatuation

I checked out Blogger and discovered the last time I posted was on July 19.  Wow time flies when you are busy, but then looking at what I have accomplished, it doesn't seem like a whole lot.

I have been working on the Quiltworx pattern that I am taking a class called Desert Rose. 

This is one arc.  I have finished the 8 which are facing this way.  I have 8 more to finish which face the other.  I also have 8 arcs with flying geese that I need to complete.  I will say that there are many hours put in doing these paper pieced pieces, and you can see how large they are, so I guess that is where much of my time has went. 

I have also been working on the prep for the paper piecing templates, and cutting templates on the Quiltworx Sand Devils quilt.

These are just a portion which I have cut.  I do it in the evening when it gets too dark to sew, or I need something truly mindless to do.

Obviously I am enjoying the paper piecing and I have a Quiltworx infatuation because I saw this  pattern and had to have it.  It is called Cattails in the Meadow.

I actually went on a mission to find the exact fabrics which were created for this specific quilt called Reclaimed West by Timeless Treasures.  Yep that line was out over a year ago, so it truly was a search mission, but after a few hours I think I found all the fabrics that are called for and have ordered them. 

As to other sewing.

I did the quilt guild friendship block of the month.

The guild fabric is the yellow floral.  I will say I just love it.  The fabric pattern is called Harvest, and so of course I had to find some and order it. 

Finally I received some surprise squishy mail from Julierose at julierose quilts.  Look at the lovely butterflies and I am in love with the background which reminds me of birch trees. 

Isn't this fabulous.  Thank you again so much for the sweet gift.  It lifted my spirits on wings of butterflies the day I received it. 

I have other things to share, but being as I hardly post ever....decided I would spread it out among several posts. 

Little Sewing

I have been a wee bit busy lately.

Last Thursday was quilt guild.  During the day was the charity sew day.  We make gurney quilts that the VFW sends to the military, they are used to transport injured personnel home.  The quilts measure 36 X 60 and are supposed to be  manly.  Unfortunately a lot of our fabrics are donated and have a tendency to be florals, or have metallics in them which cannot really be used.  Anyway we had a lot of 10 inch squares that we divided up and made into about 40 quilt kits for our members to take home. 

I came home with a huge box full of 2 1/2 strips---must figure out a way to use them, and  pile of 4 1/2 inch squares in orange.

I thought I could do pretty manly with these if I had a few more oranges and a gorgeous brown to pull it together. So off I went to the LQS to do a wee bit of shopping.  These are my donations.

Isn't the orange camo looking fun?   The brown ombre scrolls were a great addition for the sashing.   And check out this super cute selvage.

With an hour or two sewing I put together a quilt. 

Now to quilt it and bind it. 

Saturday was the Quiltworx class.

I managed to get my diamonds made even though I had a couple of hours sewing at home to finish them up.

I then started working on my arcs.

I have 16 arcs to make.  8 left, and 8 right.  So far I have 6 sections sewn on 8 arcs.  I still have 15 more sections to go!  Oh my!  Lets just say that these 8 took about 3 hours to get this far. 

I started sewing together small shoofly blocks for Jeff's quilt.

I have also been working on my tumblers as leader and enders.

I sew them into twosies, then foursies, then make groups of 10.  I calculated that I needed about 270 strips of 10 to make a queen size quilt.  I am well over 100 so far. 

In the evenings when I am trying to unwind and listen to a book, or when I am listening to the Bible in the morning I have been working on hexies too.

I have been just randomly sewing them together, you can see my creation sew far at the top.  I guess these are 1/2 inch hexies.  All of the hexies come from fabric scraps while I am making other things. 

Of course I have had some stash enhancements.

Chicken fabric, and chicken feet, and some chicken wire.

Aren't these girls too cute! 

I had also pre ordered Lori Holts Spelling Bee book and it arrived.  I see some patterns which will find their way into my farm girl quilt.

Of course there are times that a certain something needs attention. 

So much for any sewing or cutting today.  Maybe it is time to go into the A/C and work on a Quiltworx quilt. 

5th Annual Piggy Bank Challenge Begins!

I decided I needed to participate in Val's 5th Annual Piggy Bank Challenge from Val's Quilting Studio again this year.

I had played along a couple of years ago, but discovered that I had someone sabotaging my savings.  Jeff was grabbing my saved cash to buy coffee every morning....we had a come to Jesus talk about him snatching my savings.  I made sure he had enough money in his pocket to buy coffee for the week, and any change was contributed to my jar. Amazingly he decided that he wasn't thrilled with the coffee from a particular company any more and quit buying coffee except on the rare occasion. 

I didn't sign up the past year, but I still used my jar.  Recently my jar was running over.  After Jeff died, I discovered several Solo cups throughout the house full of change, as well as the side pocket in my car, the side pocket in the truck.  Jeff's tool box in the barn, Jeff's tool box at work, Jeff's locker at work, and my dad pulled out a ton of change from Jeff's car which was wrecked.  There was so much change I finally broke down and bought a coin sorter.

I ended up with over $210 dollars in change.

Since I pay for lots of things with cash I knew I need to participate this year.  Unfortunately I don't have my change thief around anymore, but at least the change will not end up all over the house, cars, basement, barn. 

This is my 1/2 gallon jar, and what I have accumulated since the first of July.  I definitely need to clean out my wallet again soon.  I wanted to get a 1 gallon jar, but the local store that usually carries them didn't have one.  So I will have to stick with my 1/2 gallon jar for now. 

Almost There

I have been working on catching up on the Farm Girl SAL at SewYouQuilt2.  I posted last week that I spent one day just cutting so I would have stuff to work on.

I only have one block to go to catch up, it is the Garden Block, and I will admit I am a little leery of this one because it is all these tiny fiddly templates, with really no directions.  We shall see.  But this is what I did get accomplished.

Cool threads.   I had all of these cute ginghams out and just had to use them. 

Corn and Tomatoes.  I had this cute red fabric with canning jars, and I even managed to make sure my canning jars were all facing the right way!  I will say I love this block!

Country crossroads.  I have been using up the little bits and pieces I have remaining of these Riley Blake prints that I have had for a very long time.

Egg basket.  I just love how this turned out so bright and happy.  

Farmhouse block.  I will say I probably got a wee bit busy with my fabrics.  And doing the 6 1/2 inch block was a bit of a challenge.

Haystack, using up some more tiny bits left over from here and there.

Old Glory block.  Another one that just turned out too cute.

Simple star.  Again I had to pull out the old truck motif. 

Finally the wooly sheep.  OK he is missing his legs, I have been putting the embroidery stuff to the side and will do it all together. 

Here are all of my blocks together so far.  I wanted to do a mix of 12 inch and 6 inch blocks.  I think I need a buttery yellow to use for the sashing. 

So I got brave and signed up to take a Quiltworx class at the last moment in May.  Saturday is my 2nd class and I am ready, I have my homework done.  Since I thought I had a pretty good concept of how the patterns worked I pulled out a Quiltworx pattern I had purchased over 10 years ago, and thought what the heck!  I am going to work on it.  The pattern is called Sand Devils. 

I had bought the package of extra papers so I could make a queen size.  I calculated how much fabric I was going to need and started shopping.


I had seen this batik, of course since I am always a day late and dollar short, it is from a line from a year or so ago, so finding enough was going to be a challenge.  But I managed.

I then was going to need 5 background colors and 5 spike colors.  I decided to choose fabrics based on the colors in this batik.  There are several shops nearby that have loads of batiks, but I decided to head to Tecumseh to The Quilt Patch, because they had a super simple, and cute row for the Row by Row.

These are my selections.  I was feeling pretty smug.  So I came home, and opened the packages, only to realize that I had to make copies of portions of this pattern, unlike the newer ones where everything is done on newsprint.  Now that doesn't sound too daunting, but there are some portions that need to remain in tact because they are a template for cutting and they are huge.  Awe shucks! I am going to have to rethink how to do this now.  I could divide the larger pages into smaller chunks, and do the copies (we are talking of about 20 copies per template and I have quite a few templates).  I am going to have to most definitely think this one through some more.



While there I did pick up the Row by Row, and this cute little mini quilt pattern.

I have trying to be good, honestly, but I wanted a small pineapple trim tool (mini), and I had a coupon for 20% off my total order from Bear Creek Quilting.  Then I saw chicken fabric to add to my hoard stash.  The shop threw in this super cute handy dandy mini pattern to make a lap size quilt. 

 Finally my other purchase was some of the Kimberbell Basics.  I love this print, and I had already purchased the white on white and love to use it in my Farm Girl blocks, I was getting low already.  Of course I thought I most definitely needed to add the red on white cherries, and the white print on red cherries too. 

I see making the Farm Girl Vintage Cherries block in my near future. 

I think it is time to work on a couple more of Jeff's shirts. 

Piece O' Cake

I decided that today was a good day to cut blocks for different quilts.  I started cutting early this morning, and by 3 pm I had lots of different things to work on.

Next Thursday is guild and I had still not done my bag lady block.

It is kind of backward compared to usually the corners are light, this one I went rogue and did dark.

I worked out a design layout for the farm girl quilt and I know I need a lot of 6 1/2 inch blocks.  So I thought hey, I can throw a couple Ohio stars into it.

I am so proud of this one, my words are all going the same way even!

This one I used a yellow, I had a piece of Polka Dot stitches from long ago, one fat quarter has really big motifs.  I thought it would be a cute center block.  Not too sure, but oh well.

I then decided I would do the cake block--while not in the book, it had been decided it would be fun in the quilt.  I had a page with the cutting instructions but that was it.  Let's just say that it definitely was not a piece of cake to make.  I had to recut pieces several times, and not matter what it just did not come out right.

This is my 6 1/2 inch block. 

This is my farm girl book with several blocks cut and ready to go.

I just put the fabric pieces in the book on the page that contain the block.

I also cut out pieces to work on Jeff's quilt, and for the Ocean Waves Quilt.

I worked on pieces for the ocean waves quilt for a couple of days this week.

I have a lot more blocks parts to make and square up before I start the "assembly".

This is my box of fabric that I use for my farm girl.  This looks good to what it looked like while I was cutting. 

I have a couple of fabric acquisitions also.

Chickens and coffee cups...do you see a theme yet?

1/2 yard cuts of Bee Basics Backgrounds.  I need more neutrals, probably darks too, but I loved these neutrals. 

 This is a 1/2 yard piece I purchased a while back.  I thought it would be a great background.  Soft pink flowers and dots on a white background.  And look at the selvage with the bees!

I think I have plenty cut to keep me busy for a couple of days.