Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

May you all have a blessed holiday with your friends and family.

New Bag

I have not made a new bag in a while and I wanted something new. Have been using a Christmas bag I made last year. Well, when I went to the mall this weekend with my Mom. Everywhere I looked there was houndstooth. Well I must say I do live in Alabama, but still, it seemed to be the hot item. Soooo... I came home and got busy. Here is what I came up with.

Finally time to hang Nativity.

I can not tell you how long I waited to see this hanging over my fireplace. I thought about this as I planned and then worked on this cherished quilt. I blogged about this quilt when I finished it here. SewCalGal is having a virtual Christmas Quilt Show so check all the pretty Christmas Quilts that are being shown off all around the world.

SNOW!!

Snow in Alabama!

The Tree is up.

Our tree is up, and we are busy with the events of the holiday season. We are involved with a production of A Christmas Carol, at our local Civic Center. Lots of fun and work. So getting the tree up before the busy two weeks of the play was an important thing to check off my list. I still have some Christmas Presents to finish but things are moving forward. The lovely quilt in the back ground was made by my Mom several years ago. It is a special part of my Christmas decorating.

Quilt Memory

Today I am blogging about a favorite quilting memory. A little Bit of Kaos is having a givaway and it is all about quilting memories. I must say I have quite a few but one of the most recent is of quilting with some high school students of mine. They were all new sewers and we made rag quilts. It was lots of fun, some of them kept there quilts others gave them away to special people in their lives. Here is a picture of a few of the girls and their quilts.

Black Friday

I hope you all have had a wonderful Thanksgiving. There are so many things to be grateful for. I feel truely blessed.

I made the cutest little fabric basket from Pink Penguin. I will have pics very soon.

But today I want to tell you about a fabulous give-a-way. That is happening at Reto Mummy So please pop over and check her blog out.
I will be back with pics of my little baskets soon.

Show and Tell/Fabric Friday

Rosebud Quilting is having Fabric Friday/Show and Tell. On Fabric Friday, Michelle asks us to show any handmade item {quilts, tote bag, wallhanging, clothing, etc.}, or show your fabric stash, or recent fabric purchase, or show how you decorate with fabric or fabric items.

So I am sharing an Apron I made for a class I taught last spring to some high school girls. We had such a fun time. Here is a picture of all of them in their wonderful aprons. My daughter who was my assistant in the class is modeling my apron.

So please pop over to Rosebud Quilting and check out not only her great site, but all the show and tells for the week.

4 Blocks

The first 4 blocks. It has been another crazy week, but I have gotten a little done. I really need to finish up some Christmas Presents. But these pink and green fabrics just kept calling my name.

I WON!

Like most people I never win drawings. But this time I hit the jackpot! I won a absolutely gorgeous group of fat quarters. They are from Linda Lum DeBono's Inspiration line. It is in honor of breast cancer. They not only look beautiful they feel wonderful too. I have already started my quilt. It is to honor my two Aunts who have battled breast cancer. But also my friend Carol Morris, who lost her battle last week.

Christmas Quilt

Oh I just love these fabrics by Moda, and Charm Packs they are a dream when it comes to a fast quilt. I put the center together in a little over an hour yesterday! Just boaders to add today. I really do not want to invest to much time into a quilt that I am only going to use at Christmas time.More pics soon!

What Are you making for Christmas?

Busy Busy Busy

Here is a little peek at what I have been working on this week. It has been a quilt for Sonia. She loves her bright colored quilt I made this summer BUT...it is not really what she wanted. (I used my stash with that one) She wanted to pick some fabrics. Well when she saw these Heather Ross Fabrics she had to have them! The are so pretty and really do call her name. So I have been working on a quilt for her. Her Birthday is coming up.

Here is a close up of the blocks.

Oh and then I took every possible scrap and made blocks for me to have a wall quilt. If I can I might squeeze out a throw. I just love these Heather Ross prints. Pictures of that will be coming soon.

Blogers Quilt Festival

Amy over at Park City Girl is have an on line Blogger's Quilt Festival!! It is wonderful. Grab a cup of coffee and set back and enjoy. There are beautiful quilts from all around the world.

I entered my Nativity quilt. I have gotten many wonderful comments. But I have been inspired by so many of the quilts I have gotten to see. There are more being entered every day.

My children and thier new quilts.

I have been busy making each of my children a quilt. I have 3 down just one child to go. His will be for Christmas.

But here are the 3 that I have made.

First Joey who is off to college. So he need a quilt for his dorm.


Next is by daughter Sonia. She is my sunshine. Always bright and happy, well almost always. This quilt was made for the Old Red Barn Quilt Along. Lots of fun .

Number 3 goes to my beautiful baby daughter Savannah her quilt was huge. She wanted it for her water bed. This one was made with Old Red Bard Quilt Along #3 Wonky Blocks.

#4 is in progress.

Where has the time gone?

Oh My! I am sorry I have not posted in so long. I have been very busy with all kinds of things. Lots of great things too!


The HQH Quilt show was wonderful. There are lots of talented quilts in my guild. I entered my Nativity Quilt and 2 quilted jackets. Surprise!! I won third place on one of my jackets.


The blue and white jacket on the right of the picture is also mine.

My winning jacket is made of many batiks and I tried several new techniques. I entered this in my County Fair in Indiana and they absolutely hated it! Here in Alabama they loved it so you just never know.

My Nativity Quilt is made from the Paper Panache Pattern "Nativity Advent" It is paper pieced. See a previous post for more about this quilt.

Mod Quilt Sampler

I started this quilt back in July with my Mom, she is making the Mod Quilt Sampler by Oh Fransson. also but in different colors. Back in July we went to the AQS Quilt show in Knoxville, TN. and there we collected the fat quarters for our quilts. We came to my home (she lives in Orlando) and had a mad sewing couple of days to get our quilts blocks cut and sewn. She left with her quilt blocks made to go home and sash them. I am finally done with mine. I just love it and am quilting it now. As I am also costuming a play for Theater Huntsville, It has slowed me down a little. That along with getting Joey off to college.Here is a peak before quilting. I will say the quilting is making this quilt even more wonderful. Such a great pattern, thank you Dana.

Joey

It has been awhile since I posted because I have been getting my son Joey ready to go away to college. He will be 7 hours away so I will not see him often. I am happy for him because this is what he really wants. But for me I am sad, I will miss him terribly. It has been very hard for me to let him go.

Nativity Quilt

I think I am finally at the end of this quilt. All that is left is the binding. It has been a long journey but so worth it. This is one of the biggest projects of this kind I have made. I love paper piecing and have done several smaller quilts but this was really very detailed. Just the choosing of all the fabrics was a daunting task. It was a rather long time between choosing the fabrics and sewing. We moved among other things. So... as I was sewing I decided to change some of them. So it just added to the stress. I wanted it to be just right. This will be a family heirloom. My oldest daughter has already claimed it. I just want to see it over my fireplace this Christmas!

I am working like crazy on a quilt that I started many many moons ago. This quilt has taken many hours of planing and then sewing the many pieces together and now for the quilting and embellishments that need to go on to complete this project. I still have quite a bit of work to do.
This is a pattern from Paper Panche It is a paper pieced pattern that was divided up like a advent calendar so you could do 1 section a day for 25 days. Which in theory sounds great but around the holidays when I wanted to do a Christmas Quilt I had no time. But diligence pays off, as I come into the home stretch I am very happy with this piece of art.

My quilt guild is have a quilt show next month so I am trying to get it finished so I can enter it. Also after several years of working on this quilt (sometimes I just cannot do Christmas in Feb. March, April etc) I am excited to think it will finally be done and hanging over my fireplace this year.

Happy Scrappy Quilt Giveaway!

Happy Scrappy Quilt Giveaway!
Marie-Madeline Studio is giving away this wonderful quilt!!!

I immediately fell in love with this quilt and I'm sure you will too!
This original quilt was created by the Long ladies at Marie-Madeline Studios using new fabrics. It is twin size and measures 66 3/4" x 90". It was machine quilted and freshly laundered.





If you would like to enter for a chance to win this beautiful quilt here's how!

::leave a comment at Marie-Madeline Studios.

::for another entry, send over a friend (or two)

::for 5 more entries, grab the mariemadelinestudio.com button on their sidebar

::you get 5 more entries for grabbing the quilt giveaway button, too!

::blog about the giveaway (use their pictures, if you'd like!) for 10 more opportunities to win (and send the Long ladies the link)

::share it on facebook for 10 more...

::spend anything less than $50 at the store (and let us know) to receive 25 more entries

::and if you spend over $50 at our store, we'll count your name 50 more times!

This happy giveaway will close on August 8th! And they''ll plan to choose the winner by random number generator the next day.

p.s. i quilt is having a giveaway!

There are some great blogs out in blog land. Also very generous ones!. p.s. i quilt is one of those. she is having this great giveaway. So please check out her blog.

Here is my Disappearing 9 patch for Joey. I am very happy with how it came out, and most of all Joey seems to really like it! He will be taking it with him this fall as he heads off to college at Indiana State University.

My Disappearing 9 Patch

The goal this summer has been to make some fun projects and use up some of the fabric in my stash. After all I need to make room for the new stuff I want to buy! So I saw this great pattern called A Disappearing 9 Patch. There are many wonderful sites that talk about this pattern. Here you will find a wonderful story and history of this block. There is a great tutorial here. There are lots of other great sites that have info on this block as well. Lots of great color combinations also. I did use a very boring group here but I really wanted to see the pattern form and it was fabric I had.

So the cool part is you start with a simple nine patch.


Then you do some clever cutting and sew the block back together and you get this!


Then you sew them together. Which I will be busy sewing my 20 blocks together today. Her is a sample of how it will look.

I also finally fixed this great quilted backpack. It is made from Fons and Porters Groovy Backpack pattern. I made it like the pattern with pre-quilted fabric and the handles just were to thick and stiff. At first the store was out of the brown fabric I used them time just passed, but finally I have my backpack just in time to take to the AQS Quilt Show in Knoxville in just a couple of weeks.

Today has been a busy sewing day. I worked more on the quilting of Savannah's quilt. I am now all the way across in one direction. Remind me NOT to do a decorative stitch across a quilt. It takes forever!! I really like how it looks but the time. UGH

Ok, I finally got this bag finished along with it's matching pieces. I really love the wallet It came out especially nice. Now back to the quilting. I am really excited about some of the things I have in the works.

Check out these cute chalkboard wall hangings these girls made. We had so much fun. Yes that is fabric that can be written on with chalk.

Children's Summer Sewing

This summer I have had a wonderful group of girls that I have taught sewing. It has been so much fun. They made these great bags to go with the pillowcases they made. Won't they be cute at their next sleepover!

Finnaloly a new Bag!

I have been very busy with the quilts for my daughters. Sonia's is finished and Savannah's is partially quilted. That is going to take me a while. Sooo.. I took a quick break and had to make a bag. For those of you that know me. I just love making bags. I have a new bag about every month. But I have had real trouble lately coming up with something I wanted to do. But a trip to Hancock's and a wonderful find in the Batiks spurred me to come home and make this bag, and a matching wallet of course! I still have to hand sew around the top of the bag and the wallet (picture comeing soon. I also tried a new handle that I really love.

I have been sewing like a mad woman. Sonia's quilt I finished the quilting now to bind it. Then I now have Savannah's quilt top done. On to the quilting of it. Hope to get these done so I can work on a quilt for me! I have really enjoyed making these quilts even if it has been fast and furious.

Well I have started the quilting. I decided t0 go with straight line quilting. I am just thrilled with how it is going. I have never quilted this heavy on a quilt, and WOW what a difference. As you can see Teaga likes it too.

I have Sonia's quilt together and am so excited to start quilting it. The back of the quilt came out as great as the front! This quilt is as bright an cheery as she is!

Summer Sewing

Today we had a summer sewing camp for girls 8-12. Was lots of fun they made pillowcases today and will make a tote on Wednesday. We had lots of fun, this made me think of all those summers in Indiana and the 4-H sewing workshops. Well this is not as intense as there will be no judges for these projects but still lots of fun.

I am back to working on sewing the strips together for the quilt I am working on. I have some of the blocks done here is a preview of my quilt.

Summer Purse

I thought I should finish this bag before I started my quilt. So here it is. Now I can start cutting my strips for my quilt.

Fun Summer Quilt

These are the fabrics for the quilt I am getting ready to start. I am going to make this simple fun quilt. I am look forward to an easy project that I can have fun with. This project is part of the The Red Barn Quilt A Long. http://oldredbarnco.blogspot.com/2009/05/quilt-along-schedule-of-events.html