Back from vacay

I am back from a wonderful vacation in the PNW! My husband and I put on 2600 miles...that's a lot of travel! We started and ended in Portland. The first 3 days were business for my hubby. From Portland to Pendleton, OR to Seattle and back to Portland. We stopped at a winery and Mt. Rainer on the way.

There was still quite a bit of snow!

Then we started our Oregon Coast vacation. Leaving Portland we traveled to Ecola SP on the coast and continued south over the week until we met the Redwoods in Jedediah Smith SP in California. The Oregon Coast is beautiful and vast and the Redwoods are amazing! 

On our way back to Portland, we stopped at Crater Lake. It is the most intense blue ever! The brillance comes from the depth (deepest lake in the Americas) and clarity.  

Once home, it was time to catch up with some sewing! 

July's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is red. 

Here are my red plus sign blocks.

And my red flying geese block.  

I also needed to catch up on my Temperature Quilt. I had been recording the temperatures daily but just hadn't been able to cut and stitch them until now. 

You can see how our temperatures have risen with all those red centers and orange background. 

I have also sandwiched the Harry Potter quilt and is next up for quilting. Stay tuned! I put sleeves on 2 quilts, Mini spools and Milky Way, so they can be hung. It is nice to have that small project done. 

Linking up to Finish or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Midweek Makers at quilt fabrication and Scrappy Happy Saturday at So Scrappy.

D for Done!

As promised, I am back to show you my first T-shirt quilt now that it has been received by this sweet young lady graduate! 

This special lady has graduated from HS and will be off to Hope College in the fall. She is a very close family friend that I have know all her life. 

She has already accomplish quite a bit in her young life! 

Besides academic and leadership accomplishments, she is an accomplished dancer, specializing in tap. I am so proud of her!

I used the puzzle technique to put together the quilt 

(pieces vary in sizes to fit together like a puzzle) 

You can read more about how I put it together here. 

 I used a white flannel for the batting and a pink and gray plaid flannel for the backing. 

I bound the quilt with a gray and white stripe print. It finished at 54" x 65"

I named this quilt Remember When... because there are so many memories packed into this quilt. 

I also found some time (not sure how I managed to squeeze it in) 

to quilt and bind this quilt!

This is Sea Gems and is a result of the cut offs created by my Regatta quilt. 

I love the colors!

For the quilting, I randomly picked a point (offset from the center) to start straight lined quilting along the diagonal. This basically cut the quilt into quarters for easy quilting. (It is hard to see but you can see it best from the back in the solid colors.) 

For the backing, I pieced more left overs from the Regatta quilt! 

The middle print is what was left of the backing on the Regatta and the solids are cuts of the Kona solids used. No new fabrics purchased for this quilt! 

It is like getting 2 for 1!

This quilt finishes at 35" x 47"

I'm linking to Main Crush Monday @ Cooking Up Quilts

Full Steam Ahead!

My friend Joy is a quilter (no blog) and she creates beautiful quilts! Her colors are blues and purples. Another love of hers is Kaffe Fassett and batiks! We were together for a charity flea market (you may remember that I made repurposed jeans items) and she had made some mug rugs and other small things. BUT she also brought her scrap bin and baggies for people to fill a bag. 

I looked through her bin for blue and white fabrics for my scrappy little houses quilt (here and here). I will give an update on the neighborhood soon!  While rummaging through I found a string of 30 HST. I thought for sure that she accidentally put them in there but when I attempted to give them to her, she shrugged me off and said that they were left overs.  So I rescued them and made them into this little Mini KF quilt! 

I arrange them into pinwheel and square in a square blocks. The remaining 6 HST are on the back.

I used some batiks from my stash that were left over from the quilt I made after we went to Hawaii. Simple straight line quilting with a FMQ braid in the borders. Yay! Another finish even though it is a small one!

My son-in-law's sister is expecting a baby in October and my daughter asked me to make her a quilt. She said that she is really into Harry Potter 

(which I know very little about) and started to text me some ideas. 

This is the one that was her favorite.

So using letters from Lori Holt's book Spelling Bee,

I pieced together this quilt.

I used the 6 1/2" blocks to make the quilt bigger. Although I don't know the context and meaning of this quote, taken by itself, I think it makes a cute saying for a baby quilt. I kept it light and colorful using scraps from my stash. The background is Kona Ash. 

In keeping with the theme, I pieced the back but it is a secret I can't reveal yet. 

It is now waiting to be sandwiched and quilted!

But this one comes first and this happened today!

Sandwiched and pin basted! 

We leave for vacay in a few days. Not sure if I'll be back here until I get back in a couple of weeks 

(except to maybe reveal the graduation T-shirt quilt as the party is this weekend.) 

Hope you are enjoying your summer!

Linking to Can I Get a Whoop Whoop @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Midweek Makers @quiltfabrication

Another finish!

I have been steadily working on getting my UFO's finished while still moving forward with new projects and ideas! 

I'm happy to tell that I have another quilt finished!

Do you remember the red letter quilt that I started in the spring? 

It came up as my next quilt to sandwich and quilt. 

(I try to do them in order of being finished but sometimes I have a few waiting.)

Last week I was able to take time to sandwich it and then start on the quilting.

I quilted around each letter in the ditch and did some FMQ in the negative space between the rows of the lowercase letters. I also did some straight line quilting in the borders. 

All the letters are made from different red fabrics from my stash 

(mostly from my scrap bin.) 

The backing is a red apple print from my stash. I still need to label it.

This quilt finishes at 32.5" x 47.5"

So what is next you ask? 

I have 2 more quilts waiting their turn. The left overs from the Regatta quilt

and this one.

I finally cut into one of the first fabric lines that I bought after starting to quilt (so many years ago!) This line is called Blush by Basic Grey. The backing is pieced with most of the remaining pieces from my collection with a few coordinating pieces from my stash. 

You will just have to wait and see which one speaks to me next. 

I also have a few more piecing projects in the works. I'm thankful to have the summer days to spend working on the many ideas in my head. 

I'm linking to Let's be Social @ /Sew Fresh Quilts

and Midweek Makers @ Quilt Fabrication and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

What's happening in my sewing room....

I've have had more time (but still not enough) in my sewing room now that school is out for the summer.  Summer also brings projects around the house that need to get done too! If only there were more hours in a day!

So I finally got around to sewing the labels on 4 quilts! The labels were made just waiting to be stitched on.

                                 

Do you label your quilts?

Here are a few more repurposed jeans items I made.

June brought a new color to play with for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge! 

Aqua to Teals. 

January through June blocks!

I will link up to Rainbow Scrap Challenge @So Scrappy here.

I also was able to get my Temperature quilt up-to-date!

See how quickly our temps went up! Very little yellows...

We jumped right to the reds (hot temps)!

I will link up to Midweek Makers @ Quilt Fabrication.

Now that I'm caught up with these ongoing projects, 

I will have updates on some new projects soon! 

What's been happening in my sewing room?

First off, I'm very happy to say that I finished quilting my Grandma's Kitchen Sampler which I stitched along with Pat Sloan in 2017! The binding and label are also done so that's a wrap! 

I made a pieced back with left over pieces from the front and then FMQ in an all over meander. Label not sewn on yet but it's made!

Each block was released with a memory of Grandma's Kitchen 

like this one Pick a Posie!

Many of the blocks were pieced but a few were appliquéd like Telephone Time, Peppermint Swirls and Grandma's Apron.

(upper right corner, top row 2nd from left and 2nd row center)

The fabric line I used was Domestic Diva by Riley Blake. I had 2 charms in my stash for a long time but I needed to get a bit of yardage that I still found online! I also used some other coordinating fabrics. 

It finished at 60" x 60" square...a good size for a picnic quilt!

I will link up to Pat Sloan's Grandma's Kitchen link up. 

I also have been working a bit on making some things for sale to help the youth mission trip at our church. I wasn't sure I would have time to donate anything since work has been so busy but I decided to pull out a box of old jeans that I have stashed away. I deconstructed them into parts. First, I took the flat felled seams and cut them very close and straight. Since the seams were not long enough, I needed to splice them together with a few stitches until I had a length between 92" - 98". Then using fabric glue, I rolled them until they were about 4" - 4 1/2" around. 

Don't they look fun with the different jean colors and stitching showing through?

A stack of repurposed jean coasters!

These will be sold in sets of 2. 

I also cut off the pockets and made a set of 4 placemats. 

My table was too small to fit all 4.

The field of the placemats was from an old jean skirt of my daughters. I cut it to be 12" x 16" and serged around the edges.

Don't these projects work well together? 

I have a few more ideas for the rest of the repurposed jeans. Stay tuned!

I'm linking to Finished or Not Friday at Busy Hands, Show off Saturday @ Sew She Can and Friday Foto Fun @ powered by quilting.