Fall Fun with Family and Friends!

It has been a busy month of October!

 Over Columbus Day weekend, our DD2 and SIL visited from Austin, TX for 

6 days. Our family tradition is to camp up in Door County, WI and enjoy the lovely Fall colors! Our DD2 hadn't been there in 14 years, since her freshman year in high school and our SIL had never been to Door County. We were so excited for this visit!

We camped in Peninsula State Park with a large group of friends and enjoyed hikes, cooking over the fire, the fish boil at the White Gull Inn and breakfast at Al Johnson's.

Although the weather was beautiful, it was a bit nippy for these Austinites!

No sooner was our visit over, when our attention was turned to Fall Fest at the nature center where we keep bees.  My DH is a hobby beekeeper and once a year he does presentations about bees at the Fall Fest. Earlier, we robbed the hives and extracted the honey. This years crop was about 50 lbs! 

Next up, my DD3 and her boyfriend's visit from Austin. Although her 25th birthday was in August, he bought them tickets to come home this weekend. 

(They are currently sightseeing downtown Chicago) 

For her birthday, she wanted a black & white quilt. She found this print that she liked. It is a Luli Sanchez and Russell Busch collaboration. 

I started by drawing it up on graph paper then started doing the math to make it into a quilt. Here is the finished quilt!

I am so pleased with how it turned out!

The black and white stripes are 4" finished width done in Kona black and white. It was pieced on the diagonal.

The backing is a black and white geometric print. 

 The quilting is straight line. Its finished size is about 73" x 84".

Hopefully, I'll be back before too long to show you the quilt that I put on hold to squeeze in this one for my DD3! 

Another post...Oh my!!

It feels so good to be back in my sewing room after a long absence! I carved out time this extended weekend to fulfill my creative nature. As stated in my last post, I caught up on my Art Journal Challenge and now here are my September and October blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

September's color was baby blue.

October's color is black!

I even spent some time quilting my nieces wedding quilt. It has been pieced for quite some time. I'm about 3/4 done with the quilting. Hopefully pictures soon!

Normally, my DH and I are camping in Door County this weekend. Not so this year as he is on a business trip to Thailand. This gave me time alone (with our Nellie) to put school work aside and be creative. I must admit, I miss Door County and the beautiful colors that are spectacular this time of year and all our DC camping friends! Here is a picture from last year.

Check out the new button for Sew We Quilt! It is now Sew and Show...a blog about sharing your creativeness with others - at the blog hop! Go on over and get one for yourself here.

Leafs Me Happy

Welcome to my little corner in blogland! Whether you are here for the Leafs Me Happy Blog Hop or a regular follower, I hope you enjoy what you see. Today is my day to share my projects for the Leafs Me Happy Blog Hop. If you haven't been following the previous posts, you can find the complete list over at Cherry Blossoms quilting studio. I know that I have found some great inspiration and I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss it!

Of coarse, none of this would be possible without Madame Samm of Sew We Quilt and Cherry, from Cherry Blossoms. A big Thank You goes to both for their willingness to be our cheerleaders!

Although I can not say that fall is my favorite season as I do not look forward to the cool, chilly, cold weather ahead. What I do love about fall is the beautiful colors! We just returned from our annual trip to Door County and the colors were spectacular!

When I signed up for this hop, I was excited to start playing with fabrics in all the wonderful fall colors!

One of the things I think of in fall are sunflowers. I found this wonderful free paper pieced garden bench on Regina Grewe website. It is no longer available.

I made the bench the focal point of my sunflower garden mini quilt. Here it is pieced with the sunflowers fussy cut and appliqued. Once it was sandwiched, using FMQ and monofilament as well as metallic thread, I quilting the sunflowers and leaves. Using a zig zag stitch, I created the stems. Wouldn't you like to grab a book and relax in my garden? 

Next, I began playing with the fall color of leaves and made these 2 blocks. 

These blocks are 12 1/2"  unfinished. I wanted to include another common fall sight ~ flying geese heading south to their winter home ~ so I stitched together rows of geese and made this asymmetric table runner. I'm calling this 

Leafs Me Geesing.

Having too much fun to stop there...so I found a flying geese in a circle pattern on Caryl Bryer Fallert website. The block is 12 1/2" unfinished.

I really needed to include some pumpkins ~ so I drew up some pumpkins that could be used as a border and surrounded the circle of geese with these pumpkins. 

This mini quilt is 24 1/2" and is still unfinished. Hopefully I will find some time to sandwich and quilt it soon! I really love the bright fall colors!

I also showed a little sneak peek of my mini sunflower dresden here. Well, they multiplied into 4 sunflowers that I made into coasters. These little sunflowers measure 5 1/2" across. 

I will be putting together a tutorial in the near future, so if you are interested, please stop back. I'd love for you to become a follower, if you would like, so you won't miss the posting. 

Thanks for visiting. It has been a lot of fun. Now join me in visiting the rest of the talented ladies on the hop today! 

Tuesday 9

Till We Quilt Again

Sheilas quilt world

ferristhoughts

Home Designs by Amanda

Quilt n Queen

Polka dot classic

Moonbeams in a Jar

Stitch, stitch, stitch

Sew Me Something Good

quiltingbydawn

My collection of Things
Jessisca

Beautiful!

Every year over Columbus Day, we head up to Door County, WI to enjoy the fall colors. We camp in Peninsula State Park with a rather large group of friends. Hiking, sharing meals, laughing and catching up around the campfire are a few of the great things about this weekend. But really, the show is of God's spectacular creation. This year is of no exception...take a look!

Sights along our hike.

A beautiful birch tree

Colors against the blue sky!

We hiked to the lighthouse...

and amphitheater...

where the kids like to perform for the adults :D

A recent storm left many trees down.

We found this friendly walking stick...no not the kind you use for hiking 

although there were plenty of those around too!

In town, we ate at the White Gull Inn for the traditional fish boil.

And breakfast at Al Johnson's

Fall reminders were everywhere!

I was able to finish these over the weekend too!

October's block and a new block for June. The original June block is too different from the rest so I will use it on the back as the label.

I almost have a another finish...I'm hand stitching the binding :D 

Stayed tuned!