Here's to the close of 2020 and new hope for 2021!

 I thought I would participate in the Best of 2020 linky party hosted by Cheryl @Meadow Mist Designs. She has asked that a new blog post be written highlighting the 5 best of my blog post from 2020. Cheryl has left it up to us to determine which post are 'the best'!

The first 'best' up for me is my post from October 31st when I posted about my finish of my Look on the Bright Side quilt. This quilt was made from my participation in the Quiet Play Pattern Club from 2019. All the blocks are paper pieced and designed by Kristy Lea. 

I really enjoyed sewing the paper pieced blocks in rainbow colors and the text blocks!

I picked this post because although this quilt took me longer than usual to finish, I kept working on it and finally finished it~~~no UFO here!

Second 'best' is from my blog post on August 30th. This post showed the finish of my I Spy quilt featuring by grandson. He still loves to take out the quilt and 'spy' all the things on the quilt! There are over 100 things to search for!

My third 'best' is Manifest, a quilt I featured in my May 13th blog post. I designed this quilt for my daughter. She loves very simple designs and sent me some ideas to work with. This quilt also feature some of my natural dyed fabrics!

The fourth 'best' is my Breaking the Rules quilt featured in my March 19th blog post. This quilt was created as part of the #improvtrianglesewalong by Nicholas Ball. I really loved learning this technique and how this quilt turned out! It now hangs in my quilt room.

I quilted it using a dense straight line/matchstick type quilting...much denser than I usually quilt!

Finally, my fifth 'best' is my Orphism quilt. It is based on the Cubism Art movement which is known for it's abstraction and bright colors. This was featured in my 

May 6th blog post.

I really like this quilt that is made with 2 different sizes of HST. The pop of yellow really makes the quilt stand out. 

Well, that is my 5 best! It was hard to pick only 5 out of 20 quilts that I made during 2020, however it was fun to look back through the past year. Hope you enjoyed it!

I'm linking to the Best of 2020 @Meadow Mist Designs.

I Spy a Finish!

 I was able to work on my I Spy quilt. The top was finished for quite some time but it needed to be sandwiched, quilted and the binding added. I found some time these past few weeks to get this done!

The photo shoot was quite fun as my husband and I were babysitting our grandson while his parents and aunt visited our youngest to celebrate her 30th birthday! We took the quilt on our morning walk to the park and let him 'spy' the many things

 on the quilt. There are over 100 things to 'spy'. 

He loved it and had so much fun!

Spying flags!

Spying watermelon!

Spying the mouse!

Spying stars!

He was very proud of himself!

I straight lined quilted around the houses and trees. I also quilted straight lines across the banner of the raw-edged appliquéd letters. In the center of each house I FMQ a heart. 

I found the backing fabric at JoAnn's on clearance. It was the perfect color of blue and it says 'The Adventure Begins'.

The quilt finished size is approx. 65" x 75" Linking to Meadow Mist Designs Monthly Link Up and April 2020 Scrappy House Challenge.

In the meantime, I started on a hexie project. I found the modern hexie movement on Instagram @modernhandcraft. I have had this mini charm pack in my stash waiting for inspiration for something to do with it. A modern hexie pillow would be a great solution!

I read about these cute 1" Happy Hexies by Mollie Johanson of Wild Olive on The Night Quilter's blog post. She gave the link to these printable hexagons. 

After finishing 30 hexies, I laid them out on a piece of linen from my stash. 

Following the Modern Hexie method, here is my finished pillow. In plenty of time for winter snow!

A fun little project!

April's Rainbow Scrap challenge block

For April's Rainbow Scrap Challenge, Angela chose light blue! I finally got around to completing my block using scraps from my overflowing blue scrap bin! It is always so hard to take a picture of just one months column block. Each column is only 4 1/2" wide unfinished. 

Here are 4 months together!

I'm linking up to Scrap Happy Saturday over at So Scrappy. 

I have seen quite a few house blocks going together during this Shelter At Home order. I have also been thinking about doing an I Spy quilt now that I have a grandson. With the suggestion from Allison at Cluck, Cluck Sew, I decided to make an I Spy quilt with houses. I didn't use her free house pattern because I wanted to use smaller squares of novelty fabrics. I drew up a pattern for a house and started cutting 4 1/2" squares from my scraps and stash. I have well over 100 squares cut but I'm not sure how many will be used. 

Here is a sneak peek!

I also joined the Elvira Quarantine Quilt Along that was hosted by Gundrun Erla of GE Quilt Designs. 

Here is what is on my design wall currently. 

I have quite a few projects going (which I usually don't do) but I am finding that I have run out of certain basics and I'm waiting for 1) my online order to deliver 2) local quilt shop and fabric stores to reopen. 

I have exhausted my limited supply of elastic making masks, my supply of fusible interfacing making a t-shirt quilt (which I can't find anywhere!), Kona cotton fabric in white and spa blue. 

I love using my stash but some basics are always in need!