It's Strawberry Season at my house!

Nothing better than some freshly made strawberries (except freshly grown ones!) While I'm waiting for a fabric order, I started making these adorable strawberry blocks. I bought the pattern last summer and never got around to making them. It is called Strawberry Social by The Picnic Basket.

I will be making 7 more blocks. These are all make from my red, pink and green scraps! The background is Kona white. Aren't they just too cute!

I finished my 4 May blocks for the Stash Busters Challenge. 

So pretty in pink! Next I'll work in purple or turquoise!

Angela announced blue to be the color of the month for the RSC. 

Here are my blue blocks.

Blue with scrappy gray background

Blue Hang Ten quilt block

Blue Squiggle blocks

Here are all 6 color blocks together!

Although I forgot to post my April calendar, I have been keeping up. Here are my April and May calendar journals.

I'll be linking to Scrap Happy Saturday at So Scrappy, Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Friday Foto Fun @Poweredbyquilting, TGIFF @Anja Quilts

Sew What's New?

 Although school has officially started here, kids are remote learning. There have been few opportunities to sub but I have been trained (sort of). The process is quite complicated and hasn't be tested enough. Technology is great but there seems to be glitches every step of the way. 

The good news is that I do get a bit more time in my sewing room when I'm not watching my grandson!

eating cucumbers from the garden

Sew what have I been doing? 

I purchased the A is for Apple pattern from SewFresh Quilts when she was having a 50% off sale. I started making the apples to use as a new table runner. 

I got a little bit interrupted as a friend of mine @megillicutti on Instagram commissioned me to make a drawstring bag for her. She loves vintage and has a booth at an antique mall. She is headed to an Extravaganza this weekend to shop to restock her booth. She dropped off this cart and a vintage linen tablecloth at my house. I measured the cart and started working on a drawstring bag. 

As you can see, it didn't quite fit around the cart. Realizing my mistake, 

I started again. 

Here is the 2nd bigger version! 

Isn't it cute made from the vintage tablecloth?

I had some orange ribbon that I added for a pop of color! She loved it!

I also finished the baby quilt that will go to a charity. The pattern is Traffic Jam by Pat Sloan but I am calling mine True Blue.

It was made from my overflowing box of blue scraps except for the gray dotted fabric for the sashing and borders.

The backing is a yardage piece that has been in my stash for some time!

The finished size is 31" x 45" 

The quilting is a straight-line outlining the squares and a X through the corner squares. 

All labeled and ready!

Monday was the release of Week 2 in the National Quilters Circle Starlight Mountains challenge. 

I managed to finish and here are both week 1 and week 2 blocks together!

(It looks like Christmas at first glance but the center blocks are watermelons on a blue plaid backing. Picking up the reds and greens of the watermelons.)

I'm linking to Midweek Makers @QuiltFabrication 

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

2015 isn't going much better!

Well, once again my blog has been neglected. 2015 has been very busy with family issues. My mom fell in late January after slowly becoming more and more unsteady on her feet. After demanding much discussion with the doctors, they finally admitted her to the hospital for further testing and treatment. 

Ten years ago, we discovered that my mother had a brain tumor but the decision at the time was not to treat it since it was slow growing, not cancerous and she had no symptoms. Now she was unsteady and weak on her right side. So a treatment plan was started. After several days, she went to a rehab facility to strengthen her right side in preparation for neuro vascular surgery. Surgery was completed and successful for the left side of the tumor. A second surgery was scheduled after more rehab. However during this time, she had a major setback with a brain bleed which acts similar to a stoke caused by a reaction to a drug she was given. She currently has no movement on her left side but some feeling has come back which is a good sign, however, we have a long road ahead of us. 

To help her remember and keep her hands busy, I made her a Fidget Quilt.

Knowing that she would not be able to sew/craft anymore, my siblings and I starting cleaning out her room. 

(In anticipation of this, I have been sorting through things for over a year, read about it here and here, but some things she wasn't willing to give up. Now she was ready to accept the idea.)

I used many things from her sewing supplies to create 24 different textures and activities. Beads on rattail, a button flap, mini spools on a string, big snaps, yo-yos, a zipper, ribbons, beaded trim, a appliqué doll, fleece, satin, terry, fur, etc. Each square is 6" so the finished size is 24" x 36". Perfect for on her lap. 

Another small project I started to keep me sane busy was this scrappy map of the USA! 

A friend of mine sent me this link. On her post, it didn't say how big her map was and she downloaded her shapes for a silhouette machine which I do not own. 

So what did I do?

I search google images for a simple map of the USA. I copied it and enlarged it after cutting the map in half along the borders between North/South Dakota and Minnesota all the way down to the Texas and Louisiana's border.  This gave me about half of the US on each 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. 

I then cut out each state, measuring how big it was and finding a scrap of fabric that would fit...no problem...this project didn't even put a dent in my scraps!

I also cut a piece of HeatNBond the same size and ironed it on the back of the fabric. I traced the paper shape on to the back of the fabric, remembering to flip the state over. Carefully, I cut out the states and ironed them on to a piece of linen (from my stash). Once they were all adhered, I started sewing around the borders with black thread, intentionally messy as was stated.  

I stretched it over a 16' X 20" canvas yesterday...finished!

All 50 states each with a different fabric! 

Can you name them all?

One more finish!...The quilt for my SIL's birthday which was yesterday! 

I originally was going to give it to him for Christmas but since my DD2 and SIL just bought their first house, they needed to buy a refrigerator. So that was their Christmas gift. So even though the top was pieced, it was put away during the holidays. Knowing that I needed to get it finished in time for his birthday, I squeezed in time between visits to the hospital, work and other committments.

Slowly, I sandwiched the quilt, and started quilting. I used straight line quilting, around the squares, in the sashing, and in the negative space.

The quilt pattern is Fieldcrossing by Cloud9 fabrics. The fabrics are Menswear Mustaches by Timeless Treasures, coordinating fabrics by Timeless Treasure and Kona Ash. 

The finished size is 60" x 72"

The backing fabric is from Connecting Threads. 

I'm calling this quilt X Marks the Stache. 

We will be delivering it on our trip to Austin in a few weeks! Hope he likes it!

FNSI, Giveaway and Thanks!

Last night was the November Friday Night Sew-In.  I had BIG plans to bind my placemats, work on my Snowman quilt, and maybe some stitching.  Everything was ready.

Earlier in the week, I worked on taking my graph paper drawing of my snowman quilt and doing the math involved in making this quilt a reality.  How many of each size squares, rectangles, and HQT in each color? Most of the pieces were cut before FSNI.
The binding for the placemats was also made. Just needed to be stitched on to have a finish.

So what did I do? 

I  made my Snowman quilt!  It is only a flimsy right now...needs to be sandwiched and quilted but I do love how it came together.

What do you think?

On to announcing...

the winner of my giveaway for the potholders and some other goodies is Finn over at Pieces from my scrapbag.  Send me your smail mail address and I will get a package out to you.  Thanks for playing.

Now for an over due THANKS!  I was the winner of 2 bags of scraps!  The first came from Kate over at Swim, Bike, Quilt.  Just look at this pile of yummy scraps! What fun it was to sort these!

The second package came from Emily over at Em's scrapbag.  These scraps came in this adorable little drawstring bag.  

There is so many scraps stuffed inside.  I can't wait to get going on my scrap quilt.  I just need to get some things off my list before I can really get started.  In the meantime, plans are swirling in my head.  Thanks again Kate and Emily!