So, honestly, my birthstone had always been a bit of a disappointment. Peridot always looked to me like Emerald’s anemic cousin….no rich color, sometimes a little yellowish, lacking definition. However, peridot as a stone is very different than the lovely spring green in fabric.
Believe it or not, I actually had pulled this bee fabric out for a quilt that I didn’t end up with enough time for. I coupled it with a yellow my youngest gave me as a gift (my family really knows me!) I used my favorite go- to baby quilt pattern and here it is…I think it’s the bee’s knees!
I used one of my favorite all-over designs and quilted it on my Qu’nique 21 Pro using a very pale yellow thread.
Thanks again to Kim and Trish for a chance to play along!
This week’s challenge was to use three traditional blocks in our piece. I really struggled to find an idea that sounded fun. I didn’t really need another heart quilt but I just kept looking at a pile of leftovers from the chandelier quilt.
Eventually, I turned a quick sketch into this 30×30 wall hanging. Because, it turns out, I did really need one more heart wall hanging! I challenged myself to explore more about my QCT software. In this one small quilt, I practiced borders, triangles, placement of blocks and more.
There are four blocks in this quilt….flying geese, hourglass, pinwheel and, of course, a heart block.
And now, it’s off to bed, I don’t want to admit how late I’m up!
This week’s challenge was Ombre. I actually just used ombres in two recent quilts so I was wracking my brain for something to feel fresh and new. Instead, I went for an old favorite, the Chandalier pattern. It’s perfect for ombre because the strip piecing gives you nearly perfect matches between the larger and smaller squares. This quilt only used two fabrics, a white and an ombre.
My Ombre Chandalier measures about 64×64.
I also pieced the back from the same ombre and centered the quilt for a fun effect.
I’m coming in right under the wire this week and I’m excited to finish!
As I write this, my PQ16.1 project is humming along on the longarm. This week’s theme is mythical creatures and I had the perfect project-in-waiting. This would be quick, too, a panel, a couple simple borders….well, not quite!
I decided to add feet from a Riley Blake free pattern that was part of the Legends fabric line. Just a couple, surely those 1″ pieces wouldn’t take too long? Two feet became four which became 7. Then the trees for the other borders. And the “nice lap quilt” grew to 68×76. I was barely going to squeak this one out until I realized that my tablet on my longarm had not charged.
Despite not finishing in time, I feel good about this “someday” project becoming a “This week” project. My recipient is going to love this and I love that it’s going to be done!
My company is closed for the week between Christmas and New Years. With no travel plans, I treated myself to a quilter’s stay-cation and focused on my own pile of unfinished tops. I quilted 7 tops, bound 1 that was already quilted and bound 5 of the 7 that I quilted.
Then, this weekend, I finished a top for a friend.
I also recreated this little PQ Challenge quilt from last year. So, I guess that’s another finish. I’ve decided to start my year from the day after Christmas since I can’t really remember which one I finished which day.
So, my stats so far this year are:
7 finishes of my own (6 UFO’s, 1 new)
1 quilting for someone else.
As of right now, I have four quilts waiting for binding but it’s the kickoff week for Project Quilting so I’ll be creating my “mythical creature” quilt this week. Maybe I can squeak out a binding and finish 2 more this week!
Oh, the feels! For years, I’ve loved playing along with the blog hops and the lovely Carol and Joan are hanging up their cat herding hats. I’ve had blog hops to push me to try new things, finish projects, and enjoyed so much inspiration and connection. I so appreciate all these ladies have done to make the quilting world a cozier, more intimate space. However, both will be continuing their wonderful projects like the Scared Silly Boo Along. Make sure you are connected to the Cackling Stitches Facebook group. As for me, I’m going to try to be a more faithful updater. I have an updated sewing space and lots of UFO’s…so stay tuned.
In the meantime, back to the subject at hand. I love the Virtual Christmas Cookie exchange because it gives me an excuse to try a new recipe. I can’t have gluten or nuts so sometimes baking is trickier. This year, I’ve had lemon on the brain so I went searching for a really nice lemon cookie. I found this recipe for a lemon crinkle cookie over at The Loopy Whisk and, wow! Just wow! These may be my newest favorite cookie. (They were so good that I had to send them away in self defense…LOL.) The light lemon flavor makes such a nice contrast to heavier sweets.
In celebration of the season, I took the opportunity to finally bind this Christmas quilt. My dear friend, Margot, suggested that I could use the back of the couch as a revolving quilt display and here it is on the back of the couch. With Milo, of course, office holder-down-of-quilts-on-the-couch.
Be sure to hop over to all the other talented quilters who have been playing along. There’s a huge amount of talent in this group. And a very special thank you to Carol from Just Let Me Quilt. You are a star!
Over the years, I’ve had such fun playing along with the various blog hops. Times change and the time had come that the lovely Joan at MooseStash Quilting has decided to retire from cat herding (I mean blog hop hostessing.) So, of course I wanted to play along one last time. Gnomes are as cute as can be but I’ve never actually made one. I found this adorable free tutorial at Sew She Can! With his kitchen-patterned hat, this must be a baking gnome!
I originally planned to make a pillow but I’m kind of enamored of the little guy and I’m wondering if he needs a little more space to move around….and maybe a tree, or two…a little cabin in the woods. I think He’ll hang out on the design wall a litle longer until I decide what to do.
In the meantime, hop on along to the other bloggers and see what they’re bringing home for the holidays! And come back to visit…there’s a virtual cookie exchange coming and I haven’t even shared about my recent trip to South Korea!
We all know I can’t resist a hop and a hop about kindness…well, what could be better? I can hardly believe that I haven’t posted since July! It’s been a bit of a wild ride this summer as I replaced the carpet in 80% of my house with laminate flooring. The other 20% was already tile. My allergies have been thanking me but I’m still trying to recover my spaces. (Imagine having to move EVERYTHING in the sewing room to one side…and then move it back!) There’s been a lot of pitching and sorting going on. I’m trying to make sure more things are leaving than are coming in. Well, not fabric things…LOL.
There are so many wonderful people in my life that I’d like to bless with a quilt so I thought I’d share two recent projects. The first is made from leftover flying geese from another project. It’s going to be leaving to go to a friend soon. The Sawtooth Star is my all-time favorite block and my go-to since it’s so very versitile. I’ve used this one many, many times!
In fact, I’ve used it so many times that it almost sews itself! This is not a great photo (I’ll try to get a daylight photo tomorrow) but you can see the stars made from the leftover geese.
This 70×70 large lap quilt used up all those stray flying geese and was quilted with an allover pattern called Rebekah’s Roses from Urban Elementz.
My other current favorite is a free pattern you can grab here. The chandelier pattern from Lella Boutique is a quick and fun quilt that gives you lots of bang for your buck. I used this pattern for the “Kitchen Inspired” project for Project Quilting and loved it! The directions are nice and clear. I made one last Christmas for my nephew and I can give you a sneak peek at the newest one.
For this one, I only used two fabrics. One is an ombre and it looks like it’s going to be one of my favorites. I also saw this done up in random holiday fabrics….I can see one of those in my future, too! This is the first one I made. If you’re looking for a fun project to add some joy into someone’s life, consider a chandelier. It’s quick and easy making it kind on you and the recipient. This one was made with three different ombres and I shared my speedy construction methods in a previous post.
Now that kayaking season is coming to a close (boo!) and the house is somewhat together, expect to see a flurry of finishes. As I type this, the longarm is whirring away, Milo is purring beside me, 48 pints of tomato sauce are cooling in the kitchen and I’m looking forward to a new work week. I am going to be kind to me and not try to finish the crazily dense quilting I started yesterday. Each pass of across this 60-inch quilt is taking about an hour…and almost a full bobbin! It will be boo-ti-ful when it is done, though!
Thanks for stopping by, bee sure to check out the other wonderfully kind quilters on this hop! They’re a honey of a bunch and we have the sweetest “Queen Bee” in Joan over at Moosestash Quilting! I appreciate being able to play along!
Today is my day on the Something Smells Fishy blog hop hosted by Carol over at Just Let Me Quilt. As usual, I had tons of ideas but I just kept circling back to the leftover Baby Shark fabric. Now, that might have been uppermost in my mind since seeing an actual shark in the wild for the first time in Hawaii in April. Or, it may be that I was just excited to use up the last of such cute fabric!
These are not the most clear photos as I was racing the light to get the top outside butyou can see just how cute the fabric is. Added bonus, you can end up with the song stuck in your head! A quilt with it’s own soundtrack!
I went round and round about background fabric and finally decided on a lovely ombre with shades from pale green to deep teal. I had a lot of fun playing with the triangles to try to get the shading right. The photo, however, doesn’t want to flip over without cropping so I’ll leave that for morning, too. (Here’s the updated photo on the top. My phone seems to want to invert all my photos…sigh,) It’s really cool to see how much difference a little daylight makes!
I plan to add some ombre borders and finish it off with a shark quilting motif. And, of course, I’ll probably be humming Baby Shark the whole time, doo doo!
Please hop over and see all the other awesome fishy projects…I bet you’ll fall in love with them hook, line and sinker! And show Carol some love for all her hard work. I’m sure that keeping this quilting “school” of fishy creators together has kept her on her toes.
Ever since I first saw the block lotto bird blocks, I’ve wanted to try them. They just made me smile. With one thing and another, they kept getting pushed back to the back of the list. Then came the perfect hop and I knew I had to move my dream flock to the top of the list! Joan, over at Moosestash Quilting put together the hop with a bunch of talented stitch-ests from all over the web. I always feel honored to get to play along in this talented group. Many thanks to Joan for her exceptional cat-herding skills!
These blocks start out with a square and some background fabric. Honestly, looking at my rather, well, lets just say “well-endowed” stash, I was unsure where to start. I finally grabbed the piece of blue batik that has been floating around on the cutting table and spotted a piece of Kaffe fabric on the top of the bin where I keep pieces for string blocks. At first the cutting seemed a bit fiddly, but once I got the system down, it was fun! My first two birds had a pretty wide stance so I lke to think they’re striding purposefully somewhere, maybe to the feeder? The next four blocks came from two stray charm squares and another piece out of the string box.
You can find the video tutorial for these birds here.
Here’s the start of my little flock. I’m looking forward to a whole bunch more!
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I’m looking forward to playing with more of my scraps and building more of these little blocks. I’m thinking I need some pink birds and some birds with red chests like the robins I’m seeing in my yard. And, of course, I’ll need some crows because I love crows!
Speaking of birds in your back yard, have you tried the Merlin App? It’s a free app that lets you sound ID the birds in your yard. So far, I’ve identified about 8 different birds that visit my yard. I put bird feeders in my back yard a few years ago thinking that my cats would enjoy “Bird TV” from the window but it furns out I like watching the birds far more than they do.
While I work on growing my little flock, head on over to this talented group of quilters and check out all the fine-feathered projects on display!
Words & Stitches 
