wearing quilts and other goings on...

hello!  today is crazy busy, so I'm just going to show you a couple of quick pics of what I'm working on right now.  more info will follow as I {hopefully} find time to sew & make a bit of progress.  ok, here we go!




I'm making a patchwork skirt, because who doesn't want to wear a quilt?  {and it's plaid!!}




these are 144 cracker blocks 1/3 of the way done.  I still need to cut 288 squares on the diagonal and sew 4 of the resulting triangles to each block {that's 576 triangles for all you math geeks out there :) }  I started these at the quilt retreat I went to awhile ago.

FYI, I'm super sizing this tutorial from the Moda Bake Shop.

Ok, I've got a full day of appointments, track & field, and two baseball games to get on with.  but first, I'm linking up with Sew & Tell Tuesday , Freemotion by the River, and Quilt Story.   have a great day!

edited to say:  now that it is Wednesday, I'm linking up over at WIP Wednesday, too :)

Done! Finished! Crossed off the UFO List!

I'm so happy to have this done!  I originally started it five {?} years ago as a block of the month at a not-so-local quilt shop.  I chose this colorway with the intention of gifting the finished quilt to my MIL.  I kept up with my blocks while the program was running, but when the shop was sold I fell off the bandwagon.  {the first owner gave the kits for the remaining blocks to the BOM participants when the shop sold} 

 Anyway, when I made my UFO list in January, I only had about six of these blocks put together.  This quilt had me doing my first ever set-in seams, as well as my first curved seams and first paper piecing. 

The first time I put the top together, it was so crooked, I had to rip apart the blocks, sashing, and cornerstones so I could better trim the blocks down to the same size.   It was a bloody masacre of points, but it had to be done since the bottom two rows were an inch+ wider than the top rows.  {sigh}  At least the top fits together now.

Here is a shot of the backing.  I thought about using the backing for the front border instead, so a strip of the cheater piecing and floral would frame the piecework, but decided to leave well enough alone, mostly because I would have been in need of new and bigger backing fabric.

I quilted it on my home machine, making a grid of straight lines.  And I am using the word 'straight' loosely. You see, I didn't mark the lines.  Instead, I just eyeballed it.  Sometimes my eyeball got a bit wonky  ;)

Well, it was an interesting challenge to work with fabrics I would never have choosen for myself, but after spending a whole lot of time with this quilt lately, I needed something a bit brighter.

Like this

Ever since my first glimpse of it, I've been determined to get my hands on some Happy Mochi Yum Yum  :)

I don't have any plans for it yet.  I bought one of each print so I could see the scale of the prints for myself, especially those two on the far right.  For some reason I expected them to be larger than they are.  

So, just incase you have been wondering about the scale of the Happy Mochi Yum Yum prints too, here are a couple photos to help you out :)

I hope you can read the tape measures well enough to get the idea anyway.  I'd make the photos bigger, but then they run over my side bar and just make a mess of the place ;)

Have a great weekend!

time for a coffee break

Well, I finished my mug rug :)

I did all the quilting with my walking foot; along the lines to accent the fake patchwork, and around the hearts with white thread.  Then I used red and blue thread to quilt X's over the center hearts.

I bound it with the same blue I made the hearts with.  Remember the silver sparkles on the right side of that fabric?  Well, you can't see them on the wrong side (showing), but they still catch the sun in bright light, giving it an unexpected sparkle.  I love it :)
I think I'm going to use the wrong side of the sparkly blue for Mr. 5's penguin quilt, he will love the surprise sparkle when he notices it.

Putting my mug rug to good use:

hmmm, it needs something...

Yes, much better with a cherry square.  :)
Oh, and do you remember my Christmas wallhanging?  Well, it looks like this now:

I decided that I want to be spending my time on projects that are more important to me, so I cut the panel up into 2.5" squares to be used in this scrap quilt. 
This was a UFO on my list, so now I am down to 13.  I hesitated to do this to the panel, because it kind of felt like cheating on my UFO goal, but since I'm using the fabric for something else and not just putting it back in the closet, I decided to go ahead and cut it.  Anyway, my personal goal, my rules, right?  :)

Happy Saturday!

it started with one fabric....

Have you been to one of those fundraisers where you pay a set price, get a bag, and fill it with fabric that had been donated to the 'cause'?  Well, that's how I got this piece of fabric. 

It's ugly, in a nice kind of way, and I don't have anything in my stash to go with it; so it's chances of making it into a quilt were slim.  Every now and then I find an ugly fabric that I just really like a lot, and this is one of them.  It reminds me of the cushions my Mother made for around the kitchen table way back when.  Not that the cusions were ugly, they were a cheater fabric also :)

Anyway, this print has been on top every time I go sift through my stash, so I decided to make a mug rug with it.  I had two pieces close to fat quarter size, which was just about perfect.

So I made some hearts. 
I had solid red in my stash, but not a solid blue, so I used the wrong side of a blue-with-silver-sparkles fabric that I have.

That white fabric in the middle is from my stash also.

Those hearts were hand appliqued down.
Right now, I'm nearly done quilting my mug rug.  When I finish it, I'll show you, ok? :)