Villa Rosa Blog Hop

It is time for the second annual Villa Rosa Designs blog hop! When this got started last year, I was very happy to participate and this year is no different. For a little bit of background, Villa Rosa Designs is located in Grass Valley, CA. This, as you may or may not know, is where I lived for almost 30 years. The owner, Pat Fryer, is a creative force and her shop carries gorgeous fabrics. In addition, she has a HUGE number of postcard size patterns for sale. You may have seen these in your local quilt shops. They are usually patterns that come together quickly, often using pre-cuts. Having produced over 600 patterns in the history of VRD, there are many to choose from. The VRD on-line shop is wonderful! Shoppers will find patterns and fabrics, quilt kits to go with the patterns and often times a fantastic sale section (for the bargain hunters out there).

This year, the bloggers on the hop were given a set of five patterns to choose from. I chose to use the Ebb Tide pattern.

I decided to make a quilt to donate to Project Linus and had some cute fire truck fabric the build around. This pattern allows for the fabric to be seen in large blocks which is perfect for a child’s quilt.

Here is a progress shot. I had the blocks (simple squares and rectangles) cut out as well as most of the sashing. I kept the fire trucks front and center as the focal point. The two squares of yellow add a vibrant pop to the quilt!

The simplicity of this pattern meant it went together extremely fast. This allowed me time to practice some free motion quilting on it!

The loops and circles are free hand. The straight lines and angles were done using a ruler.

The backing probably took more time to piece than the top! It was great to use up lots of pieces from my stash and I really wanted to include as much of the firetruck yardage as I could. I have very little left of that fabric.

This simple pattern was fun to put together. It made a super cute child’s quilt and were it used with a cool large scale fabric it would look wonderful. For collectors of Kaffe Fassett or Anna Maria Horner fabrics, this would be an excellent choice. I could also see this pattern used for chopping up sections of a panel. So many options here!

Thank you to Villa Rosa Designs for inviting me to take part in this fun blog hop. I think VRD patterns are a lot of fun and look forward to seeing the quilts made by the others involved in the hop. Tricia, coordinator of the hop, has lined up an incredible selection of prizes! The generosity of the sponsors of this event is amazing.

To be included for prizes for the event be sure to leave an email address so we know how to contact you if you win. Registration for the prizes closes on Sunday, March 24th. 

From the comments on this post, I will select names to win a prize or to be entered into the Grand Prize Drawing. One person will win a set of the blog hop pattern cards (see photo above). The other names will be sent to Villa Rosa Designs to be entered to win one of many prizes. If you would like to be entered in the drawing, please leave a comment telling me if you have ever used a Villa Rosa pattern card. Does your local quilt shop carry them? Have you shopped on their website? I would love to hear of your experience with this company. If you are an international reader, please do let me know. Some of the sponsors are able to ship internationally and some are not.

Again, enjoy the hop. Go check out the other bloggers and see which pattern(s) they have made. I plan to do the same!


Blog Hop Schedule:

Thursday, March 14
https://villarosaquilts.com/

Friday, March 15
1. Kathleen McCormick — https://kathleenmcmusing.com/
2. Cheree H — http://livelylatte.blogspot.com/
3. Roseanne Nelson — https://www.homesewnbyus.com
4. Wendy Tuma — https://www.piecefulthoughts.com/
5. C&T Publisher (Valerie) — https://www.ctpub.com/blog/

Saturday March 16
1. Bernie Kringel — You are here!
2. Sandra Walker — https://www.mmmquilts.com/
3. Linda — https://www.texasquiltgal.com/
4. Debbie Huber – http://time4stitchn.blogspot.com/
5. SIY (Branyn/Jennifer) – https://blog.siysewityourself.com/

Sunday, March 17
1. Carolyn — https://quarterinchcapers.blogspot.com/
2. Emily (Norton House) — https://www.nortonhousequilting.com/blogs/news
3. Gail Shepperd — https://quiltinggail.com/
4. Susan Slaton — http://wazoonewsbits.blogspot.com/

Monday, March 18
1. Nann Hilyard — https://withstringsattached.blogspot.com/
2. Jaftex (Jennifer) — https://scottfortunoff.com/
3. Jan Altomare — https://www.cocoaquilts.com/ 
4. Tricia – http://quiltwithaview.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, March 19
1. Joy — https://shout4joy-shouting.blogspot.com/
2. Emily Leachman — http://thedarlingdogwood.blogspot.com/
3. Vicki S — www.knitbug2.blogspot.com
4. Rose Mikulski — https://somethingrosemade14.blogspot.com/
5. Quilts of Valor (Lexie) — https://www.qovf.org/

Wednesday, March 20th
1. Nancy — https://www.graceandpeacequilting.com/
2. Jocelyn — https://happycottagequilter.blogspot.com/
3. Tracie — https://joyfullytracie.com/
4. Daryl Perry — https://patchouli-moon-studio.blogspot.com/
5. Electric Quilt (Diane) — https://doyoueq.com/blog/

Thursday, March 21st
Tricia villarosaquilts.com

Villa Rosa has planned for a terrific set of prizes to be given away! You will not want to miss out on these opportunities! Check out the list of sponsors:

Hoffman Fabrics — https://hoffmancaliforniafabrics.net/
Moda Fabrics— https://modafabrics.com/
Timeless Treasures — https://www.ttfabrics.com/
Jaftex — https://jaftex.com/
Electric Quilt — https://electricquilt.com/
Banyan Batiks/Northcott — https://www.northcott.com/home.aspx
Benartex — https://benartex.com/
Hancock’s of Paducah — https://www.hancocks-paducah.com/
Fox Chapel/Landauer — https://foxchapelpublishing.com/
C&T Publishing — https://www.ctpub.com/
P&B Textiles — https://www.pbtex.com/

This event has been sponsored by so many wonderful companies!

Thank you Sponsors! Without you, this Blog Hop wouldn’t be possible.

2024 Stay At Home Round Robin – Finish

It is a bit early but my SAHRR project is finished and I am excited to share it! This event began in mid-January. With suggestions each week from a group of bloggers, the participants made quilts that could not be more unique. We were to pick a center to start with and build from there. Some quilters kept their center at the middle and others chose to off-set it. I made a small quilt (17″ x 18″) and others made large lap size quilts. Overall, it was so much fun.

Stepping Stones Quilt; May, 2016

My main goal was to use a bag of fabric that remained from my Stepping Stones quilt, made back in 2016. While I wasn’t able to use all of the scraps, I did manage to stick to using bits from that bag for this mini quilt.

Choosing designs to quilt in the various sections was fun. Loops, cross hatch and triangles filled most of the sections. I did quite a bit of dense pebbling on the black strips which was silly because it is impossible to see. I felt like I was quilting in a very dark room and just hoping what I was doing was right. The black thread was nearly impossible to see on the black fabric. I wish I had used dark gray.

Here is a close shot of some of the quilting.

I have the quilt hanging above the guest bed (which is in a corner of the sewing room). It looks a little lonely having there but I am on the hunt for something to hang with it. For the meanwhile, it is hanging out all by itself. Doesn’t this picture make a person think I have an immaculate sewing room?? Let’s just say there is a reason the photo was taken from this angle. 🙂

Many, many thanks to Gail, Wendy, Kathleen, Anja, Emily, and Brenda for the fun weekly prompts. I am excited to see the other finishes that are linked up at Quilting Gail’s site on March 18th.

I hope you will participate in and enjoy the upcoming Villa Rosa Designs blog hop!! It is sure to be lots of fun – so many quilts and patterns to be shared and prizes to be won. See you back here for my post on Saturday, March 16th!

Scrappy Pink Finish

Not sure why I have not posted this already but I finished up the pink heart quilt for the twin bed. Actually I finished it several weeks ago. I kept thinking I would go take some sort of artsy, creative photos of it but really, a twin size quilt is a bit cumbersome to take outside and hang over a fence or tree branch. I settled for somewhat boring shots of it on the bed. Better than never recording the finish!

It is cozy, warm and very, very pink! Just what little girls need when spending the night at their grandparent’s house! Simple cross hatch across the heart and then minimal straight line quilting over the white portion did the trick. I am somewhat concerned I need more quilting over the white background and will add another set of double lines between the existing sets. Shouldn’t take any time at all to pop the walking foot on the machine and add a bit more stitching.

It looks puffy because it is! I wanted this to be super warm. The girls often wear nightgowns or little shorts and t-shirts to bed so I gave this quilt an extra layer. When I basted it, I had the batting (80/20) and then also added a layer to thin pink flannel between the batting and the dark pink backing. Not surprisingly, this added some heft to the quilt. I think it feels super cozy.

Here is the backing. I have a number of yards of this leftover from the shop so it felt great to use a large portion to back the quilt and to bind it as well. I prewashed it to prevent any color bleeding into the white portion from the front of the quilt. It shouldn’t be an issue.

Both of the heart quilts look sweet side by side in this guest room. These will keep the grand kids cozy for the next sleepover!! Enjoy the weekend everyone. We don’t have any plans so maybe a little sewing, a little exercise and some yard work. Sounds good to me!

Linking to my usuals. Check them out at the top of the page, under link ups.

SAHRR – Final Round & a Little Extra Project

I knew this event would go quickly! Here we are finishing up the sixth round for the Stay At Home Round Robin and then it is time to quilt it. Crazy fast. The final week was set up by Kathleen McMusing. For her prompt she asked we incorporate letters or numbers into the round. In her post, she provided so many fun ways a person might do this.

I really didn’t want to add more pieced blocks to this very busy little quilt. Instead, I took the fabric I had left from the five inch square you can see at the top, cut a narrow (1.5″) strip of it and stitched it to the side. To balance things out one last time, I added another strip of the blue along the bottom.

I am calling it done. When I look at this, I feel like it is complete. Hopefully I will baste it and begin quilting it this weekend. Everyone will be back on March 18th to share their finished quilts. I believe Gail (the originator and organizer of the event) said there were about 50 quilters participating. Creativity abounds in this group so I am excited to see the finishes!

While I am here, I want to share this quick little placemat I made this week. My grand daughters both have birthdays in March – Big sister will be 7 and Little sister will be 4. I thought it might be fun for them to have a birthday placemat they can share, each one using it on their birthday.

My sister, Cathy, has a shop on Etsy called 6 Monkeys & Co where she sells handmade childrens’ clothing. She thoughtfully saves many adorable scraps for me to quilt with. Making clothing means a large amount of extra fabric that isn’t useful to her but is very fun for me. Anyway, that this where the birthday fabric scraps came from. Just enough to piece together a placemat.

I glued strips or rick-rack trim around the edges before I put the binding on. I was concerned it might make the binding bulky but it wasn’t a problem at all. The backing fabric is a festive rainbow of polkadots. Hope the girls enjoy this during their birthday month. I won’t see them for a couple of weeks so I need to get this off in the mail to them.

Update to last week’s post – I attending the Project Linus meeting and it was quite fun. These women work hard! So many donations that needed to have labels attached. Also loads of donations of fabric which I spent several hours sorting and measuring. I plan to return to the next meeting. Yay!

Enjoy the weekend everyone! I will be working on the SAHRR quilting which I am looking forward to.

2024 SAHRR – Round 5

It took me all week to get upstairs to work on my Round Robin project this week. But yesterday I did it! This week was Quilting Gail’s week to supply the prompt. Her only request was that, somehow, the number 4 factored into our decision for what to do with this round. Four patch blocks, use four colors, maybe 1/4 square triangles or pinwheel blocks – these use the number four in one way or another.

I had no problem deciding how to implement the suggestion of four in my round. I looked at the bits of leftovers I am working with and counted out four blue strips with tiny black and white HST’s attached to them.

I connected four of the HST’s with a square of the blue in between each one. Then I added enough of the blue strip to each end to be able to border one side of the Round Robin project.

It looks great. After attaching it to the left side of the quilt top, I measured the width of the rounds on each side of the original center block. Unless the prompt doesn’t work out, I plan to add the final round to the left side of the project and hope to emphasize black in that last round. This should lessen the asymmetry and balance things out a bit.

This has come together quickly and now that it is almost finished, I am looking at each section and planning how to quilt it. I enjoy quilting something small and easily maneuvered. This one will be fun.

We had one really nice day of sunny weather this week which was such a treat. Ray wanted to take out the boat as he had done quite a bit of work on it and needed to test a few things out.

As you can see, there was no one on the water. But the sun was out and the sky was just gorgeous. It was the perfect way to take advantage of a bit of sunshine. Heading to the end of February is leaving me hopeful spring is not far off!

This weekend I plan to attend a monthly meeting of the local chapter of Project Linus. I have donated to them before when in California. However, I haven’t ever gotten involved. Since moving up here, I haven’t been interested in joining a guild but I am interested in meeting other quilters and, as always, love service clubs and projects. Have any of you gotten involved with Project Linus? I am sure I will meet some like minded, nice people in the group!

100 Year Old Ladies, SAHRR Round 4, Ruler Quilting, and Hand Quilting

Lots to catch up on today! I think my priorities are correct in introducing my 100 year old grand daughter. Big sister is in first grade this year. She loves school so much. This week her class celebrated the 100th day of school for this year. The children came to school dressed up as though they were 100 years old. It was so much fun to see the joy on her face when the day finally rolled around.

She was so cute with her gray hair (wig) and cat eye glasses on a chain. H was watching the bus pull up with this huge grin on her face. These special days at school are so much fun for the kids.

Moving on to this year’s Stay At Home Round Robin…. It was Brenda’s week to choose what we were to incorporate into the round. She chose the square in a square block, also called an economy block. For some reason, I had the idea I needed to make a larger block and it was bothering me. I couldn’t come up with a way to use a bigger block. At first, I thought I would skip the whole round. But then I decided to try and make a tiny one. My first attempt was very wonky and I tossed it. Then I tried again and made two blocks I was happy with.

The blue piece set the size for the block. The blue square measured 1 1/2″. I cut large white squares for the surrounding triangles and chopped those in half. The finished square ended up being two inches. I made two of these. They are totally improv which means the center is not square. (I still need to trim the blue corners on the back side). I love them!

I also made this blue border by alternating the solid blue with two tiny black and white HST’s. As I mentioned before, all of these bits are leftover from a quilt I made a while back. As of yet, I have not attached the blue border or the tiny S-I-S blocks. I want to wait to see what comes up on Monday. But for now, I like the idea of this layout.

Stepping Stones Quilt; May, 2016

Since I keep referring to the quilt I first made with these pieces, I thought I would show the original quilt to you again. I made this quite a while ago as part of a quilt along with The Inquiring Quilter. Seems like seven plus years is long enough to hold on to the extra bits. Time to use them up!!

Hand quilting is a great way to keep my hands busy while watching television or listening to an audio book. This peek shows a snippet of a wall quilt I am working on. I stitched much of this while Ray watched the Super Bowl last weekend. By the end of that time, my fingers were sore. Even with a thimble, it is hard to push that needle back and forth for a long period of time.

In the sewing room, I have been working on a quilt for a blog hop in March. (I am way ahead of schedule on this)! The layout of this quilt allows for lots of FMQ practice. I have been quilting it with a straight ruler. After a number of squares like the one above, I think it is time to switch to a curved ruler. When I practice with the curved rulers, I have a lot more hiccups. There are so many pretty motifs to be stitched with rulers so I am motivated to keep practicing.

2024 SAHRR – Round 3

Another Monday rolled around and this meant a new prompt for the 2024 Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR). Hosted by a group of bloggers, headed up by Gail, this annual round robin is a great way to push myself creatively. The blogger for the week suggests a block or an idea and we interpret it as we feel works with our quilt.

This week’s blogging host is Emily of The Darling Dogwood. Her only specification was to incorporate triangles in this round. This clicked with me right away. After last week’s round (use only two colors) I knew I wanted to incorporate some of the black and white charm squares I have set aside for this project.

These leftover charm squares already have a 1 1/2 inch strip of blue already attached to them. I decided to cut triangles from the side where the blue meets the charm square.

I cut a 2 1/2″ triangle from each of these. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get two triangles from each one so I am saving the remaining pieces for another round (hopefully).

I wanted an equal size, white triangle in between each of the blue/black units. However, I didn’t really realize by doing this, I would be chopping off the points when I attached something to the top of this row. I should have made the white triangles larger so the points of the print charms would be encapsulated by the white and thus the points would be preserved. I am leaving it as is and not going to worry about it. Let’s all pretend I meant for it to be this way, ok?

I have some ideas for the next round but of course, I am waiting to see what the prompt is. I hope I can work within the prompt and the idea I am playing with. Currently this measures 15″ x 17″ which is great. Three more rounds should keep this to a nice wall hanging size.

Want to know one of the toughest parts about this event, for me anyway? It is waiting until the following Monday! Now that I sat and worked on it this morning, I don’t want to stop but I have to. Patience is a virtue, so they say. I need to work on that a little. Haha.

While I wait for next Monday’s prompt, I will go back to this project. I have a blog hop coming up in March and yesterday I spent some time piecing a backing for the quilt. It is so cute! Can’t wait to share this one with you all.

Hiking, Tea Parties, Crafts and Sewing with My Girls

We had the pleasure of spending last weekend with our grand daughters. They haven’t had a sleepover at Grammy and PePaw’s house since early fall so this was really a treat. My son dropped them off on Friday and came back Sunday to pick them up. As usual, we managed to do all sorts of things over the weekend.

On Friday, we spent a lot of time outside as Saturday promised to be very rainy. These girls love being outdoors and like all kids, they need that time to run around and burn some energy. They played frisbee and basketball for quite a bit before heading to the woods in front of our house. Both girls decided to dig for treasure without any preconceived notion of what that treasure might be. After digging for a long while, PePaw asked if they wanted to dig for worms.

They were excited about this and ran right to the compost bins. Previously the girls have held the worms in their hands, especially Big Sister. This time, they wanted them on their shovels to look at and then off the worms went, into a bucket. These girls are adventurous and try most any activity they are offered. While they were playing with worms, I snuck into the house and grabbed a handful of ‘treasure’ (marbles and little glass gems).

Acting quickly, I tossed them into the dirt nearby. It took forever for the kids to discover them but once they did, they were very excited. The interesting bit about this was how each girl thought the gems got there. H, being a very worldly six year old, immediately said “Grammy, the kids who lived here before you must have been playing here and forgot about these.” (Note – she has no idea whether any kids lived here before me). A wasn’t close by when her big sister explained this to me. A few minutes later, Little Sister asked me, “Do you think some pirates left these gems here?” Two very different theories. Of course at three years old, A doesn’t feel the need to explain where the pirates came from or why they left this treasure for her. She found five pieces of treasure and was so excited.

Back to the weekend, as expected it rained most of the day on Saturday. But this made for perfect crafting weather. We were looking at images on the computer trying to learn if rainbows could have pink in them even though poor, poor pink sadly is not ever mentioned in the ROYGBIV order of things. We decided yes, pink can be seen in rainbows. While doing this important research, we saw a craft making rainbows with colored stickers. Miraculously, Grammy had stickers in the craft drawer. They added cotton balls for clouds too. It was interesting to me to watch each girl make her rainbow. Big Sister wanted her stickers aligned on the guidelines but not touching. Little Sister insisted on overlapping her stickers so no guideline could be seen.

After lunch on Saturday we were invited to my parents, Great Papa and Great Grammy, for hot cocoa and cookies. The girls loved it and were super about letting us visit while they colored pictures and ate cookies.

Big Sister always asks to sew something while she is here. She knows I won’t refuse her this request. Usually we don’t sew when Little Sister is around because she really isn’t old enough. But it all worked out.

First project was to make this whole cloth project with A. She loves fire trucks and ambulances so I thought she would like this. My vision was to show her the matchbox cars and she could drive them along the roads, keeping busy so I could sew with H. She didn’t get into this at all. Blankets are for babies and stuffies. I don’t think a matchbox car even touched the fabric. It was immediately put to use to wrap up a stuffed animal. Soon Pepaw came to the rescue and took her downstairs to play.

This gave Big Sister and I plenty of time to get started on her first quilt. She was thrilled. Being a very tactile person, she favors the bin with flannels and minky scraps. Her choices centered around dog and cat fabrics and a bright pink scrap to brighten things up. I cut a stack of squares for her to arrange on the design wall.

I loved how seriously she took this part of the process. She wanted symmetry and was able to work it out with the squares she had. I wish I had taken more pictures but it is more fun to stay in the moment with her. This time, she was a very able participant. She sat on my lap and guided the fabric along. I showed her the 1/4″ markings and we talked about the need for a straight line. Fortunately, my machine has speed controls and I could set it to go very slowly. She also learned to pin the pieces together. This made her Grammy a little bit crazy. She looked at the pins like she was judging the quality of fine diamonds, choosing which pins she wanted to use. At times, I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, ‘c’mon, just pick a pin’. If you think about it, when sewing many things happen at the same time. Pressing the pedal, guiding the fabric, taking the pins out, pressing the seams etc. She was wanted to do each part. I did help quite a bit with keeping the fabric straight but she will get there.

To simplify the project, we didn’t use any batting. The quilt is very soft with a flannel backing. We sewed the layers right sides together and then flipped it right side out. H did a great job turning the corners out. That was as far as we got the first day. Sunday morning we finished it up with a topstitched edging and two lines of quilting, corner to corner. She chose to use ‘special stitches’ for those seams. I love the joy on her face in this picture. She was very proud of this project.

Sunday was better weather wise. We took the girls to the nearby park which also has some great hiking trails around it. After playing on wet slides and swings, we wandered into the woods. The girls spotted this rotten tree stump and started playing. They decided to make a person. Using moss for hair and the smile and leaves for eyes and nose, they soon had a person. Big Sister immediately named her Treetopolis.

Now you have a snapshot of the weekend. Not pictured are the pizzas we made, the paintings the girls did and the amazing shows they performed form us. One involved dance and the other featured their amazing air guitar skills. They are becoming such good friends. So much fun to be with – even if we did go to bed at 8:30 Sunday night after they went home. 🙂

Linking up with a few favorites. Check them out at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

SAHRR – Round 1 and 2

Last week turned out to be a busy one and while I did make the first blocks for the 2024 Stay At Home Round Robin, I never had a minute to write a post. So, let’s catch up!

For the first week, Wendy of PiecefulThoughts, chose signature blocks. I was pleased with the choice because they make a nice graphic border and are simple to make. So, thank you Wendy!

I made eight of the signature blocks without a real plan as to how I would use them. At that point, I set them aside to wait and see what Round 2 would bring.

Anja of AnjaQuilts is the host for week two. She surprised all of us with a very simple instruction. We are to do as we please but use only two colors. My vision came easily. I decided to use black and white, include the signature blocks and finish off the first border.

The signature blocks are arranged in a pattern reminiscent of the zig zag on Charlie Brown’s t-shirt. They follow around the corner of the block and each side finishes with either black or white. The two remaining sides are bordered in black. At this point the block measures 15 inches which is great. I hope to combine the next two weeks into one border as well because I keep this to about 20″ square. I plan to hang it on the wall in my sewing room. Within the next round or two, more of the royal blue will be included.

I will be linking to AnjaQuilts for this week’s link up. One thing I love about this SAHRR is the unique interpretations of the weekly prompt. Looking at all of the projects linked up, one really wouldn’t think they have much in common yet we are all following the same prompts each week. To see the variety of SAHRR projects, click here.

Green Strips and Pink Hearts

We just finished up a week or so of bitterly cold weather. We don’t often drop into the teens here but yikes it was cold. No snow (which disappointed me). Lots of rain but then this is Washington, so it is to be expected.

With the super cold weather, our heater was just keeping the house warm. My sewing room has never gotten much heat and it was pretty chilly up there. But I braved the cold and sewed anyway. Nothing an extra sweatshirt couldn’t take care of!

I finished up the quilt top for the twin bed in the grand kid guest room. It is going to be so cute! Yesterday I pre-washed the backing fabric because it is a deep pink color and I was concerned it might bleed into the white background. Now I can sew one seam to make it large enough and do some spray basting. For quilting, I am thinking an edge to edge over the white background and some sort of meandering motif in the patchwork heart. I am excited for this one – it will look so cute in the girls’ room. (Hmmm, if I ever have more grand children, are the girls going to think it is unfair to have to share ‘their room’ with cousins???)

A few weeks ago Ray and I (mostly Ray and only a little me) painted the kid room. That pepto bismol pink was so awful. In the summertime when the sun came through that window, it cast a deep pink glow over the hallway. The room had so much pink and ugly dark gray curtains! I bought some off white paint and found these sweet polka dot curtains on Facebook Marketplace. What a difference this made. When the heart quilt is done, it will replace the patchwork that you see above. I love the twin bed frame. Ray made it for Julia when she was about four or five years old. It weighs 500 billion pounds and should we have an earthquake we will all run in there and hide out under the bed. We will be perfectly safe there.

Always thinking of my girls, I saw this (undressed) doll at a thrift shop for a dollar. I went to get my stack of doll clothes patterns to make something for her and remembered I donated all of them. Why did I do that??? Anyway, I had a pattern for pants and drew a little pattern for the shirt. It closes with velcro in the back and looks pretty cute (if I do say so myself). She needs a bit of hair styling but I am thinking H and A can take care of that when they come over.

Quite a while ago, I participated in the annual Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. These projects are hosted by Angela at So Scrappy. Below are some projects I made with RSC blocks. In case you are unfamiliar, and I cannot imagine anyone is, Angela picks a color each month. The quilter makes blocks with that color and at the end of the year assembles a rainbow themed, scrappy quilt.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014 Quilt; Finished January, 2015
RSC 2017; finished March 2018

This year my goal is to use up my bin of strips. It is stuffed to the brim. The only thing I won’t use are binding strip leftovers. These are rolled up and measured. Maybe I can use them as a scrappy binding at the end of the year? As for what blocks I plan to make with these, that remains to be determined. Right now, I am just joining strips and ‘making fabric’.

This week I joined all of the green strips. Most of these pieces of made fabric are seven inches tall. The length is determined by the size of the strips I used. Hard to tell from this picture but the bulk of this measures about 30″ wide and 21″ tall. So it is a good chunk. The green has been dealt with for now. If one of the monthly colors doesn’t exist in the strips bin, I will just skip it. I have a few books for inspiration when I think about how to use the strips. Sunday Morning Quilts, No Scrap Left Behind, and 15 Minutes of Play are my favorites for this sort of thing. I am sure I will find inspiration within one of these books and decide how to use the strips. Thank you to Sandra of MMMQuilts for this idea. I saw her working on something similar on Instagram and decided to follow suit.

That sums up my work in the sewing room this week. Good start to the year, for sure.

My son texted this picture to me last week. He was picking A up from preschool. She was covered in mud! She goes to a farm based preschool and they play outdoors no matter the weather (which makes sense around here or the kids would never be outside.) When the school year began, parents were warned not to send the kids to school wearing anything special. These kids play hard and are allowed to make mud, dig holes, whatever. There is a really cool area called The Mud Kitchen which has all sorts of utensils, bowls and pans to ‘cook’ with. She clearly had a great day. I love the expression on her face. “Mud? What mud?”

Linking up with Angela at So Scrappy.