Category Archives: Quilt Alongs

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.

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!

SAHRR – Final Round & a Little Extra Project

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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

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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

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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.

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

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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.

SAHRR – Round 1 and 2

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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.

Stay At Home Round Robin

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Last year was the first time I participated in the annual SAHRR (Stay At Home Round Robin) hosted by Quilting Gail each year. Gail began this quilt along during Covid as a way to stay connected during quarantine. I jumped on board last year and it was a lot of fun. I like the challenge of a new block to use weekly in any way I want. There are quite a number of quilters involved now and seeing the interpretations of the new block was really inspirational.

Last year I made a baby or toddler size quilt using pieces I had cut for a different project which had since been abandoned. It was a great use of the fabric.

This year I had a few ideas of what I wanted to work with. My bin of orphan quilt blocks (the leftovers from projects, test blocks etc.) is stuffed! After pulling three different piles of fabric and unused blocks, I finally made a decision.

This block is made of bits left over from a quilt I made years ago as a gift for my niece and her new husband.

I have quite a variety of pieces leftover and will do my best to re-purpose them into this quilt. I can always add to this as needed but I hope to use most of this. Likely I will have to cut up or take apart some of the existing blocks. The challenge will be meeting my two goals; use up the leftovers and keep the quilt size as small as possible. Watching other quilters last year, I saw many who combined weekly assignments into one round. Six bloggers will each post one block but this doesn’t mean the quilt has to have six separate rounds.

If you want to see what some of the other quilters are planning as their starting point, I would pop over to Quilting Gail’s to take a look. We are linking up our starting blocks there. I can tell from the variety of chosen center blocks, each quilt will be unique. Now to wait until the 23rd when Wendy of Pieceful Thoughts announces what we are to use for the first round!

2023 Positivity Quilt Finished!!

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I really wanted to get this posted during September! The goal was to have this finished by Labor Day weekend which, for the most part, it was. The only thing unfinished was the hand sewing on the back of the binding. But so much was happening and by evening I was too darn tired to stitch it down.

As Dad has gotten better and the worry lessens, life is getting to feel (a little bit) more normal. I finally got that binding stitched and am happy to show you this sweet quilt!

I loved making flowers using the Dresdens I had made some time ago. I only had to make one more to complete this. I was attaching the ‘flowers’ first to the quilt top by stitching around the border and along the seams of some of the petals. Then I attached the center circles using a blanket stitch on my machine. So they are firmly attached to the quilt top. As I was finishing the binding I kept thinking about washing this before donating it. I realized (luckily in time!) that I really need stitch through the Dresdens and backing fabric so they won’t pull apart when washed. The unquilted portion, especially on the larger Dresdens, is too wide.

Looking at the back side, it is obvious where the blank space is from the unquilted Dresden. As an aside, backing this quilt with the last of this bold floral was very satisfying. It has such a pretty, autumnal vibe to it. The background on the front and this print on the back were from the same fabric line so I wanted to put them both in the same quilt. I did have to add a chunk of blue solid to make this work.

The butterflies were made with tiny Dresden bits and pieces. I really like them as well as the partially blooming flower above it to the left.

Another little butterfly! Quilting was done with a simple stipple on the background and wavy lines on the leaves (thanks to Janine, Quilts From the Little House, for that inspiration)!

Many, many thanks to Preeti for this cute pattern and her time hosting this QAL for Mercyful Quilts. Also sending gratitude to the quilters who made and donated Positivity quilts to Mercy Hospital.

For those of you who were not able to participate but want to help, Mercy Hospital is in need of more lap size quilts. Basic requirements are no smaller than approximately 55″ x 55″ and no larger than approximately 65″ x 80″. For style, that is totally up to you. We do not serve children so no juvenile fabrics please. We love having a mix of male, female and gender neutral designs and colors. Also, if you want to, we do love having one or two patriotic quilts for our veterans. Lastly, please do not send us anything from a home where someone smokes inside the house. We need quilts free of fragrance. Should you decide to wash it before sending (which we do prefer) please do not use fabric softeners or any sort of scented detergents. If you have more questions, please leave them in the comments and I will get back to you.

I am just finishing up one more comfort quilt which I will share soon. Then they will be sent off to Mercy Hospital!

Linking up with Oh Scrap and Finished or Not Friday. Check them out too. I have been so out of the blogging world and had forgotten how much I enjoy looking at everyone’s projects!!

Positivity Quilt Along Link Up #2

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Hi All! Crazy busy here over on the western side of Washington state these days. There has been so much happening. Julia moved up here just a few weeks ago. My mom and dad were successful in selling their California house and just moved up here as well. The family has been working on helping them with unpacking which means no sewing time.

I did get some progress made on my quilt top before all of this began however. I am very happy with it. My plan is to use the Dresdens I made some time ago, as well as a few new ones, for the flowers. This is a time saver for me which is so helpful. Time is just not plentiful these days!!

I am experimenting with the placement of the Dresdens. They won’t be sitting right on top of the stem. If you look up on the left side, you’ll see a partial Dresden. I want to put a cone shape center at the top so it looks like a partial bloom. (Does that make sense)? I am loving how this is coming together. I borrowed some bias tape makers from my sister and will make stems with it. I want them to be narrower than the stems I made for the leaves. I may use a few slightly different fabrics to add some variety to the flowers.

These are sunflowers Ray and I planted in our backyard this year. They are blooming profusely. My favorite flowers by far are sunflowers and peonies. Anyway, see the pale yellow, partially open blossom? That is what I am trying for with the small, partial Dresden. In another week or so I should have the Dresden’s finished and will be able to baste the quilt.

OK – time to see some quilt tops!! Remember we will be giving away a number of quilt patterns for entrants in this week’s link up. If you don’t know how to link up or just want me to share a photo of your quilt top, please email it to me. Can’t wait to see what the quilts are looking like at this point! Thanks so much for participating in the 2023 Positivity QAL!!!

Linking up with Oh Scrap!

2023 Positivity QAL – Link Up

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Hello Everyone!! I hope you have stopped by this morning to link up your progress on the 2023 Positivity Quilt! Preeti and I are really excited to see the variation in colors and fabrics you are using this year. Remember, the pattern can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Last time I posted about my work on this quilt, I explained my determination to use scraps I have on hand for the green portion (my leaves). This has been a challenge and my leaves will be different sizes but with some work on the background piecing, it will work out.

Because I have been traveling a lot over the past six weeks, my progress has been slow. Like the non-existent sort of slow…. But I am home and have no plans to go anywhere. After all the driving over the last week, Ray and I both have no inclination to get in the car for any reason all week! This means I should be able to catch up. I plan to assemble the leaves I have made into vines. I am super excited to make some flower blocks too.

This picture is from the tutorial on Sew Preeti Quilts. Click here to find it. I think the flower is adorable and doesn’t look terribly fussy to piece for this non-fussy quilter!

Not everyone will choose to make blooms – some quilters might choose to do a quilt of leafy vines and finish it that way. Not all vines bloom, right?? In the above quilt, Preeti didn’t make the flower blocks. I love the look of this lush green quilt. Kaffe Fassett fabrics for the win!

OK – lets take a look at some progress pictures! It’s ok if you are behind – I certainly understand. Show us your fabric choices or just a few blocks. We love to share the fun around here. The link up will be open all week. If you aren’t a blogger, feel free to email a progress shot to me. I would love to add it to this post so people can share in your quilting fun. Just click on ‘contact me’ at the top of this page and send me a picture.

Updated to add the above progress photo from @Justanaveragequilter. Danielle quilted along with us last year too. So happy to have her sewing along again with us this year.

Updated to add another quilt update. Made by @skynme, she did link up below but it won’t show the thumbnail so I put it here as well. Love the solids! Looks really different like this. She says she had all of these in her solids scrap bin. Yahoo!

The next link up will be on July 16th. This time we will be sharing quilt tops and there are patterns to be won! I am determined to have a finished top to share by then. (I think I can, I think I can…..)