Tag Archives: Classic Stitches BOM

Resplendent Rows

Oh, how I love this finish! I’m not positive, but I think this quilt (so far) is the one that I have spent the most time on. I don’t track hours or anything like that, but I feel like this one has many hours into it. For RSC15 I made a row quilt by following along with Mari and her Classic Stitches BOM. Each row consists of a set of blocks that root back in quilting history. Mari chose an excellent sampling of blocks and I was able to complete nine of her eleven tutorials. A couple of them were too challenging for me and I substituted easier blocks those two months.

Overall, I absolutely adore this quilt. I love the bright, crazy, scrappy look, the traditional blocks that change row by row, sampler style, and the quilting that I did on each row. It was a great experience for me in a couple of different ways.

First of all, row quilts are a challenge in that it is tough to get each row to come out the same length. My supposition is that with all of the handling of each block and each row, month over month, they stretch a bit and become distorted. This quilt is absolutely not going to be entered into any juried shows! it is not even close to square. I sashed it because I wanted lines separating each row to give the eye a place to rest; this is a busy quilt. Additionally, the blocks are not accurately pieced enough to match row upon row. Did I cut off any points? Oh yeah. So by sashing them, I was able to deal with a lot of those issues. Cutting 60″ rows of sashing allowed me to ease the rows in and deal with any rows that were slightly longer than 60″. Really, sashing hides a multitude of issues. 🙂

I had a great time quilting this project. At 60″ by 70″, it was a reasonable size to FMQ on my machine. I chose a different motif for each row which was a great way to quilt it without getting bored half way through. Some motifs were easier than others but for the most part, I am very pleased with the result.

Lazy little flowers meander over the blue Water Wheel row.

I quilted meandering hearts over the pink row. They turned out decent but they were harder than I expected.

The orange Dutchman’s Puzzle blocks made for my favorite row. With these tiny pieces, my row had a fair-sized ripple to it and I was concerned about quilting it. After consulting with one of my favorite quilters, Janine over at Quilts From the Little House, I decided to use a tight meander. She felt like I could quilt the row into submission, and it worked. Yay Janine! Definitely good advice.

The yellow row of Double Stars is another favorite. I decided to quilt each individual star, rather than cruising over the entire row and I am very happy with the resulting flower contained within each star.

The green row of Crosses and Losses blocks is quilted with little swirls. These were tough. They are a bit more herky-jerky than I would like but this is where I am at this point in my quilting. With each row, I worked right to left, preferring to begin with the bulk of the quilt bunched into the throat and then feed the quilt out. So the right side of the rows are a bit rougher than the left. I improved as I went along. I plan to only look at the good half. 😉

The brown Pennsylvania blocks are sporting a Baptist Fan motif. Since I rarely get around to labeling a quilt, I also put my initials on the very far right corner. (On this row I did work left to right. It seemed easier to get the fans moving in that direction.) Again, these turned out ok – they look better from a distance than up close. Curves are tough.

Here is a peek at the back. I love the simplicity of the back since the front is so raucous. With the tiny floral print, the quilting really doesn’t show but that is fine. Crazy on the front and calm on the back! I used the backing fabric as binding too. The little floral has a vintage look to it that works with these traditional blocks.

Yep, I love this quilt and learned so much from the process of making and quilting it. It was a wonderful project and I am so grateful to Mari for all the time she took to create the tutorials each month and her patience with my whiny emails about how hard the blocks were! Her bit of history behind each block was an added bonus each month.

Linking this week with Linky Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday, Freemotion Mavericks and Finish it Up Friday.

Row Quilt Top Finished

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I am so excited to show you the top and backing for my Classic Stitches Row Quilt. It was (just over) a year in the making and it looks great. Thank you again to Mari over at Academic Quilter for hosting this BOM throughout 2015 and posting 11 awesome tutorials.

I sashed it with 1″ (finished) strips of a plain cream fabric that I had in my stash. I had planned to do a colorful border after the sashing but it is already 60″ x 70″ and since I plan to quilt it at home, I decided that was big enough. (It was quite windy when I took these photos so they aren’t the best.)

For the backing, I found a cute blue floral print on a clearance table for a great price. I held my blue ‘Broken Dishes’ row back (to control the length of the quilt overall) and pieced it into the backing.

I am very happy with the way the back looks. I definitely learned my lesson with this Broken Dishes row. It was the first row in the project and I mixed too many scraps within each block. I didn’t realize that mixing the prints and values this way would cause the block to lose the pattern. I feel like it doesn’t even look like the traditional Broken Dishes pattern, but rather like a Pinwheel block instead. This was a good lesson to learn and I didn’t mix the scraps as much in the later rows.

Overall, I call this project a success and will be basting and quilting it soon. I have just about finished quilting the brightly colored baby quilt (made from those blocks I found at the thrift store). But once that is done, I will move on to finishing up this row quilt.

This project is my second quilt made while following along Angela’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge. You can see the first one here. My RSC challenges for 2016 will be two projects that have a modern slant. For one, I be using a pattern called Pretty Gemstones, designed by Cynthia Brunz and published in the latest McCall’s Quilting magazine. I just bought the background fabric so I canstart piecing it soon.

Isn’t this a pretty quilt? I look forward to working on it. I have a second project in mind using improv fabric made from my scraps. There are all sorts of ways to do this and I haven’t quite decided what to do. At this point, I am making the fabric slabs and will wait to see what sort of quilt evolves from them. The color for January is Icy Blue and I have some perfect scraps for it!

Wishing you all a great weekend! We have enjoyed (lots of) rain and snow all week long in much of California. Some flooding is occurring in Southern California but up in the northern end of the state, we are all fine – just really appreciating the rain.

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict this week. Both links are available at the top of the page, under “Link Ups”.

Mid-Week Update

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First of all, I really want to thank everyone that entered the giveaway last week. I loved reading about all of the Christmas memories. So many really sweet stories were told; I encourage you to take a peek at the comments and read them. It was very heartwarming. Julia drew two winners. My gifts were sent off to Kelly (she won the bunting) and Sarah (she won the tablerunner). Interestingly, both winners hailed from Pennsylvania! Congrats to both!

I have been busy in my sewing room over the past week. Working on my row quilt, Christmas gifts (which I will share after the holidays), a very frustratingly fluffy yellow bathrobe and a gift for my dad for his upcoming birthday. Where to start? Let’s go with the frustrating stories and end up on a more pleasant note, shall we?

Oh, this bathrobe! The fur and fluff that flies when I work on it is truly amazing. I had NO idea what I was getting into and never will I buy such a fluffy fabric again! I have the robe basically assembled – I sneezed my way through it only to find that it will fit nicely once I gain about 75 pounds. I don’t know how to account for this. I made it a size small (8-10) but honestly, I could wrap it around me twice over. When I re-read the post about planning to make this, I can hear a very cocky tone in retrospect. I said that garment sewing came naturally to me because I had done it so often. In some ways that is true. I knew how to put it together, didn’t need to ponder the directions, just dove in and sewed. But what about trying the thing on? At least holding it up to me in front of a mirror at some point?? Nope, as I was getting ready to hem it, I thought, ‘hmmm, this looks a tad large’. I put it on and my jaw dropped. It frustrated me because I can only imagine the fluff that will fly if I try to take a seam ripper to it.

I tossed it on the bed in the sewing room where it landed in a cloud of yellow. There it sits, waiting until I calm down and decide how to fix it.

Next project update: My Classic Stitches project that I have been working on all year. You probably remember that I have been doing a BOM project led by Mari over at Academic Quilter. All I had left was to complete the green row of ‘Peace and Plenty” blocks. Well, I can honestly say these blocks gave me no peace. Not a moment, in fact. It started out well enough. When I was up in Downieville over Thanksgiving weekend I got all of the green pieces cut and I felt so proud. All organized and ready to go. I came home and assembled the first block. It was adorable and I even shot an email with a picture of it to Mari. (What is it they say about pride????)

With that one done, I quickly made another. So far, so good.

After those two, everything hit the fan. For some unknown reason (though it may have to do with that whole pride thing) I couldn’t assemble block number three. COULD. NOT. I sewed it and picked it apart and sewed it again and picked it apart. After the third time using my seam ripper (you know when the edges of the fabric are frayed and you know that the integrity of the block is nill?) I gave up. Luckily, I had just read Mari’s post about finishing her row quilt (which is spectacular – take a look here!) I saw that she had issues with the brown row and decided to just make a checkered row of simple squares. Since I had my green blocks cut, I just trimmed them down to 3 and 1/2″ and called it good. I figured I was really just taking my cue from the master. So my green row is now a simple row of blocks. (See it to the left of the pink hearts?) I actually like that it is a small row. I wanted a change in the height but couldn’t see myself really making any of these blocks in a three or four inch size. At least not without a considerable amount of pain. 😉

Right now I have all the rows hanging over the back of the couch (luckily we have two!) I am at the stage where I am moving rows around, trying to decide what order to put them together with. I need to get sashing fabric too. I don’t have any stash that is long enough and I don’t want to piece the sashing. I do love how this is coming together and hopefully I will get it assembled in the next few days.

Finally – to leave you on a good note… I went to the monthly meeting of a gardening club that I belong to. Since there really isn’t much gardening to be accomplished right now, we made wreaths for the holidays. I decided to make a really big one so i could hang it on the front of the house. All of the boughs were cut from trees in out yard, which is a nice thing. It turned out so pretty and was incredibly easy to put together. (I really needed a win at this point!)

I also wanted to show you how pretty the Swoon Mini looks. I hung it on the wall behind the Christmas tree and the lights just make it glow. I just love it. I need to make another one that doesn’t have a holiday theme.

I hope your recent sewing efforts are a bit more successful than mine have been. I feel I am turning the corner though. Ready for success.

Linking to Freemotion by the River and Let’s Bee Social. Links to these two lovely blogs are at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Finished My Pennsylvania Blocks

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It seems like it’s been a while since I posted a finish. But I have one this week! Getting back into the sewing room has been so nice though it took me a while to really get going. I decided to make the October blocks for my Classic Stitches row quilt. Being so close to the end of this project, I didn’t want to get too far behind.

The color for October was brown for RSC15. The block that Mari chose for October was the Pennsylvania block. I think this was in honor of her recent move from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania. It worked perfectly for me too. I have a strong fondness for the state of Pennsylvania. When my boys were little guys, we lived there for two years. We were in State College and I loved everything about that town. So making a set of Pennsylvania blocks was perfect for me.

Unfortunately, I got off to a rocky start with these guys. Mari always posts the cutting plan for various size blocks when she writes her tutorials. I thought it would be fun to make a row of 3″ blocks. Turns out it wasn’t fun at all. 😉 The block is very simple to make but when you are going for a 3″ block, it means using little pesky pieces and honestly, we just didn’t get along. I struggled along and got two blocks made, throwing away all sorts of attempts along the way. After a fair amount of ripping, cutting, and grumbling, I gave up and made six inch blocks. They went together with almost no effort (or at least it felt that way after my tiny block debacle.)

Isn’t that a cute row? So traditional. Much like I thought State College was. I remember thinking it seemed like everything was more grounded, more down to earth in State College, as compared to living in California.

The row fits right in with the other rows of classic blocks that I have made this year.

At this point, I have ten rows completed. (For some reason, I didn’t grab the purple or the yellow rows when I went outside to take pictures. So, they aren’t shown here.) My next decision is whether or not to make the November row. With these ten rows, I have 62 inches in length (two of the rows are 7″ blocks and the rest are 6 inches.) I am going to sash the rows because my not-so-precise sewing style means the blocks won’t line up perfectly and that can be disguised with some sashing. This will add a bit more length. How long do I want this to be? (It will be 60″ wide.) Any ideas???

The week buzzed by and I am happy to have this checked off the list. My Etsy shop is getting busier and I need to make a few more things for holiday shopping so that jumps to the top of the list now. Along with that is the Michael Miller fabric challenge that I am doing with the Modern Quilt Guild. That project is due on November 30th so I need to get cracking on that. It is well underway and I am sure I will have a post for you with pictures sometime next week.

Enjoy the weekend!

Linking to Amanda Jean over at Finish It Up Friday.

Wednesday WIP

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You know that feeling when you have been down with a bug for a while and you finally feel better? That happy feeling of being able to have normal days, doing normal things? And it feels so good to just be back to normal? Well that is kind of how this week feels.

It has been three weeks since Mom’s heart surgery. This week she has made some really big improvements and is feeling so much better. She looks wonderful and is up and doing little things here and there. Consequently, we all feel better! I don’t know if this is how all families are, but when one of us is down, we each have this sympathetic /empathetic thing that causes the rest of us to be down. And we know this about each other. When Mom was in the hospital, moving from bed to chair to walker was intense. It was so hard and it really hurt. The first couple of times the nurse came in to tell her it was time to get up and move from chair to bed, Mom would tell us to leave the room for a minute. She would say, “If you watch, you’ll hurt too. No need for that.” She knew how hard it was for us to be watching her. But now, three weeks later, she is on the road to recovery and looking great. Such a relief! We are endlessly, completely grateful for her good health.

Today I did normal stuff. Enjoyed cleaning my house and catching up on laundry! (Pretty exciting, right? Honestly, it was.) I also decided I had better do something with the apples that have been sitting in my basement for more than a month now.

My in-laws have a small apple orchard and we went and picked apples a long while back. I made a large pot of applesauce with the last of the apples. Yum. Our family loves homemade applesauce, chunky with lots of cinnamon.

Even our hens were happy about this. They get all the scraps. Lucky girls.

I have also been back in the sewing room. Finally! This week I have been workng on my blocks for the brown row of my Classic Stitches BOM quilt. The blocks are so cute. I started out making 3″ blocks. This was two weeks ago. My brain couldn’t deal with the small, fiddly (as Mari says) pieces. I just couldn’t come up with consistent blocks. It took me forever to get two finished. So, I gave up and went back to 6″ blocks and they are great.

I will get these finished up in the next day or so and stitch them together. The last color of the year is bright green. This is an easy one for me – I love green and have a big tub of scraps to go through. I need to go check in with Mari and see what sort of block she has planned for us this month. It is really crazy that we are coming to the end of this project already!

Lastly, while making applesauce today I was watching the finches. We have lots of them. This little guy settled in way up at the tiptop of our spruce tree.

Hope you are having a wonderfully healthy week filled with the ordinary pleasures of life.

Linking to Let’s Bee Social – the link is at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Orange Opulence

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Another row is complete. Thanks to Mari at Academic Quilter, I now have nine rows done for my Classic Stitches BOM quilt. This is, as you probably know since I have explained it many a time, my project for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge that Angela sponsors each year at So Scrappy. It is pretty nice having all of this spelled out for me each month. Angela dictates the color and Mari gives me a block. No decision making on my part except for what scraps to use and what size to make the blocks. Easy peasy.

Orange has never been my favorite color. However, with a bit of on-line research using a very intellectual website, Signology.org, I found out that I do (should?) have a significant connection to the color orange. It seems that, according to the Thai solar calendar, Thursday is associated with the color orange. Accordingly, people born on Thursdays may adopt orange as their primary color (whatever that means – does one have to wear only orange, live in an orange house, eat lots of citrus?) Guess what day I was born on all those many years ago? Yep, Thursday. It concerns me since this isn’t a color I associate myself with, nor am I a particularly huge fan of it. This whole Thursday thing has been a problem from the beginning…. remember the poem, Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace? Well, Thursday’s child has “far to go”. That’s not fair. Talk about creating issues for a kid right from the get-go. Yikes. The color orange and all of those obstacles in life that cause me to have “far to go”. Like Charlie Brown, I’m doomed.

Enough negativity. I love this row of bright orange blocks. See what you think.

It really is a pretty row. These blocks were such a breeze to make. Until yesterday that is. For whatever reason, I had sewn one of the flying geese blocks in upside down. I ripped it out and then repeated the error. More ripping and more sewing… I don’t know what the deal was. Finally worked it out and the row is finished. Here it is with it’s other mates.

At this point, most of the rows consist of 6″ blocks. The light blue and the gray rows are 7 1/2″ blocks. I am thinking of doing a small row next month, maybe a row of 5″ blocks? Just for variation. Of course if Mari springs some sort of complicated monster of a block on me next month, that may change. 🙂

For now, I am pleased with the quilt. It is going to be a fun one, once it is all stitched together. I am going to sash the rows because my blocks are not entirely precise and won’t line up well if I sew them row on row. Not to mention the difference in size with the light blue and the gray rows. Of course, that begs the question, what do I sash them with??? The background color on each row is made of scraps of cream and/or off-white fabric. I had a load of it and wanted to use it up. What if I find some sort of miniscule polka dot? Could I sash with something like that?

In closing, and because you are probably dying to know this, it rained a little bit yesterday. Every single person in Northern California could be seen dancing a happy dance. It was heavenly. Hope all of you have a wonderful weekend!

Linking to Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts and Angela at So Scrappy.

Stuck Inside

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Poor California. It is a mess. Currently there are ten large fires burning up and down the state with approximately 400,000 acres are involved. It is horrible. Smoke fills the air and ash rains down everywhere. (If you want to see more details, here is a good source of information.) Yesterday and today have been horrible as far as air quality goes. It was a stay-inside-kind-of-weekend. The photo above shows the pasture next door to us and was taken by Julia this afternoon.

Doesn’t take much to guess what I did. Played with fabric, sewed, cooked, and read. It was only logical. What else is there?

Let’s take things in order, shall we? Saturday morning Julia had to be at a meeting at the library for an hour so I had a time to check out a few books. Here is the reading list for the next little while.

I am already half way through The Distinguished Guest, by Sue Miller. It is an excellent book. Sometimes Sue Miller’s books are a little dark for me but I am really enjoying this one. The two Kaffe Fassett books are solely to drool over. I have finished drooling over his Quilts in the Sun book and yet to begin salivating over Country Garden Quilts. The book by Lee Cleland, Quilting Makes the Quilt, is amazing. The quilting shown in this book is far beyond my skill level but the process she used in creating this (older) book is amazing. In order to show how much the quilting defines the quilt, Cleland, an Australian quilter, decided she would make five sets of twelve traditional quilts, each exactly the same. So, twelve quilts – five of each of them! Sixty quilts in a two year period. It exhausts me to even write about it. She took each of the quilts and quilted them, one different from the next. It is really helpful in seeing how the different choices of quilting motifs would set off the piecing and secondary patterns on each quilt. She is brilliant. While this book is a great one to thumb through, it is beyond me at this point. She does include the patterns for each of the twelve quilts in the book. The two cookbooks are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The French Laundry Cookbook, by Thomas Keller, is just for grins. I don’t cook like that and as a result, we don’t eat like that. But it makes a person hungry to thumb through it! However the Light & Healthy Cookbook (from America’s Test Kitchen) is how I cook and eat. Last night I made the Turkey, Lime and Tequila Chili and it was excellent. Finally, I grabbed the biography of Mary Cassatt because she is one of my favorite impressionist artists. I have seen a number of her paintings at different exhibits and there is a tiny print of one that hangs in my sewing space, making me happy each time I see it. I’m looking forward to reading more about her.

Ok, moving forward. Playing with fabric took some of my time yesterday. I recently ordered some Michael Miller solids to use in the Michael Miller Challenge, sponsored by Modern Quilt Guild. I have a few ideas brewing but luckily this project isn’t due until November so I have some time. At least I have the fabrics ready to go.

I ordered the solids from Hawthorne Threads and while I was on their site, I also ordered a scrap bag. I love these. It is an inexpensive way to add a few pieces to the scrap bin (because I really, really don’t have enough scrap.) Most of the pieces I received are wonderful. Here is a sampling of them (a few have already been cut into so aren’t included here.)

See that pretty piece of Amy Butler’s, second from the left? To the right of that is one of Jeni Baker’s prints. They are all lovely and will be used here and there.

I did receive one piece that I know I will not use. I haven’t ever watched Downton Abbey so I have no affinity for this fabric.

Does it speak to any of you? It has a little Christmas holly on it. The piece measures out at 16″ wide, so just under 1/2 yard. If anyone thinks they would like to use it, leave me a comment and I will happily send it to you. If more than one person asks for it, I will just choose a name randomly. Hope someone can use this so it doesn’t just live sadly on my shelf. Claim it as yours!

Finally, I did accomplish some sewing. Check out these orange Dutchman’s Puzzle blocks. They will be the orange row for September on my Classic Stitches BOM project. These blocks are so bright – they will add a good splash of color to the quilt. Hoping to finish these up this week.

That is my weekend in a nutshell. A lot of nutshells actually. This post just got longer and longer! 🙂 Hoping for the air to clear and feeling eternally grateful for the nearly 10,000 firefighters that are battling active fires in California right now.

Linking to Molli Sparkles’ Sunday Stash which is hosted by Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts this week and to Freemotion by the River.

Gorgeous Grays

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Yikes. I think it has been a week since I wrote a post. My routine got all turned around and all of a sudden a week passed by. (Were you sitting and waiting anxiously for another amazing read on Needle and Foot? My apologies for the wait!)

As things often do, one project led right into another. I have been making blocks for the eighth row of the Classic Stitches BOM (led by Mari over at Academic Quilter). The color for this month is either indigo blue or gray. I went with gray. We have already done two rows in shades of blue and I didn’t want to add a third. I am loving this gray row. For August, Mari wrote a tutorial for a quick block called “True Blue”. She explained that it was a block which dated back to the Civil War years (on the Union side, hence the name True Blue.) It is a really simple block utlizing four patch squares and HST’s. I chose to make the blocks in the 7 1/2″ size. This is the second row of 7 1/2″ blocks for the quilt, the rest are 6″ blocks.

I don’t know how everyone else does it but I am sort of ADD when I am making blocks. I cut for a while, piece a whole block, cut some more, piece a few more. It is really inefficient and makes me crazy. I end up cutting more than I need of one fabric and not enough of another. (I know, It is so silly. I highly doubt that my methodology is taught in any of the billions of quilting books out there, due to the inefficiency of it.) I vowed to make a change with this project! For these eight blocks, I cut the pieces for all of the blocks, stacking them in nice orderly piles. Then I made the four patch blocks. (I used strip piecing, sewing long strips and sub-cutting them into pairs, which were then joined into four patch blocks.) Next came the HST’s. Doing it in this amazingly organized manner, I had my HST’s all prepared. It was so much better – the best part of piecing is putting the actual block together, right? Once all of the tedium was done, those blocks went together in a snap. It was much better than my usual “a little of this, a little of that” method.

Plus, when I had that stack of HST’s, I started playing with them. I spent some time laying them out in different patterns, which is pretty fun with HST’s. (It’s kind of like playing with Tangrams.) I found a design that I really liked and decided that is what I would use for my New Blogger Block Hop project. (Remember, I posted last week about having to make a block with a tutorial for the project sponsored by Fabri-Quilt?) This made me so happy. I have been playing with fabric and mocking up blocks (a version of a Herringbone block and a version of a Plus block, neither of which I liked.) Seeing this simple little pattern (which, as far as I know, isn’t some really common pattern?) was the perfect inspiration.

Back to the row of True Blue blocks. Take a look. Here they are before sewing them into the row. I enjoy playing with them and getting an idea of how the blocks would look as a quilt of their own. These blocks are fairly busy. I don’t think I would do a whole quilt with only these. It makes my eyes go a little crazy. 😉

And now a row of True Blue blocks (that are gray instead of blue!) The pasture behind the blocks is looking a might dry, right?

I hung a few of the other rows with this newest member of the family. They all look great together.

It is amazing that eight rows of this project are complete. Summer is ending, fall is on its way. This is very apparent in our garden these days. The squirrels are making a huge mess each day, eating the pinecones and dropping the pieces all over the deck. The apples on our tree are growing and it looks like, for the first time, we will have apples. The tree is about three or four years old and hasn’t really produced any apples yet. These look great though.

I have mentioned before that we didn’t put in a vegetable garden this year due to the drought in California. We had a volunteer plant come up though and Ray couldn’t resist watering it just a little. We were very negligent and only gave it a drink every now and then. The foilage looked like squash and it was in a bin where we had spaghetti squash last year. We figured that was what it would be. What a surprise to see these growing on it.

In the next bin over, we had planted decorative gourds last year. They were so much fun and we had tons of them. Apparently there was some cross-pollination going on and we now have a plant bearing some weird combination of spaghetti squash and decorative gourd. They are hard, bumpy and dry, like a gourd, They have that cool coloring of a gourd, but the shape and larger size of the spaghetti squash. We had so much fun trying to figure out what they would be. (Doesn’t take much to amuse us.) I am fairly sure they are not edible but they look pretty.

Finally, I leave you with this gorgeous picture of our front lawn in all of its droughty glory. (I know… I made that word up.) It is criminal to waste water on growing green grass so we are only giving it enough that it doesn’t totally die on us. This is the year though, right? Rain all winter long. (Please?)

Linking to a new linky party over at What a Hoot as well as Freemotion by the River, Let’s Bee Social, and Crazy Mom Quilts. Links to the last three sites are available at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

August, really?

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August is here. That’s crazy. Summer is buzzing by and we are trying to cram as much as possible into these last few weeks.

With the new month, I am looking at what I want to create and complete for August. The list is long, maybe too long?

The main goal is to finish the vintage nine patch quilt. I have the quilt top and backing ready to go. I ordered batting on-line because I don’t feel like the 75 miles (round trip) to Jo-Anns. I won’t buy batting at the local store, it’s too expensive. Anyway, it should be here this week and then I can get the quilt pin basted and start quilting it. That is the goal I am submitting for August for ALYOF.

I also have a project that came my way via the New Quilt Bloggers Bloghop. Fabri-Quilt has sponsored an activity for the group. We are each to work with a set of solids and create a block that is of our own design.

These are the fat eighths that I received this week. I have been cutting and sewing mock ups and so far don’t have exactly what I want. It needs to be original. What exactly does that mean? I can’t really think of a block that hasn’t been used in some way by someone else. Truly, there are only so many ways I can visualize HST’s, squares, triangles and rectangles. So, I am trying to take a regular block and put my own spin on it. That is about as original as my brain gets. At any rate, this is certainly forcing me to work beyond my comfort zone. In addition to making the block, we will all be writing tutorials for the blocks. That part will be fun and I am really curious to see everyone’s block tutorials. Could be a fun project to make a selection of the blocks and come up with a sampler quilt or wall hanging. Stay tuned for more on this.

Next on the list, as always, is my RSC15 row quilt. Last month I veered from the Classic Stitches block but this month I plan to go back to Mari’s monthly block. She wrote up an easy block for this month and the color is indigo, black or gray. I need to look at the quilt so far and choose either indigo or gray, either of which I have plenty of scraps to choose from.

Lastly, if I get around to it, I am going to start making two twin quilts for the beds up at Downieville. Ray saw me looking at comforters on-line and raised those eyebrows of his – like, really? You are always looking for a reason to sew and you want to buy two comforters? I shook my head and came back to reality. I painted the room a pale sage green. There are cute curtains (that I thrifted) with a floral pattern of green and violet on a tan background. (Sorry, I don’t have a picture for some reason.) I was at the store last week and they had a deal where if you bought the end of the bolt, it was 40% off. The tan bolt (I think it was a Bella Solid) was perfect so I bought the remaining six yards. Then I bought a piece of violet and a print.

It is a good starting point. I don’t know exactly the design yet, but I do know I want it to be big, oversized blocks. I started a board on Pinterest for inspiration. I think with big chunky blocks, both quilts will come together reasonably fast. My hope for this month is to settle on a design and get the pieces cut.

The bedroom will look much better with normal bedding. Right now there is a hodge-podge of linens that I had stashed away. Not exactly pretty. I really love this little hummingbird print. It is called “Windsor Woods”.

Somewhere in all of this, I need to start working on Etsy items. The holiday season will be here soon. I hope to have plenty of items posted by fall. Last year I was new to the game (actually, I still am!) I didn’t have enough items listed and sold out quickly. Hope to boost the quantity this year.

Lots of the list. I better get to work!

Linking to Sew Cute Tuesday, Freemotion by the River and Let’s Bee Social. Links to all of these sites are available at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Red Blocks Resized

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Here is an update to yesterday’s post! Because the size of those red blocks was driving me crazy, I decided to fix them. It was simple and well worth the bit of time it took. Being made of simple squares, I just cut them down. I didn’t even rip the original blocks apart. They were so much bigger than necessary that I just sliced them apart. First I cut them to 7 1/2″ blocks but they still looked too big. I cut them back to 6 1/2″ and they are just fine. I had to make a few more blocks to complete the row.

I don’t know yet in what order I will put them together. They need sashing though. With each row made of a different block, the patterns don’t line up. I think they need separation between the rows. I also have some definite issues with a few rows being short or long. That will have to be dealt with before I can assemble this. I don’t look forward to that….. If anyone has a strong desire to do a random act of kindness, please come and fix them for me.

Very glad to be able to call this a finish for the month of July on my RSC15 project!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts.