Red Sampler quilt along, week 3

This quilt along is so much fun!!! I made this itty bitty 3" square.  Thanks to Kimberly from Fat Quarter Shop's livestreams on YouTube every Friday, I've learned a lot of tips on how to sew these little squares. 

I made my three squares, one 12" and two 3" blocks.  I'm not crazy about my fabric choices in the top right square, but I'm going to leave it.  When you have about 50 squares sewn together, no one will ever notice.  This sew along is so inspiring, I just couldn't pass it up.

I corrected my Sunflower block from last week, it wasn't a difficult fix at all.

I've joined quite a few quilt alongs as I have a lot of time to sew lately. 1.  Red Sampler quilt along

2.  Sewcialites quilt along

3.  A Quilting Life block of the month

4.  Sunshowers quilt along, and I think I've decided to make two at the same time.  I just couldn't decide on one color scheme....two are much better than one :)

See you next week!

Red Sampler quilt along

 I saw that Lori Holt was having a quilt along, and I was all in!

Lori's creations are just too cute to pass up, no matter how many projects I have in the works.

Here is the link to her blog if you want to check her out.

I pulled out my red fabrics and went to town, creating these fun blocks.  I admired them, photographed them and.......I was ready to post week one on Instagram, when.....

I'm sure you see it!!!!

😩😩😩

I sewed the third row upside down!  It won't be a big deal to unpick and resew, but why didn't I see it??? 😂😂😂

I also made a mess of the flying geese block and I'll redo it. 

 I think I'll use my flying geese paper for it this time :)

Here's week two, sewn like a charm!  I really enjoy sewing the 12" blocks, but sometimes the 6" blocks are a little tricky because of all the small pieces.

Are you making Lori's Red Sampler quilt?

 Yay, I finished my Rosemary quilt, from the book "The Seedlings Quilts" by Jodi Godfrey.

My friend Nedra and I made  our quilts together on our sew days.  She used her beautiful Charlie Harper prints and I used my cherished and coveted Heather Bailey (Fresh Cut) and two Amy Butler prints.

This is Nedra's Charlie Harper quilt, isn't it beautiful?

The quilt shows off the large print fabrics in the big rectangles.  I made mine bigger with an extra row along the bottom and on the side.

The rosemary blocks are paper pieced with shapes I had never sewn before.  I've only sewn hexagons.  I savored the time I spent hand sewing the paper pieces.  I find it very relaxing to sew by hand.

I  bound the quilt with the bright berry colored fabric, as it stands out the most.

I used my large leftover pieces of fabric and pieced the back.  I love this fabric so much and used every opportunity to show it off in the quilt.  I think I've had this fabric for about 10 years, waiting for the perfect project! 

I also enjoyed machine quilting this quilt.  I used an all over flower design which I haven't tried before and I pebble stitched the negative area around the rosemaries so that they would pop!  

I think you can see the flower design I used below.

I'm proud to say that this quilt makes #14 in the grandchildren pile.  I'm going to make some extras in case parents want to choose and to have variety for the grandchildren who will have to choose last.  It's okay, they're pretty young and probably not too particular!

Thanks for following me in my quilting adventures ❤️

Doll Clothes

 My grand daughter is turning 11 and she still loves her 18" American dolls. It helps that she has sisters to play dolls with too!  I made her some doll clothes for her birthday and used my doll Red Rose, to do the modeling.

This fabric has a sparkly thread woven into it, and it wasn't very easy to sew.  There was a lot of unravelling, so I had to secure all the seam allowances with an overcast stitch.  It wasn't the most desirable fabric to work with...

Here is Red Rose modeling a garden outfit.  A nice broad rimmed hat to keep the sun out of her eyes, and a cute apron with blue vintage rick rack trim.  Red Rose has her garden bag full of some of her beautiful flowers that she just picked from her garden.  She's still waiting for her strawberries and blueberries to grow and become ripe.

This is a cute retro looking outfit with lots of detail.  I hand stitched the crocheted butterfly to the pocket.

This sporty outfit comes with a nice green sash to tie her hair back.

I think Charlotte will like these clothes for her doll, it's always nice to refresh your wardrobe :)

Easter Sunday

Easter is a very special day.  Our Savior lived again.  The most glorious, comforting and reassuring of all events of human history had taken place.  The victory over death.

The atonement is the greatest evidence we have of the Father's love for His children.

Easter is also a time for bunnies, chocolate eggs and little chicks.

Here are three of my cute grand daughters with their little Easter packages from moi :)

I'm flying to visit the other 11 grandchildren and had to bring a carry on suitcase just to fit the Easter treats!!!

Here's the link to my post about these bunny coasters.

Happy Easter, may you always remember the true meaning.

A Quilting Life, block of the month

There are quite a few blogs that I like to follow, and one of them is 

A Quilting Life by Sherri McConnell.  I feel like I know Sherri personally, she is so warm and friendly.  I love to watch her YouTube videos with her daughter Chelsi.  I think my daughter and I could be a designing duo like them :)  I decided to join along on Sherri's block of the month which you can find on her blog, here.

This is Sherri's January block, it's very simple but still interesting. I was going through my stash and found this cute fabric and decided to put it in the center of my churn dash block.  Now it has a vintage look.

This is the March block, and I stayed with the cool pastel palette, and vintage strawberries in the center.

This is the February block, a little more time intensive but not difficult because it's all half square triangles.  Even though the light doesn't show it, the background is the same as the other two blocks.

 This is such an easy block of the month because there is only one block a month, really easy to keep up with.  Also, if I've inspired you to follow along, it's certainly not too late.  I'm pretty sure that Sherri posts the new "free" block the first Thursday of every month.

I was in a virtual quilting bee with Sherri called 

"The Bees Knees a Quilting bee".

Her block of the month quilt was so cute last year, that I made sure and joined this year.  You don't even have to join, just make the blocks :)

Fresh Cut Pines quilt

 This is a quilt that I began in 2018.  It was a really fun one to make, and it's been hanging in my closet ready to be quilted.  

Here's the link to my former post that gives you all the details.

I've got the top all pinned, that takes a while and is an exercise in agility!

Here's the quit, all machine quilted and bound :)

The back is a green on green pine floral, I think it matches really well!

Here's a close up with better lighting.  I did a swirl motif and kept them fairly large, so it didn't take as long.

I even added the label :) This makes quilt #13 to my grandchildren pile.

Bunny Coaster

I saw the cutest coaster bunnies on Instagram.  Lisa Cox from aspoonfulsugar designed the pattern along with so many other cute little things!  My friend said that her photos are eye candy ❤️ My friend gifted me with a cute yellow bunny and I absolutely loved it!  I just couldn't resist buying Lisa's pattern, it was only $6 on her Etsy shop. I have been wondering what little gift I could give my 14 adorable grandchildren, and this seemed like the perfect thing!

 I made each of my grandchildren a cute little bunny coaster in their favorite color.  

I made a trip to Hobby Lobby and found these glass egg cups which I thought were perfect!  I will package these little bunnies and chicks up with a pack of tic tacs and make it really pretty with some Easter grass and a ribbon bow.

I had a difficult time deciding which egg cups looked best on what color coaster.

       .          I think that contrasting is better than matching.

The red bunny even has a little bunny piece of fabric.

I love this pink one with the strawberries and matryoshka dolls.  

I would love to keep it for myself :)

The color combinations are endless. 

The chicks are pretty cheap, they just add an extra "ta da"!

Get it, the chicks are cheap, cheap, cheap 😂

I really like the orange one too!

It's funny how bunnies like to multiply!

I even made a black bunny with a mustache in one of the squares, for my oldest and almost 16 year old grandson.  He is the sweetest guy ever, so he will politely thank me and probably use it on his bedside stand.  I also bought him a tie :)

I will probably make some more bunnies, but first I have to finish machine quilting a quilt and then I need to make a couple of doll dresses.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Rosemary quilt

 My friend Nedra and I try to get together once a week to sew. We decided to make the "Rosemary" quilt together, it's from the book "The Seedlings Quilt" by Jodi Godfrey.  We loved this quilt because it shows off big prints that you really don't want to cut up.  Here is the photo of the Rosemary quilt in the book. 

There are some paper pieced blocks in the quilt.  I added an extra row of blocks along the side and the bottom to make the quilt a little larger.  There would normally be 8 paper pieced blocks, and I added two more.  I've never paper pieced these shapes before, and really enjoyed it.  I bought the pieces from an online shop called Paper Pieces.

Here is my finished quilt top.  I used mostly Heather Bailey fabrics that I had been stashing for years.  Fresh Cut and Nicey Jane, and two Amy Butler prints which pair perfectly with Heather Bailey.

At first I thought the colors might be too soft, but I love how it turned out! Pinks, greens, yellows and blues, with a few pops of light red.

I'm going to try to machine quilt it this week.

This is Nedra's quilt, isn't it gorgeous!  She used  Charlie Harper prints, except for some of the paper piecing.  I really love the color scheme.  Maybe we've inspired you to check out this quilt pattern?

Penguin Party

 My idea was to keep machine quilting the quilt tops I have hanging in my closet.  My goal is one per month.  As I looked at those forlorn tops waiting for some attention, I realized that I only have one quilt appropriate for a boy.  I love Elizabeth Hartman's cute animal patterns, so I decided to make Penguin party!  My oldest grandson is almost 16, and he will be the first one to choose a quilt.  The other boys are 8 and 4 and all the rest are girls.  I looked at all the Penguin Party quilts that people have made and liked the penguins with plaid the best.  I had to buy some nice Riley Blake woven flannel fabric on Etsy for the penguin bodies, along with the background fabric.  I wanted to backing color to be the color of ice.  I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Cutting the fabric was pretty fast. 

There were three sizes of penguin bodies.

The face was the most tedious to make, there were so many pieces!

It's also the face that gives them their personalities :)

Assembling the penguins in their neat, tiny rows, made me feel like I was at their party, lol!  I machine quilted the quilt with a staple or jigsaw design.  I used a grey dove color of Aurifil thread #2600.

I used a light blue minky fabric for the back of the quilt.  Penguins make me think of freezing arctic temperatures, so I had to use a cozy fabric :). The binding is scrappy, I used all the flannel penguin body fabric.  I added a Sweetwater label to the bottom of the back of the quilt and framed it in the black and white check.  I just added the name of the quilt and the year.  I literally made this quilt in about 3 weeks, and loved every moment of it!

It's March 1 and I didn't get a quilt top machine quilted in February.  Technically, I quilted 2 quilts in January (Spell it with Moda and Penguin Party), so one of them can count for February 😊