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 😊

Spell it with Moda!

 Hi everyone!  I'm so excited to have finished this quilt! If you can believe it, I've been working on this quilt since 2014.  I made some letters and then stopped for a while as I had other things that had to be done.  Like blessing gowns, birthday and Christmas gifts, life, etc.  There are so many different variations of this quilt and I really wanted to get it done.  Years passed by and I still hadn't picked up this quilt pattern.  I belonged to a virtual quilting bee called "Bees Knees a quilting Bee".  It was my month of the year and I thought, I could get the ladies to help me finish my blocks!

Here's my post in 2019.

The blocks came back and it's February 2021 and my quilt is finally finished!!!

Here's my quilt in the beautiful afternoon Arizona sun.

I correlated some of my blocks with the alphabet.

Q is for Queen, and the fabric has crowns.

M is for movie tickets.

S is for strawberries.

C is for cherries.

The backing fabric is alphabet letters by American Jane.

Interesting story.....I went on a two day quilt shop hop when I lived in Northern California. I visited all the local (within an hour and a half) the first day and went to the far away (up to 3 hours) the second day.    I won a $100 dollars worth of product at a quilt shop in Paradise.  I chose yardage of this alphabet fabric, knowing that I would finish my Spell it with Moda quilt someday and some slate gray yardage.  The sad thing is that is where they had the terrible wildfire in 2018. 

 That sweet little quilt shop burned to the ground. 😔

My quilt label, 2014-2021.

Repurposed Doll Clothes

 See this cute little girl?  She's one of my precious grand daughters, her name is Isabel Louise.  We call her Izzy.  She loves dresses and skirts.  She chooses her clothes every morning and does a great job at coordinating her outfits.  The dress she is wearing in this photo was one of her absolute favorites.  This photo was taken 2 years ago when Izzy was 4 years old.  She just had a birthday and now she's 6 and in Kindergarten!  The time sure does fly by fast.

It was a shame to get rid of this dress, but it is pretty worn...

I had an idea to repurpose it and make a dress for Izzy's 18" doll for her birthday.  

This is my 18" doll, her name is Red Rose.  I bought her for my grandchildren to play with when they come to visit.  Her beautiful ringlets have become fuzzy, but she's loved.  She has the outfit that she came with and I made her an extra dress.  I keep meaning to make her some more clothes for the grandchildren to have even more fun with!

Red Rose is my model, she fashions the clothing I make for my grand daughters.  Here she is wearing Izzy's repurposed dress.  It's a long dress (ankle length) and I was able to keep the original hem.  There wasn't quite enough fabric for the entire dress so I found some in my quilt stash for her bodice.  I even put the original tulle lining under the skirt, keeping the original hem and gathering.

I didn't have any knit fabric or any fabric besides quilting cotton.

Red Rose's top is from a pajama top I had.  The pants were Izzy's and I kept the ruffled hem and reattached the bow at the waist.

These cute Santa pj's were Izzy's too.

This monkey robe used to be Izzy's and she laughed and laughed when she saw it.  I used the original hems again and used the robe sash, it was the perfect length!

All of these doll clothes were our birthday gift for Izzy.

I made this dress from fabric in my stash and the rick rack trim is vintage.

I thought this was such a cute and easy idea and wanted to share it with you.  The dresses and the top were painstakingly time consuming.  I had to take a break for a few days and then I was fresh and able to finish them.  It was all worth it when I saw the joy in Isabel's face when she opened her gift :)