My Sew Alongs

 Since we had a worldwide pandemic, I had lots of time to quilt.  I joined quite a few quilt alongs. The first one was the Sewcialites quilt along, hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop.  This sew along began on September 25 and ends on June 25.  A new block comes out every Friday morning, and you can do a 3", 6" or 9" block.  I chose to do a 9" block because I like throw size quilts.  There are only 4 more blocks to do and then I can assemble my quilt!  I'm making my blocks from Bonnie and Camille fabric I've been saving for years :). Here are  my blocks strewn all over the floor in color order.

Next is my temperature quilt that I'm making with my friend Nedra.  I'm using triangles on a roll and every strip is a month beginning with January.  January 1 is at the bottom and you work your way up.  January, February March, April and now May.  The triangles are the highs and the backgrounds are the lows.  The pale blue in January are the days it rained, the triangle is when it rained in the day and the background is when it rained at night.  I live in Arizona, so it doesn't rain much.  The yellow triangles are 81-90 degrees, the orange triangles are 91-100 and there's one pink triangle in May that's 101+!!!  We will soon be seeing a long of pinks!  I have a hotter pink for 111-120 and an even hotter pink for 121+.  You might be thankful it's still cool where you live.  My ideal weather is 75 degrees, my body's thermostat doesn't work anymore and I get cold very easily.  It's very difficult for me to warm up after being cold.  Anyway, this will be an interesting quilt!

Next is the block of the month by Sherri McConnell at A Quilting Life.
Sherri posts her blocks the first Thursday of every month.  Here are my 12" blocks from her quilt along.  I loved the first block in January, the churn dash one.  I patterned the rest of my colors from that block, a sort of vintagey vibe.  I forget the name of the background, but it's leftover from a quilt I made from Fig Tree fabric.

Next is the Red Sampler quilt along hosted by Lori Holt from Bee in my Bonnet.  Everything Lori designs is fabulous, I can't resist anything she does!  These are my week #6 creations.  There's just one problem.....every single week, I make a crazy mistake.  I will admire the blocks, take photos, and I still won't see the mistake unless someone points it out to me.  They are all simple fixes but I think that I must be going out of my mind!!!  Well, week 6 was no different.  I made all three of these blocks 6" when one of them should have been 12"!!!  That's really an easy fix, I'll just make two 12" blocks this week instead of two 6" blocks.  I'm making my quilt my own, lol!

Lastly is the Sunshowers QAL by Megan Collins at Megancollins.com
She designs the cutest quilts!  I made her Love and Stitches quilt and learned how to sew curves.  If you sign up for Megan's newsletter, she tells you when her quilt alongs are and when she has a sale on her patterns and she also gives you lots of helpful tips.  I am thinking of making 3 Sunshower quilts, I love them that much!  I cut out 12 blocks in my American Jane fabric and I have the cutest pink and yellow lemonade fabric that I might make my third quilt out of.  

I also have a short list of some more quilts I want to make for my grandchildren pile and quite a few that I need to machine quilt.  I hope you have a great week and thanks for following along! 😍

Bringing Home the Christmas Tree

I always loved the quilt "Bringing Home the Christmas Tree" but never thought that I would make it.  One of our daughter's family always go to the mountains every Thanksgiving, to cut down their Christmas tree.  Every year their tree is bigger and more majestic than the year before! 

 Last Christmas their car got stuck in the snow.  When they were pushed and pulled out of their predicament, their car started sliding backwards on the ice!  They have enough adventures about their escapades to write a book, so I felt it was my duty to make a quilt for them. Shhhhhhhh......it's a surprise!

"Bringing Home the Christmas Tree" can be found in the book "Vintage Christmas" by Lori Holt.  I want to make every single project in that book, and there are many!

 

I love personalizing things, so I had the great idea to sew their photos into the quilt.  Their mini van is black, so I made a black car.  A month ago, they traded in their van for a white SUV. Nooooo!!!! I felt like saying, you have to keep the black van because I made a quilt about it!  Just kidding, it will be a quilt to bring back many wonderful memories.

I thought the other cars would look naked without people or critters peeking out of the windows.  I perused my fabric stash and this is what I found....some cute bears that wandered into a car.

A squirrel in the backseat, because why not?

It's Christmas time so why not include Mr. & Mrs. Claus!

Here's a vintage looking Santa waving, I just couldn't resist him!

I even machine quilted the quilt myself!  

I quilted a swirl motif and my swirls are getting so much better. Practice really does make perfect!

I used a Christmas fabric for the back that has lots of Christmas songs in the text.  The black is a little distressed in areas, which gives it an interesting look.

Thanks so much for being interested in my quilting stories :)

 

Sew Sampler Basket quilt finished!

 I finished my Sew Sampler 2017 basket quilt designed by Lori Holt. 

You can see some of the blocks that I posted about here. 

I finished the quilt top and talked about the process here.

Here are Lori's blocks, I tried to make mine look like hers, using the solid colors.

I finally machine quilted the Basket quilt this week.  It took longer than I thought.  I quilted flowers in the yellow squares and stitched in the ditch on the baskets.  I also quilted a flower motif on the borders.

I used an Amy Butler print for the back which I absolutely love!

I used  green for the binding, which I thought matched both the front and the back really well.

I also corrected one of my Red Sampler blocks from last week!  

Thanks for telling me about it Sigi ❤️

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 :)