Jolly Bar 4 Quilt Along

 I'm participating in the Jolly Bar 4 Quilt Along,,sponsored by Fat Quarter Shop.

The Jolly Bar 4 book has 84 pages of 20 full color quilt patterns, designed just for Fat Quarter Shop's Jolly Bar precuts.

A Jolly Bar is half of a layer cake, measuring 5"X10".  There are usually 42 prints in the collection.  

The quilt along runs from January to March 2023.  There will be a few blocks to sew every week.  Here is the cute quilt for the sew along, made from all the blocks in the book.

I have narrowed my fabric line choices down to 5 Jolly Bars.  I am hoping that you can tell me decide which Jolly Bar will work the best!

The first Jolly Bar is "Stitch" by Lori Holt.  The colors are pure and vibrant.  I love everything Lori Holt designs!

The next Jolly Bar is "Holly Jolly" by Urban Chiks.  I have loved every single line that Urban Chiks has printed but have never had one of their Christmas fabric!

The next Jolly Bar is "Midnight Magic II" by April Rosenthal.  I also love her fabric and wouldn't it be cute to have a Halloween theme!

The next Jolly Bar is "Smoke & Rust" by Lella Boutique.  This color scheme would be so different and very modern.  For me, it would be thinking outside o the box!

Last but not least is "Kitty Corn" by Urban Chiks.  I love the vintage black cats, and the cute Halloween designs.

Please, please leave a comment and tell me which Jolly Bar I should choose for the Jolly Bar 4 QAL.  

I don't think I'll be able to choose! 😩

Cabin Chills quilt

 There are a few quilts that I'm working on, but I finally have a finish!

I made J. Wecker Frisch's Cabin Chills in her Old Made line from Riley Blake.  Instead of the white background, I chose a gray from Fig Tree fabrics.  I wanted mine to look a little spookier.

I bought the kit from Pine Needles in West Jordan, Utah, after Halloween last year. My goal was to make it for this Halloween.  I even machine quilted it with spider webs and spiders.  

I used a variegated thread, Aurifil 4670.  It looks equally good on the white and black fabrics and doesn't show up too much on the background fabric.

The fabric is all sewing related.  Do you notice that the fabric for the roofs is snaps?

Each character has a sewing name, like Mrs. Sharp, the needle keeper.

Old Made instead of Old Maid :)

In my opinion, the lady below is the ugliest 😂

The backing fabric is called Midnight Magic 2 by April Rosenthal of Prairie Grass patterns for Moda. 

The selvage says "The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." - Yeates

I'm going away for the weekend and am taking this quilt with me to keep me warm during the crisp Halloween nights.

Scrappiness is Happiness

This is Lori Holt's new quilt pattern book and it has so many cute patterns in it! One of my favorites is the Santa hats quilt.

 Lori had a tutorial on one of her You Tube videos for this Santa hat pattern. She suggested that you could embroidery family members' names on the brim.  I began doing that and love how it is turning out!  I'm going to embroider all 29 members of my family, with 3 extra hats to spare!  I hope to have it completed by Christmas :)

Have a great week! ❤️

The Crosley Pouch, Halloween style

I wanted to make my grandchildren something for Halloween and decided to make them each a medium Crosley pouch 

by Center Street quilts. You can see more about the pattern 

on my last post here.

 Choosing the fabric is half the fun!

These pouches were all made with 10" squares of fabric for the outside, 10" for the lining and another 10" for the trim.

I had fun taking these photos with some of my Halloween decor!

I'm going to fill these pouches with each grandchild's favorite candy.

I really love the pumpkins with the purple background!

It took me a week of solid sewing and late nights to get all of these pouches cut out and sewn.  I'm waiting for some little ghost charms that I ordered, to arrive. Now I'll be on the hunt for their favorite candies ❤️ I hope I might have inspired you to make your Halloween a little spookier 😂

The Crosley Pouch

I posted about the Holland Pouch pattern that I bought from Centerstreet Quilts in July, here. I follow them on Instagram and they came out with a new pattern, the Crosley pouch.  I fall in love with everything they do, partly because their patterns are so cute and partly because they post great video tutorials on Instagram.

Below is their Crosley pouch.

When I saw their post on Instagram, I raced right over to their site on Etsy and bought the pattern.  I made three right away, a Papa (11"X11"), a Mama (9"X9"), and a baby (7"X7").  I just love them!!!

This one is made with Rifle Paper Co fabric, from their Alice in Wonderland line.  I thought it was so elegant, that I had to add an Eiffel Tower charm for the zipper pull.

The inside always has to be cute too 💗

 Next, I used American Jane fabric, with a black m&m charm.

This pouch was made from layer cake squares.

Last but not least is the little pouch.  I used Lucien fabric and a gummy  bear charm.  

Here they are, all in a row.

Part of the fun is choosing the fabric and the zippers.  I buy my zippers from YKK zippers on Etsy.

I decided to make a halloween themed pouch for each of my grandchildren this year.  I hope to have them finished by the end of this month.  The sweat shop has been busy for the past three weeks, choosing, cutting and sewing :)

Sabrina's First Birthday

 Last week was my grand daughter Sabrina's first birthday. A lot of preparations went into that party :) I have a little pink plastic pig that blows up balloons and then I tie them.  I made a few balloon arches.

It was a circus themed party.  

My son Sean and I wore matching tee shirts.

I made 99 old fashioned sugar cookies and almost half of them were left over.  

Sabrina's mom prepared a beautiful spread of fruit.  They also had a popcorn bar with various spices to sprinkle on.  They had a savory one, Mexican chocolate, cinnamon and theater butter.  There were m&ms to add and praline pecans and little chocolate peanut butter cups.

Karina made Sabrina a banana loaf cupcake with whipped cream frosting, minus the sugar.  Sabrina loved it!!!

I drew this chalkboard for the party.

There were about 35 people who came, and it was fun to see all 9 one year olds play together :) There was a piñata, darts to throw at balloons and a bounce house!!! Sean grilled hot dogs which were delicious.

One more photo of Sabrina loving her little doll I made for her 💗

My Quilt Retreat

I went to a quilt retreat last week, Monday through Thursday.  It was only a 50 minute drive from my house but I still stayed at the hotel.  I shared a room with my good friend Nedra and we had lots of fun together.  We sewed and sewed and went to a nice restaurant every day. There were 41 woman at the retreat and it was great visiting and getting to know some of the ladies. This is me at my machine.  Everyone had a large Costco table to themselves which was really nice!

This was my view, sitting across from Nedra.
 

There was a sea of sewing machines in the. ballroom, quite a few of the women brought their embroidery machines along with their sewing machines.

We were just a block from a wonderful quilt shop called "Modern Quilting" where we saw and bought lots of gorgeous fabric!

I completed my Cabin Chills quilt. The fabric is designed by J Wecker Frisch. It's called "Old Made" and is all sewing related.  I fell in love with the quilt the moment I saw it, and bought the kit last year. 

Instead of the white background, I chose a gray fabric to make the quilt a little spookier.

I still have to do a blanket stitch around the moons and the windows.  I had my Singer Featherweight with me. It sews like a dream, but only does straight stitch.

I also made this little doll for Sabrina who turned one year old.

I attached a little tag on her back which says 

PS I love you.

Sabrina loved it!

I also made about 10 Halloween "Tell me a story" blocks.

The retreat was so much fun!  The ladies were all so lovely, we won lots of prizes and were given quilt patterns and all sorts of goodies.  

I sure hope to go on the retreat again next year :)