Rebecca's table runner

I made a table runner for my daughter, and she wanted it to match her carpet.

Here are 3 separate views of her carpet...

These are 5 of the colors swatches that she sent me. 

I chose them for the main colors of the table runner.

I chose this color for the sashing, it matched up to Kona avocado perfectly!

I went to my local quilt shop and matched the color swatches to all the bolts of fabric.

I bought a half yard of each piece, and a yard of the Kona.

I cut 5" squares of the 5 main fabrics and cut some of them in half.  

The sashing strips are l l/2" wide.

I used a pattern that I got from my favorite quilt shop, Pine Needles in West Jordan, Utah during one of their quilt shop hops.

I put a 5" strip of some pretty "Liberty" style fabric on each end, with some matching rick rack.

I love how happy and bright this table runner is.

I backed it with leftover pieces.

It looks great on my black dining room table and shows off the photos of 2 of my sweet grandchildren, Maisie and Benjamin.

What I've Been Working On

My daughter received a Samsung tablet for Christmas over a year ago.

I told her I would make a case for it and finally got around to making it....

I'm not quite that pathetic, her tablet was lost for about 6 months.

One day her little one year old was playing in her bedroom and pulled out the tablet from between the cushions of the chair.

My daughter had looked there so many times, I guess it took the right touch :)

I wanted to make a vintage case, and found this adorable little Japanese print with 1950's style stuffed animals, perfect!

I don't know if she likes it or not, but I LOVE it :)

I chose a cute polka dot for the top of the holder and a teal colored zipper.

This is the back of the case.

Don't you just love those little vintage animals?

Can you tell how much I LOVE it???? Lol!

I've made this tablet case many times, just in different sizes.

Here is the link to the tutorial from Fresh Lemons Modern Quilts.

Liz has excellent tutorials :)

I really like the aqua gingham lining!

 The inside pocket has a polka dot lining.

This is such an easy case to make, I recommend it.

I'm very fortunate to belong to a virtual quilt bee, The Bees Knees a Quilting Bee.

April Rosenthal sent me this fabric with her new pattern, and I put it together and sent it to her.  

The colors and prints are so interesting :)

I'm working on lots of projects right now, but they just aren't complete enough to show you yet.

Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next Monday :)

Modern Instate - December & January

I finished up my Modern Instatebee, Hive 11 membership.

It was a great experience, I was sent 10 beautiful blocks and made 11 blocks every month for others.

(One of the ladies dropped out of the bee after she received all of her blocks, which was disappointing)

December's block was the Stacked Windmill, it was the most popular block.

The hive member chose red, aqua and gray, with Kona white for the background.

January's block was Trellis Crossroads, this is the first one I made.

There are 30 blocks in the quilt, so the hive member said that she would love 2 blocks if we had the time.  

She has 4 young children and works full-time as a teacher.

I thought that anyone with that work load and who is also a member of a quilting bee, and is very nice (Ha ha!) deserves at least 2 blocks!!!

She didn't want any reds, pinks or browns, and loves purple.

It was a little difficult not choosing any reds or pinks since they seem to be the colors I have the most of, and I don't have much purple, but I did my best :)

These blocks look really great together, with their bright, happy colors!

I loved this book, I highly recommend having it in your library.

They sell it at Joann's, need I say more?

AYOS and a little bit more - Kaleidoscope mini tutorial

Our challenge for the month of January, was to follow this tutorial by My Rainboots are Red, for a Kaleidoscope mini quilt.

I bought the Kaleidoscope smart plate ruler from Sharon Sebrow.

Sharon sent me a bonus quilt, which was really nice!

I made lots of half square triangles with my pretty scrappy fabric.

Do you notice my design board?

I use them all the time!

Lori Holt has a tutorial on her blog, Bee in my Bonnet.

You can make them in any size you want :)

This is what the ruler looks like. (ignore my legs...)

I cut and cut and cut...

 One of my blocks was imperfect, but I kept it.

I thought it might add some extra interest :)

I don't know if this is normal or not, but my corners were all cropped a little bit.

I love this cute little block!

I sewed a triangle to each of the 4 corners to form a square.
Forgot to take a photo of that step...sorry.

Yay, my squares are all placed and ready to sew together!

I enjoyed machine quilting with my walking foot.

I realize that some of my low volume fabrics weren't pale enough to stand out as much as they should.

The mini measures approximately 21" square.

I used it to decorate the table during my lesson at church, and some of the young women noticed it!

I backed it with a Japanese hexagon print, and the binding is a bright pink that I pulled from one of the scraps.

The tutorial was excellent, I think I would have been lost without all the wonderful photos.

I really enjoyed this technique and am anxious to make something else using it :)

Snapshots QAL, cake

I'm making Fat Quarter Shop's Snapshots quilt.

When I saw this, I fell in love with it...and I have a difficult time resisting a quilt along, especially when other designers are involved.

I love seeing everyone's version of the same pattern.

The Fat Quarter Shop has requested that you give a $5 donation to St. Jude's hospital for each pattern that you download.

You can get more information here.

This quilt was made from "Day Sail", Bonnie and Camille's latest fabric line from Moda.

I have a good collection of Bonnie and Camille's fabrics already, so I decided to use their fabrics from other lines.

I divided my fabric into blocks, and labeled all 12 of them.

Then I put the piles into a basket and will take out one block at a time, each month.

January's block is a four layer cake, yum!

I cut out all the pieces and marked them with Alphebities.

These are the fabrics I'm using for the cake block.

Voila, here's my tasty cake!

I'm pinning all the designer's blocks on my Snapshots QAL board if  you want to follow it on Pinterest.

Thimble Blossoms and Heather Ross

It's time to make another baby quilt for a little grand daughter who is due at the end of February :)

I perused my patterns and found this old Thimble Blossoms pattern.

I thought it would be a great pattern to showcase some pretty fabric.

 My cherished Heather Ross collection came to mind!

I really love Heather's fabric, and have the entire Far, far away line in my stash.

I adore this unicorn in her lovely field of wildflowers!
Just imagine how heavenly their scent is....

I pressed Wonder Under to the circles, which is so easy to work with.

I used a blanket machine stitch to attach them to the background.
Before I did that, I had to buy some more Aurifil thread to match the unicorn circles, yay!

I disected the unicorns in half vertically, for the half squares.

One of the halves has a unicorn head and the other has the unicorn's  behind! Ha ha!!!

I didn't know how else to do it!!!
Kind of weird because they're all chasing their rear ends....
What made me think of pairing Far, far away with this pattern in the first place, was how I could place the cute Princess and the pea images.

I tried lots of different sashing colors to frame the unicorns, this bright orange stood out the best :)

I love the outside border, pink with yellow polka dots which sort of gives a hint of orange.

Now which color rick rack?

I like the pink, but needed another opinion.

My daughter Lindsay liked the pink best, so the pink won!

I hung the quilt on my tree in the backyard for the best light.

The sun was shining brightly so there was a little too much light!

Did I tell you how much I love these unicorns?

Notice the strawberry fabric at the top?

They are from Heather Ross' Briar Rose line.

Yes, I have that entire line in my stash also :)

Here's the finished quilt, bound with yellow.

It's backed with really soft pink minky, I didn't use any batting.

This method (without batting) gives the quilt a silky drape.

The quilt is so soft and pliable, that it kind of ripples a little.

This  quilt will be perfect for swaddling babies.

I machine quilted this quilt with a wavy stitch which is apparent on the minky back.

I didn't design this pattern, but I did do a lot of designing in the way that I used Heather Ross' fabric :)

I'm going to make some matching burp pads with the leftover minky and more Far, far away fabric.