Let Them Eat Cake

As the storm swirls around us here, not too bad, I want to share my weekend finish with you.  Remember these?

I pieced these for the Texting While Sewing contest that Amy Friend hosted this summer.  Well, I finally quilted and bound them and I want to show you how nice they turned out.  I made them into two wall hangings.

 The tiered cake is one hanging all by itself.  I added two more borders to the original one and binding was Kona pink...can't recall the exact color.

 I pebble quilted the white background and stitched in the ditch around the cake and the stand, as well as around the borders.  I love the way the pebble quilting mimics the dots on the cake.

 The other two blocks, I paired up for this wall hanging.  I gave it the same treatment, two more borders, this time using a lighter Kona pink for the border and the binding.

 Keeping with the theme of the background quilting mimicking the cake, I did roses on this one...

and straight lines on this one.  More stitching in the ditch around the cakes, stands and borders too.

I am so pleased with how they turned out.  I hope you like them.  They are going to go live on the dining room wall at my daughter's house.  She was the one who came up with the concept originally, so they kind of need to go to her.  I can go visit them.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Time for the Quilt Blogger's Festival

It's time again for the  Quilt blogger's Festival.  I love all the inspiration that comes from the participants of this festival.  I have gotten some seriously great ideas from looking at some of the entries.  So for this go round, here is my submission:

 I started this quilt last summer as part of Amanda Jean's 36 Patch QAL.  No this was long before Sunday Morning Quilts came out.  I had been reading her blog for about 6 months or so and just loved her style.  I had never don a QAL, so I was anxious to try one and see what it was like.

 I started pulling out scraps an small bits to find pairs for each block.  Now I am a sort of matchy matchy girl when it comes to fabric for my quilts, but with this, I kinda let go a bit.  I selected to fabrics for each 36 patch square, without regard for how it would look with the other squares.  I worked hard to stay caught up, but still fell behind.

 I finally finished the squares last fall I think.  Then I finally came up with the layout and sewed them all together.  I was surprised to find out how much I liked it.  Then, another stumble...how to back it?  By now it was spring.  I wanted to keep the scrappy theme, so I took all the leftover strips from the front and started piecing the back.  About half way through, I realized the "huge pile" was smaller than I thought.  So I stopped again.

 Then one day, I just grabbed the half done back and added a few larger pieces of fabric that had been sitting in my stash, some for years.  The back was done.  Then I folded it all up and it sat some more.

 This summer, I finally bought some batting.  I had been on a "sew only from the stash" diet almost all summer, and that included batting for awhile as well.  I didn't have nearly enough scraps of batting for this baby.

 It took me several sessions at my machine to get it done.  I love each block for itself and I even love the whole thing together now.  It took some getting used to, I must admit.

                 She looks good in the autumn sunshine, doesn't she?

With all that color, I decided to use black and white for the binding.  I had a jelly roll of Summersville and I pulled all the black and white out.  I love the way it finished off this beauty.

Now the stats:
Quilt measurement is 70" x 70"
Quilted by me on my Bernina
Category-Favorite Scrap Quilt or Favorite Throw Quilt
Number 38
Now off to see everyone else's quilts!!

Traveling Stash Giveaway

Here it is, the Traveling Stash Box number 2.  I have been periodically checking in to see where they all were and what was available.  I thought it would be fun to have one come to me.  And it is fun.  Lots of interesting things in this box.

This is what was in the box when it came to me.  Lots of fabric, a stack of patterns, a zip bag of notions and a few charm packs.  I perused it all a couple of times.  My thoughts in selecting was to only take things I really thought I would use.  My own stash is large enough, and I didn't want to just pick things that would sit around here.  So this is what I took:

Two large-ish pieces of fabric and several smaller ones, including a Santa piece that looked very cute and vintage-like.  There were several more Christmas themed pieces in the box as well.  And one charm pack of vintage sheet charms.

This is what I added to the box:

Four 1+ yards pieces of well loved fabric that I never could figure out how to incorporate into projects, several smaller pieced including a ladybug on pine branches piece, a Charm pack and a collection of 3 inch zippers that I bought, intending to make small coin purses, which I never did.

If you would like to have this collection of lovely stuff come to you, leave me a comment here on this post.  Here are the rules:

RULES:

1. Be an active blogger. Post about receiving and the giveaway on your blog in a timely manner.
2. There is a note in the box that logs where the box has been. Please add your info and place the note back in the box.
3. There is a list of Rules and Guidelines in the box. Please read and follow these and return the list to the box.
4. You may take anything you like from the box. Just replace every item with comparable quilt shop quality items equal to the amount taken. See guidelines below.
5. Ship the box to the next person in a reasonable amount of time.
6. Due to the amount of postage shipping is only within the USA.

Visit here to read more.
Contest Closed
Good luck.  I will leave this open until Friday October 26, at which time I will pick a winner.
Winner will be posted here and contacted by email.
See you soon.
Edited to add: And the winner is...Lucky 13 SewCalGal Send me your mailing address and the Traveling Stash will be off to you next week!!

Winner Winner !

I had to work all day and am now feeling a cold coming on, so no witty post today, but I used the Random Husband Numerator to pick a winner for the Charming Travelers giveaway.  The winner is Dana, of  Old Red Barn Co.  I sent you an email Dana. 

I will be back tomorrow with a proper post for the Traveling Stash Giveaway.  Stay tuned.

Quickly

Just dropping by quickly to let you know I will draw for the Charming Travelers tomorrow, and to let you know I was also lucky to receive one of the Traveling Stash Boxes that is making it's way around the country.  I will be posting pictures and a giveaway of that over the weekend too.  See you then!

What's a blog post without a picture?

Charming Travelers and a Clean Sewing Room

You may know by now if you are a regular reader, that I generally sew most on Sunday and Monday when I am off from work.  I only dabble a bit during the week.  Saturday, when hubby picked me up from work, I came home to find out that I won the Charming Travelers, which is a Charm pack that travels the country.  It is awarded by giveaway and when you receive it, you can take what you want, and replace that number with charms from your own stash of charms.  This was started by Diane at From Blank Pages.  I will get to the giveaway in a minute.

I went into the sewing room Sunday to look at the charms and do my selections and replacements.  It was a mess!!  I could not think, work or create in there.  So I had to clean and organize first. (warning: lots of pics)

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Sorry, just an After here.  I guess I forgot to take one of the stack of stuff that was the Before.

And now, what you were really waiting to see...The Charming Travelers.  This is what came to me.  There are 56 Charms in here.  This came to me from Christina at Dolci Deleria.

 I spread them out and looked at all of them.  There seems to be lots of dark colors and purples in here.

 These are the ones I chose to keep.  Most of these are very different from my charm stash.

 And these are what I put back in the pack.  I felt like it needed to be lightened up a bit.  And yes, there are a couple of what I considered ugly pieces in there, but you know what they say 'one man's trash is another man's treasure".

And here they are, all ready to go out again.  If you would like the Charming Travelers to come visit you, just leave me a comment here on this post.  Tell me what you or your kids are going to dress up as for Halloween.  I will pick a winner Saturday, October 20.
The Rules, as written by Diane:

• winners must be active bloggers
• you must reside in the US
• before sending the charm pack off to the next winner, there must be 56 - 5" x 5" squares of fabric inside - please no yucky fabrics
• to help keep Diane's map updated, winners must fill out the quick and easy form to let her know where you are!
• if the charm pack arrives full of unwanted charms, let Diane know and she'll clear it out and fill it back up with more beautiful fabrics!

If you want to see where they've been, Diane has a map on her blog that is tracking them.
Have a great week.

23 Minutes

I wanted to get some sewing time in yesterday.  Madame Samm, of Sew We Quilt says you can get lots done if you do it in 23 minute blocks of time.  That is apparently the amount of time our focus is at peak performance level.  So I thought I would give it a try. 

I went into the sewing room and sat down at the machine.  I checked the clock.  I turned on the machine.  Oops, left the wrong color thread in there.  Changed that, got the pieces I was going to sew together.  Took a few stitches...oops, machine needed oil and dusting, too dirty to run smooth.  Did that...tried again...oops, needle broke on small metal part of zipper that should not have been where it was.  Checked clock again, 15 minutes gone.  Started again after changing needle.  Finally got those few pieces together in 35 minutes.  Then I quit for the day to go fix dinner.

I was so frustrated.  I hope to try again on Saturday after work.  We'll see.  Meanwhile here are some pics from last Monday's sewing session:

            October's bee blocks for Sunday Morning Quilts Bee

             Two more bandanna bibs for drool monster baby B

               More long pants for the same little drool monster

corduroy

flannel

more corduroy

inside out

Hope you have a great weekend and get lots of 23 minute things done.

What's on YOUR couch?

I had a couple of comments last week, during the Leafs Me Happy blog hop (which is still going on this week) about the couch in my header.  I love the couch, and the header.  Since we have been busy painting our livingroom, there was less time for sewing this weekend and I decided to dress up my couch and show off some of my quilts.  Here is the story of the couch.

Her is the naked couch.  We had been living without one, with only two IKEA chairs in the livingroom for the past year.  This summer, we found this couch at Crate and Barrel when they were having a clearance sale of floor models.  This is their silhouette sofa, which they still carry.  We loved it and got it for about $500 less than retail price.  The only possible down side...it's off white...we have grand children.  Hmmmm...what's a quilter to do?

 This is the way the couch looks now.  I love the way it displays this great quilt.  One of my newer finishes, the 36 Patch I did with Amanda Jean's QAL last year that I just finished this summer.

 Here is a shot with just the pillows.  I mad the two cathedral windows long before we had this couch, with just this in mind.  I was inspired by the pillows I saw in blogland.  The two nine patch pillows are made from charm packs of California Girl by Fig Tree Quilts.  The other two was me playing with some of my favorite fabrics I had been hesitant to cut into.

 Here are two smaller quilts that I recently made and blogged about.  You can see that it takes two to cover the seat of the couch.

 An older quilt that was one of my first attempts at a modern strip quilt.  Love the colors on this one.

 An older quilt from the early 2000"s  I believe this is Kansas Twister.  I found it in a book and just had to make it.  I still love the color combo.

My Winding Ways quilt, made in 2005.  It was the first quilt I made with all green fabrics, as my husband told me I never use green.  Also my first with curved piecing.  I am proud of this one.

So there you have it for today.  Hopefully there will be more sewing and I will have something new to share soon.  Have a great Monday.