Friday Finish-Belle Waves Quilt

I must start out by saying, I.Love.This.Quilt. So very soft, great colors and I know it will make me smile and keep me cozy all winter long.

 This is a free quilt pattern I found on line, by Faith of Fresh Lemons. She designed it for the Fat Quarter Gang and Art Gallery Fabrics. So of course it was perfect to use with my saved Art Gallery fabric that was waiting for the "perfect" quilt. I love the color and the movement.

 The quilting is a bit hard to see, but I started here and quilted the echo of the flower shape, around and around out towards the edges of the quilt.

 I can't stop looking at it. It is one of those types of quilts. In the time line of quilts, I think this one got done pretty quickly for me.

 For the back I chose this wonderful dusty pink flower print I found on line somewhere. I had 2 yards, but that wasn't enough.

 So I auditioned lots of other fabrics to go with it and settled on this print from the Eight Days a Week line.

 This quilt, after a trip thought the washer and dryer, is so very soft. Art Gallery fabrics have such a soft hand anyway. The white is Kona white.

The edges I decided to bind in white. I rarely do that, but in this case, I love that it just fades away and doesn't stop at the edge of the quilt. Hope you have a great Friday. Linking up with Crazy Mom.

A New Quilt Started

As if I needed another quilt start. But, I have had some yardage of Lizzy House's Catnap line for quite some time. Always in the back of my head it sat. I was trying to find the perfect quilt design to show off those great prints. I never could get one I really liked, until now.  I saw a quilt the other day that had a kind of motion to it. It inspired me to sketch this:

It will look woven when it's done and there is some partial seem sewing to it. But the end result should show off the fabric nicely, which was my goal.

So I cut out a bunch of pieces. I have no idea how many blocks I will make. They finish at about 12 inches and I would like a nice size throw for my Cat naps on the couch. Here is the first block:

I think I like it. I am going to have to sew carefully on this so the strips match up. I might even have to use pins (eek!) And guess what else?
I am finally quilting this:

This is my Belle Waves quilt made with Squared Elements and the lovely flower print from Art Gallery fabrics. It is Essentials by Pat Bravo. Have a great day! See you soon.

Independence Day Friday Finish

Happy Independence day! While many of you will be celebrating with cookouts and fireworks, I will be working, but I'm okay with that. At least I make time and a half. lol But this week I do have a Friday finish to show for my week. I am loving this one.

 This is my Belle Waves Quilt top. This is made from a pattern by Faith at the Fresh Lemons blog. She developed this pattern for a specific fabric by Art Gallery, hence the name Belle Waves. It is a very easy pattern to assemble and best of all it's free.

I used two different Art Gallery fabrics for this one. I had bought the Squared Elements looking for the best way to show them off. When the Essentials line came out, I fell for those beautiful flower prints and together, they are just dreamy. This is going to be another favorite quilt. I may have to try this pattern again in another fabric combination just to see what it does.

Smart hubby turned the top sideways and look! A really cool pattern this way too. This is where I think different fabrics might be really cool. Have a great 4th. I'll be back later today to link up with all the Friday finish folks. Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts.

WIP Wednesday-First Post for July

I made a deal with myself to try really hard to post more this year, and so far I am doing pretty good. I found that for me, finding things I was working on and being able to link up with others was a big help and incentive to post more and get a bit more traffic here at the ol' blog.  Happy Wednesday all. Here is what I am working on today:

 Remember these lovelies? I had been looking for the perfect showcase for them for so long and I finally found it.

 I began sewing blocks and just throwing them up on the design wall to see how they played. This was the beginning of some great quilt love for me.

 Then, I switched it up and decided to alternate rows and I loved the way that  looked. It was much better than the jumbled method above.

 The colors, the pattern, these fabrics are just gorgeous. Art Gallery really knows what they are doing.

 The blocks went together pretty fast and I made the number of blocks I wanted to get the size quilt I wanted. This is one of those you can easily adjust like that.

Here is the final layout of my Belle Waves quilt. My sweet husband helped me rearrange until we arrived at this. He is good at that part of the process. I have two rows sewn together and hope to finish the top by the weekend. Have a great Wednesday everyone. Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced.

Summertime and the Living is Busy

I know things are supposed to slow down in the summer, but really, do they? I don't have kids at home any more and I am still very busy with work and projects and planning vacations. I know those who still have little ones at home are busy now that school is out. There are camps and swim lessons and trips to take and family to visit. When I was a kid, we had maybe one week or so where we took a trip, but other than that, summer was very unstructured and loose. I miss those days.

So in the land of projects, here is some (not all) of what I have going on:

 I cut out all the rest of the pieces for my Belle Waves quilt. I am about a yard short on the Kona white, so I will pick some up later this week.

 I changed the arrangement of the blocks to one I like better. I am putting all the squared elements blocks in a row and then the essentials block in a row and alternating them. I just realized this morning that the two partial blocks on top need to be switched out for essentials, so I will do that too.

 These are really making my heart sing! The fabrics are so very soft and the colors so joyful to me.

 Then, I got the fabric for the boys' quilt backs. I was able to take advantage of a Kona sale at Fort Worth Fabrics and bought 4 yards of these two. I love the blue. The yellow was originally going to be Kona Curry, but they didn't have that so I bought a brighter yellow, which I think will be just fine. For now they sit for a few days while I wait for the thread to arrive. I ordered some 40 weight Aurifil from Hawthorne Threads to do the quilting with. I want to test out other weights of threads. I am also looking for a project to use an even heavier weight thread for quilting.

And lastly, for today, I have made these. These are two balls of string scrap "yarn" to make a crochet rag rug like Crazy Mom made. The tutorial can be found here. This is going to be my beach project. I need a hand work project to take with me to the beach in August. For my rag rug I will need 3 balls of this that each weigh one pound. One of these is done and one need a few more ounces to weigh in at a pound. I am using my kitchen scale to weigh them. I can't wait to get started crocheting on this! Have a great week and I will see you back here soon.