It's a Girl!

 I have been saving these fabrics for such a long time. I love all of them, but I thought they were too girly for the grandsons. And now, I have a reason to create with them. In fact, I have a plan and have already started cutting.

 Then there are the pinks. I have lots and lots and lots of pinks. I have one quilt top finished and you can bet there will be more soon.  I love being able to use these pinks.

 Then there are these two Sarah Jane prints. I don't know if they will be quilts or not. They would be adorable dresses. Have to think on that. She's still brand new and tiny.

 I love this print too. I think it would make a great quilt back. I hate the thought of cutting it up.

 More pretty pinks and flowers. I am over the moon to have a granddaughter to sew for, can you tell?

I love the old fashioned look of these Heather Ross Tiger Lilly prints. Something good will come out of these too.

 Remember this? Well I got busy last week and quilted it up in just a couple of hours. I always felt it looked pretty girly. I love the way it turned out.

 And I used an Anna Maria Horner fabric for the back. It's from the Innocent crush line. This quilt came out so soft.

 Then there's this one. I know it's sideways, but anyway, I pieced this a couple of years ago and had long hoped to quilt it. So last week I decided to get it done. I love how it turned out.

 It's soft and sweet and not too girly, but maybe just a little bit girly. I was hung up on how to quilt it, so I went with straight lines and I think it worked out great.

And I had a bunch of the dots, so that became the back and the dark blue Squared Elements made the perfect binding. Stay tuned. Lots more baby girl quilts to come.

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.

A New Project-WIP Wednesday

I am so very excited to be working on a new project! It took me so long to piece the boys quilt tops and I tried so hard to stay focused. Now that they are done and ready to quilt, I am allowing myself to start piecing something new.
I saw a quilt on facebook and I loved the design so after some investigation I found it on Flickr and then found the person who designed it is Faith of Fresh Lemons and hooray, it is a free design so I am now making it.

 I just love Art Gallery fabric. So soft and pretty that I had to buy all the Squared elements I could find and then the Essentials flowers, all by Pat Bravo. They play so well together, don't you think? I was just waiting for the perfect idea to strike in order to cut into theses beauties.  So here it is...

The pattern is Belle Wave by Faith of Fresh Lemons. Easy to piece and each one goes together pretty quickly. I am still playing with the arrangement, but I am loving each block so far. This will be a nice size throw when I am finished. Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

#300-A Friday Finish and A Giveaway

So here we are at post number 300! I almost can't believe it. That is a lot of words and pictures. I have come a long way since I started. I have learned so much from the quilting and blogging community and I want to say thank you to all of you who have inspired me.

For my Friday finish this week, I raced to finish one of the many baby quilt tops I am working on this year. I really wanted to get this top done, and I did, but there is a small mistake that will have to be ripped out and fixed. Let's take a look.

 I tried to arrange all the blocks to spread out the colors. When I make a quilt like this, I don't plan it out very much, so I just grabbed two fabrics that paired well with each other to frame the center. I always figure I can work out the block arrangement afterwards.

 See the two blocks in the top row that are blue on the outside? Those weren't supposed to be together, and I don't think they were, when I laid things out. But in my haste to finish the top, something got mixed up.  So they will be separated before I quilt this.

 So many fabrics in this one. Sweetwater's Noteworthy, Pearl Bracelets, Squared Elements, Flea Market Fancy, Malka Dubrawsky, and some other older fabrics from my stash. This was a fun fabric pull. Now, a few of my favorite blocks:

              The blue fabric here is a batik that I love, with tiny yellow and orange dots.

 One of my favorite grey stripes from Sweetwater, and I am sorry I can't remember which line.

 Navy blue Dimples surrounded by a great stripe from the Noteworthy line from Sweetwater.

                       Here is Denyse Schmidt playing nicely with Squared Elements.

I love this quilt already and I hope the new parents love it too. I don't know the gender of the baby yet, but I think this is cute enough to go either way. Now, since you have read all this way, let's talk giveaway.

 I have this pretty fat quarter bundle that I put together. These are all Kona Cottons I bought at my LQS. I wanted something bright and springy to give to you.

 I looked at lots of fabrics and chose these to hopefully appeal to a wide audience. And then, for fun I added a spool of Aurifil thread from my stash and some pretty springy zippers from Zippit.

I know you could find something fun to make with these. So, in order to be entered into the draw, since it's spring and all, in your comment please tell me what your favorite spring flower is. That's it. I will draw a winner next Friday, May 2nd. Drawing is open to any and all. I will ship internationally. Thank you again for reading about my quilting adventures here.
Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts.
Giveaway over. Winner has been chosen.