Hearts Hearts Hearts

I was busy with other things in early February, and if I'm being honest, was quite unmotivated to sew very much. I was looking for my sewing mojo. So, I did not make anything heart shaped for Valentine's Day, even though a part of me wanted to. So I did what any quilter would do when I found my mojo, I started on a heart quilt.

I think it was this little guy that got my mojo back for me. I won this amazing hand made Tomte Stitching Station from Moss and Lotus for the December Tomte Sew Along. When I saw it, I immediately felt better and more like sewing. How's that for magic?

 I had a wonderful bundle of fat quarters that I bought from Fort Worth Fabrics that I just knew would be perfect for hearts. I used Allison's at Cluck Cluck Sew pattern for the hearts. You can find it at her blog.

 See how pretty they are? This bundle of fabrics really makes my heart sing...lol.

I think this one is my favorite print in the bunch. The color is just so vibrant. And I love the touch of gold.

I currently have it up on the design wall . The rows are all together, and I am trying to make decisions about the vertical sashing strips. This cutie will be done soon, though and then to quilt!

 One bonus of this quilt is the leftover triangles from the bottom of the hearts. I decided that the fabric is way too pretty to waste any of it, so I sewed them right up as leaders and enders with the hearts.

  And now I am going to have this little wall hanging for my efforts. Isn't she pretty? I will be back soon, with completed projects to show to you. Have a great rest of your week.

My Penny Sampler Quilt Club-February Blocks

I have just finished my February blocks for the Penny Sampler Quilt Club. I am making the Dutch Version of the quilt. The other version available is the Nordic version. Here we go:

 The first task was to select the fabrics for this unique courthouse steps block. I laid out my background fabric and set all the step fabrics in order on top of it to make sure what I saw in my head was what I really wanted.

After taking a picture and looking at it, I decided to move the larger white polka dots down one position. I was going for a kind of ombre look with this. That made me happy, so I was ready to sew.

I put this little sweetie in the center. This is Lola Dutch, by Sarah Jane. I found her in my scraps that were left from a skirt I made for Miss N for Christmas. The perfect touch.

 And this is the end result. I am very happy with it. My husband says it looks like stacked wedding cakes. :)

It is quite a large block, one of the largest in the quilt. I love that it just shouts "Look at me!"

 Nest up was the double diamonds block. I chose this solid red to really make the blue pop, and I think it worked.

                  Here is one of the four diamonds in the block.

And here are all four of the diamonds together. This quilt is really a balancing act of colors. Some soft, some not. Choices are based on the position each block has in the finished quilt.

My last set of blocks is thirteen small pinwheel blocks that will go into a sashing strip later on. This is the first one, and I am showing you the back, because it is paper pieced. I don't like all the bulk in the center where the seams meet. So I decided to try piecing one the old fashioned way and trimming it to size.

 With a block like this, I like to press my seams open to achieve maximum flatness in the center.

See how much flatter the whole block is? I was much happier with this option so I made all the rest using this technique.

And here they all are lined up and waiting. And now, February is done and I can sew some other things while I wait for March.
Enjoy your day.

A Bit of Crochet

I have been working on the latest blanket pattern from Lucy at Attic 24. It is the Dahlia blanket. What attracted me to it was the beautiful colors and the interesting pattern.

This is part one which is 15 color stripes. Lucy has them in a "planned random" order in her pattern and I am following that. I like the randomness of it, but it is not totally random.

You can see here, we are beginning to repeat some of the colors, but not in the same order as the first rows. This really keeps it from being too predictable. And the colors are so amazing and bright. Perfect for a winter project.

And this is as of Sunday. I am just plodding along and taking my time. It is big enough now to cover my lap as I crochet and I just love that stage. The crochet along has finished with handing out each part, but you can always find all the instructions on Lucy's blog. I print each week's instructions as I am ready for them. I just printed week 3 of 7 including the edging. More hooky fun coming my way. I will show you when I get much more done, but if you want some beautiful shots, go visit Lucy.

Have a lovely day all.

A Hexie Finish

In June of 2018, I joined a sew along using EPP hexagons. I had never don English Paper Piecing before, and had never wanted to. When I finished my Kingfisher quilt, I missed sewing those cute hexies. So I decided to start making more hexies to use in a future project. I kept them grouped in a box by color. When the box was pretty full, I decided I needed to quit making them and start using them. I used a few here and there in applique projects, but finally started sewing them to each other.

I pulled out this dotted fabric to use as borders/sashing and made some more hexies. Then, I began making hexie flowers. I just made them randomly, and began joining them together with the dotted fabric. Once I had a few together, I decided that a table runner was a good idea. It wasn't too big, but it was big enough.

 I would make a few and them join them together, just trying to find pleasing arrangements as I went along. I have seen many Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts, so I knew it really didn't matter if some colors were too close together.

I decided to leave the edges of the runner irregular and I began quilting it, dividing each hexagon into 6 pie slice pieces. It took me three days to get this small runner quilted like that, but I am very happy I chose this way to quilt it.

 I knew there was no way I would be able to bind the edges of this thing, so I opted to cut it close to the edges and zigzag over the edges. It won't get washed as much as a quilt might, so I think it  will be fine.

And here it is, in all its glory. It sits on the glass coffee table in the living room. And yes, there is usually stuff sitting on top of it, but I wanted to show you the whole thing. So that is one more project checked off my list for 2020. I am just rolling along here.
Have a great weekend.

A-B-C-D-E-F-G...

Do you have the ABC song running through your head now? Ha! I saw this sample from Dropcloth Samplers on Instagram back in the early fall I think. I immediately fell for it. In the past couple of years, I have rediscovered my love of hand work. It started as a way to have something to do in the evenings while watching TV or visiting with friends. Now it is a must have in my life.

I picked out these 5 shades of pink from my collection of DMC floss and decided to do some sort of an Ombre look on this sampler. I knew it would make my heart sing!

I usually only hand stitch in the evenings and on weekends. Machine work happens Monday-Friday during the day while my husband is at work. I seldom do machine work on the weekends. This bit took up the first week of stitching.

I made it this far by late October. I know the time frame by my painted toe nails. I got them done in early October when I was in NC visiting my Daughters.

I got to a point where I had 3-4 different hand stitching projects going on. Two were embroidery and two were EPP. Both of the EPP projects are still ongoing. Progress gets made on all, but on some things it's slower than others. I was so happy when I reached the more than halfway mark on this.

 Finally, two weeks ago I was down to the last line left in this. I don't know about you, but that always re-energizes me to finish something.

 So this past weekend, I just chugged along on Friday afternoon and evening. Saturday I took the day off to go to Torrey Pines for the golf tournament with my hubby. By Sunday night it was almost done.

And here it is, pressed and ready to frame. I took the last few stitches Monday morning and went and bought a frame for it. Sorry, I don't have a picture of it in the frame. I hung it above my sewing machine so I could look at it all the time. I am very pleased with this bit of stitchery.

Thanks to Rebecca @dropcloth on Instagram for this great sampler. If you do one, there is a hashtag for it #abcsprinkle. @bjones6416 posted when she received hers in the mail and that spurred me to get one. I am giving consideration to getting another one, because I have another colorway idea for doing this.
Talk to you soon.

My Penney Sampler Club Quilt-the Beginning

I made a Penny Sampler Quilt in the second round of Rachel's classes for that quilt. Maybe a year and a half ago? I loved it. I took the class to get better at the several skills that were used to make the quilt, and it worked. I feel like I have truly mastered those techniques.

Rachel has now come up with the Penny Sampler Quilt Club. I never would have decided to make another Penny Sampler Quilt, but she has two versions now, and the new one is a Dutch inspired version. That was where she got me hooked.

 This is the coloring sheet, for help in getting started on this year long project. I used colored pencils to help me establish some sort of color scheme for the quilt. I knew from my last class that this was the best way to keep it from being a daunting task to choose colors and fabrics. Some things will change, as this quilt will lead me and show me what it needs as we go along.

 This is my initial fabric pull for the quilt. I know that as we work through the blocks, some fabrics will not make it into the quilt, and others may join this stack. But the point is to have a starting point.

 This is my first block for January. The compass block. It turned out so much softer than I had imagined. But I truly love it. I have left it on the design wall so I can just look at it.

 This is the row of diamonds on the top of the quilt. My second element for January. The red in this block was not in the initial fabric pull, but when I was digging through my stash and I saw this, I knew it was perfect. The color is so rich and sharp, especially compared to the compass. This quilt needs some of that kind of color in it. I am super happy with this.

My third January element is the ribbon block. Again, a bit softer look, but all these came from the original fabric pull, except for the pink background. After I did my initial fabric pull, I ordered some Kona solids to compliment those colors. This is such a busy quilt, it needs some solids to give your eyes a place to rest a bit. It makes the other fabrics really show off to their best advantage.

This is a year long project, so I will be back with updates along the way. You can still join the club at any time. There are two different Penny Samplers to choose from. You get the patterns for both and you can mix and match as you like. Don't care for an element? Swap it out. The only thing that needs to be consistent is the different block sizes in their place in the quilt.

Have a lovely weekend, and I will see you soon.

Dune Done

One of the things I have been doing for the last couple of years, in between sewing projects, is crochet. Lucy, from Attic 24 has so many wonderful crochet blanket patterns. I recently finished my Dune blanket. I am always behind in these crochet alongs since I sew much of the time.

 The two things that drew me to this blanket were the seashell pattern of the crochet and the colors Lucy chose for the yarns. They are all from a day at the beach, and things she saw or collected there.

 I had decided to do the colorwash version of the blanket, but apparently I cannot read. T very top of the colorwash sheet that tells the order of the colors says "make two rows of each color". There are 100 color rows and 4 repeats in this pattern. I made one row of each color. This is also the back of the blanket where you can see the V stitches.

 by the time I was more than half way through, I realized there was a problem. The blanket wasn't as large as it should have been. I did not want to rip out the whole thing, so I had to come up with a solution. The blanket still looked good, and the color arrangement was interesting. What to do?

 So I decided to continue on to the end of the 100 rows, and then go back in reverse color order with the single row of each. It really turned into an accidentally striking pattern.  The V stitches in between the shells were so nice.

 And it worked out perfectly. It is almost the size of my queen size mattress. I haven't figured out how to photograph the entire thing, so you are getting lots of bits.

This is what the back side looks like. Totally different, it's like having two blankets. But here you can see the way the V stitches look on the blanket.
Have a lovely Friday my friends.