Year of Schnibbles~ Times Two~

I got a little carried away with this month's Schnibbles, Tagalong. First off, I bought the pattern and then misplaced it. Still haven't found it and didn't discover it was misplaced until it was too late to re-order it as it was not to be found locally. So not knowing the sizes of anything to cut I thought why not make it larger as I had already decided not to use Charms and was just sorta tired of making small quilts.

This turned out to be a bit more challenging than I anticipated and ended up asking someone a bit more mathematically astute for help! I used all stash and leftovers from prior projects but it's mostly Faded Memories from 3 Sisters, with a little Romanza, Sanctuary, Portugal, and that luscious pink dotted background from Charity for a Cause/Legacy.

It ended up finishing out at 68 by 80 inches. I'm quite pleased with the results.

And here's my Block 5 in the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along. It's a lot of fun sewing along and seeing what other participants are doing with their fabric choices. You might want to check it out if you haven't already.

I'm off to weed a flower bed full of these pretty little yellow flowers, almost seems a shame. Thanks for stopping by!

Rainy Days and Sundays

What a treat this morning, slept late (7:30) and it was raining when I got up.  A guilt-free day of skipping my hour morning walk! A few days ago  finished the Sanctuary Sampler top I was working on.  I really like the way it turned out.  One less kit in the stash!

  Because I have such a small sewing room, after projects I am forced to tidy up or else nothing can be found.

That evolved to going through my fabric stash and pulling out stuff I no longer like or the quality is questionable.  I had a lot of the latter.  This being judged by the old holding-it-up-to-the-light test.  Amazing how fabric quality has improved just in the past 6 or 7 years or so. Anyone else notice that?   In my sorting and re-arranging, I ran across this online BOM I participated in last year.

I had neglected to do the last month which consisted of the trees using templates! Ugh.  All went well albeit rather slowly.  A major distraction over the past few weeks has been a pair of American Bald Eagles in our neighborhood. 

They have generated quite the stir!  I'll leave you with my Block 4 of the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along that Konda is sponsoring.

Now I'm off to pick out fabric for  the Schnibbles for the month, Tag Along.
Thanks for stopping by!

Easter Greetings

May you have a bright and joyful Easter and after all the festivities ~ a little time for sewing!

This and That

Hope everyone had a pleasant weekend.  I spent mine sewing ~ On Saturday my LQS sponsored a Pillowcase Challenge Day.   I precut a bunch of novelty fabric and ended up using it all, 10 pillowcases, which means 10 yards out of my stash!

Then while waiting for my fabric to finish my Patchwork Party sampler quilt to arrive I started another kit in my stash.  Another one I have no recollection of buying nor can I summon up why I would want to make a kite-themed quilt.

Here's the fabric,

I decided to use this pattern from Moda instead.

The blocks are large ~ 15 inches. And I like them better than the kites!  My fabric came on Saturday late afternoon so I was able to add the sashing and cornerstones on Sunday. 

I love how it's turning out, so soft and feminine looking.  All I have left is a light pink tone-on-tone floral for an inner border and then the purple for the outer border.

And a pocket tissue holder I made for my daughter.  I made the quilted fabric and somehow it came out all askew and with squares rather than diamonds. 
Lastly, the back of a quilting book I found at the library featuring a men's quilted vest that I thought was a hoot!  Can you imagine... LOL.

Thanks for visiting.

Salute to England

Several years ago I spent 3 weeks touring England in a rental car.  A country filled with archaic cathedrals,

historic castles, bad food (sorry) and a plenitude of roundabouts!  So similar to our traffic circles (or rotaries in Massachusetts) but so confusing and comical to negotiate driving on the left-hand side of the road.  There's a huge one in London, I can't remember the name of, that had us going in circles for what seemed miles! Definitely not for the faint-hearted nor humorless!
Anyway, this Roundabout was a lot more fun, it was the Year of Schnibbles pattern for the month.  The Parade of the participants' quilts will be  April 1 over at Sherri's and Sinta's blogs.

I made mine with one charm pack of American Primer by Minick and Simpson and assorted stash fabrics.  It was such an easy pattern.

  

Thanks for reading my blog.

An Annoying Quilt

Hi everyone,
Just a little sewing going on here, first up is my (Fig and Plum) block 2 in the Jelly Roll Quilt Along over at Konda's blog.
Then in keeping with my personal challenge  to start sewing the many quilt kits I've accumulated~

I started with these.  They are from  Patchwork Party 2007 Spring edition.   If you're not familiar with the concept, you visit 12 different online shops to purchase 12 different sampler blocks.  Each shop offers their own finishing kit for their own rendition of the finished quilt.  Each block makes up a 12 inch block.  The ones I purchased used Sanctuary fabric by Three Sisters.  So I got them out and what an unpleasant surprise!  I assumed that the instructions would be for using a rotary cutter to construct them.  Uh, no.  To be fair, there were templates printed on the instruction sheet, but clearly the intent was for customers to purchase a template set by Marti Michell, who designed the blocks.  This little bit of info was not shared before purchase.  I might add the templates were weird sizes not readily duplicated through simple measuring.  I hope that's clear.  Anyway, I cannot stand working with templates so I made 12 different blocks and simply tried to keep the gist of the blocks similar.

Here's a few blocks,  Rolling Pin,

Foxy Grandpa!

Chinese Block,

and Four Crowns.
Now for the setting, I got the not-so-brilliant idea to set the blocks alternating with stepping stones blocks,  and bought some more of the red tone-on-tone fabric.

Too much red!  Tried another setting using a white floral,

and thought it too plain,

added pink which makes the already cut white floral the wrong size!  Yup, had to order more of the white floral.  Thank goodness for the one online shop that still has Sanctuary fabric.

I'll leave you with this little tree frog, cute on the shrub, not so cute when attached to your leg!  Thanks for stopping by.