It's Been A While....

My dear Mother passed away on Easter Sunday after suffering a fall on the previous Sunday. She was 88 years old and had a good life with a long marriage and seven children.

We will miss her so much. 

Obviously, I haven't been able to spend much time in the sewing room, but I do have some older photos that I had planned to share. I will do a Simply Red update later this week--our meeting was last Monday.

I finally got my Schnibbles Canasta quilted.
This was one of the quilts from last year's Another Year of Schnibbles.
I got to use some of my Jo Morton Blue Variety fabrics for this one.
It looks kind of small laying on the king size bed--it's a throw size. 

Hard to see, but the main part of the quilt is a small stipple, the blue inner border is an egg and dart design and the outer border is a feather. 

The quilting shows much better on the back. I took the top to a long arm quilting group and the consensus was to use meandering rather than a more contemporary design--so that is what I did. 

Earlier this month, I covered a small paper mache box to keep my Stitch Society hexagons all together. It won't hold all 180 of them, but with my slow progress, it will do for quite a while.

A perfect fit.

The blackberries, fox and rag doll.

Happy Easter!

I haven't had a lot of time to post, so I thought I'd do a quick little show of some of my wooly Easter projects from the past. 

Little penny mat--I think those are deviled eggs!

If I remember correctly, this was a pattern in a Better Homes and Gardens Quilt magazine.
All of the wooden rabbits in the photos were purchased at craft stores as bare wood. I painted them with acrylic paints--most of them are dated 1993 on the bottoms. I thinned the paints a lot and applied washes of color so they aren't glossy.

This is a Brandywine pattern from one of Linda Hohag's books.
I used a Wildflower's variegated pearl cotton for the buttonhole stitching.

I think this little picture was from a Need'l Love book.
A velveteen rabbit is helping to hold it up!

Another Need'l Love book pattern--love the cabbages!
I hope your Easter baskets will be filled with treats!

A Little Catching Up....

There's not a lot happening in the sewing room right now, but I thought I would post a few things before I  begin preparing Mr. Moosebay's dinner. I have to get an early start since tonight is our guild meeting.

This is last week's Jane Austen block from Barbara Brackman.
I am making my blocks 6" so I do a conversion in my BlockBase program. 

This is a mock up of Block 2 on one of my design boards. 

This was the second arrangement I laid out and ended up sewing together.
Unfortunately, I didn't notice that I left the setting in BlockBase to round to the nearest 1/8th inch, so my block was too big--not much, but too big--ack!!

Since I had to reverse sew, re-cut, and re-sew, I changed those half square triangles.
There was not enough contrast in the originals.
 I'm much happier with it now although cutting 1-11/16th inch squares isn't the most fun I've had lately!

My Triangle Sew Along top is all sewn together and ready to quilt.
I plan on leaving the jagged sides just for fun.
Gotta run so no links today--sorry!!!!

Update

All of a sudden, it is starting to feel like Spring may actually happen! Yesterday was beautiful and so is today--perfect for a walk and a garden lecture to get in the mood. I know it will be about 7 weeks before I can plant any flowers here, but it's fun to make plans.

I think that's why I gravitated toward these stash fabrics for my Jane Austen blocks.
Well, maybe not the plaids...we'll see!
Yes, I've caved--but it was peer pressure--not my fault--haha!
 A group of quilters encouraged by Sharyn are going to do the blocks, so I have to join in on the fun, right? I think Elizabeth and her sisters would be wearing cheerful floral cotton dresses this time of year.
There will be 36 twelve inch blocks, but I am going to do a smaller version using 6" blocks.
Barbara Brackman will be posting a block weekly at the Austen Family Album blog.

Sassy Quilter Triangle Quilt Along

So far, I'm keeping on top of the Triangle Sew Along.
There are 12 rows of 17 triangles. 

The triangles get sewn together in pairs.
As long as the blunt tip is facing up or down, you will end up with straight of grain on the top and bottom of your rows. It helped me to place a pin on the triangle facing up so I didn't get my pairs turned at the sewing machine. It's easy to flip them--trust me: I know from experience!

These are my twelve rows sewn across.
The rows will be sewn to each other in the next step on Friday.
When I randomly laid out my triangles, I had a bit of a star peeking out, so I rearranged all the triangles to get three big ones.
It's impossible to see them up close, but they magically appear as you step back from the design wall. 

This has been SO fun to sew up!
 Since the triangles have been starched they go together easily and the the blunt tips help with matching.
I don't think I'll have any trouble staying on the timeline for this one!

Whew!

I only had time this week to be on the computer to check email--no, not even to shop! 

I filled in a little bit at Colorz for Quilts while Susan is in Arizona. It happened to be meeting day for Martha's Prairie Women group, so it was a fun day. 

Even more fun--this bundle of French General I picked up!

The April Stitch Society meeting was on Thursday.
Of course there were storm warnings, but I was lucky and managed to get home before the worst of it. These are a few more of the hexagons I finished from March.

I love the Cow Jumping Over the Moon.
We had a delicious ice cream dessert as a treat at our meeting.   

The Pansy is one of my favorites (so far). 

And I have a big finish!
 My Quilty Fun Sew Along quilt is complete!
The top, back and binding were made completely from my stash (which makes me pretty happy). I did purchase white batting. I was worried that a natural colored batt may change the white on white prints I used as backgrounds. 

I got to use up a lot of chunks of old fabrics for the back and some Kona solids for the binding.
I used Aurifil thread to quilt a pantograph design called Popcorn.

Lori's design for the label was pretty cute. Since it was a 16" square, I pieced it into the backing and quilted over it. It felt pretty good to not have to add a label after the last stitches of the binding were finished!

It looks like I have a pretty full calendar next week too.
Happy Sewing!!