On the Road to Spring

Here's a better look at my On the Road to Spring quilt. I followed the quilt along from I Have to Say... blog. I wasn't really thinking about spring when I decided to make this quilt. You may think from the colors that I was thinking about Christmas! No, I just liked the look of the greens and reds I had on hand and decided to use them. I initially wanted to throw a third color in the mix but couldn't decide on which one, so I left it alone.

The binding for this quilt is actually some wide ribbon I had on hand. I'm not sure how it will hold up to repeated washings, but so far so good. The quilt back is made from the patterned part of a thrifted king sized bed dust ruffle. I had to sew about 4 strips together to make the back and I like the way it turned out.

If you look down in the left hand corner, you'll see Miss Parker, she loves to "supervise" all my projects.

Postage Stamp Quilt

I thought I would show the postage stamp quilt that I finished a week or two ago. I followed the instructions for this quilt from the quilt along at P.S. I Quilt. The fabric I used is a set of six prints from the Picnic Parade line by Jenean Morrison. The backing fabric is Topsy Turvey Dots by Legacy Studios.

This quilt took about a month for me, the longest I've spent on a quilt so far. For the first time I tried to use a quilting method other than in the ditch. I did quilt as you go, block by block, then added another layer of of whole batting before attaching the back. Since I added the second layer of batting, I also used hand tying, each center square per block to hold that batting down.

I really like the dotted backing fabric and how the dots happened to match the colors in the Picnic Parade fabric.

W.I.P Wednesday

Okay, so here's my real W.I.P. Wednesday post! I've been working on a Paintbox quilt as seen on Oh! Fransson. I've just completed the top and need to decide on a backing for it as I don't wish to do the one that she did with the quilt a long.

My quilt top measures 78.5 x 98.5. I decided to make the center block 4.5in as I needed bigger blocks over all. This quilt is for my daughter, and she wanted the blocks placed randomly and that's what she got!
This was my first time with sashing and I'm quite pleased with how that went, but it is a bit time consuming.


My other W.I.P. for today is a quilt inspired by the heart shaped blocks on Tall Grass Prairie Studio.
I'm making a quilt for my Mom's birthday using mostly Delilah prints from Tanya Whelan. I've mixed in a couple of solids and some other scraps of print that I have to round out the blocks.
I'm going with a combination of the heart blocks and simple 9-patch blocks interspersed with plain white.
I've had to come up with my own layout for this one as I hadn't a quilt a long to follow, so I hope that it will all look okay once together.

Not W.I.P Wednesday

This was supposed to be my first W.I.P. Wednesday post, but that will have to be delayed at bit as I woke up to find my daughter has taken my digital camera to school and I won't have it back until late afternoon. I was really excited to participate, but I suppose I can withstand the delay!

In the meantime, how about some pictures of some of the DS Quilts fabric I've managed to pick up at Joann's? Neither of the 2 Joann stores near me seemed to have the full line, unless they were already sold out by the time I found out about these fabrics, but I was very happy to snag yardage of both the dots, as I really love dots. I think I managed six prints altogether, but have only photographed these three.

Red Gingham

Pink/Red Dots

Aqua/Green Dots

Vintage Floral Sheets

Our local thrift store has some competition now. We have two Savers thrift stores that are some-what new to the area. I'm not overly impressed by Savers, but the couple of times I have gone they have had a nice selection of vintage sheets. Today I'm going to show off a few. Eventually I hope to put some fat quarters or half yards up in my Etsy shop, but for now I just like to look at them. The colors have not come out quite true, they are showing up darker than they really are. I've no idea how to fix this...:(

Orange Butterfly Percale Vera Collection by Burlington


Lady Pepperell 100% Cotton


Cannon Royal Featherlite


JC Penny's Percale


And one squash print pillowcase that I've taken apart.

Long Time Gone

So it's been quite some time since I have posted! Last year I was making all excited making cards and other crafts for a craft show I was participating in. I'm sorry to say that the craft fair was a big disappointment. I did make my table fee ($55) plus a bit more, but nowhere near what I put into it. I started a new job a week before the fair so I was really unable to take off weekends to do more fairs the rest of the holiday season.

I think my crafting spirit got wiped out for awhile, as I didn't do anything crafty again until late February. So far this year I've been not in a card making mood, but a quilting mood. I've completed 3 quilts since March and am at work on my 4th with plans for several more.

When I started making the quilts this spring it was my intention to use of fabric I already had in my stash without spending a bundle on more. Oh how foolish of me to think that would be possible. Of course I had to start looking at all the pretty fabrics on the 'net, plus looking at quilting blogs and seeing what others were using fueled my desire as well. Needless to say, I'm the sheepishly proud owner of lots of new fabrics and vintage sheets, which I am determined to use up! Right?

So, hopefully I'll be doing a little more posting, showing off some fabrics and sharing some shots of the quilts.

Here's a small picture of the 2nd one I made. This one actually is made out of all stash fabric. It's about 45x60 and is going off to live with my Grandniece soon.

This quilt was made following this Quilt a-long