Totally FAB Little Quilt

Last week I received this wonderful little quilt from Linda (Quack Quack 22) in the Fab Little Quilt Swap, and today dawned bright and beautiful (for a change) so I could take some photos.  I have to say that this is a TOTALLY FAB little quilt.  I love it!  Isn't it gorgeous???  I can't even imagine making all those flying geese, but I love how they turned out.  I love that it is so colorful.  I love the tree in the center.  I love the piping around the center medallion. I love the stripey binding. 

Truly, I just love this quilt.  Linda did such a great job.  It is gorgeous, and executed so beautifully.

Check out the jewels she added for the leaves on the tree.  And the flying geese in a circle are amazing.  I've been too intimidated to try this technique yet.  But look at those perfect points.

And the label is just as amazing as the front.  Look at all those teeny tiny flying geese.  Each one can't be more than an inch and a half.  I could just sit and stare at the label!  It's really a shame I can't look at both sides at the same time.

This is the lovely package she sent me.  See the hoop?  It would have been a lovely swap item on its own.  It is just beautiful.

And I love the saying she chose.

The happiest of people
Don't have the best of everything
They just make the
Best of everything!

Words to live by.

Thank you, Linda for a wonderful swap!

Fab Little Quilt

I'm playing along in the Fab Little Quilt Swap - FLiQS for short (why do we love acronyms, I wonder?) - and this is the little quilt I made.

The pattern is from 99 Modern Blocks which is a great resource for ideas for modern quilt blocks.  This particular block, called "Wedged In" in the book (they are in alphabetical order) has fascinated me since I flipped through the book the first time.  I'm calling my offering "Ripples of Love", since the way the blocks flow out from the center, getting ever larger reminds me of ripples in a pool.

And then when  Dawn (guiltyquilter) made a pillow for PTS8 from the pattern, I knew I just had to make one myself.  Dawn modified the pattern, making it a little bigger and substituting larger fussy cut blocks for the teeny tiny squares in the middle.

I used her fussy cut idea with some little medallions in a bit of Kumari Gardens fabric I had lying around, and built my blocks from there.  The small drunkard's path blocks are appliques and were hand sewn.  (Yes, they were kind of a pain.)

Then, as you can see, I added some rows of hand quilting to give it interest, picking up some of the colors in the blocks.

It is far from perfect, but overall, I really like it.

I hope its new owner will enjoy it too.

M is for MollyJolly

Some weekends are just so frustrating...  I have such big plans and don't manage to get nearly as much accomplished as I would like.  This weekend was especially so because I just felt so exhausted, it was hard to focus.

The good news is that I did manage to finish one project that I have been obsessing about for weeks.  I'm playing along in the Mini QT swap, and this time it was to create a mini quilt using words that start with your partner's first initial.  I've made lists of M words, drawn scads of pictures, and generally been haunted by this since the partner assignments came out in August.  Then, I had difficulty paring down the M words so that my little quilt would make sense.  Then I had to pare them down again so that this little quilt would be manageable - maximum size is 8 x 10 or something like that.  I think this one is actually 9 x 11, but oh well.

Of course, I can't show you the whole thing yet, since you know who you are partners with in this swap, and she might see this, but I did manage to include 15 M words.  The little mini includes embroidery, buttons, and applique.  And quilting, of course.

And if you haven't guessed it, the first word is Moon.

Fun Mail - Indulgence

I received another wonderful package in the mail late last week, this one perhaps even more eagerly anticipated than the rest!  It came from none other than Westwood Acres, BD#1's little fabric shop, and was filled-to-bursting with yummy fabric goodness.  I was totally self-indulgent and while I felt a little guilty, I couldn't help but just sit for awhile and pet all these lovely bundles of color.

Here's what was in my box:

The Birds and the Bees, by the fabulous Tula Pink.

Chicopee by the ever-so-talented Denyse Schmidt.

Out to Sea (boys)...

And Out to Sea (girls), by the playful Sarah Jane.

Field Study, by the incomparable Anna Maria Horner.

And finally,

A lovely bundle of Madrona Road, by the delightful Violet Craft.


 With apologies to my dear daughter for messing up her lovely and precise stacks of fabric, I proclaim...

Ahhhh,  I'm in fabric heaven!

Oh, for more time to play with this yummy cotton goodness...  But for now, I have to go to work so I can perhaps buy more fabric one day.

Fun Mail!

This has been another great week for fun mail here at the M household.  WH is in awe that there have been fun packages in the mail nearly every day.  If you read this post, you will remember that for once I had very specific ideas about what kind of journal cover would make my heart sing.  My partner for this round was ValeryAnne, and she really hit the nail on the head!  We've been partners before, so she knows my style...

And she met all the criteria:

It is pretty enough to take to work.

It is bright and cheery.

It has embroidery and embellishment.

It has this nifty snap latch so that I can tuck papers in and they won't escape.

And it even has an adorable pen holder on the inside.

She really pegged it, didn't she?

And I hadn't gotten around to taking pictures of the cool name tag that Wendy (lovethesky40) sent me in the RATZ swap.  This is one swap where I thought I had signed up and something went wrong.  Wendy came to my rescue and we swapped with each other.  We have also swapped before, so it was great fun.

And I just have to show you the back of my new name tag.  Love it!

I got a whole bunch more GMFG blocks in...

And some more basket blocks...

And even some blocks for a special project I'm working on...

So all in all, it was a great week for mail around here.

Wish I could say I had made this much progress on the outgoing mail this weekend.  Oh well....  Maybe next weekend.

I'm a Winner!

A couple of weeks ago, my friend at work asked if I would be interested in visiting a local quilt shop that was having an open house.  Can you believe there was a quilt store right here in my town and I hadn't been there?  That had to be remedied.  Never one to forego exploring new quilting horizons, I readily agreed.

Martelli's sells Janome sewing machines, has a little bit of {really lovely} quilt fabric, a long arm quilting and embroidery service, and a ton of other stuff.  But the coolest thing about them is that they manufacture really cool quilting stuff right here in my home town.

You know that Curve Master foot that everyone's talking about?  The one my very own daughter did a tutorial on last week?   Yup, it's manufactured right here on the Gulf Coast.

I bought a non-skid mat to put under the foot feed of my sewing machine. It really works!  No longer do I have to chase the thing all over the room.  That is pretty cool.

 I also bought {what I hope is} this really nifty binding toolkit.  It's supposed to be foolproof.  See the package?  Perfect binding EVERY TIME it says!  I haven't used it yet.  We'll see.

But along with the sale, and the product demos, and the general festivities, they had door prizes.  The Grand Prize was a brand new Janome sewing machine.

I didn't win that. =(

But I did win a $100 merchandise gift certificate.  There's a lot you can do with $100, you know.

I can buy that Curve Master foot.  That looks pretty awesome!

Or I could buy this nifty ergonomic rotary cutter they have that's supposed to save your wrists.  I have carpal tunnel syndrome, so that might be a really good thing.

Decisions, decisions....  Sometimes choices are just so difficult.

But this is a good kind of choice to get to make.

What brought all this to mind is that last evening, in my email box, was a post from the Play Crafts blog.  I follow her by email because its a Wordpress blog and I can't follow via Blogger or Google Friend Connect.  Anyway, she posted this cool palette builder tool she has developed to extract colors from any photograph.   You upload your photo and it instantly extracts the colors and shows you the color palette in the photo.  I suppose most people would use landscapes or sunsets for their experiments.  The first photo I came to was the photo of Martelli's I snapped the night I won the gift certificate.

I uploaded that random photo, and this is what I got...

I made it really big so you can see what it does.  And it was very fast. 

What do you think - should I make a quilt with those colors?

Happy Birthday Ari!

Youngest daughter's birthday is September 11, so now that she has received her gifts, I can show what I made her for her birthday.  Last week when I was lamenting the lack of progress on THE LIST, I mentioned that I was going to go make a dress.  Well, that was my plan.  But when I got in the sewing room, these two remnants called out to me and I decided to make shirts instead.

The shirts are made from knit that I found on the remnant table at JoAnn's.  The pattern is a really favorite shirt that was ruined by rust that I cut apart for a pattern.  I didn't even transfer it to pattern paper - or even newspaper.  I just plopped the cut up pieces of shirt on the new fabric and whacked it with the scissors, all the while chanting, "Remember to add the seam allowance.  Remember to add the seam allowance...."  The gray one cost $2.50.  (I just love remnants!)  I put 3 little buttons at the shoulder just for interest and double-needle stitched the hem.

The yellow one is a slightly lighter weight knit, so it drapes a little better.  No buttons on this one.  I was going to do a fabric flower but it just didn't work so I gave up.  The yellow one was slightly more expensive.  I think it cost $3.25.

When Ari and I were together last time she said she was thinking about learning to embroider.  I bought her some embroidery floss then - way back in April, I think it was.  Then, a month or so ago, a friend who had an embroidery shop was going out of business and had one of my favorite embroidery tools, the Darice spring tension embroidery hoop, on sale for $1.00.  Who could resist?  Wish she had had a bunch of them, but I got the last one.

Then I had to make a little pouch so she could keep all her supplies together.  The pouch, of course, is made out of Heather Ross Far, Far Away III.  Don't you love those little "drawers" hanging on the line?  (Well, OK, some people might call them "longjohns", but when I was growing up, they were "drawers".)

 It has a nifty little zipper at the top to keep everything corralled.  I kind of wish I had added handles too, but I didn't think about that until it was done and ready to go in the mail.

I lined it with some DS Quilts orang-y circles that I had lying around.  I really must have liked this print because I bought several pieces!  Or I forgot I had already bought some.  But I do like it.  It's very versatile.

I made her a little hexie needle book and filled it with needles, pins and scissors.  Then tucked in some scraps of white Kona in the bag.

And added a copy of one of my favorite embroidery books, Doodle Stitching by Aimee Ray.  If you embroider and you haven't checked out this book, you really should.  I'm not much of an artist, so her designs really help me create the design I am trying to achieve. 

So Ari, I hope these little gifts helped to make your birthday more fun!

Happy Birthday!  Love, Mom!