Design Wall Monday

 I've been working on a couple of secret sewing projects that I can't show, but I can show you this...

This package of goodies arrived last week and I was excited to get sewing. Can you tell that the pieces were already cut for me? WooHoo!

The first thing I did was sew a bunch of half square triangles. It was easy and fast because the triangles were already cut.

I can't show you anything else, but the top is done and I love it! It will be heading back to the designer later today and I can't wait for the pattern to be released. 

I had to put Layne's quilt aside because I decided to make a change in the design and I need to make a fabric change. I think I have what I need in my stash, but I haven't looked yet. 

Instead, I started working on Peyton's elephant quilt. The final quilt will be a combination of three different patterns, mixed in with a little of my own design. The solid yellow will be a frame around what you see here and then I'll add at least one border after that. I'll have to see it and make decisions as I go. 

While I have gotten a chance to do some sewing lately, it's not as much as I'd hoped. Two weeks ago, Jack picked a fight with a wasp, and lost big time. Not only did he get stung, but swatting at it, he lost his balance, fell, and broke his left ankle. He is home with a pretty titanium plate in his ankle, along with seven shiny screws. He is "enjoying" life using a walker and wheelchair and the frequent visits from a nurse and physical therapist. He will continue to be non-weight bearing for at least two more weeks, so life has been interesting. The good news is that he's been able to catch up on his Spanish novel reading. He's on his third book already and his reading skills and vocabulary have really improved.  

While getting the house ready for his return, I swapped out a wall hanging and put up the LOVE quilt I made a year or so ago. I've pinned a couple of love notes and pictures from the grandkids to the quilt. This is hanging next to the bed that was moved downstairs for Jack. I smile every time I look at this!

Lynn and family stopped over the other day so I could run a couple of errands. Ty mowed the lawn and the three older kids spent some time in the back yard playing, but came in the house to do some crafts when Ty was ready to mow there. I snapped this picture right before I left. 

Avery made this "little piece of art" (that's what she called it) out of an old embroidery hoop, some rubber bands, yarn, and scraps of paper. It looks great hanging in the kitchen window. 

What are you working on this week?

Check out the quilters' eye candy at

Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

and

Beth's Monday Making

August Color Challenge

It's the first, and that means that it's time for the new 

Monthly Color Challenge Block

It's Color Challenge Time again!

This month's color is Pink,

and the bird is the Flamingo

For the pattern and block instructions, 

head on over to 

Jen's Blog - Patterns by Jen

Flamingos symbolize beauty, balance, and grace. Since many Flamingos are pink, they are often associated with femininity and innocence. Presumably because of the stature, Flamingos also tend to represent confidence. 

The Flamingo spirit animal is beautiful in its stature and grace, able to stand on one foot effortlessly while keeping the other one tucked in to keep its body heat. Flamingo symbolism calls for you to be vibrant and outgoing, and to be well-balanced and resourceful in life. 

It is believed that Flamingos are monogamous. Once they mate, they tend to stay with that mate. A group of Flamingos will all mate at the same time so that all of the chicks will hatch at the same time. ... Flamingos live 20 to 30 years in the wild or up to 50 years in a zoo.

Flamingos are beautiful birds with an even more beautiful sound. Click HERE to see more pictures and to listen to them. 

I've made a variety of pink quilts over the years. 

This is my all-time favorite pink quilt and you can read about it HERE.

I just had to show the quilting on this. I love it and it was perfect for my friend Kare. 

I made two more special pink quilts. You can read about them HERE.

Sometimes, when you are making a donation quilt, you just have to use what you have on hand and when I was making these quilts, it was one of those times. The quilt in the middle (Sorry, I don't have a better picture) is a lot of pink, but I liked it when it was done. I hope the recipient did too. :-) 

To tone down the pink a little, I used teal for the little flange binding and blue for the backing. I was love how the teal just pops against all that pink.

A couple of years ago, I made some mini quilts that I framed. This was one of them and the recipient was happy with the results. Me too!

The pink that I used this month was purchased at Once Upon a Quilt in Ft. Lauderdale. I'm sure you are sick of reading about the fabric I bought there for this color challenge, but I just have to give them a shout out. It really was easy to choose the fabrics because they had just what I needed and the staff was awesome. 

The texture of this fabric is perfect to reflect the feathers of a Flamingo. 

Here are the strip sets, ready to sew together. 

And the blocks look great!

Check out this month's featured bloggers. 

They have all done such a nice job with their fabric choices and blocks. 

August Bloggers

Mona - Ky Whittaker Creations

Joanne - Quilts By Joanne

Pamela - Pamela Quilts

Carolyn - Sweet Boater Chick

Anja - Anja Quilts

Kathy - Kathy's Kwilts and More

Kathleen - Kathleen McMusing

You will definitely want to check out the 3rd Quarter Sponsors. 

They have provided some awesome prizes. Thank you! 

Sponsors July thru September

Quilters Chic - PDF Pattern

For The Love of Geese - PDF Pattern

Carole Lyle Shaw - Pattern and Grunge bundle

Quilters Dream Batting - Dream 80/20 - 60" x 60"

The Fat Quarter Shop - Fabric Bundle

Warm Company - Warm 80/20 - 55" x 60"

Warm Company - 1 yard Insul-Bright

Make Modern Magazine - 6 month subscription

Patterns By Jen - Superior Thread S-Fine 50

Patterns By Jen - Magic Wand

Design Wall Monday

It's been a while since I've written a Design Wall Monday post. It's not because I haven't been doing anything, but rather because most of what I've been doing is secret sewing and can't be shared yet.  I'm caught up on those projects (for the moment) and have a couple of personal quilts on which I'm working.

This tiger fabric and the coordinating ones in the second picture, have been sitting around far too long, waiting for me to make Layne a quilt. It's up on the wall where I have to look at it whenever I walk into the room. My goal is to have a plan by the end of this afternoon and to actually start cutting and sewing tonight.  I do have a few thoughts, but I need to do some sketching and playing around.

I have completed sewing the first units of my Perpetual quilt (a Tamarinis quilt pattern) and am very happy with how they look. 

I am making the bed size quilt (73" x 97"), so I have to make 72 of these units. They will be made into 18 blocks, once I complete the next two small sections that get sewn to the sides of this unit. 

Tammy Silvers (Tamarinis) will be teaching this quilt at the Ohio's Amish Quilt Festival; but since I will be working at the Festival, I can't take the class. Instead, I decided to make my own so I can show it at the Festival. (No pressure to get this done in a timely manner, right?  lol) 

When I showed the pattern to Jack, he said that he really liked it. It is quite intriguing, isn't it?

While talking about the pattern, Jack said that he would love to see this done in red and black. I agreed with him that that would be striking. So... I started the search for fabrics. This picture do NOT do these fabrics justice, but this is what I'm using.

The pattern includes instructions for three sizes - bed quilt, lap quilt, and table runner. Of course I decided that if I'm going to do it, I might as well go big - so the bed quilt it is!

I'll update as I work on this, but it's a busy week for me so it might be just like this next week. 

By them, I hope to be able to share some of my secret sewing projects.  

What are you working on this week?

Check out the eye candy at 

Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

and

Beth's Monday Making

July Color Challenge

It's Color Challenge Time again!

This month's color is Rust,

and the bird is the American Robin

For the pattern and block instructions, 

head on over to 

Jen's Blog - Patterns by Jen

American Robins are songbirds that typically have large, round bodies, long legs, and a fairly long tail. They are easily recognizable by their rusty belly and the flicker of white under their tails that can be seen when they are in flight. 

Robins are quite populous throughout North America and can commonly be found in gardens, parks, yards, golf course, fields, pastures, pine forests, deciduous woodlands, shrublands, and even tundra. 

Many people mistakenly believe that all Robins migrate south for the winter. While some do, many remain in their northern locations year-round. The reason for this confusion is that many birds, including the Robin, will stay up north as long as they can find a food source, be it natural or man-provided. During the winter, Robins form nomadic-type flocks consisting of hundred, and even thousands of birds. Typically the flocks will find food on trees and shrubs like crabapples, hawthorns, holly, and juniper, or that which is provided by people filling bird feeders. 

When the weather changes and Spring comes along, the flocks split up and the Robins begin their individual and never-ending journey of finding worms in our yards. (Remember the saying that the early bird gets the worm? That dates all the way back to the 17th century and is attributed to John Ray's collection of English proverbs.) 

Whether or not they leave the area for the cold month or stay here, to me, seeing a Robin is always a welcome sign that warm weather and green grass will soon be an every day thing. I find it comforting and peaceful to hear the easily recognizable sound of a Robin when I'm sitting on the patio early in the morning, enjoying a cup of coffee. It is another sign to me that we are headed away from short, cold, and dreary days of Winter, and that Spring is on it's way. 

Click HERE to listen to the sounds of the American Robbin. 

While searching for quilt pictures, I realize that I don't use a lot of rust in my quilts. There is definitely more brown than rust, and I'm not sure why that is. I think I'm going to work on changing that. 

While it doesn't have much rust or brown in it, it has some. This was made using the Bundle Buster pattern by Quilting Jetgirl 

This table runner has some beautiful rust fabrics in it. This is from Doug Leko's Once Upon a Memory book.

I used a variety of browns and rust batiks for this Breezy quilt that I made while pattern testing for Rachel Rossi. 

 

Most recently, I made this Prism quilt (a Tammy Silvers pattern), and I just love how the rust fabric works in it. 

 

I found this awesome rust fabric at Once Upon a Quilt in Ft. Lauderdale and knew right away that I wanted to use it for this block. I love the multiple "layers" of color here and it immediately made me think of a Robin's breast. I think it looks great with both the black and white background fabrics I chose.

Here are all the pieces, cut and ready to sew.

And here are the blocks! 

Check out the bloggers who are being featured this month. 

I think I'll grab a cup of coffee, go to the patio, and enjoy these posts. 

Hopefully I'll hear some Robins. 🐦☕😊

Jen - Patterns by Jen

Wendy - Peaceful Thoughts

Claudia - Create with Claudia

Kathleen - Kathleen McMusing

Stephanie - Steph Jacobson Designs

Sandra - Textile Time Travels

Fawn - Quilty Creations By Fawn

Stephanie - Quilt'n Party

Don't forget about the prize opportunity. 

Here are the 3rd Quarter Sponsors

Sponsors July thru September

Quilters Chic - PDF Pattern

For The Love of Geese - PDF Pattern

Carole Lyle Shaw - Pattern and Grunge bundle

Quilters Dream Batting - Dream 80/20 - 60" x 60"

The Fat Quarter Shop - Fabric Bundle

Warm Company - Warm 80/20 - 55" x 60"

Warm Company - 1 yard Insul-Bright

Make Modern Magazine - 6 month subscription

Patterns By Jen - Superior Thread S-Fine 50

Patterns By Jen - Magic Wand

Mandalynn - Pattern by Busy Hands Quilts

Do you remember this post about my secret sewing project for Myra of Busy Hands Quilts? I showed you a package that had arrived and I was getting ready to sew.

I loved these fabrics when I opened the package and that feeling has never waned. 

Let me introduce you to

Mandalynn

 

This pattern is now available in both print and pdf version at Busy Hands Quilts. 

I know that I've said this before, but I LOVE using Myra's patterns! They are so easy to follow and her illustrations are wonderful. This pattern includes four sizes (throw, twin, queen, and king), so you don't have to do any math. She's done it for you!

Here are a few pictures of Myra's completed quilt. 

Mandalynn
Image from Busy Hands Quilts

Check out that quilting! 

Mandalynn
Image from Busy Hands Quilts

Why is it that it always seems to be windy when I try to take quilt pictures?

As you know, I always like to take pictures of the quilts I make from side angles. 

We all know that sometimes our beds to do not get made properly. I just love this picture Myra shared. I can just picture myself waking up and seeing these bright colors. What a wonderful way to start the day.

Mandalynn
Image from Busy Hands Quilts

You can get your own copy of Mandalynn at Busy Hands Quilts.

While you're there, sign up for her newsletter. 

Check out Myra's Facebook page for more pictures of this beautiful quilt. 

You won't be sorry you did! She is offering a special introductory sale for this pattern thru Sunday, so don't wait too long.

I just have to share one more picture...

Mandalynn
Image from Busy Hands Quilts

Design Wall Monday

Since this whole Covid-19 deal started, I've been working on a lot of different projects, including hosting a Table Runner Sew Along for Chestnut Ridge Sewing. I enjoyed that and decided that I really wanted to host another Sew Along, so I got busy on samples of Bloom, a Cut Loose Press pattern. This is the quilt on the pattern and for some reason it just caught my eye. I love all the colors and hexagons. 

Here's my version...

I used the same fabric for the background, setting triangles, and borders, and I'm very happy with how this turned out. This entire quilt top was made from stash fabrics and that makes me very happy. I did have to purchase backing, but I found the perfect fabric very quickly. As a bonus, after I quilted and trimmed this, I realized that the backing fabric was also the perfect binding fabric. Yay!

Of course I can't just make one sample when I'm going to be teaching a project, so I made a smaller version of the quilt too. (Stash fabric again!)

I used the backing fabric for the binding on this quilt too.  It has all the colors from the fat quarters I used and I'm thrilled that I didn't have to buy anything. :-) 

A 60 degree triangle ruler is required to make this quilt, but I didn't mind. I've used the ruler a lot; but I know many people have not. As a matter of fact, I know at least four people that have yet to remove the plastic. That was kind of the catalyst for me to use the pattern for the Sew Along. I really want people to use what they have and not be afraid to learn something new.

With that in mind, I figure there might be some participants who don't want to commit to a large quilt. So, for them, I created a couple of table runners. 

They will learn to use the ruler and have a usable product when they are done. 

After I made the red and white runner, I played around with some layout options and threw together this version of the quilt.

This measures the same as the original quilt, 64" x 80", but it looks so different and only uses 24 blocks. I'm pleased with this and will get it quilted soon. 

We pulled some fabrics, in case any of the Sew Along people want to buy a kit. Aren't these beautiful?

I have a strip of each of these fabrics so I can use them for my demos. I'm happy that will result in another quilt because I know it will be very pretty and I have just the person in mind who would love this. 

What are you working on today?

Check out the quilters' eye candy at 

Beth's Monday Making

and

Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts