Little Penguin Quilts Through the Year

Little Penguin Quilts Through the Year

Friday, September 25, 2015

A Scrappy Gift

Among other things this week, I needed to make a small gift for a lifelong, but long distance friend I will be seeing in a couple days.  My go-to gifts lately are zipper pouches and that's what I went for this time.


I wanted to give this pouch a scrappy patchwork look, so I got out my 2 1/2 inch squares and stitched up the center section, and then a coordinating top and bottom border.



A red zipper and some tiny dots for the lining finished it up!  Originally, I was going to box the bottom corners, but because of the way I made the bottom panel, I decided to leave it flat, and I like how it looks that way!



Hopefully, my friend will find this little pouch useful!




Sunday, September 20, 2015

What are you doing today?

I'm stitching up my scrap play from last week...


And getting lots of inspiration from Oh Scrap at Quilting is More Fun than Housework!


Happy Sunday, everyone!
Oh ScrapOh Scrap

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Seaglass

Whenever we travel to the ocean, my favorite pastime is walking along the shore looking at rocks and shells. Once in awhile I am lucky enough to find a little piece of seaglass, and I now have a tiny collection!  So when I won a set of Bali Pops last spring and the line was called Seaglass, I knew it was meant for me!


This week I finished the top for my "Life is a Highway" quilt from the pattern by Cynthia Brunz, made out of my Seaglass Bali Pops.  And I am so pleased with it!


As I was finishing up the last few rows, I was trying to come up with some words to describe what I love about this quilt top, pattern, and fabric combination, and "sweet" comes to mind.  The colors are very sweet, and the simple pattern lets them be the focus.  I chose Kona Navy for the small squares and I love the contrast it gives to the more pastel batik fabrics.  I'm going to enjoy snuggling up with a good book under this quilt when the snowflakes start flying.

Since the quilt top is very calm and straight forward, I decided to go with whimsical for the backing.  I love those little birds!  The binding will be the Kona Navy.  


On to basting and quilting!

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Playing in the Scrap Bin

Like most quilters, I have a stack of random charm squares in my stash that are left over from other projects, and this week, as I stitched up rows of my Life is A Highway quilt, I was thinking about what to do with them.  As I got them all out and sorted through the colors, I noticed there were a lot of black and white squares.  That got me to thinking about a black, white, and red quilt, something that's been on my list for awhile.  Of course, not all reds are the same, nor are all whites, so that added a bit of a challenge.  I knew I would need more than just the charm squares I had, so I looked around some more and found my Charlie Harper bird fabric, especially the red and black cardinals.  Perfect!  Those cardinals are kind of a tomato red, so I knew I needed to stick with that shade of red for consistency.


The white charm pack I ordered a while back is a true bright white, and it didn't go with the background of the cardinals or the black and off-white prints that I had, so I had to scrap them for a creamier white.  I also had a little bit of some mama birds feeding their babies in nests on a teal background, that I wanted to include, too, for a little pop of something different.  So, I fussy cut the little birds in their nests to add in.  I used the black/off-white print charm squares to make HSTs since they were actually 5 1/2 inches rather than 5 like some of the others.  (I hadn't noticed before that not all charm squares are equal!)


Finally, what kind of layout?  Another quilt on my bucket list is a plus quilt, so the rest of my play this week has been with a plus design, and here is what I came up with.


This is going to be a mini - not bigger than 30 x 48 (and that's before stitching it up), so I will probably hang it on the wall out in our family room.  My husband and I are avid birdwatchers, and we have several bird feeders hung outside our family room windows, so this seems appropriate for the room!  We wish we could see some cardinals at our feeders, but they don't come this far west, so the fabric cardinals will have to do!

Last, but not least, look what came in the mail for me yesterday!


The lovely families of the PTA at my school gave me a gift card for my retirement, and I have been spending it on quilting supplies like a new cutting mat and rotary cutter, thread, a Tri-Recs ruler, and that kind of thing over the summer.  I had $25 left on it, and that gave me just enough to get 13 fat quarters of Amanda Jean Nyberg's new Good Neighbors fabric from Connecting Threads.  Oh boy!

Linking up to my favorite Sunday afternoon party, Oh Scrap!  See you there!


Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Scraptastic Tuesday Link-Up

I am often just a bit behind the times when it comes to discovering all the different linky parties that are available around the blogiverse, and today I just checked out Scraptastic Tuesday.  So fun!   So I decided to write up a quick new post about this finish from a couple of weeks ago so that I could link up.  This is my Scrappy Strings quilt:


Before this quilt I had never made string blocks before, and it turns out that they are great fun!  I combined my scraps of green, orange, light blue, and gray for these blocks, and then added a cream tone on tone for the border.


I'm sending it off to Tanya for her collection of quilts for the nursing home in her town.  I'll enjoy picturing a senior citizen getting lots of comfort from this quilt!


Sunday, September 6, 2015

This week...

Usually, after finishing a bigger quilt project, I spend a few days playing in my stash and trying different things before settling on the next big project, and this week was no exception.  Earlier in the week, I went from adding on to my Scrap Vortex quilt...


To making a couple of blocks for Kat's September Covered in Love block drive...She has a color guide and tutorial for these blocks in that post, so I looked around in my stash and came up with the ones below. Purple is so hard to photograph, but each block does have purple, green (what shade would you call that?), a dark blue, a light blue, and a cream color.


And, finally I decided to get out the Watercolor Bali Pops that I won last spring and get started on "Life is a Highway."

This is a pattern by my friend, Cynthia Brunz, who inspires all of us with her scrappy genius and is available from Craftsy.  Check out her blog, Quilting is More Fun than Housework, for the link to Craftsy.


Life is a Highway Quilt

I am loving this pattern!  It is perfect for a jelly roll and is so fast to cut, lay out, and stitch up that I can see a finished quilt top in my very near future!  (Which is not typical of me as I am a slow stitcher, generally!)

Thursday night:


Friday:


You can see the top hanging on the chair as it comes together, row by row.

I really like chain piecing, and this pattern works perfectly for that.  To keep track of the order of my rows, I have just been leaving each row attached to the whole bunch, and snipping one off at a time to add on to the quilt top.


I didn't make any progress on it yesterday as we decided we needed to get out of the house, and went wine tasting instead of sewing, but I will be back at it today!

Happy Labor Day weekend to all of you!  I think fall is on its way!

Linking up with Oh Scrap at Cynthia's blog today!