Wild Thing - an Improv Sampler

I took a leap of faith back in February, and joined in with the Play Improv Quilt Along over at Elm Street Quilts, and I'm so glad I did!  I tried a bunch of different techniques, struggled a little bit, and learned a lot!

From the beginning, Patty told us that this QAL was about playing with color, shape, and fabric, but without a pattern or rules.  That made this quilt along fun, because everyone followed it in their own way.

Earlier this week, I finished up my quilt top for this quilt along - it measures about 30 x 33.

I've taken to calling it Wild Thing - because it really is about the wildest thing I've ever made!

Some favorite parts - 

all the different ways to make triangles!

an improv quarter log cabin, that I stuck in because I needed something there!

curved piecing, letters, a word!

I quilted it with horizontal curved lines, very simple, but going along with the modern feel of this quilt.  The binding is Kona Pool.

Today, my Play Improv Sampler, Wild Thing, is done!  I took it out in the backyard for some photo ops - 

Love this one!

Thanks, Patty, for hosting this great QAL!  I'm already thinking about what improv kind of sewing I might like to try next!  

The final link-up for finished Play Improv projects is happening right now, over at Elm Street Quilts, so I'll be linking up there to share this Wild Thing!

Also sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.

A Little Bit of Miscellaneous

Focused on finishing up my Play Improv Sampler, I pieced some letters (our final prompt from this past Monday) and added them, plus a few other bits and pieces to the bottom of this project that I've been working on since February.

This is only the bottom half of my improv sampler - I need to photograph the whole thing, but I'm working up to that!  Meanwhile, I also had to decide on a backing for it, and I decided to piece the backing from a small piece of a fun yellow print that I found in my stash, and added some Kona Citrus to it.

I even pieced the batting for this quilt.  This is easy to do because the whole thing only measures about 30 x 30.

I'm excited (and anxious) to get on with the quilting, but somehow these in between steps take time to accomplish...

I did stitch together some "multi-colored" string blocks this week as leaders and enders, with a plan of using a few yellow, turquoise, and green strings, to make some new coasters for our morning coffee spot.

Scraps of batting work really well as the foundation for these little projects.  Now they just need backing and binding, with a bit of quilting to hold them together.

Happy Sunday!  For more scrappy project inspiration, be sure to check out the Oh Scrap linky over at Quilting is More Fun than Housework.  

Multi-color Bow Ties

April's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is multi-color... the fabrics that just don't fit into one particular color category.  This week, I had fun digging into my stash to see what might fit that theme and I pulled out -

Apples, bicycles, sewing items, and owls!

Bow tie blocks are so fast and easy to sew up that it only took a few minutes to make these - 

But why stop there?  So I made a few more!

These blocks finish at 6 inches, so it will be awhile before I have enough to make anything, but that doesn't bother me!  I just enjoy making a few whenever I get the chance!

Happy ScrapHappy Saturday!  Check out what all of the other Rainbow Scrap Quilters have been up to, every Saturday over at SoScrappy.

I Like Thursday #25 - This, that, and a few other things

Welcome to I Like Thursday, a weekly blog hop sponsored by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color!  I'm always on the lookout for things I like to share with you, and to promote thinking positively about life and our world.

I like seeing the world around me green up in spring!  We have a beautiful flowering crab apple tree in our backyard (called a Spring Snow Crab), and I have been anxiously waiting to see its blooms.  Unfortunately, the buds haven't opened all the way yet, but all over our town there are other pretty trees that I am really enjoying.  I saw this one at our bank while going through the drive-thru today.

I like a little bit of spring snow.  Colorado has had a really dry winter, so the moisture we've gotten the last few weeks has been very welcome.  Here are the views from our windows yesterday.  I did end up covering all my daffodils and tulips - I was afraid they might freeze!

I like my little pincushion collection!  Some of them I've made myself, and some are gifts from friends.

The latest addition to my collection is this adorable piece of pie, made by LeeAnna, and gifted to me when we met up last week.  So cute!  Thanks, LeeAnna!

I really like our membership to Netflix.  We've found lots of good shows to watch, and our latest favorite is "Call the Midwife."  These women are midwives in a poorer section of London, set in the 1950s.   One of the things I enjoy about this show is that there is no "girl drama" in the story lines.  These women live together, work together, and genuinely care about each other.  Plus they make a difference in the lives of all the women around them. Reminds me of many women I know!

I like experimenting with fabric!  This week's prompt for the Play Improv QAL at Elm Street Quilts is to create letters, which is definitely something I've never done before.  But, I gave it a try - and letters formed! This required some "brain work!"  What shapes form the letters that we've been able to recognize since we were little?!

One thing to share that I (or maybe I should say "we") didn't like this week, was a pizza crust made out of shredded cauliflower.  (Sounds a bit weird, but there really is a recipe for it out there!)  You know that my hubby and I have been on a quest to replace some of the carb foods we love with vegetables, right?  Well, this was the most recent try.

It actually looks good in the picture, but the flavors didn't really work for us.  I guess you never know until you try though!

Have a wonderful day, friends!  For more I Like Thursday posts, check out Not Afraid of Color every Thursday!

What can you make with two fat quarters?

Way back in December, Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework, our host of the Oh Scrap! linky every Sunday, posted about participating in the Henry Glass Desire to Inspire Challenge, using the adorable Coffee House fabric line.  You can read her original post here.

I commented to her about how much I loved the coffee themed fabric, and what she made out of it, and she so very generously sent me some mug rugs she had made and shared some of the scraps she had left.  That was some fun quilty mail that day!

I hadn't made anything out of the scraps until recently, when I used a couple of larger pieces that she sent to make some of my favorite cloth napkins.  A tutorial for these can be found here, from a blog called Made with Moxie.

These cloth napkins are made out of two fat quarters, and they end up being double sided, which is a lot of fun because you can use a different side depending on what meal you are eating or what time of the day it is!

I actually made two sets of cloth napkins this week - coffee and wine-themed for our house, and another set to send off to Cynthia to (finally!) thank her for sharing all the goodies with me!

These sets of napkins make great gifts!  

And they get a lot of use at our house, too!

I'll be checking in with all the scrappy inspiration at this week's Oh Scrap! link-up, today, at Quilting is More Fun than Housework.  See you there!

A Modern Rainbow

I was all done with my red sewing for the month of March, so I decided to play with a different rainbow of fabric this week.

These are the Kona Cotton solids that I've been working with during the Play Improv QAL hosted by Patty at Elm Street Quilts.  Bordeaux, Pomegranate, Citrus, Cactus, Pool, and Oyster.  I love those names!

I've posted quite a bit about this project in the last month or so, mainly because I am having so much fun trying the prompts that Patty gives us each week.  This week's prompt was *Strips and Curves!*

The piece I've been working on has a lot of strip piecing in it.  That's been a fun way to fill in some spaces and use up the scraps that have been generated, for example, in this corner from a few weeks ago.

But... Curves?  Scary!  (For me, anyway!)  Thankfully, Patty always includes a short tutorial with her weekly prompt, and I also found this post by Debbie from A Quilter's Table, and carefully read the section on piecing improv curves.

I started with two strips  - bordeaux and pool - of about 5 x 22, followed the tutorials, and ended up with this section that I added to the bottom of my project.  

Hey, those went together really easily, and they were fun!  Who knew?!  :)

To make this section fit, I cut off two pieces from each part that were about 3 x 6, and I decided to keep going and use those up.  What I found out was that curved piecing is addictive!  I just kept adding another section, and another section, and...

This piece was sewn onto the left side of my project - and here's what it looks like now!

So. Much. Fun!  No wonder this QAL is called "Play!"

Angela at SoScrappy has chosen multi-color fabrics for our April Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, so I'll be heading into my sewing room to see what I've got that fits in with that idea.  Sounds like fun to me!  See you over at the Scrap Happy Saturday link-up tomorrow, too.

I Like Thursday #24 -

Happy Thursday Eve, friends!  I didn't use to like Thursdays, back when I was working.  They seemed like a long day, which needed to be gotten through, in order for Friday to come!  We sometimes referred to Thursday as "Friday Eve."

But now I like Thursdays - it's the day I've chosen to post about things I like, the good things of my life, what gives me pleasure, what I am thankful for.  

This week, I like my daffodils even more than I liked them last week, because they are just blooming like crazy!  I'm really enjoying Spring!

I like discovering books that continue stories and characters that I have enjoyed in the past.  When my dad was alive, we shared a lot of books, and one of our favorite series was written by Tony Hillerman. These books always took place in the Navajo country of New Mexico and Arizona.  The main characters were Navajo Tribal policemen who always had a mystery to solve.  These books also have a lot of Native American culture and beliefs woven into the stories which I always enjoy.  The last book in the series was written in 2006, and Tony Hillerman passed away in 2008.

I just found out that Tony Hillerman's daughter, Anne, has begun writing a new series featuring these same characters, so I checked the first one out from the library last week, and enjoyed every page of it!  It was like meeting up with an old friend.

I quickly finished this one, and now I am on the second book in the series, called Rock with Wings.

I like a freshly painted room!  (Although I have to admit, I don't enjoy the actual painting...)  This week, we decided it was time to get started painting the inside of our house.  We started with the stairway hall, because it really needed some work.  Painting a stairway is not necessarily easy, but oh, it does look so much better!  

I like making small, but useful items, like cloth napkins or drawstring bags.  They are quick to make and fun, plus they make great gifts for friends.  If you're interested in making something like this, you can find a tutorial from In Color Order here.

I made this drawstring bag as a gift for a quilty blogger friend who I got to meet in real life!!!!!  It is LeeAnna from Not Afraid of Color - our muse for I Like Thursdays, as well as many other quilt-related inspirations, who came to Colorado, and got in touch with me about getting together.

We met up at my favorite quilt shop, and enjoyed lots of fabric related conversation, among other things. This was my first opportunity to meet a blogger-friend, but definitely not my last, as it was great fun to find out how much we have in common.

Which brings me to - be sure to check out LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color, because she is the original I Like Thursday girl, and hosts a blog hop there every Thursday for anyone who writes a similar post.  

Thanks for visiting today, and Happy Thursday!