A Summer Finish

I am so happy to have finished my Winter in the Woods quilt earlier today!

It is made from a jelly roll of Into the Woods by Leila Boutique for Moda and a jelly roll of Kona Snow, loosely based on a video tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company (called Summer in the Park) and a pattern from England Street Quilts.  I say "loosely based" because after the initial jelly roll strip sewing and cutting, I put the rows of smaller blocks together completely differently than the patterns called for!  Rather than unpick and re-sew, I decided to leave them as is, and go with the quilt this way.  And I have ended up being very happy with it!  

I love the color palette of this fabric line and quilt - it has always reminded me of mint chocolate chip ice cream!  (With a little strawberry thrown in!)

Awhile ago, I used a few orphan blocks leftover from the construction of this quilt to make a pillow that goes with it.  It's fun to finally see them together!

I quilted this one myself on my Janome with edge to edge organic, wavy lines.  I love the result of the quilting, but have to admit that one of the reasons it took me so long to finish was because the quilting process went very slowly for me!  I started and stopped many times because I got bored and needed to work on something else!  So happy to have it finished now!

I often forget to put a label on my quilts, but not this one!  Another leftover part of a block made a great label.

And, finally, a shot of the binding.  I ordered some yardage of the mint dots from Into the Woods for the backing and binding, but also added in the last few jelly roll strips in green and pink to make a scrappy binding!  My favorite!  

Yay for a Friday finish! Linking up with Finish it Up Friday and Oh Scrap on Sunday!

Progress and a Pyramid Pouch

With my Scrap Vortex blocks, I am making slow progress, but definitely having fun!

Week one:

Week Two:

Today:

For this project, I really need a design wall in my sewing room so that I can keep the blocks up all the time and work on how they will fit together.  That will require some furniture moving and figuring out!  

This week, I have also been working on a Pyramid Pouch, and just finished it up this morning! 

For the last couple of years, I have had fun trying different types of pouches and bags, so when I saw that Sandra of Musings of a Menopausal Melon had published her pattern and tutorial for the Pyramid Pouch on Moda Bake Shop, I knew I wanted to try it!  Working with equilateral triangles was a good stretch for my sewing skills, and although my points aren't as perfect as I would like them to be, I'm not disappointed in my work, for this first time!

I used 16 charm squares from a charm pack of One for You, One for Me by Pat Sloan for Moda for the outside.  I chose the navy, teal, and lime pieces because I thought they would go well together and give my pouch a happy look!  Unfortunately, the lime color didn't photograph quite right for this close-up.  For the pouch lining, I used a lime fat quarter from my stash.

Sandra's tutorial was very clear with lots of helpful hints on how to make the pouch turn out exactly the way you want. (Which I am sure I followed perfectly..wink, wink!)  There is definitely plenty of room for whatever you want to carry in this pouch.  I think I might use it to house all of those pesky cords and things you have to take along when you travel!

Now it's time for me to get back to work on one of my bigger WIPs.  But pouches and scrappy sewing are a fun break now and then!

Linking up with Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework

Simple Things

Simple things always make me happy!

A young hawk using our bird bath to cool off:

The little birds at our feeders probably aren't so happy he is there, but I love the variety of wildlife we are able to attract to our suburban backyard.

My favorite souvenirs from our recent trip to Oregon include rocks, shells, and bits of driftwood from the beaches we visited.  I think I will add "beachcomber" to the skill description on my resume!

A simple sewing-related thing that made me happy today was replacing the old pillows that I put inside the pillow covers I made in the last year or so with real live pillow forms which are the correct size for the covers!  I made these with the best of intentions: to dress up some old, tired, gray pillows we had for our couch.  Unfortunately, I didn't quite match the size correctly and the pillows looked kind of slouchy and wiggly.  So today I put 18 x 18 pillow forms inside them, and love the difference it makes!

Before:                                                   

After:

Here's to the simple things in life!  Happy Friday, everyone!

Scrappy Projects

I have one tiny little scrappy finish this week... a pincushion!  I have admired Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts' collection of mini pincushions for a long time and made one other before this.  This one is made from scraps of Gleeful.

I sent this one off to Cynthia of Quilting is More Fun than Housework, along with the dot fabric giveaway she won from my 101st post.  Thanks for always being such an inspiration, Cynthia!

Having survived the end of the school year, and thoroughly enjoyed a trip to beautiful Oregon, I am more than ready to get back into my sewing room on a regular basis.  I decided I want to participate in the Scrap Vortex QAL at Crazy Mom quilts and this is what I've done so far:

My plan is to match darks and lights so that, hopefully, I will have a good balance of those as the quilt comes together.  This will be fun to try! Time to get some more bits and pieces put together!  

Linking up with Finish it up Friday and Oh Scrap on Sunday, too!

A little of this and a little of that...

I have been neglecting this space lately, and have no real excuse for it except that there are many things higher on the list right now!  I am retiring from teaching in 5 days, which is just amazing, but comes with lots of work!  I have to clean out my classroom and, of course, there are gifts to be given which I am busily sewing away at.

But first... I won a giveaway on the May Great Big Giveaway Day through Faith at Fresh Lemons and Shabby Fabrics!  So fun!!

These Bali Pops are called "Sea Glass."  Aren't they pretty?  I am going to enjoy figuring out something to do with them!  Thank you Faith and Shabby Fabrics!

My lovely, quilty friends in my quilt group surprised me with this fun box full of fat quarters as a retirement gift:

What a special treat, and so unexpected!

And my sewing this week has consisted of finishing this table runner for my teaching partner.  It is made of strips of Gleeful from Art Gallery Fabrics and done in a "quilt as you go" technique.

I did have fun adding some decorative stitching to the top on every other strip or so.

For one last gift for a fellow retiree, I am making my favorite reversible cloth napkins from this tutorial.  I love giving gifts that are useful! You can make 2 napkins out of 2 fat quarters, so I'm going to make my friend two more out of some other coordinating fat quarters.  I hope she likes them!

I will be absent from my blog again for awhile because we are celebrating my retirement with a trip the day after school gets out, but I will keep tabs on all of the scrappy goings-on through the Oh Scrap! link-up while I am gone!

Have a great week everyone!

Diann

QAYG and a Giveaway!

Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there!  Here was the view out my backdoor this morning:

Yes, that is snow!  And if you look closely, you can see a sheen of ice on the fountain, too... I guess I won't be planting flowers in my yard, which is my usual tradition on Mother's Day! It does make for a good sewing day, however!

Inspired by posts I read this week from Svetlana at s.o.t.a.k. handmade and Amy at Diary of a Quilter, I decided to play around with some quilt as you go techniques and out of it came this pouch:

Front and back views. It is made out of a panel from my Charley Harper bird fabric.  I made a slab from pieces of the panel and some strips of navy and white Gleeful that I've had in my stash.  Then I cut the slab apart to make the front and back.

The inside comes from a fat quarter of Comma.

This was the first time I've tried making a pouch without any directions.  Since I've made a few in the last year or so, I thought it would be a cinch!  (Ha!)  After sewing the zipper in backwards, and then sewing the whole thing closed without a way to turn everything right side out, I decided I will not be so self-assured next time!

While looking for an idea for an end of the year gift for one of my teaching partners, I found a tutorial for an easy quilt as you go table runner on Amy's blog, and decided to give it a try.  I am using the rest of my fat quarter bundle of Gleeful for this project for a fresh, happy, and spring-y look.  So far, here is how it looks:

The top is made from 2 1/2 inch strips, and the back is pieced from some larger pieces.  I am hoping it will kind of be reversible!  I have plenty of the 2 1/2 inch strips left for the binding, too.

And finally, to celebrate my 101st post of last week, an inspiration from a comment left by Lara at BuzzinBumble!  I'm going to have my first giveaway, a small bundle of 6 fat quarter dot fabrics, an homage to the 101 Dalmatians, and my most recent fabric obsession!

If you would enjoy having this little bundle, leave me a comment, and I will choose a winner this coming Thursday, May 14th! 

Have a great week, everyone!

Pushing Along

There hasn't been much scrap play in my sewing room this week, but I have been on a big push to finish the quilting on my Winter in the Woods quilt.  It is going pretty slowly, probably because I am quilting it pretty densely (for me!) in organic wavy lines, but I am making progress.

See those lovely purple gloves?  They are gardening gloves with a coating of nitrile that I bought at Lowes! My Machingers quilting gloves got so dirty on the fingertips that I had to get rid of them, and I saw something about trying gardening gloves like these posted in Pat Sloan's quilting Facebook group.  They work great, are inexpensive (I think I got 3 pair for about $5), and there is the added bonus that they are purple!

I did have to take a break at one point and try something new and different.  This is a Triangle Zipper Pouch from the blog of Vanessa at The Crafty Gemini.  Isn't it cute?

All it takes is 2 - 5 x 10 inch pieces of fabric, a little bit of fusible fleece, and a zipper, and it goes together in about half an hour!  So fun!  I can see more of these in my future!

I just noticed that this is my 101st post!  I totally missed that I had come that far.  This must mean I need to have some kind of celebration.  Stay tuned!