Mystery Quilt and More

I actually think I'm going to finish!  Back in July, I joined a mystery quiltalong designed by Cheryl Brickey at Meadowmist Designs.  April 1 is our deadline to have the quilt finished or at least a finished top to be eligible for prizes,  As of tonight, I have three rows left to sew together and I'm done!  Here are the fabrics I chose to use:

And here are the blocks laid out but not yet sewn together.

  I'm thrilled that there are more points that look right than there are that don't!

And another "mystery" was solved today as well.  Remember the missing tree block I told you about?  It showed up in my mailbox today!  I am showing this picture to prove that I really did have my Bee block mailed in January like a good girl.  Apparently, I just don't know how to copy down addresses correctly.

Earlier this week, I found a blog that I'm probably the last one in the world to discover, but it has tons of wonderful tutorials for free motion quilting!  The blogger is Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt.  She is a Free Motion Quilter enthusiast and I am looking forward to trying some of the cute things she shows.  

Like this:

Or this . . .

Or this!

Her tutorials are very clear and easy to follow and there are lots of really fun designs.  You should check them out, especially if you like doodling with thread. 

This has been a very productive week.  My BQF (best quilty friend) Robin, has the same machine that I do  (Bernina 440QE) and she recently took hers in to have it serviced and discovered that the stitch regulator has to have regular computer updates to work correctly.  So all this time I have been using this BSR and it hasn't been regulating a thing.  I wondered why my quilting stitches weren't more consistent in size.  Any regulating that was done was all me!

I really do like to celebrate little things sometimes.  So here is my little victory for the week.  You know how sometimes you need something but it just isn't that important to take the time to go to the store for?  This week, for me, it was tweezers.   I find that they get borrowed and not returned and then nobody knows where they are.  I keep forgetting to get some and I think my brows are getting rather bushy!   Look what I found today at our university bookstore where I work.     Not only are they cute, they were 75% off!  Yay!   I hope they work.

As I was putting away my Quilting Camp kit and enjoying the colorful fabrics, I remembered that I forgot to show you the backing that goes with it.  

Isn't this cute???  

And this selvedge!!

As you can see, little things make me happy. 

I hope I'm not boring you with minutiae.

Have a blessed day!

Linking to:

Needle & Thread Thursday
Let's Bee Social
Midweek Makers

What I'm Working On

My main goal this weekend was to get my Bee blocks completed.  I joined three bees this year and maybe that was a bit much, but I am still enjoying them.  This week, Lori in Hive 6 of the Stash Bee requested blocks she will be using for a quilt she is making for her father.  He has Alzheimers and will be moving into a long term care facility.

Lori requested a fun block with simple novelty fabrics in the center with sports-related, animals, foods, anything a man might like.  So here are the two blocks I will be sending for Lori:

This one cracks me up.  Blue eyed pigs, lambs, and horses?  Hmm!

One of the bee blocks I am supposed to make this month had very specific requests.  Here is the block she wants us to make:

She wants four different monochromatic gray fabrics with green and orange accents.  I could only find three out of my entire stash!  I ended up having to use black and white for one of the fabrics.  This is what I was planning on using:

My BQF, (best quilty friend) Robin, to the rescue!  We're going to swap fabrics tomorrow at church.  She has lots of grays as a result of a recent grandbaby quilt where gray was one of the requested colors.   

UPDATE:  Here is the block I ended up making:

Last month, one of the Queen Bees of a bee I belong to wanted a magical forest full of trees and I made one and sent it but she did not receive her block!  Pooey!  I worked really hard on that one and I even mailed it on time but who knows where it is.  I told her I would make her another one so here is what I have so far. I'm excited to see what her forest ends up looking like!

I am also making good progress on the quilt for my daughter's dorm room.  She will be a freshman this fall.  I have two long seams left to sew and the flimsy is done!   I hope to show you the whole thing in a few days. I love the colors she picked!

And now for a confession.  I have been trying really hard not to buy any new fabric unless I absolutely did not have it in my current stash.  I was doing pretty good too.   This weekend, I fell off the wagon HARD!  I bought a whole kit.  I have a problem.  I admit it.  I could not resist.  It's summer and camping season!  My kit has red background on the borders instead of blue.  Red is my favorite!

So what are you working on?  I'd love to hear from you and hear all about your projects!  

Hey Lisa P!  When are we going to get together?  I know you have an unfinished quilt top you want to finish and I would love to show you how!

Linking to:

Sharing Sundays at Creative Side

Finish it Up Friday st Busy Hands Quilts

Blog Hop Summary & Giveaway Winners

OH MY GOODNESS!  I had such a ball seeing all the different versions of the Quilter's Laundry Day mini.  Such creativity!   If you haven't seen the results of the mini blog hop, you can find all those links here.   I am in the process of creating a gallery and adding all of your quilts to it with a link to your blog post about it.  So far, I only have a few, but will keep plugging away at it.  I'll announce the prize winners at the end of this post.

Vicki at Vicki's Crafts and Quilting posted her mini in a forum she belongs to and Shirley at The World According to Me liked it so much she decided to make one . . . out of faux leather!  Whaaaaat?  Look at this!  You can see her post about her process here.

I have to give a shout out to Karen at Tu-Na Quilts, Travels and Eats  She turned her laundry line posts into cactus plants and added a hot sun beating down on the whole scene.  Obviously, the quilter who lives here dreams about cooler, wetter, places judging by the lighthouse quilt hanging on her line. That micro mini took Karen an entire day to  make and has over 40 pieces in it!

Melva at Melva Loves Scraps looks out at the mountains every day so she added them to her mini quilt in a very modern way!  Love it!

Several ladies had the idea of making the quilt on the line a 3-D actual quilt with an actual line a little clothespins.  So clever!  Vicki's version (of Vicki's Crafts and Quilts)  has a few little extra's with buttons safety pinned on so she can switch them out as desired.  Her micro quilt is themed for the month of March and it can be switched out as well.  I wonder if she'll make little quilts for each month of the year?

Julie of Pink Doxies made her mini into the cutest baby quilt!  I happen to know this quilt is going into her stash of quilts for potential future grandbabies!

Jen Strauser of Dizzy Quilter had another beautiful 3-D quilt on the line

Oh, I would like to show all of them but that's what the gallery is for so I will force myself to stop.  There are sooo many more good ones!

And now last, but not least the winner of the blog hop participant prizes were:

Sharon Denney Parcel of Yellow Cat Quilt Designs for the USA 

Sharon won a $25 gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop

and

The International winner for a free Craftsy class was 

Leanne Milsom of Lizzie the Quilter from Australia!

Thanks ladies! 

Now to announce the winner of the commenters.  Comment  number 40 is . . .

Leanne Milsom! LEANNE!  How are you so lucky?  

Well, I think it would be better to spread the wealth around so I think Leanne will be ok if I try again.  This time the random number generator choses #62 which is 

Tish Stemple from Tish's Adventures in Wonderland

Tish I'll be in touch with you with instructions on how to collect your prize!

OK, now to get to work on that gallery!  Thanks so much to everybody who participated and visited and commented!  You all made this so much fun!

Linking to:

My Quilt Infatuation
Busy Hands Quilts

Gnomes and Quilt Plans

A big THANK YOU to all of you who gave me suggestions and ideas on how to quilt mom's quilt. Now this is why I blog!  This community is so generous with it's knowledge and more often than not, I learn even more than what I ask.  On thread color choice, I was all set to go with the large majority who suggested a neutral color of cream but when Angie at Sleepy Hollow Quilt Shop showed me a variegated thread with pastel, pink, blue and yellow thread that she says she uses a lot,   I fell in love with it!

The quilting pattern that I used is one called "Plumify It" that I learned in a Craftsy class by Patsy Thompson and I'll show more of that later when I'm done. I am struggling with making the pattern too small and am making a concentrated effort to enlarge the motif as I go.  I'm sure between where I start and where I end, the size is going to be quite different.

Just curious, can any of you fellow quilters tell me what your average number of bobbin changes is for a lap size quilt with medium dense quilting?  Is that something people track?  And also, does anybody know about how many yards of thread one Bernina bobbin takes?  I think medium dense is about where my quilting is ending up although I am going to continue to work hard to enlarge it.

I seriously consider each and every one of you who give me advice and suggestions as part of my mentoring group so THANK YOU so much.

OK, next subject . . .

I belong to a bee group consisting of quilters who belonged to the 2016 New Quilt Bloggers.  This month, Kate Heads of Smiles From Kate is our Queen Bee and she wanted a Christmas Tree and Gnome block that is supposed be to very wonky.  I have never made anything wonky before and this was WAAAAY outside my comfort zone so thanks for stretching me, Kate!  I had such a hard time not cutting things symmetrically,  and a couple of my blocks ended up not so wonky.  Here is my attempt at Kate's block.

Kate you stretched me but not enough to want to make a quilt full of these!   

Linking up to:

Love, Laugh Quilt
Main Crush Monday
Bambi's Show & Tell Monday

How Would You Quilt It?

As I've mentioned in a few recent posts, I promised my mom that I would quilt this lap quilt that she made out of scraps that were given to her.  I wanted to try a new quilting motif that I've never done before but I keep chickening out.   I could use some encouraging words to get going!  But in the meantime I do have a question.

Here's a reminder of what I'm going to be quilting on very soon:

Here is the question.  When you have a wide variety of colors like this, what is the best way to choose thread color?  Do I just pick one of the main colors in the quilt and go for it knowing that it will be high contrast in some places?  Or do I try to choose a neutral cream or tan that isn't going to contrast so much?   

I was going to try and do the motif I was practicing that I learned from Vicki but I'm a chicken and not at all confident it will look good.  I haven't really practiced it on a quilt sandwich, only on paper.

What would you do?   I would truly LOVE to hear how you would choose to quilt this.  Both thread color and motif.  I'm tempted to just do the stipple because I know I can do that.  Or possibly just a cross hatch, but wanted to branch out.   Please help me make a decision!

Linking to:

Love, Laugh, Quilt
Moving it Forward Monday

What Next?

Now that my blog hop mini is done (see yesterday's post for links to all the fun creations!) I am looking forward to making progress on some of my other projects.  Do you want to see one of rejects for the blog hop mini quilt?  All of my quilts seem to lean toward the more traditional side so I was trying really hard to do something more modern but my attempt didn't quite do it for me.  Well, now I have a funky little 4 1/2" block that will probably go into some kind of orphan block quilt.

Here is something else that I am experimenting with!  Have you ever visited the website Spoonflower.com?  Amy at AmyScrapSpot told me about it.  She was all excited to start designing her own fabrics and ordered a bunch of swatches (pretty cheap to do that too!) with her designs.  You can design your own fabrics and offer them for sale if you desire.  I wish her great success with that but that's not for me.   I did think it would be fun to make a bag with my blog logo on it though.  So I ordered a swatch to see how it would come out.  Here it is:

The colors look great!  The fabric is kind of thin though so I might try it on a different kind of fabric.  What a great conversation starter that would be!

Quilting opens up all kinds conversations so easily doesn't it?  Friday, I was sewing like mad to get my mini quilts done in time for the blog hop so I took them with me to work on at while I was at my daughter's track meet.  Another track mom asked me what I was making and we spent the rest of the meet talking about quilting and all kinds of stuff.  Hi Donetta!!  It was nice to meet you!

 A little while ago I bought a few fabrics just to try and make my stash a bit more modern and my daughter fell in love with those fabrics so I'm working on a quilt for her.  Here are the fabrics I got:

Here is the pattern I will be using to make this quilt:

And here is the progress I have made so far.  

I hope I can figure out where I left off on the pattern!  Yikes!

Here's an interesting blast from the past.  Long ago when my oldest son was 6, Pokemon was all the rage so I bought some Pokemon fabric.  I never did make anything with it.  Now it's probably collectable!  this piece is from 1998.  I'll probably hang onto it just in case any grandsons come along.  I can't believe it, but Pokemon is still around!

I attended a concert of the Boise Philharmonic with my daughter and a few other ladies from work last night.  Those musicians are incredible!  And yes, you guessed it, I was sewing on binding during intermission.  I think I have a problem.   Sort of.  But not really.  :D

Kate,  my dear accountability partner, here is my list of projects that I need to be working on this month.  Keep me on track!

1.  Three Bee blocks to make for March

2.  I got mom's patchwork quilt sandwich basted and now I need to quilt it.

3.  Finish Meadowmist Mystery Quilt.  Here are the fabrics I picked and a few shots of blocks made along the way.  I still have to do the last months' clues and then sew all the blocks together.

So I've got my work cut out for me this month!

Linking to:
Love, Laugh, Quilt
Sharing Sundays

Jen & Jan's Mini Blog Hop Reveal Day 2

Hello fellow quilt lovers!

Welcome to day 2 of Jen and Jan's Mini Blog Hop QAL!

My talented friend Jen Rosin of A Dream and a Stitch designed the mini for this QAL and blog hop and the free pattern for it can be found here.

I have been having so much fun seeing everybody's mini quilts!  WOW!  Some really creative minds out there!

Well, let's get to it!  You've already seen my first mini, but here it is quilted and bound:

I just love these little birdies!

 And now . . .  presenting . . . Twilight Zone!  My friend Kate calls this spooky house.  She caught my vision!

As the last time, I had my share of troubles!   Even though the serpentine stitch is a basic one, I had never used it before.  THIS is what happens when you forget to change to the correct foot and don't raise your feed dogs!  I don't know why I kept going, it looked terrible!  Needless to say, I ripped all of that out.

Ah,  much better!

I really wanted to put a silhouette of someone sewing on their sewing machine in the window with the light still on but ran out of time to get that done.  As it is, you'll just have to imagine that is the reason the light is still on upstairs!  This mini doesn't have a whole lot of special sewing and I let the fabric do most of the work.  I had fun making "night" and "day" minis!  

I was sewing on these right up 'til the last minute and now I finally have time to visit everybody and leave comments!  Bloggers love those, you know!  Please be sure to let them know how much you enjoy their creations!

To thank you for visiting, I am giving away a free Craftsy class to be chosen randomly from all the comments on today's blog.  Winner will be chosen March 22.  Have fun making the rounds and thanks so much for stopping by!

Jen Rosin  A Dream and a Stitch
Kate Heads at Smiles From Kate
Jennifer Fulton at Inquiring Quilter
Karen Thurn at Tu-Na Quilts, Travels and Eats

Melva Nolan at Melva Loves Scraps
Vicki at Vicki's Crafts & Quilting
Julie Stocker at Pink Doxies
Anja Clyke at Anja Quilts
Diann at Little Penguin Quilts
Jayne at Twiggy & Opal
Susan Arnold at Quilt Fabrication
Leanne Milsom at Lizzie the Quilter
Sandra Walker at Mmm! Quilts!

March 11 Reveal Day

Janice Holton at Color Creating & Quilting

Sola at Alice Samuels Quilt Co

Jennifer Strauser at Dizzy Quilter

Amy Gerlich at Amy Scrap Spot

Sharon Denney Parcel at Yellow Cat Quilt Designs

Tami at Sew Much for Free Time

Suzy Webster at Adventurous Applique & Quilting

Tish Stemple at Tish's Adventures in Wonderland

Susan Gordon at Sevenoaks Street Quilts

Anne Boundy at Said With Love

Barbara Wootie at The Flashing Scissors
Jan Welander at Making Scraps

Mary Marcotte at Fleur de Lis Quilts

Linking to:

Crazy Mom Quilts

Busy Hands Quilts