Quilts for Ashley, Cacey, and Kenzi

So as you know, I am making quilts for three beautiful young ladies.   My senior daughter, Ashley, my niece Cacey (she's getting married), and one of Ashley's best friends who is also graduating this year, Kenzi.

If you've been following me for a while you've already seen Ashley's finished flimsy.  I just need to trim the edges, baste and quilt it.

She wants minky on the back.  So minky it is!  I couldn't find any periwnkle or coral so we went with gray.  I just bought that a few days ago so now I can proceed with basting.

It will look nice thrown across this comforter we found for her dorm room.  It's reversible coral on one side and gray on the other.

Next up is Cacey's quilt.  I will be using the exact same pattern as Ashley's quilt but with different fabric for her.   Thank goodness she likes this pattern because it goes together quickly.   Here's what I have so far . . . but I'm not in love with this layout.  I laid all the coral one way and all the turquoise the other direction.

Here is layout #2 with a more random arrangement of colors.

Which do you like best?  Layout 1 or Layout 2?

And last is Kenzi's quilt!  Thank goodness Kenzi also wants a very simple to make pattern.  Here is the picture she sent me showing the pattern she wants.

I think I can handle this!  This one is a baby sized quilt and she wants a lap size so I will have to piece the strips together to make it wide enough for a decent size lap quilt.  Kenzi went shopping and brought me these fabrics to make her quilt and even told me the order she wanted her fabrics.  I LOVE getting specific instructions!   The white with pink polka dots is for the binding.

OK, time for a building update!  Last weekend I was gone to a quilting class and this is what was done while I was gone . . . the floor and one wall.

Then on Monday, THIS happened.   See those two large windows side by side?  Those are the front room picture windows.

Here is the view from the inside looking out those windows.  They are huge!

The framing would probably be all done this weekend but we found out that the framers can't get a crane for placing the trusses until Monday.  Booo!   The construction market around here is going crazy!

Well, that's the latest.  I've got my work cut out for me!  Where in the world did that phrase come from anyway?  Who actually has their work cut FOR them?  That would be great!

Linking to:
Crazy Mom Quilts
Busy Hands Quilts

Quilting Class Review

Hello there!  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  I did!  It started off with a 3 hour drive up to Hailey, Idaho to take a quilting class.  It was SUCH a beautiful day!  I stopped once to take a picture of the scenery.  Should have taken more!

Bellevue and Hailey are such cute little towns!  Bellevue is the home of Barb of the Mountain Quiltworks blog  (hi Barb! ).  Barb's quilting bee, the 5 Bee Quilt Guild, was hosting Cynthia Brunz (hi Cindy! ) of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework fame.   I was curious how the 5 Bee Quilt Guild got it's name.  It turns out Hailey is in Blaine County which is 5B in Idaho . . . so 5 Bee Quilt Guild.  Makes sense to me!

So here are the three bloggers, me on the left, Cindy in the middle and Barb on the right.  I was a mess.  Forgot my brush and this weekend was a makeup free one for me.  So there ya go.  Anyway here we are!

The first thing I learned in today's class is that Cynthia actually goes by Cindy.  She has the most beautiful, deep, rich voice and we loved her laid back, easygoing style.  (Barb had been in a class where the teacher said as long as I'm teaching this class, you're going to do it my way.  Yikes!)   The class was a lesson in color value and Cindy was using a pattern she designed called Geese Migration.  It's a mini lesson in color wash design.  She even brought a bunch of 2 1/2" squares for us to borrow from.  She found some clear plastic silverware holders which were the perfect size to organize those by color.  Great idea!  I forgot to take a picture of that so borrowed one from Cindy's blog (thanks, Beatrice for finding that!)

We all made about 2 or three blocks using her method and then threw them up on a design wall in no particular order.

Then she started putting them together, on point, by color family . . .

And here's the final version . . .

None of us had any idea what the other class participants were going to be making but when we put them all together, it would actually make a pretty nice quilt.    I have often considered joining in on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and this block would be a great one for that!

Here are the blocks I made.  The green one hadn't been finished yet when we put them all up on the design wall.  These finish at 10 inches.  By the way I had some serious stash envy going.  Some of the other participants had the most BEAUTIFUL fabrics!  My stash is filled with old fabrics anywhere from 5 to 20 years old and this is a great way to use then up.  But I still enjoyed myself and like Cindy said, it wasn't about the fabric design but the color on the fabric.

So thank you Barb and Cindy for inviting me to join in your class!  It was a wonderful getaway for me.  Barb, I enjoyed getting to know you while we both stressed our way through picking out the right fabrics for our blocks.  This was outside our comfort zone as it is much easier for us to just follow a pattern and do what it says.  Picking out this many fabrics for every block was a challenge!

If you have a chance to invite Cindy to do a class for your quilt guild, I highly recommend this class in color!

I would have a house update picture to show you but it's dark outside and I forgot to take one.   The framers got the floor joists in and floor added onto the foundation while I was gone this weekend and tomorrow, we should see the walls start go to up.  Things are moving right along! 

Oh, guess what!  My daughter's track team had a "for fun" meet within their own team on Friday and everybody had to do a sprint event, a jumping event, a throwing event, and a long distance event.  She was so excited to actually get a personal record in the high jump on Friday at five feet!!  Too bad it doesn't really count for anything; however, now we know she can do it!  I didn't get a picture of the high jump but here is one of her doing the 100 meter hurdles at a recent meet.

Hope everybody had a wonderful weekend!  What did you do this weekend?

Linking to:

Monday Making

Main Crush Monday

Bambi's Show and Tell Monday

Three Quilts in the Works & Happy Mail

Cacey, if you don't want to see your quilt in progress before it's finished, do not read this blog post.

I have three quilts that need to be done fairly soon.  My daughters dorm quilt, one of her friends who is also graduating this year, and my niece, Cacey who is getting married next month.   I think the grads are ok having their quilts before school starts in the fall, so Cacey's project goes to the top.

I created a Pinterest board and pinned a bunch of fabrics to it in the colors she likes and had her edit it down to the ones she liked the best.  She is a turquoise lover.  I picked a bunch of fabrics to use out of the ones she said she liked.  Matching fabrics online doesn't always go so well!

Here is the fabric I WAS going to use to choose as the main focus:

But when they all arrived, this one just didn't go with the others. It's too teal. They looked good online together but just didn't work.  In fact there were about three that didn't work.  Here are the ones that I ended up keeping.  Cacey loves turquoise and her fiance loves blue so trying to get both colors in here.  I'm still not totally sold on this fabric pull.   I'll be using the same lattice pattern for Cacey's quilt that I'm using for Ashley's (you can see that here).

In the mail this week came a wonderful mini that I have been anticipating for a long time!  My blogging friend Kate at Smiles from Kate and I decided to do a mini exchange.  You can read about the one I made for her here.  And I was so happy this week to receive the one she made for me!  She called it Home to Roost which was appropriate considering that I love house quilts and what I named HER mini!  :D   Isn't this the best???

I am currently writing this blog post from a motel room in Bellevue, Idaho, getting ready to attend a quilting class taught by Cynthia Brunz of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework!  I can't wait!  I will also get to meet Barb at Mountain Quiltworks as it is her quilt guild that scheduled this class with Cynthia.  I live about 3 hours away and drove up to spend the night so I can be fresh to learn new things from Cynthia.  So worth it!   Here is one of the beautiful views I got to see on the drive up here.  Isn't Idaho gorgeous?

I had LOTS of other happy mail this week in addition to Kate's great mini.  One was Cacey's fabric (seen above) and the other was an impulse buy.  You know the ones.  Facebook knows what you like and keeps showing ads to tempt you.  Well, I gave into one of those temptations.  This one came from Robin at Fabric Pantry and she had it packaged so pretty!

Here's a view of all the fabric:

Yes, I know they aren't very modern, but I still have a soft spot for traditional fabrics and I guess I probably always will!

And last but not least, at least not in my mind!  Our building update.  All the concrete has been poured.  Here is the front porch:

Back patio:

Triple car garage:

They started framing today!  YAHOO!!  So I'll have lots to show you by Monday.  Everything I learned in Cynthia's class and something that actually resembles the beginnings of a house!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts

Busy Hands Quilts

Bee Blocks

Hello friends!

Today started off well.  The first thing I decided to work on was a set of four crow blocks requested by one of my April Stash Bees.  They were fairly simple to do except I had trouble with the beaks.  The first one was too small:

The second was too big!  And looked kinda grumpy . . .

But the third one was juuuust right.   :)

And here's the fourth . . .

Then I was almost done with the second bee block and this happened:

My needle came out right in the middle of sewing!  It was jammed down there so hard it took some major prying to get that thing out.  And it was bent up pretty good.  I had a bad feeling about this.  I put in a new one and started sewing again and this is what I got:

I tried everything I know to fix this and nothing worked.  Now, it isn't even doing THIS much.  The thread on top is not catching the thread on the bottom.  I think something underneath has been bent or damaged.  I am not a happy camper.

Since I'm shut down on the sewing front, I'll share a fun picture I took today.  We adopted a kitten in the dead of winter and since it was so cold, he stayed inside the first four months of his life with us.  He's not been outside much and is very hesitant to go outside at all.  Naturally, he's curious about it, but it's a big scary world out there!  And is that snow you see on the mountains?  YES!  It snowed today!  I thought we were done with that kind of weather!  Since we don't have landscaping yet, I'm ok with him staying inside and not tracking in mud.  :)

Last, but not least, another small update on the building project .  The last pictures I showed you looked like this:

Now the backfilling has been done and all the foundation walls have nice neat flat and level ground all around like this!

That's the latest!  Hope you have a great Easter weekend!

Linking to:

Crazy Mom Quilts

Flimsy Finish!

Building update!  The foundation has been poured and the forms already stripped.  This happened on Monday!  Looking good!

Never fear, I actually do have quilty things to show you this time.

My mom  attended a rummage sale and bought three pieces of fabric for me!  

Love, you mom!  

One is 3 yards of cheater fabric good for backing or just using to make a small quilt and practice some quilting on it.

One is 5 yards of a floral knit fabric.  Not sure what to do with this.  Ideas??

And last but not least two yards of this LARGE floral cotton print.  I love this!  These flowers are huge!

I'm still not very good at estimating how long it will take me to do something.  I was hoping to get Ashley's quilt quilted this month but I don't know if I'll make it.    So for the moment, I am happy to announce I've at least got the top done!   Here it is:

This particular flimsy will require a trimming of the zig zag edges before I baste and quilt.  Hmm, let's try a cropped picture to get a better idea.

This quilt will measure 60 x 68.  I am tempted to add on a border using the dark navy with coral flowers.  If I had this to do over again, I would use darker colors in place of the fabrics that are kind of low volume.  Ashley does like it the way it is, but I think the high contrast of white and darker values together is more striking.

One of my favorite parts of reading your comments is hearing your ideas on how you would do something.  Sometimes you have ideas I would never have thought about.  So please, feel free to share you thoughts with me on these two questions:

How would you quilt Ashley's quilt?
What would you do with that 5 yards of knit fabric?

I'd love to hear from you!

Linking to:

Let's Bee Social

Midweek Makers
UFO Progress
WIP's with Friends

New Adventure!

If you've been following me for a while, you may remember that my husband and I remodeled an old farmhouse that started out looking like this:

And now looks like this!

Above is the view outside the pretty red door and here is the view from the other side of that door.  The furniture is from our other house and doesn't really fit the country house style.  So we'll work on that when we start building our final house.

We moved in last October but this is just the first phase of our plan.  The land that the farmhouse came with was 18 1/2 acres and we split that into four different parcels.   One is 12 acres, two are 2 1/2 acres and the one the house sits on is 1 1/2.  Our plan is to build our final home on the 12 acres and use the profits from  the other three lots to build that house debt free.

So phase one and two of the plan has happened.  We have sold this house and one of the 2 1/2 acre lots as of last Monday.  The nice thing is the buyers agreed to let us rent back this house for at least three more months.   We will now start building a house on the 2 1/2 acre parcel and list it for sale.  If it doesn't sell, we'll live there until it does.  If it sells before we finish it (which it probably will) THEN we'll have to get creative!  Let the building commence!

First step , dig the hole . . . check!

Step two, pour the concrete footings . . . check!

The house we recently remodeled was originally built in the 1940's.  Do you see that wooden shack in the top left of this picture?  That is the ORIGINAL farmhouse built in the 1920's.  It is a one-room shack about 16 x 16 and all it had in it was a wood stove and a wide plank floor.  We moved it from its original location which was beside the house we remodeled.  We were going to try and save it and use it for storage (which is what we are using it for right now) but it needs too many repairs to be secure.  So we will be dismantling it and recycling the wood from it to make something out of it like some sliding barn wood doors or a large dining table or maybe a feature wall.  So although this blog post doesn't have a lot to do with quilting, it does have to do with creating!

I have to show you a chair I found sitting out on the sidewalk in front of a tiny little antique store.  It is not that old, but someone painted it and distressed it to look shabby chic.  It is the perfect shade to go with THIS rug:

So what would you do with this chair if it was yours?

I need some creative ideas!

After my last post asking for help finding gray fabric, I've had several people tell me they have trouble finding gray fabric too!   One quilter who shops online a lot recommended Hancocks of Paducah and Missouri Star Quilt Co as good places to find them so I thought I'd pass on the tip!

Sorry I don't have much quilty things to talk about today, but I have been playing in my sewing room.  I am lucky enough to be able to get to attend a class by Cynthia Brunz of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework on April 22!  Yahoo!  I will have to drive 3 hours to get there, but it will be worth it.  I have been searching through my stuff for solid fabrics and find that I have very few of them!  I seem to be attracted to bright prints.  I need to diversify!

I just got the fabric for a Block of the Month I signed up for.  I had forgotten I signed up for it!  I'm liking these colors!  

I will keep you updated on these blocks as I get them made.  I could show you a picture of the whole quilt now but suspense is so much more fun.  So don't forget to tell me what you would do with a turquoise chair!  :)

Linking to:

Oh Scrap!