Sew Sunshine

  After all the Christmas gift sewing and doing,  I decided I needed a quick quilt project. On my UFO stash was 6 blocks I made in the 'Flying Geese' pattern. My local quilt guild was doing a block of the month demo at each meeting and I wanted to try the Geese. Well small half square triangles might not be my thing. I had a bit of trouble with stretching and bulky points. However, I pushed ahead and used up the 4 fat quarters I picked to make a baby boy quilt. I am not totally wild about the prints or colors but it does make for a cute little boy quilt now that it is all together. (pssst...don't look closely at the points that is all I can say about that!)  I did some straight line quilting in a hatch pattern to finish it off. One quilt ready for the new year charity pile. :) Well Happy New Year everyone. I hope all your sewing and quilting resolutions come to pass. 

....Or at least I hope it is? It has been over a month since I made a post. I have had so many things going on in my head and body and so ....well you know how it goes, right?  Well I have not been idle while away.  I am pulling up my "boot straps" and "getting back on the saddle" again.  Here is a Christmas gift I made that I am quite happy with. But wait, first there is my ongoing problem with Google chrome not letting me upload photos. If anyone has any ideas for me ( I log in and log out and log in and still it says it is unavailable)??? Okay, back to the good stuff.... Ta-da! My first sewing machine cover project. I sort of designed it myself and I made sure to put a pocket on the front. If any of you have little ones that like to come into your sewing room and turn on the knobs and pick up your scissors and seam ripper, then you can see why the pockets came about.  The pocket sort of blends in so if you don't need to use it for anything it s...

Found this cute plaid diagonal fabric and decided to make myself something new to wear for Thanksgiving this year. The pattern is a tie scarf flowy top from New Look patterns.  Super easy Super cute and a Finish! Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday

  Today I put the last couple borders on my experimental charm quilt design. Top is finished as planned!        I was hoarding the "Little Black Dress" charm packs for a while and wanted to experiment with my own design. Since this fabric is sort of "formal" to me I am stewing over how I want to quilt this. I think I want to practice some feathers and see if that will work for at least part of it. I am pretty critical of my FMQing work so this might not come to fruition any time soon. ;)    My photos are not all that great to show off the colors of this line of fabric but it is Yummy!  I just love it. I am so happy to have a top finished. I am going to work on some Christmas presents and practice some FMQing as soon as my machine gets back from service. Yes, finally the wrench/hammer icon came on...I don't have a choice I have to take it in. I am sad!  Guess it means to go put my design cap on and get creative. Linking ...

  November goal setting party time already. I am not sure what I am doing with this little bit of "Little Black Dress" fabric I have but I AM going to make something. I am thinking at least to get some kind of top done. We will see.   According to the quilt market this month there will be a new line -"Little Black Dress II" coming out. This alone has motivated me to get going on something. In my previous posts I am trying not to hoard my favorite stuff. It will be great to enjoy it when it is in a completed project...right? I will keep telling myself. How about you? Hoard it as fabric or make it and love it?? Linking up with Shanna and Melissa HERE    

                                I am a tiny bit late to the Friday party. I finished the quilt in the morning, took some pictures of it to post last night but went out to dinner first. Came home looked at the photos and the front photo was missing. I had a camera glitch while taking it and silly me, did not check it out. So today I had to wait for some daylight and then decided to wash it first. Well.......the washer would not spin and drain so still getting to posting this before lunch. If you see a quilt in this post then I guess all is well! This is my first big quilt using low volume pieces with some mid to dark range prints. I was hoarding this FQ pack of Textures by Angela Walters for something but I didn't know what. With all the hoopla over the Fall quilt market right now, I realized that some of my favorite designers...

     Fabulous Amy over at Amy 's creative side Blogger Festival  is having a raffle on a Baby Lock Melody sewing machine. WOW!  I would love to take that little gem home with me. I would love this machine (who wouldn't) to take with me so I can sew where ever I go.  Look at these fun Features: and   This is what I want!!   Wish me luck but you can enter too....go over to the link above and see the amazing guilts!!! Title of this post refers to Sugarland's song "Stuck Like Glue" one of my favs! :) Now I am going to be singing till the contest is over.

"Like Rain" the 4 block quilt finished! I actually finished it right after I set my goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes @ Bittersweet designs and Fiber of all Sorts HERE.    It measures 49 1/2 x 49 1/2 and it has improv back made from bits of the fallout on the front blocks. I love how it looks. Straight line quilting in a grid which really worked with that wipe open space on the front.  Block for this was from the Modern Block 2 at SewMamaSew with Allysia Lichner. I am super glad for a finish after a two month miss.  Linking up this month.

Over at Amy's Creative side time again. I loved looking at all the quilts last spring and really set a goal in my head to enter something. What can it hurt ...right? Here is my first ever entry:2 color quilts    This was an BOM quilt block by Alyssa Linchner over at Sew mama Sew.  I made a 4 block quilt. Approx. : 48 x 48 pieced and quilted by me Straight line grid and circle quilting Check out the other lovely quilts entered into the Blogger's festival and give a big shout out and thank you to Amy  HERE

Well as I was finishing the last corner of binding this morning the phone rang and some of my family was in town to have lunch. I was done but did not knot and snip. I was so happy to go out to lunch and shop but I was knew I was not going to have daylight left for a quick pic.  So here is my finish in bad lighting. I am okay with that because...hey I got a FINISH!!! wooohooo "Moody" 44 1/2 x 45 1/2 This is the Retro Ruby quilt top from the QAL that Alyssa Lichner hosted a while back.  I actually won a prize from my quilt top but I really wanted to get it done and bound. Today was the day!  Some scraps and one reverse block on the back. The quilting curves was harder than the piecing of the curves. :) Linking up with Crazy mom quilts HERE

I have been reading some of the blogs about the "backside" of quilts. I am kind of proud of some of my backs now, but at the time I was making them I really didn't think too much about them. I am linking up with Katie at  Swim, Bike, Quilt . Here are a few of my backs that I think are kind of interesting.  This is the back to the mini quilt in my header above. There was a lecture at our guild meeting about improv piecing to make your own fabric so I used some of my scraps from the front to make the stip of fabric on the back. Love it!  This is the back of my Scrappy Lone Star, called Lucky Star blogged HERE.  This is the back of my One Fish Two Fish quilt blogged HERE  One block left over to make a nice accent block on the back blogged HERE One of my favorite backs was because of the last collaboration of sewing/quilting with my Mom. We put together blocks for a Bournoigne Surrounded quilt. Her sewing was smaller than mine so her two fi...

Thank you Maureen Cracknell for your QAYG Scrappy Herringbone quilt tute!!!  HERE . I saw it at the end of September when she posted it on her blog and I knew I had to give it a try. My scrap boxes were overflowing.  "Happy Scrappy Time" QAYG quilt 56 1/2" x 61 1/2" -miscellaneous scrap strings including scraps from cut off backings -various cotton batting leftovers that I cut down to approx 7 1/2" x 64" -several leftover pieces of binding scraps were sewn together to use up -many misc. odd colored bobbins were emptied while piecing the strings  -on each strip I did straight top-stitching, a feather stitch and a cross-hatch (Those turned out so great I wish I would have used several colors and done more of the decorative stitching.) Since it was bigger than I thought when done I used these two beloved green prints. They seemed to work well with all the scrap strings.  I used an orphan block I had hanging around in my...