Sew Sunshine

Dapple - a Floating Square Score 43" x 43"   Spiral quilting with Aurifil thread.   Recently we had a sew day at the museum working on improv. We were lucky enough to have Sherri Lynn Wood stop by on her cross country book tour and give a talk. We were really inspired by her book and wanted to try one of the scores.  You can read more about her visit HERE.   It was exciting to be a little part in having her visit us. My piece took on a life of it's own when the flower print kept falling off the shelf. Have you ever been chosen by a fabric?  I think this one wanted to be in this one for sure. :)     This is a sample of all the floating square scores from several that came to the Improv Sewing day.  What a great mix of color and design.   Literally ....floating squares!!! Someone had to say it Linking up with Finish it up Friday @ crazy mom quilts   and Kelly NTT @ My Quilt Infatuation and C...

Exhibit by Eye Candy Quilts   I have been away for some time but I have been sewing.  I jumped into doing this adorable block swap at LQS Crafthouse.  The pattern is super fun to do and the fabric bundles to choose from were too irresistible!  So here are a couple of the blocks from one bundle. (I have another to make up yet)   I started the month helping at the county fair. That is a fun but tiring endeavor. Hot and muggy most of the fair week.   Placed a blue on my Hillside houses and it won a cash award and certificate, and I placed a  blue on my Off-Kilter Sunrise Sunset quilt.     And....My friend Jennifer, entered our SuperNova Friendship swap quilt and won the choice of the local Modern Quilt Group.  I made the ribbon which is a mini of the guilds logo.   While at the fair, a couple charity quilting groups came in to spend their days quilting. I agreed to help quilt on...

So....that is not going to get changed! Can't believe I didn't see that I had two similar houses together.   Well this has been fun putting these together but now the pieces all over the place are driving me crazy so I must get this put together....as is!! :) This is from the Hillside Houses QAL @ Pretty Little Quilts. I just grabbed a bunch of Kona and went for it without using the coloring sheet. Yep, there ya go!   Linking up with Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation

  One of my local quilt guilds had a group of lovely ladies come and talk about various charity and out reach programs last month. At the end of the talk I sent out a challenge to design a small quilt for one of them.  I handed out graph paper with the optional sizes on it and told them to keep it modern and simple.  We hope to have them turned in by next meeting and with a little luck and some volunteers, I hope to turn at least one of the designs into a kit-able quilt kit for others to sew up.  I thought I better give it a go so here is one of my simple modern designs. This went together really quick and didn't waste much fabric. I was able to grab fabrics I had on hand to go with the cute butterfly center fabric.   Since the design was so simple I took the time to free motion mums all over in Aurifil gray.  I am getting better at free motion but still not great. I could make several more of these before I will say good. :) I thought a ...

Crossroads  52"x 52" It has been far too many months since the birth of my 'great' nephew.  I persevered,  put my nose to the grind stone, bit the bullet and got this little guy quilted.   This quilt is a kit with a bazillion kona solids in it by Robert Kaufman.  Super easy but how to quilt it was a baffler! I ended up with straight line directional quilting lines in Aurifil gray.  The white word fabric has the names of the colors in a 96 pack of Crayola colors. I thought it was super fun to put on the back of all these colors...until I wanted to quilt it. :)  The gray thread worked pretty well. Today I was so lucky to wrangle my friend Jen from Jennifer under the Juniper tree blog. We headed out for some adventures today including holding my quilt out near some cool train tracks.   After we spotted some quilty inspirations in the area. Totally fun quilt idea...right?  Then we headed to some fabric stores a...

      I actually finished something lately!  I absolutely love this little wall hanging. That is not why I am calling it " and There is Love" though.  This wallhanging is for a special niece and her new husband as of 6/20/15.  The design is by Liz Harvatine and it was a block of the month in Jan for the LAMQG.   I love this block.  I want to make it again and maybe bigger....someday!  The whole time I was working on it I was singing the Wedding Song so that is what I came up with.  This was super hard to give up but I am sure it has a good home!! 24 x 24 Matchstick quilting with Wonderfil Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday

I am so excited to have this finish. This is an improv piece I did for our local Modern Quilt group challenge.  I was not sure how this was going to go. I started out just piecing a few things and then the more I added the more it brought back memories of the bridge that crosses over the Missouri River near my childhood home. It is a rare double decker bridge that believe me, struck fear in my heart more than once growing up.     This is a view from the South Dakota side. The risers were running that section up and down until the 80's.  The lower level was originally for rail traffic but than never happened by the time the bridge was almost finished so it is one way traffic on top and bottom.  The bottom has a super scary metal grate for a huge portion of it...thus the plaid fabric representing the grid near the bottom of my piece.       Upper level with an up close view of the structure of the risers. I tried to inclu...

Last night our guild met up and had a little make and take mug rug project. I made this one up for the sample and just had the binding to finish.   I have been so out of tune with sewing for the whole month that it just feels good to actually finish something no matter how small.  :) Finally have a bit of sunshine to go with that little accomplishment! I used Allison's tutorial on how to bind back to front from her blog Cluck Cluck Sew Linking up with Lorna for Let's bee social and Lee with WIP Wed

I am getting way ahead of myself these days. I signed up for two classes in one week, I belong to 3 guilds now, and I am helping to host some improvisational sewing days at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.  The Saturday class I am taking there is with Victoria Findlay Wolfe and I can't wait!! All of this leads to little getting done and lots of things started and little getting done...did I say that already???? :) So my class yesterday was with Tony Jacobson, designer for Fons and Porter Magazine.  He designed the 3 Tours star quilt and so I signed up. It is a beautiful quilt design and very fun. However I am pretty much on a budget and wanted to do more from my stash.  Mine is not going to be the traditional look of red, white and blue but I think it will be pretty just the same.   I did manage to finish all of the star blocks and started to work on my striped section when suddenly our time was up.  So fun to sew with others so...