Presenting March Schnibbles - Bibelot

I worked so hard on this quilt and I almost missed the posting deadline!  Totally forgot this is the 31st, but luckily as soon as I opened my Google Reader, I saw someone's post about it.  Whew!  I wouldn't have wanted all that hard work to go to waste.

So, without further adieu....presenting.....

BIBELOT

 Only I'm calling it "T-Squared".  And the amazing Thelma of Cupcakes 'n Daisies is calling it "T is for  Thelma"  (When I say "amazing", you really need to see her Red & White Tribute quilt - and every other quilt she's ever made. I am in awe of her.  The linked post tells the story and the quilt is at the end - A-Maz-Ing!)

So, T-Squared took a long, fiddly time to do.  At the end, though, I am happy with it.  But, I wish I would have caught the fact that there is no white sashing between the T's on the bottom right.  Maybe I'll unpick and fix it.  But I probably won't.  You were supposed to be random when putting the Ts together.  I have a hard time being random.

I used two of Moda's Collections for a Cause charm packs and some Kona Snow - I forget which collection I used though - maybe it was Legacy.  Anyway, I thought these fabrics really worked in this pattern.  It finishes at 38-1/2" square.

You can check out the parade of Schnibbles at Sinta and Sherri's blogs starting April 1st (is it really April 1st already tomorrow?  Where is this year going???)

Today I am off to visit a newly opened LQS - YAY!!!!  It's called the Round Bobbin Quilt Shop and I've been eagerly anticipating its opening. 

Last night, members of the PMQG met for a Sew Night at Granny's Sewing Den.   I didn't bring my camera, so no photos, but it was fun seeing all of the great things everyone was making (like Pat's triangle quilt - I had serious quilt envy over that one.  And Bobbi swoooned over a piece of Andrew's fabric.  I believe a good time was had by all.  I know I had a great time - didn't get much done, but that's not really the point.  Before I knew it, it was about 9:30pm.  I can't wait for our next sew day!

Granny Squares - the next four

Now we're up to ten!  Here are four more Granny Squares...

Ten more to go and we'll have a quilt!

I'm planning to be a little less scrappy with the next ten.  In these first ten, I didn't use the same fabric twice in a square.  For the next batch, I'm planning to use some of the same fabrics in a square.   I think it will look fine if I disperse them throughout the quilt.  I also have to figure out color schemes for the remainder of the squares. 

I'm excited to see what this quilt is going to look like then it's all done!

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my birthday and I bought myself a birthday present!  It came on Friday ... my tummy had butterflies as I opened the box ...  it was just as beautiful in person as I thought it would be ....

I wasn't going to be left off the bandwagon this time!  I didn't get any of the original FMF and then there was none to be found.  I've been haunting Hawthorne Threads' site for weeks, I even emailed them (they are so nice there).  And, as soon as it was available, I placed my order for Flea Market Fancy.  It arrived in two days! 

I love, love, love it.  These pictures do not do it justice.  Now, to decide what to do with it.  There's enough for a few quilts here. Yay!

In other quilting news, I bought a layer cake of Lotta Jansdotter's Echo when it was the Daily Deal on the Missouri Star Quilt Company's website.  I decided to make a triangle quilt.  It was kind of small, the layer cake only had 24 "layers", so I decided to put a couple of borders on it.  I love the way it came out and it's the perfect size for my office wall.  Since there was so much white in the fabrics, I chose to alternate the prints with black triangles.  

I chose this print for the backing and binding...

I think I'm going to quilt straight lines in the print triangles following the triangle shape and then meandering in the black.  I hope to start on this tomorrow (I took tomorrow off - it's a BIG birthday today and I'll need to recover by having a quilting day - LOL!)

Now, I'm going to go roll around in my FMF for a while before the family comes over to help me celebrate!

It's Hard to Find Good Help These Days

Happy National Quilting Day everyone!  Hope you can all do something quilty today! I was planning on posting this midweek, but, well that didn't happen obviously.  The week just got away from me.  Between work and jury duty (I only had to go one day, but what a looonnnggg day and I missed getting picked for a really scary trial by a hair - whew!)  Anyway.....

My Countdown to Christmas Twister quilt has been finished sitting folded up on my wing chair in the living room for a month or so now waiting for its photo session.  Well,  the moon and stars aligned and I was able to get some quilt holder helpers to hold it up (I don't have any cool places to drape my quilts for "artsy" photos - I think I would like to move just so I stage better quilt photos - that, and a bigger dining room - LOL!)  I don't think my quilt holder-uppers did a very good job, but at least it's done!

Ariel tried to hold the quilt up by herself at first, but we kept getting the head bump in the middle of the quilt.  So, then we got Dad to come out and help, much hilarity ensued and I got this really bad shot.  But, like I said it's done...

I love the snowflake quilting...

An outtake...

You can see Lilly looking out the door saying "why didn't you ask me to help???"

Last week I also made up my I Spy 9 Patches my guild is making to put together charity quilts.  At our last meeting, we all brought novelty fabrics and spent some time cutting them into 5" squares and then putting together sets for members to take home and sew.  It was fun working with these cute fabrics. We're going to set them with solids.  I think they'll be really cute.  We had a boatload of fabric, so I'm thinking we'll be able to make quite a few quilts! 

I was glad to be able to contribute a lot of fabric for this cause.   I've been working on an I Spy quilt for about 100 years.  Seriously, this has been in progress for about 10 years.  I've collected lots of novelty fabrics for this, friends have given me pieces and this is how far I've gotten...

Yep, six short rows - LOL.  It's one of those "long-term" projects I guess.  I swear I'll finish it someday.
So, I'm not giving up by giving away some of the fabrics because I had enough novelties to make 5 I Spy quilts, and if I can't even finish one, it's probably better to put them to good use elsewhere!

Ooooh, and I am SO (yes, I'm shouting) excited about this...I found out last Friday I got into the class I really wanted to take at MQX next month.  It was sold out by the time I made up my mind to go, but my waitlist came through! 

 I'll be a McTavishing fool when I'm done (I hope!)

More Granny Squares

Remember when I said these things were like potato chips?  I can't stop - LOLOL!

Here are the next four...

These are great blocks to use up scraps, but they do not make any kind of a dent in them - LOL!  I do loving looking at them and seeing fabrics that are special to me.  Lots of good memories in these blocks.

Bargello Quilt-a-Long - Complete!!

I finally finished my Bargello table runner - quilted and all!  Katie did a great job of hosting the quilt-a-long.  Her instructions were great, I just needed to pay more attention to what I was doing. Focus...Focus...Focus!

I'm very pleased with the result.  I chose the Fay Feathers pantograph (one of my go-to patterns) and love the way the quilting mimicked the bargello "waves".  I didn't realize that would happen when I started - I love when serendipity steps in!

I backed the runner with an old piece from my stash and bound it more of the brown from the front.

It looks very "Fall" to me.  As soon as daughter-in-law Raqhel saw it she claimed it for her new dining room.  (I love that she loves what I make o:) )

Thanks again, Katie, for hosting this great quilt-a-long!

New Jersey Quilt Fest!

I waffled until the last minute on whether I was going to the New Jersey Quilt Festival in Somerset, yesterday.  All that mental energy while I debated with myself over the last few days - should I go, shouldn't I go?  Gas is so expensive.  I'm going to MQX next month, I shouldn't go to this one.  I don't need anything.  It's a long drive, etc. etc.  I wound up going, and thanks to my new GPS, I made it without incident (well, there was one incident, but I think it was my fault, not the GPS.  Like I keep telling my husband, I need a driver!)

I was at the show before the doors opened and was finished by 2pm.  I did the vendors, looked at the quilts and sat in on two demonstrations.  The first was for the AccuQuilt Go cutter and the second was on new notions.  They were fun!

Like I said, I didn't need anything, but I managed to come home with stuff anyway.

Actually, I've been thinking about this for awhile and it was shown at the Notions demo, which of course, made me absolutely have to have it (those demos are great marketing tools!)  This is the Olfa rotating 12" mat.  The other night I was doing some cutting and kept having to move all around the cutting table and contorting my body.  I was wishing I had this.

I'm also always on the lookout for good needle threaders.  My favorites are the Collins Quilter's Threader.  They don't last forever though, so I always pick up a package when I go to a quilt show. I have seen the price on these go up and up over the years.  I remember they were around $2.00 a package when I started buying them at quilt shows.  Yesterday, I paid over $3 - geesh! (Oh my, I see I can get them from Hancocks of Paducah for $1.49 a package - guess I got ripped off!!)  I'll let that one go.  I also had heard about a machine needle threader (because the ones on machines never work right (at least on my machines!).  I finally found it.  It's by Bohin.  I also heard that their desk needle threader was pretty good, so I picked that up too.  I tried them.  They are awesome! 

These cute little microfiber discs are for cleaning up threads, dust, etc.  They were $1.00 each and in such pretty colors.  I picked one up for me and one for my quilt-buddy-at-work, Lindsay. 

I also picked up a couple of books.  The first is the story of Indigo.  Looks very intriguing. The other is on folklore of American quilting.

I also picked up some Quilts and More mags from 2009.  I just started reading Quilts and More last year and am really enjoying the projects so was happy to get some back issues.  Plus, they were 30% off!

The only fabric I bought (and I'm still finding that hard to believe - LOL!)  were these "frosty" blues for a winter quilt for my daughter-in-law.   These all have a bit of silvery metallic on them.

 Last week at Sunday dinner, she looked closely at my "winter" quilt and said "I love this!"  I'd love to have one just like it.  Well, that's all I needed to hear - great gift idea!  So, I went on the hunt for appropriate fabrics.  I made mine about 5 years ago and Keepsake Quilting had a great bundle of metallic blues that were perfect for this project.  Of course, they don't have them anymore.  I was able to put this collection together from a few different vendors at the show.  Here's mine - it's the Take 5 pattern and quilted with my snowflake boards.  This is quick and easy to make, but very stunning!

 So, obviously, I did *need* some things.  Oh, the quilts were good too!! o:)

Granny Square Quilt-a-Long

I've officially declared 2012 the year of the quilt-a-long!  I got sucked into another one...

The Granny Square Quilt-a-Long!

It starts today.  I first read about it on Dana's blog.  Krista is hosting  and Jolene also has a great tutorial.  This is a great scrap-buster and I'm having fun going through my scraps to choose fabrics for my squares.

This Q-a-L called to me because the last afghan my grandmother (who raised me and who lived with us for the last eight years of her life - she passed away in 2004) made me was a Granny Square.  I remember her making this for me from the left-over - or scrap - yarns...

My grandmother was a crocheter.  She tried and tried to teach me, but with her being right-handed and me being left-handed, I never got past the double crochet - LOL!  I have many of her crocheted creations and treasure them all!  When I took up quilting she told me it was always something she wanted to do.  When we moved in together, I wanted to teach her but she'd always say she was too old.  I would have dearly loved to have shared this hobby with her, but she did love everything I made.

When I was a little girl, I think we did every craft out there together.  We did ceramics (I think my grandfather, Pop, painted a couple of ceramic beer steins too), we made candles, did decoupage and I think we even did some macrame.   It was a fun, crafty childhood - but no sewing, not a stitch!  Who'd have thought I'd become an obsessive quilter as an adult who can't be away from her sewing machine for too long - LOL!

I couldn't wait for March 1st, so I started pulling scraps last weekend to get ready...and couldn't resist.  I had to make one.  Well, these things are like potato chips, you can't make just one - LOL!  Here's what I've got so far...

Up close...

Too much fun!