Christmas in July....PMQG Holiday Angel Swap

Lookie what I found - a post I never posted.  I really want to share this so thought I'd do a Christmas in July post!
-----------------
In January, we had our Philly Modern Quilt Guild Holiday Angel Swap.  We filled out forms using Elfster giving hints as to what we might like to get, favorite, colors, things we definitely didn't like.  This was a huge help to the Angels to make sure your giftee would like what you worked so hard on!

One of the items my gal asked for was a coffee press cozy.  I found a great tutorial online and it was very easy to make!  I chose a color scheme of gray, aqua and orange and used my coffee press as a model....

In progress...

 

So simple!

Trying it out on my press...

I thought I'd make this cute potholder to go with....

I added a few odds and ends to the bag and my gift was complete!

I was the lucky recipient of some great things tailored to me!  Thanks again, Bobbi!  Here's my super-cute bag...

Bobbi and I both have Handiquilters and she geared my gifts toward longarming...I got this great book full of design ideas and an air eraseable pen - I love those.  She also included a very cute pre-printed mini wholecloth panel for me to practice on.  And, the pretty pin is hand made!

This was the pièce de résistance, however.  I mentioned I collected Christmas ornaments.  Bobbi made me this beautiful hand-beaded ornament for my tree.  Lovely!

(Yes, my tree was still up in mid-January.  Don't judge.  It came down shortly after that - LOL!)

You can see some other great gifts given that night here.

Well, the year is now half over - it's going to be time to start thinking about this Christmas soon!  At least for me it is ... this year I AM going to start my Christmas sewing early (no, really, I am! o:) )

A Day of Finishing Tops!

I was quite productive this very hot, sweltering weekend.  Great time to stay indoors in the AC and sew!

And sew, I did!  I actually got two tops finished.  I'm now caught up on the Strings of Pearls Quilt-a-Long.  I finished my top and it's all ready for quilting....

I was a little nervous that all of the black "connectors" weren't going to line up properly, but with careful pinning and sewing most of them are spot on - and the rest are almost perfect, so I'm calling it good!  After it's quilted, you'll never notice. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to quilt this one yet...

I had about an hour before everyone comes for dinner and I spied my Swoon blocks which were pinned to a design wall for months and decided to quickly get that together.  Didn't take long at all!

I think it looks lovely...

I'm quilting this in a zig zag pattern using my EZ boards.  I saw a guild friend's Swoon quilted like that and loved it.  This will be a nice addition to my summer

This will be a nice addition to my collection of  summer quilts!

SMQ Bee Blocks

In between finishing the quilting on Wedding Quilt #3 this past weekend, I caught up on my Sunday Morning Quilts Bee blocks. I finished the two blocks for June and actually worked ahead and got July's done too!

The two June gals asked for blocks for the High Five quilt from the book - here is the colorful version...

and the neutral version...

We generally do two blocks per month but for July we're only doing one. Our July quilter chose blocks for the Ticker Tape quilt...

I thought I'd get it started and then work a little bit at a time on the block. But, it was so much fun before I knew it, I was finished! The block is just composed of scraps, worked like a puzzle, stitched down 1/4" from the edges. Maybe you can see little better in the photo below. When it's washed, the edges will fray and get fluffy. We were each asked to use a 22" piece of Kona white as our background. All the blocks will then be stitched together and the white areas filled in with more scraps.

I think I might like to make a Ticker Tape quilt of my own someday!

 

***Public Service Announcement***

You know when they say "measure twice, cut once"? Yeah, well make sure you do that or....

(using Heat Press Batting Tape to splice the new piece of batting in)

You may wind up piecing in the few inches of batting that you are short while it's on the quilting frame!! (I may have also cut my "wide back" down too short and had to piece that back together too. Sigh...)

Posted with Blogsy

Show & Tell Tuesdays

I thought I'd actually join in Show & Tell Tuesdays again (I know, it's been awhile)
I'm still on a deadline for Wedding Quilt #3 - here's a sneak peak of it being quilted. Once it's done, I'll give all the details! And, that will be soon - the wedding is next Saturday - Yikes!

it's a little wrinkly here, but it's actually very pretty

I've also started sewing the blocks for the String of Pearls Quilt-a-Long. These blocks are some fun!! I love the pops of color in the dark borders...

I'm way behind on my Sunday Morning Quilts Bee blocks for this month but I'll get them done by the end of the month deadline! Both ladies chose blocks for the same quilt this month (Hi Five on page 118 of the book if you have it) - one in bright colors (that gets started next) and this one with neutrals surrounding the bits of color in the middle of each block. Very different than the quilt in the book, but I'm really liking it!....

I'll be glad when my deadline sewing is done for awhile and I am free to sew whatever I want!

Posted with Blogsy

Wedding Quilt #2

This is Wedding Quilt #2 of the season...but it's Dot Party #5 (and it's NOT the last, I guarantee it - I've already got two more in the queue to make!) Here are links to photos of the previous Dot Parties - Dot Party #1 Dot Party #2 & #3 and Dot Party 4 if you're interested)

The bride and groom, friends of my daughter, are into bikes - big time.  I had some yardage of the blue bike fabric from the Lucy's Crab Shack line...it's getting a little hard to find, but I was able to locate some of  the bike fabric in the orange and green colorways and I paired them all with a light green background.  I did my usual dot party quilting of spirals in the circles and meandering in the outsides...

I used this plaid for the binding and I love the way it looks....

Then I saw this bike wheels fabric from the new Ride line by Julia Rothman for the back - perfect!

Which means I get to keep this awesome Beaches yardage I was originally going to use for the back of my in-progress quilt using my Going Coastal scraps (but that's a whole other blog post! o:)

I'm still waiting to hear how the bride & groom liked the quilt.

String of Pearls Quilt-a-Long #1

I'm a sucker for a good quilt-a-long...but I usually jump on the bandwagon long after they have finished.  Not this time!  I decided to join Christa Quilt's String of Pearls Quilt-a-Long last week - in enough time to gather my fabrics and start on time!

Of course you can use whatever fabrics you want, but the Quilt-A-Long quilt really caught my eye so I decided I wanted to use Pearl Bracelets by Lizzy House too.  I have a small stash of PB, but not enough for the Q-a-L, so ordered the Fat Eighth starter bundle that Christa put together (great idea, Christa!)  Perfect!  Just enough of each color with a little left over for my scrap basket.  She's also got kits for the entire quilt for sale, but I already had my two solids for the background - Kona Pepper and Medium Gray.

And I'm ready to go!

Christa posted the cutting instructions today and since I was home, I cut out my Pearl Bracelet squares and the strips for the scrappy binding.  How colorful are these? I love it!

We'll have two weeks for each step, so I'll get my Pepper and Medium Grey strips cut over the next week or so (that's not quite as fun as cutting colorful Pearl Bracelets - LOL) and I'll be all ready to sew!

There's still plenty of time if you want to join in!

Wedding Quilt #1

Well, it's wedding season and I have three wedding quilts to make this year (so far).  First up....the Cross Terrain quilt for my daughter' manager - background here .  Using mostly Kaffe &  friends' fabrics, it made a lovely quilt!

 And, I saw Heather's wedding photos, it could have been a backdrop at the wedding - the shades of teal and purple matched her wedding party and decorations perfectly.

I found this fun purple heart print for the back...perfect for a wedding quilt!

The bride really loved the quilt (I hope the groom did too!)

And, just one last bunch of photos from Mother's Day 2013...

This is ingenuity!  What do you get your mom for mother's day when you have no money?  A lovely bouquet of tulips and "vouchers"!  How cute are these? She'll be putting her burgeoning cosmetology skills to good use!  I told her I really am going to take her up on all of these services!