Rainbow Scrap Challenge and some 9 Patches

Today is another Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I haven't done too much with the challenge this month as the color is pink. I don't have alot of pink but I did find a little bit to work with....I saw these blocks on another blog that I follow and wanted to make them.  I'm going to be doing them in all colors like Teresa from Fabric Therapy did here.  When I saw hers I liked it alot and decided I was going to make one.  It's been one of those thinkgs I couldn't get off my mind...I decided today was the day I was going to start.  So, here's my feeble starting to this wonderful quilt.  More to come later!!!

Here's some more 9 patches I'm doing for an exchange.  Here's 20 of the 40 I need for the month.  I almost have the other 20 completed but I had to stop and play with the baby. I'll be sewing more later. I hope you have a beautiful weekend and get some sewing time in!

Texas Twister and little Twister mug rug

It's storming here really bad and I don't want to stay on the computer very long so I'll keep this post short. I told you earlier today that I would post a picture of my Texas Twister top...well, here they are:

Here's the little twister...I had 6 blocks leftover and I used those to make this one. One of the blocks was the red Texas fabric and it disappeared into the border....This will do for a mug rug for me.

Here's Texas Twister. I like it and it was fun. I think I'm going to put another border of red Texas fabric on it and quilt it is. This was my first time to play with this little ruler and it was fun. I want to make a heart too so I'll be playing some more...

I'm going to say good night for now. The storms are getting worse and we've lost power once already...stay safe and keep on sewing!

Weekend sewing!

Yes, I did get to sew this weekend but not much. I went to the church on Friday night and sewed and visited with my friends. Alot more visiting than sewing!!! Such a great time with my buddies. I got the Texas charm pack from Moda a few weeks ago. I decided I wanted to try it out with the Little Twister ruler. So, I put together a middle part using 36 of the 42 squares. I sewed those together Friday night and that's all I got done! Not very productive but I had a good time anyway. I didn't bring my ruler with me or the instructions either. I'm afraid I wasn't very organized and I'll have to improve on that! My friends were all working on various things including English paper piecing. I love it and and oohed and ahhed over some of Linda's little hexies and she gave them to me. She said she wasn't going to use them anyway so I was the lucky recipient of her already done hexies. Now, I'll make some cute little flowers out of them. I also learned how to make little boxes from old cards. One of the ladies was making these and showed me and another lady how to do them. If you have any leftover greeting cards, you can recycle them and make into the cutese little boxes to put rings or bracelets or any little objects for gift giving. Several ladies were crocheting too but I didn't get into doing any of that on Friday night... Saturday, I kept the grandbaby and she wasn't feeling too good. I had to hold her more than normal and play with her more so I didn't get any sewing done on Saturday at all.

Here's a bad picture of the Texas fabrics I put together. My husband took my camera and went to a car show with it so I didn't have it to take pics with. This one is from my phone and isn't a great pic but it will show you the fabrics...

Yesterday, I got a 3 1/2" border put on this. I used spray starch and pressed it really good then started cutting. I cut it all out and put it back together into pinwheels. The top is done and I'll show you a picture tonight. I got my camera back last night and forgot to take a picture. I had 6 blocks leftover and I put those together and used the twister ruler and make pinwheels out of them too. I sewed it back together and this is big enough for a mug rug. I had to use what was left and I'm not really pleased with it because of the color placement. The border is red fabric and I used red on the outside so you can't see one of the pinwheels. I learned alot by doing this project about color placement and hopefully my next one will be better. This was alot of fun to do and I'm going to do a few more of these. I'll show the top to you later tonight so come back and seee me this evening. Now I have to get busy and read some blogs I've missed reading all weekend! Happy sewing...

Friday Night Sewing with Heidi and Bobbi

Ok guys, this Friday night is sewing with Heidi and Bobbi, go on over to their site and sign up!

The badge on the right side of my blog that looks like the one above, click on it and it will take you to their site to sign up or you can click on the title to my post and it will take you there too. I'll be sewing with my friends at the church and sewing with my virtual friends too. Won't you join in the fun with us??

Golden Quilter Awards over on SewCalGal's website

SewCalGal is having the Golden Quilter Awards on her blog. Go over and vote for your favorites.
Voting will remain open until March 31st, and then SewCalGal starts tabulating the results . She'll announce the 2012 Golden Quilter Awards winners on April 2, and then on April 3, the prize winners (those who voted and were PR angels) will be announced! What a fun way to celebrate the awards and our virtual community . . . so hop on over and vote.

Some pink squares for Rainbow scrap challenge and my new sewing area.

Well, I never did get around to making any pink blocks this weekend. After I made my 9 patches and my other blocks for my swap, I stopped. I started moving furniture around in the bedroom and then we went to dinner. We had a flat tire and had to wait for AAA to come change the tire. By the time we got home, it was too late to do any sewing at all...I decided to wait until Sunday afternoon. Well, it got worse, our freezer quit working and I had to move everything in the freezer to the refrigerator freezer, then we moved the freezer out of the house and moved our extra refrigerator into the house to use that small freezer until we can get a big freezer to replace ours. Then another catastrophe hit. The hot water heater quit working. I told my husband if one more thing broke, we were moving... Well, my husband is working on the hot water heater and we haven't replaced it yet. He just keeps lighting it and babying it until this weekend and we will replace it. He tried a few things to fix it, but they didn't work so the next step is replacing it. While all this was going on, I didn't get any sewing done. Finally, Monday night, I stopped and made three pink blocks. well, they're kinda pink...pinkish purple but I'm calling them pink. I made three disappearing 9 patches.

I also put some of my little wallhangings on the walls in my new sewing area...Here's some pics. I've never had some of these up so I'm pretty excited to have them hanging. I decided I would hang as many as I could and keep them up for awhile then rearrange later. I still haven't hung all of them but I thought you might like a look at some of them...

I still don't have everything arranged like I want it. I'm still tweeking it but I can at least go in and sew. I now have a window to look out of too, I'm real excited about that! I hung all of these by myself and my husband came in and started looking around and saying, this one's crooked and that one's crooked...He's going to come in and fix them when he gets through doing all of his maintenance around the house. He says he can't stand to come into the room and look at everything crooked. I'll show you more when I finish.

I'm just using the design board temporarily. I'm trying to decide exactly how I want to do my design wall. What do you use for your design wall? Do you put anything up on the wall besides batting or flannel? Do you use a backing ? Help, I need some suggestions, please.

Ok, that's it for now. I just got back from tatting and I've got to eat something. Until next time, happy sewing!

Saturday sewing and a few pics from the Dallas Quilt Show

I wanted to work on pink but I don't have very much and I had to work on some blocks for an exchange first.  My exchange is coming up Thursday night and I had to get all of this done before I could do anything else...I did get my blocks done, thank goodness!  But now, I'm moving some furniture around and hope to get back to sewing some pink later tonight!

I got these 40 nine patches done for one of my exchanges.

Here are the other blocks I had to get done.  There were 5 blocks and a few other little bits and pieces to go with them each month.  We will be exchanging these every month for the next year.  It will be all Civil War fabric and scrappy.  We are doing this quilt out of the current  (April 2012 issue) American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. 

It's called Raspberry Mocha in the magazine and is done in pinks and browns but we are doing it scrappy.

Here's my 5 blocks and the bits and pieces for the month.

Now that I have my obligation blocks out of the way, I can play a little....Before I go, I'll post a few of the pictures I took at the Dallas show yesterday...enjoy the eye candy!  There were alot of Texas Quilts.  This one was my favorite but too many people to get a good shot of it  This one belongs to a friend of mine. This is her pattern and she is doing a Block of the month on this one...it's brand new but I don't remember the name of it...I love it but it's applique (ugh!- I guess I'll have to break down and do it.)

Another Texas quilt.

This was was an interesting quilt.  Alot of it was wool, mostly the animals but some of the backgrounds too. 

This clamshell quilt was interesting too. She put a striped band on each clam. Look below for the closeup...

This one has colored squares that were about 5" big plus the shadow behind it with black/white background fabric that waved...There was another one of these quilts a few aisles over but it was rectangles.  This one was my favorite of the two...

I'll post more later....til next time, happy sewing!

Life has changed again...

I haven't posted this week as I've been too busy with everything but sewing.  My life has changed again this week.  My son and his little family moved out. They found a place of their own. They are not too far from me so it won't be too bad.  I'll still get to see the baby and keep her on Saturdays, but wow, what a change.  Last night was the first night we've been home early and there was no noise...The house will feel empty for awhile.  I am excited for them to be starting out in life on their own but I sure will miss them....Life is full of changes and I know this will be good for them and also good for me and my husband. This will be the first time in over 29 years that we'll have the house back to ourselves! I'll be what everyone calls an "empty-nester". 

  I have gotten all my dies in that I ordered  and have been looking and dreaming about them.  I want to start projects with those soon but not this week. 

  I already have plans to move some of my sewing stuff into their empty room and I'll finally be able to have a design wall!   I'm going to keep most of my stuff upstairs and just have my current project of projects I'm working on and sewing machine in the room.  I don't plan on taking up two rooms of my house for sewing (LOL) but I very easily could!  I'm thinking about painting the room first but I don't know yet.  I'll clean it up real good first and then decide...

I was going to the Dallas Quilt show today but I took off half a day yesterday and went instead.  I met some of my buddies and walked around with them  and oohed and ahhed at all the beautiful quilts.  It's a great show and lots of ideas.  My buddies and I decided to have an exchange from looking at one of the quilts!  I took lots of pictures and I'll post some of those later this weekend. For now, I have to get off of this thing and get busy.  I'm all by myself today and want to get some things done. Til next time, happy sewing!