Friendship Stars and Carolina Chain

Ahhh, scrappy Saturday, I love it.  I got to get up this morning and go to my sewing room and sew, sew, sew.  I don't always get to do that on Saturdays as I keep the grandbaby but today was an exception.  I pulled out an old UFO that I've been thinking about and decided it was time to put it together.  Alot of these blocks were given to me from people in my quilting group. One year we decided to make blocks and give to the members during their birthday month. All year long we made the friendship star block. I got mine the month of my birthday and just put them up and never did anything with them.  These blocks have been laying around for about 5 years or more so I decided it was time to put them together.  I laid them out and decided I needed more, so since it was blue this month for the rainbow challenge I rummaged through my scraps and pulled out some bright blues.  I made eleven blocks today(they weren't all blue) and now it will be big enough for a full size bed...I'm going to put black sashing in between these blocks to make them stand out. I think they will look great and I'll start doing that this week...I'll show you more as it progresses.  These are big friendship stars, they are 12 1/2" blocks and were easy and fun to make.

I really like the pinky one above as it has a fairy in the middle block, so cute.

Here's the layout I started working with. It was 5 x 7 for a while this morning but then I decided it needed another row.  Now I have enough for it to be 6 X 7 and like I said, I'll be putting sashing in between too... 

 

 

 

Last night I went and sewed with some friends at the church and I put my Carolina Chain blocks together. I laid these out this morning to see how many more I needed.  So far I have 19 blocks made and I need probably 21 more blocks so I'll be working on more of these too.  I am enjoying seeing this one come together too. I know this one is going to be great once it's all together but I have alot more work to do on it.

 

Ok, gotta stop now and cook.  I hope you are getting some sewing time in this weekend, til next time, happy stitching!

 

 

A little lovey for my niece and her new baby.

My niece is in Italy and is having her first child.  Her sisters and the rest of her family are over here.  A few weeks ago, one of the sisters was looking on Facebook and saw something and made the comment that her new little nephew would love this.  Well, I chimed in and said it wouldn't be hard to make and that I would do one for her...so I did.  I finished making this last night. The basic directions came from Sarah over at RepeatCrafterme...here's a link to the directions on how to make this little lovey. Sarah made a little monster but  since I couldn't find monster fabric, I thought I would make it a little friendlier....This was fun to make and easy too.  Sarah's directions are great...
I haven't crocheted in a long time, at least a year or more. This was a fun project to brush up on my crochet skills.  I even learned how to do something new with this little pattern.  I used to make ring the old way, I now know how to make rings called Magic Rings.  I never knew this before but thanks to Youtube and all the great videos out there, I was able to add a new trick to my crochet skills.  I'm going to have to do more crochet now that I've pulled my hooks out!  Til next time, happy stitching, whichever form it is!

Some sewing at the church on Saturday

I got to sew on Saturday with my friends.  It was an all day thing and it was great.  When I walked in, my friend Sheila, asked me to make a walker bag.  She hit everyone up first thing when they walked in.  Most of us made one or two and it was a great way to get warmed up to sew and good for charity too.  I'm not sure how many bags we ended up with but here's a picture of the bags we made.  It was an easy pattern to do and quick too.  These will be given to the local nursing home in our area.

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After making the walker bags, we could sew on whatever we wanted to.  I brought my D4P blocks to finish putting together.  I had all the rows made and I just needed to sew them all together.  I got all the rows put together and showed it to the group and  they loved it.  I then had to teach them how to make them... So, we had a class right then. All I need to do now, is put borders on this and it will be ready for quilting.  I didn't take a picture of it but will once the borders are on.  You've seen one like this a few times on my blog so I won't bore you with it now.....

 

One of the girls was making hot pads or hot bowl pads. I'm not sure what you call them.  She was using leftover pieces of batting measuring 9 1/2" and squares that measured 10 1/2".  She put these together and made a hot pad to hold bowls coming out of the microwave.  I'll show you how to do these this week.  I didn't take any pics of it either but she gifted me a finished one for showing her how to do the disappearing 4 patch block.  This was fun to make and see how it was done.  She said she gave these as gifts for Christmas to everyone she knew and everybody loved them. 

Here's a few pics from Saturday.

 

This quilt was made by one of my friends. She made it for her young friend that goes to church with her.  Dana is her name and she loves red and purple and thinks the red hat ladies are great so my friend Linda, searched the internet to come up with fabric. A few years ago, this fabric was everywhere. Of course, she didn't need it then!  Anyway, this was made and quilted by Linda and Dana got it Saturday when she came to see what everyone was doing...she loved it.

 

My friend, Suzette was making this Harley Davidson quilt for one of her friends.  She made a quilt for her boyfriend last year and someone saw it and asked her to make them a quilt.  The middle part of the quilt is a Harley flag...

 

It was a fun day and productive too.  I want to have a lot more fun days like this this year!

 

 

 

Rainbow Scrap blocks and rainbow bracelet

I decided a few days ago when the new year rolled around that I'm not stressing out this year over how much I get done.  I'm just going to enjoy myself and work on whatever I want to. Yes, I want to finish some projects and get as many things done as I can but it's going to be as I want to.  Yes, I have a whole list of projects to finish, projects I want to start, quilts I need to quilt and I could go on and on, but this is the one area of my life that is keeping me together. So, I am just going to go at my own pace and hopefully get everything done that needs doing.   I am going to continue to do the rainbow scrap challenge hosted by Angela...I love this and enjoy using up my scraps. I stopped halfway during the year last year and now it's time to start it up again.

This month is blue for the rainbow scrap challenge.  Blue I can do!  I have alot of blue in my scraps...I didn't realize it when I first started sewing that I was buying alot of blue.  Nearly everything I made had blue in it.   It finally dawned on me that I'm a blue girl!  Anyway, I'm glad it's blue month and I can make some blue blocks....

I pulled some projects out and decided to work on them once I saw what others were working on.  I decided I would pull out my Carolina Chain blocks and I call it the Box in a box block. I forget what the actual name is....Anyway, I was able to make the blue blox in a box block for this month to add to the other blocks I made last year.  I hope to get this quilt done this year. I plan on being a good girl and sticking to the program. 

Here's my box in a box block for this month.

 

Here it is with the ones I did last year.

 

I made 18 blocks of the Carolina Chain.  These are quick and easy. They are just 9 patch variation blocks.

 

Two different blocks and they actually go together like this. 

 

I'm not sure how many blocks I need yet, but I'll soon be taking a count. These are fun to make with scraps.

 

Here's my rainbow bracelet I made yesterday morning.  I thought it only fitting to show it now that I'm working on the rainbow blocks challenge.  If you want to see what everybody else is working on, go over to Angela's blog or click this link and see what they are doing.

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That's all I have for now, I've got to get busy finishing another scarf for a friend of mine.  So, that mean's its TV time too!

Scarves and D4P blocks

Hello everyone, I hope you are having a great new year...the holidays have just flown by. The whole year just flew by for me  and I can't believe it is now 2014!  So, Happy New Year!

I have been busy with knitting and I've made several scarves.  I gave away alot of scarves at Christmas but I'm still working on them.  I've had several friends ask me to make them some once they saw the ones I made.  Here are the scarves I finished this week.  I just finished the blue one last night and I think it is beautiful.  It is my favorite but blue is also my favorite color.... I made the black, gray and white one Sunday afternoon, it was easy-peasy as it was nothing but chain stitch using your two fingers.  I wore it to work on Monday and everybody loved it.  I can't believe it.  This was the simplest thing I've ever done and this was the one everybody liked the most....go figure!

 

 

 

 

Here's the other scarves I made last week too.  I still have about 10 more to make.

 

 

 

 

Today, I got up and made a rubber band bracelet.  I gave the grandkids all a rainbow loom for Christmas and I got me one too.  I wanted to learn to make them in case they needed help.  This is all the rage here and it was easy to do.  I saw my oldest grandson yesterday and asked how he was doing with the rubber band bracelets. He had on a long sleeve shirt. He pulled the sleeve back and showed me 5 bracelets.  They were not  the simple one either but all were the more difficult ones.  I guess he's doing good with this and he can show me how to make them!   I thought it was pretty cool that he (and the other grandkids too) loved this simple gift and he's actually making them.  I forgot to take a picture of my bracelet but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about....

 

 

After that, I started cutting out 5" squares to make 20 more Disappearing 4 Patch blocks.  This is the third D4P quilt I am making. The other two were given to my granddaughters this past year for their birthdays. This one is for me.  I have been making blocks here and there for this one and finally decided to start putting it together.  I had seventy two blocks made and laid them out on the floor to see how I wanted to put them together.  (I used to have a design wall but since my MIL moved in, I can't get to it for all the furniture in the way!  It is really tough to work on the floor!)

 

 I made the granddaughters a large twin size quilt with 63 blocks each.  I was thinking that 72 blocks would be big enough but decided it needed to be bigger.  So, I started sewing more blocks today.  I finished all the blocks today, here they are below. I started putting the rows together but ran out of time.  I'll finish this one up this week, I hope.  The quilt will now be 9 blocks wide by 10 blocks long....90 blocks in all.  I'll put a 2 1/2" white border around the blocks then a final border of 6". So, it should be big enough, I think....I do believe this will be my last D4P quilt but who knows what the year will bring??? It's too early to say now, huh?

 

 

I also made these two French Rose blocks today.  These will be going to my group. Everyone is making two blocks and they will be put together to make a quilt for the church that we meet at.  Every year we give the church a quilt and this one is the one that was chosen for this year. 

 

I hope you have had a great weekend so far.  Til next time, happy stitching.