What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Monday morning's kitchen window storm view. 

There were numerous accidents, three of which involved fatalities. I'll never understand how things stay open here no matter the weather. 

We are completely cleared out now and the temperatures have plummeted -27C this morning; however, the sunshine today is most welcome. I did three bouts of shoveling keeping our steps and the veranda clear and was so happy that the old arms held up and no soreness. Ironically, I'm actually having little twinges in my right arm from the crocheting. Nearing the last round of my Yuletide Blanket.  It is ...

Hello Friends, it’s Tuesday again! It’s the last Tuesday of January. How did that happen? I hope you have had a good month so far, sewing and quilting-wise!

Sometimes small and quick projects give a good break in the midst of working on big quilt projects. I am happy to share with you a quick and easy quilt that is featured in a newly released “Quilts to Make in a Weekend” book by Annie’s. My Star Shine quilt is on the cover! Click HERE to purchase the book. I actually have another quilt in the book, which ...

I have a terrible time deciding how I want to quilt my quilts! I’ve been waffling and debating with myself for weeks about how I want to quilt this one — as usual. But at least I’ve finally decided on how I want to do the large white blocks; I’ll make a final decision on […]

The challenge in our guild this year is to make a small quilt with the theme of Celebration for our guild’s 40th anniversary year. These little quilts will be displayed in March for National Quilting Day on the third Saturday. We are provided with a fat quarter of the challenge fabric with the instruction to use at least a quarter of it, and as much as we could. You know what they say about best laid plans, LOL, and my brain was misfiring when I began cutting fabric. I showed you my design idea last time, and needed 8 ...

Learn how to take your square fabrics and make pictures and quilts with them. With pixelated quilt patterns, you’ll love how your quilt turns out. Drop in a heart, apple or animal – there are so many options.

These pixel quilts are perfect for using your charm packs or jelly rolls cut into squares.

They are also great for digging through your scrap bin. No matter the color or shade, they work together so well.

Pixelated Heart – Diary of a Quilter

Pixelated Juicy Apple – Janome Life

Pixel Heart Pattern – Robert Kaufman

Retro Camper – Fabric.com

Flamingo – Flamingo Toes

Outstanding Orchard ...

It has been below freezing a lot of this week, and although I generally walk unless it is below zero, I took a break this week. We had snow and I didn't want my dog Zeus to slip and slide on the street with his hip trouble. He did not insist on walking, and was happy to spend time out in the back yard. He enjoys the cold.

This means I didn't take a lot of pictures, so I found an old one from 2009.

2022: 15 Minutes to Stitch Week 4

We were housebound for four days this past week, which meant a lot of projects were either finished or new ones begun. A few Zoom calls took up a bit of time, and I got a bit more progress on the epic historical novel I’m currently reading. Just before the snow started, I got this photo of Oliver on the retaining wall, and noticed my daffodils are coming up way too early! It was so warm before the snow, they are confused. I think they’ll be OK, daffodils can take the cold.

On the feeder, a huge pileated ...

Here are some new Gnomes that I designed for customers. You might like them too!

SKIING GNOME is gosh darn cute as he tumbles down the ski slope! I am putting him on a pillow!

PIRATE GNOME and PIRATE SHIP can be used together as a pair of pillows, etc. or separately. They sure would look great in a kid’s room!

I love “My Hero”, DOCTOR GNOME! With the stethoscope ready to use…this cute Doctor is ready to be heroic.

NURSE GNOME is ready with the hypodermic! These ...

Continuing with my new series of Project QUILTING artist trading cards (ATCs) I created a 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" quilt featuring a silhouette of my 3-year-old niece. I used solid black batik with black MistyFuse to fusible appliqué the silhouette to my background fabric. My quilting is minimal, just long the edge of the silhouette (more easily seen from the back). This is my submission to this week's In Silhouette one week quilt challenge from Project QUILTING.

I started with this photo my sister took for me of my niece. I printed it on paper at ...

Start to finish in just a few weeks – must be a record! Our recent snow and ice is partly to credit – not much going outside. The bookcase quilt top is finally done. It was fun and tedious at the same time. There was cutting of lots of different fabrics, different sizes. To personalize the quilt, I included some appliques like a mug with the recipient’s first name initial, and a snow globe with an “engraved nameplate.” I also added a kitty and a vase with flowers. I love how the wood grain fabric brought it all together.

As luck ...

I tried to avoid temptation by not looking to see what the challenge for Project Quilting was for this week. I want to finish a quilt.

But I won a prize from Project Quilting last week, and I accidentally copied and pasted my 15-minutes-to-stitch stats last week without deleting the sentence that said I was working on the Project Quilting challenge. So what else could I do? I had to take a peek to see how hard it would be do do.

The challenge seems easy enough - silhouette. 

“Birds learn how to fly, never knowing where the flight will take ...

How appropriate to have my Snowbound (Kathy Schmitz's fabric line) Hexie runner in use. All day Monday we were mostly house bound while a blizzard blew around us. That is unusual for here as while we get lots of snow, we lack the winds to create a blizzard. 

 Neddy and I had a bit of a hard time doing our early morning walk. I had to stop twice to catch my ...

The challenge for this week’s Project Quilting Season 13.2 inspired me: “In Silhouette”. Participants have only a week to begin and finish a quilted item for the challenge, and it took me a few days just to come up with the idea.

But once I did get the idea, I was off and running or should I say off and sewing)! I found the perfect fabric for the background from my stash of hand dyed and painted fabric. It reminded me of a sunset.

I free motion quilted the background first using a variety of variegated threads. Next ...

We have some very exciting news to share today… We wrote a book! Our dream for years has been to be published authors, and we’re so happy that Martingale finally made our dreams come true. It’s been a serious pinch-me situation, but we are over the moon to finally be able to share this with […]

Hello Friends, it’s check-in day for our Leaders/Enders Sewalong. Months ago when I was working with Marcus Fabrics to develop designs for their Aunt Grace Sew Charming fabric line, I knew I was going to make this heart quilt leaders/enders style.

And I thought — why not see if some friends would like to join in for a stress-free “not-a-race” sewalong. Join in anytime! And HERE we are for our 4th installment. Good job if you have been keeping up!

Again, I stress — there is not really a deadline to this sewalong. You make these blocks as you ...

It has been a productive week of sewing, and I still have today and tomorrow to play. We were housebound from the snow until late Wednesday, and I was excited that I’d be able to get out and go to our guild meeting. Then the guild meeting was canceled, as there were still icy side roads and school was converted to virtual learning. When this happens, our venue closes, so we couldn’t meet. Oh, well, I headed back to the sewing room and got busy on the chicken fabric project and a new challenge project.

I had a ...

About a year ago I participated in the I Spy book release blog hop by making these two quilt blocks from the book. Each is a paper pieced block in which I chose to use solid fabrics.

It is season 13 of Project QUILTING and as much as I love to participate, I really have been focusing on finishing works in progress. I'd convinced myself that instead of participating in this season's one week quilt challenges by conceiving, starting, and completing a quilt in a week (for each of the six challenges) I would choose a WIP from ...