Do you put unusual stuff on your quilts? I've been embellishing in earnest lately. A few weeks ago, I wrote about stripping this 8" x 8" quilt from scraps. The key and the hawk charm came with holes, making stitching easy. The yellow fish, from a vintage necklace, had a broken hole, so I glued a brooch finding to his back (he can be unpinned from the quilt and worn, a bonus!)
It's Finish It Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts, and boy, do I have a finish for you! This was originally a Quilt for Sarah. Sarah passed away this last Memorial Day. She is sorely missed! But this isn't a post about missing and sadness. This is a post about celebration and remembrance. A sharing among friends. Friends near and far, here and gone, but never absent. This last week, I
read moreHere is a sample of the simple, utilitarian quilts my grandmother, Mary Hamrick Tague, made for her family. She used her foot-pedal Minnesota sewing machine to piece squares from our old clothes, remnants from sewing projects, any leftover fabric she could find. It’s a time capsule of patterns and colors from the 1940s through 1960s.
One Patch – Mary Hamrick Tague – 1960s
One Patch – Mary Hamrick Tague – Detail with Back and Binding
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I’ve been collecting the block patterns for the Women of the Bible quilt for awhile. I really like these patterns because they offer a little Bible lesson in addition to the block instructions. There is also space for personal reflection so you end up with a journal to document your quilt.
As I was digging through my scrap bin the other day I had this block in the back of my mind and found three fabrics that would work for the first block, appropriately named Eve. It finishes 15” square so it took some searching to find scraps large ...
As you may recall from a recent post, I spent Christmas stripping and cheating, in a moralistic sort of way. One of the things I made from leftovers was this:
On Friday all the rows for the English Garden pattern were joined. The center was fully assembled and the inner strip border was added. 
Today’s block is Tic Tac Toe. This block is the first block in the Blossom Heart Quilt’s Bee Hive Quilting Bee series.
You can find the tutorial for Tic Tac Toe at Blossom Heart Quilts. Alyce has made a great block that pieces together quickly and is a lot of fun.
I know that this is one block at a time…but here are some samples that I’ve made:
I am also working on an entire quilt top of this block. It is going to be a surprise gift for someone special!!
I am way too much ...
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I’ve had several people ask if I’m foundation piecing the hundred square blocks. Nope, just strip piecing them, then turning them and sub-cutting into more strips.
I am loving making these as much as the granny square blocks. Fourteen hundred patches so far!
It’s mindless activity, totally relaxing and so easy to make them perfect. It’s also a great way to use up some outdated fabrics that I no longer care for. Cut this small, the prints are negligible and I love the dark, homey feel of these colors.
I’m rather hoping the fabric I ...
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| The Graduation Quilt |
A finished quilt.
I’m flaking out again on the 2009 Designer Mystery BOM. I’m ready to set it aside again and work on something else!
As a matter of fact, I’ve already begun working on something else, although I haven’t packed the BOM up yet, I probably will. I love the fabrics, love the blocks, but for some reason I have a hard time sticking with that quilt. It will get done eventually.
I saw this quilt a few weeks ago in a Keepsake Quilting magazine. It’s just a scrappy quilt made of nothing but one inch squares ...
read moreWhen I finished quilting Fractured Fragments I said I was going to do some fast projects next .
The Batik Crossroads quilt is now quilted and bound and read for one of the twin beds in the guest house.
I freemotion quilted this one fast. Very fast. I did this 3-legged zig zag in each block and oriented it with the strip in each block.
This is where I distinguish blankets from quilts. I know that a lot of people get upset when someone calls a quilt a blanket. I take the word blanket as a compliment. To me it means ...
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Yesterday I did a review on the book Scrappy Fat Quarter Quilts and I couldn't resist starting a couple new quilts. There was so many neat designs in the book but these two quilts looked perfect for my scraps. Do I need more quilts.....more projects......no, but that has never stopped me before! These may take some time to make as they will be my "in-betweeners". Both quilts are in their own box so I can pull one of them out at a moments notice whenever I want a break from my current quilt.
The first one is ...
Santa put some block sets under the tree for me this year. 
My string braid quilt is done! I talked about this quilt and shared a tutorial for making the blocks back in this post. I have been working on string quilts ever since I sorted my strings back in November. This first finish was the brown and blue traditional quilt, and this is the second.
A New Year and new beginnings! I'm gonna list my goals for 2015, and you can help me stick to them! For the blog, I want to up the friendly and helpful factor. Make a menu bar, make pages for Tutorials and have more links to fun stuff for you and the fam. For me, I want to take more walks just to explore. Walks in moonlight, walks with the Dawg, and The Hubster, Wee
read moreI spent Christmas Day (and the following two days) plunging into my scrap stash, stripping and cheating.
Strip piecing, that is. And also, cheating by turning old leftover strip sets into something new.
The first step was to unlatch the Suitcase of Terror, which holds my scraps. The pile immediately sproinged upwards, like an ambitious vampire emerging from its coffin:
: 
I pulled out a bunch of long strips, and sewed them together.
This creation did not inspire me. In fact, it bummed me out. So I continued digging through the ever-growing pile. (Scrap stashes are like egg whites - the more ...
