A Flimsy, Finally

Here's some early May Day flowers for you!

My granddaughters came over on Saturday, and A~ wanted to make paper flowers.  I kept making them after she left!  They were fun.  I used this tutorial.  They call them carnations, but I think mine look more like ranunculus. They were fun to make!  A~ and I made more and different flowers than this, but I forgot to get a picture of them.  She wanted some flowers for the pottery vase that DH made for her - how sweet!  

I have to put these up where Dunkel can't get to them, because he gets them and carries them around the house at night.  When I woke up yesterday there was one lying in the upstairs hallway.  At least it wasn't in bed with me!  (Have I ever mentioned what a crazy cat Dunkel is??  He often brings his toys and puts them in bed with us at night.)

The pipe cleaners were still out on the counter when The Kid got home and made a disturbing discovery with his package of Twizzlers.  Weird, huh?  Is all that food coloring even good for you?  I'm guessing Not.

OK, enough silliness - back to quilting now!  Here is my Liberated Log Cabins from the other day.   I finally got it all sewn together and the first border on it.  

I had started the Liberated Equilateral Sawtooth border in the class with Gwen Marston last year.  Gwen had demonstrated it for us.  I was a little worried because I couldn't quite remember how to do it.  So you can imagine how relieved I was to find that the instructions are also in her Liberated Quiltmaking II book! (page 67)  It was easier than I remembered it.  I had so much fun I made 2 borders!

The 2nd border I managed to get even wonkier.  I got brave enough to play around with it, and I'm really happy with how it worked.  I like it so much I may have to make a whole quilt like this someday!.

I thought maybe all triangles in the borders might be overpowering for the log cabins, and I wanted to mix things up some, so then I made the pieced insert borders.  Those were fun too.  Finally I tied it all together with more of the plaid that is in the centers of the log cabins.  And look, there's even points on some of those triangles!  So, it's now a liberated not-really-but-kind-of-medallion!  

And this is all that's left of the plaid fabric.  Enough to do a little something on the back of the quilt, hopefully.  Which I will try to do sometime this week.  I want to get this basted and ready to quilt soon.

My crumb blocks quilt is back from the long-armer, and I'm currently getting the binding done.  I'm almost 1/2 way around the quilt, so pictures to come soon!  Which is a good thing, because the next quilt is already in the mail and on it's way here.  Whoo hoo!  I LOVE getting quilts back from the quilter!

Spring Is Really Here!

Spring has taken it's time getting to Western Washington, but I think we can safely assume now that it's really here.  Everything is blooming *ah-choo!*, the swallows and bugs are here, the frogs are croaking and the birds and ducks are courting and nest building. Oh, and the lawn needed mowing!  We won't talk about all the weeds busily growing everywhere, OK?

Here is my camellia.  I wasn't sure it would bloom this year, because of our big ice storm in January.  It didn't bloom in 2011 because of an early, hard freeze and snow storm the previous November.  But here it is!  I'm so glad to know that it survived.

And here are some sweet little violets.  They are all over the yard, and I just love them.  I keep threatening to put them in pots so that I can enjoy them up close, but I never seem to get to it.

Here are my blocks for the Block Lotto this month.  The pattern is called Hot Crossed 9-Patch.  I only got 2 made, and I'm hoping it's enough to win.  One can hope, right?  I really like this block.  If I don't win some of these, I may have to put this on my Bucket List of quilts to do.  I certainly have the plaid stash to do it, and then some!

The Kid got sick with a nasty virus about 3 weeks ago.  Then I got it a week later.  And, of course, DH got sick a week after me.  It's not the flu, according to the doctor, just a virus.  It has really kicked our butts. We even had to cancel having the family over for Easter.  :(  

 I'm finally feeling better, but I'm not totally up to speed yet.  And I'm still coughing some, although I have managed to get off the cough meds and inhalers finally.  DH is still fighting it.  The house has pretty much gone to rack and ruin in the meantime.  Ugh.  I hate having to do all that housework when I start feeling better.  Not that I ever like doing housework, you understand.  *grin* 

The only thing good about this is that I did manage to get some sewing done!  DH HATES the vaporizer.  I really needed it.  So, my solution was to basically lock myself in the quilt studio with the steam monster and sew.  And I made progress!

I started with 4 blocks and various bits and parts from the Liberated Log Cabin class I had with Gwen Marston last year.  This is what I had after 2 or 3 days of free-piecing the blocks.

BTW, this piece is really hard to get a decent picture of.  The green and turquoise fabrics are pretty bright and that hot pink is really bright!  The darkest fabric isn't really black, it's purple and it's not as dark as it looks here.  Maybe when it's all put together I can get a photo with true colors outside in better light.

And this was the next day, starting to put the blocks together and add the border pieces.  I'm working on more borders now, and will have more photos soon.  I'm happy with how this is coming together.  And it's been so fun to work on that I didn't mind being sick so much.  I've spent just about every evening for the last week in the quilt studio working on this.    

Of course, my quilting kitty, Shade, had to be in the studio with me.  You can see he's holding down those pesky fabric strips for me.  Actually, this is him NOT looking at the camera.  He doesn't like getting his photo taken too much.  I got quite a few photos just like this.

Got him!  Look at that long-suffering look on his face - hee hee!  Don't worry - he got lots of kisses and pets for being a good boy and letting me get a shot of him.  He's so happy when we're in the studio together. 

Happy Easter!

Happy Passover and Happy Spring Holiday!  Whatever you celebrate, I hope you have a good one.

Here's a little "cheater" cloth quilt I made a few years ago.  I just took a cute Debbie Mumm print that I only had a small scrap of and added some borders to it.  Quick, easy and fun and I do love me some bunnies!

It's been a while since my last post and I have very little to show for it.  I've hardly been in the quilt studio in the last two weeks.  I did get some Block Lotto blocks started, but they're not ready to show yet.

Here are some "liberated" Disappearing 4-Patches that I made for a friend's birthday gift last month.  The theme was pastels, so I decided to use some of the fabrics that she and I dyed/painted together for her gift.  The green in the blocks above was originally some hand-marbled fabric that I made, but I wasn't happy with it.  Too much white and not enough of the marbled greens, so I over-dyed it with green last year.  I think it's much improved now.  The blue is an over-dyed white-on-white fabric.

These 2 blocks were my first try and they're my favorites!  And they were a dumb mistake design opportunity.  I started with the pink/orange and blue/green fabrics and made a 4-patch.  (To see how to do this wonky 4-patch technique, go see the tutorial on the  Love Laugh Quilt blog here.  Thanks, Beth!)  Just as I was doing the wonky cutting, it dawned on me that I needed 2 4-patches that are alike to make this block wonky.  So, there I was with one wonky block that was not going to fit back together.  The problem was, I didn't have enough of those 2 fabrics to cut more patches from.  So, I had to improvise.  I found the purple and yellow fabrics and thought all the fabrics played nicely together, so I made another 4-patch.  I took the first block (remember, it was already sliced and diced) and layered it on top of the still-complete 2nd 4-patch and veeerrrry caaarefully cut along the "lines".  Then I shuffled and sewed it back together.  Ta Da!  It worked!

I am so pleased with how these blocks came out.  Those wonderful pastel colors remind me of Easter eggs and jelly beans!.  Now, I think I have to make a whole quilt of these with my large stack of hand-dyed fabrics that have been waiting for just the right project!  Oh goodie, another project to start!  

Happy quilting!