finally done!

I've been working away on Shawn's row for awhile but progress has been slow with everything else that's going on in life. Well now I can officially call it done and get it in the mail to her so she can see all her beautiful rows. Her theme was fairies and dragons and since she all ready had lots of fairies I thought what she really needed was a baby dragon-that way her quilt will never run out of dragons! Mama dragon laid a whole passel of eggs and one little dragon is well on his way out of the shell!

Row Robin flies home...

I got my row by row round robin back the other day and have been dying to get pictures so I can show it off.

I intend to separate the rows and mix them up like a jigsaw puzzle so I told the other ladies in the swap that any size of block was fine and it didn't have to add up to 48 inches exactly. Then they just basted the rows together so they'd be easy to separate.

Aren't they gorgeous....drool...lol-I'm so glad they're mine!



There are my leftover scraps from the fabric I sent along and also some bits that I bought while my rows were traveling around getting all pretty. I'm planning to make some more stars to make the quilt bigger-I'd like to end up with a large lap or full sized quilt.

Broken Heart

I've not been a very productive quilter the last couple weeks but finally I've got something to show you.

This Broken Heart block is for Margaret-one of the August birthday girls in the birthday block swap.

This little block just didn't want to go together for me- I ripped and sewed, ripped and sewed and finally got it right. Lol-but I don't think I'll be making another one anytime soon!

I've also been working a little on Shawn's rows for the row robin swap and hope to have them finished this week so they can go home to here-I'm sure she's anxiously awaiting them!

Salted Peanut Chews

As requested here's the Peanut roll recipe-they are so good and easy. I can't take remember where I got the recipe but I can't take credit for inventing it-just enjoying it-over and over, and over...

Salted Peanut Chews

Base:

1 yellow cake mix

1/3 cup butter, room temp

1 egg

3 cups mini marshmallows

Topping:

2/3 cup corn syrup

1/4 cup butter, soft

2 tsp vanilla

1-10 oz pkg peanut butter chips

2 cups crispy rice cereal

2 cups salted peanuts

1. Heat oven to 350. In large bowl, combine cake mix, 1/3 cup butter and egg. Beat on low speed until crumbly. Press in bottom of ungreased 9x13 inch pan. Bake at 350 for 12-18 minutes or until a light golden brown.

2. Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle with marshmallows. Return to oven for an additional 1-2 minutes until marshmallows just begin to puff and melt. Let cool while preparing the topping.

3. In large sauce pan, combine all topping ingredients *except cereal and peanuts.* Heat just until chips are melted and mixture is smooth, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in cereal and peanuts. Immediately spoon warm topping over marshmallows. Carefully spread to
cover. Refrigerate 1hr or until firm. Cut into bars and store in covered container.

busy, busy

There hasn't been much happening on the quilting front this last week. Dd had a friend come over for a slumber party Monday and Tuesday nights. We went swimming Monday, went to the Science Center Tuesday and went swimming twice, and Wednesday we swam for a bit and then the girls played until friend's mom came to get here. Lol-do you all get the idea they like swimming? I think the pool is the one thing we'll miss most when we buy a house someday.

This weekend is the big family reunion on my dad's side. That branch of the family is pretty big and there's lots of kids in DD's age range so a good time is pretty much guaranteed. I made salted nut roll bars and cornbread salad to take for the meal and DD and I picked up a bunch of glow sticks for the kids to play with. (Just have to keep DD convinced that she can't bust into them until dark tomorrow.)

Next week they'll be some major butt busting on the quilting front so I should have updates galore for you.

Two more birthday blocks and my secret shame

This blue block is for Diane-she requested vibrant blue stars to make a quilt for a friend who lost her home in Katrina. It's the Florida Star pattern from quilterscache.

This sleepy little kitty is for Nell-she requested pet blocks-won't that be a fun quilt!


Ok-now brace yourself-I'm about to show you something ugly, really, really ugly. This is what my sewing space looks like right now.

You may be asking yourself-how can anyone even sew in that disaster area? Trust me you can't. I can't find anything and every time I try to do something I end up knocking something over. As you can see it's even spilling over onto the floor.

This weekend DD is going to her Grammy's house with Grandma so I've resolved to get my quilting space tidied up. Wish me luck!

Speaking of luck send some Itty Bitty's way-we're going to try to release her back to the outdoors this afternoon.

Morning glories

This is the block I made for Christine in round 2 of the birthday block swap. Her theme was "In my Garden." I absolutely love appliqué so I couldn't resist this lovely morning glory pattern.


The pattern finishes at 7 inches. I always cut my background fabric a little larger and I decided not to trim this down-Christine doesn't have any size preference so I figure that leaving it untrimmed will allow her to pick a size for it to end at and give her a little more flexibility when she puts her quilt together.

I also like to have a hand piecing project to take with me when I'm on the go-usually something fairly brainless so I don't have to do to much thinking and can just slap my patches together and sew. My new hand piecing travel project is a Thousand Pyramids quilt-I have no idea how big this will be-I'll just work on it until I'm sick of it and see what I end up with. I haven't got much done on this-I took it to my mom's house over the 4th but didn't spend a lot of time piecing.


It feels like I've cut a million triangles for this quilt but I'm sure there's going to have to be more scrap bin raiding before this is over. I've been scrounging for lights in my scrap bin- some of my lights are actually darks flipped over to the back because I'm definitely lacking in lightness.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have another completed birthday block to show you however DD wants a quilt for her stuffed T-Rex and is rather insistent that I work on it so I may be showing you something else entirely.

Lucky me!

I got my quilt from the ALQS today-I am beyond thrilled. I saw this gorgeous little tree of life quilt on Cathi's blog and knew I would be so jealous of whoever got it because it was perfect. When I opened the mailbox today and saw a package with a postmark from Ireland it was all I could do not to sit down right there and rip it open. I practically skipped back home and tore into it the second I got in the door.

Isn't it beautiful!

I couldn't get a good picture of the quilting but Kathi used a stipple in the middle for the tree lovely loose feathers in the corners that really complement the top.

She also sent me some some lovely bits of fabric and a Bailey's Irish Cream Truffle Bar. Our post man decided to flatten the chocolate bar a little bit when he stuffed it in our mailbox but you know what-squished chocolate tastes just as good-lol-I can vouch for that because I've all ready sampled the goods.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Cathi-in case I didn't mention it I'm thrilled!

I scream, you scream...

....we all scream for ice cream! Doesn't this little quilt remind you of Neapolitan ice cream? Especially-dadadum (that's my drum roll) the stripy binding!

Yes-I know that's not the best bound corner-that one just didn't want to fall in line properly. I did better on the others-honest.


See-this one's not warped.

And here's the whole striped ice cream quilt.

Once my quilt from the ALQS gets here I'm going to start hanging them on my little wall of quilts-I'm so excited!

Itty Bitty update

Itty Bitty made it through the night in her box. This morning we took the lid off to check her out and she caught a couple little bugs that were on the leaves in her box. She hopped up on the edge and decided to go explore my kitchen counters a little. Total Clorox moment-I assure you my counters will be getting scoured. She hopped around the sink and over to the dirty dishes on the counter.



Since she looked so frisky we offered her a little birdseed and some bread. She ate and ate so apparently a quiet night of rest got her ready for a big breakfast.

That whole chunk of bread disappeared into this tiny, tiny bird. With our luck she'll end up being too fat to fly. She did reward us with a lovely little song-either that or she was warning us to back up off her bread. Either way it was cute...

Our neighbor Kathleen is going to pick up a little bird cage for her at the store today so Itty Bitty can get out of the box but hopefully she'll heal up fast and not have to spend too much time in the box or the cage. Although if her wing doesn't heal enough to let her go I think Kathleen is rather enamored with her and can likely be talked into giving her a good home. I've all ready told Itty Bitty that Kathleen is the one she should be sucking up to.

pretty in pink and the call of the wild

Something quilty-I got the quilting done on my little 9 patch quilt. This photo doesn't show the color very well but it's the best picture of the quilting. I really like hand quilting these little tops-it doesn't take more than a day or two so it provides a lot more instant gratification than...oh...say that queen sized top that I've been hand quilting for the last 500 years.

I'm hoping to get it bound tomorrow-I'm going to have to be a little creative with the binding-I used scraps for this and I don't think there's enough of the border fabric left for the binding so I'll have to play around a little. Kathi did this really cool stripey binding on her framed 4 patch quilt-she may be my binding muse for the day.

On a non quilty note meet out little (hopefully temporary!) visitor.

Today DH and DD were outside with the cats when Sorry (cat 1) comes in the house with something in her mouth. Dh hollers at me to come see what it is. It was chirping and shrieking and at first I thought it was one of the little ground squirrels that frequent our patio. I was completely freaked because I was terrified she was going to drop this ground squirrel and it would be loose in our house. I finally get Sorry to very reluctantly release her prize and I realize it's a bird.

The bird goes scooting out the door in a desperate bid for freedom only to be pounced on by Tommy (cat 2). Normally Tommy shows complete disdain for anything Sorry does but this time she decided to be a team player...fine-whatever. I get the bird away from her only to discover that one wing is completely ajar and it can't fly.

So we get it a little box with some batting (hey-maybe this is a quilty post after all) and let it rest for awhile thinking maybe once it has a chance to relax it will be ok. After an hour it's wing is looking a little better but it's still not flying. Our neighbor who has some experience with birds gives it a good look over and says the wing isn't broken but might be sprained and little birdy is going to have to rest for a couple days. She also sexes the bird for us so we now know our guest is a girl.

So Itty Bitty as we've been calling her is hanging out in her pimped out shoe box with food and water, soft batting, and some leaves and will be spending a quiet night in our bathroom-far away from the cats I assure you! Hopefully in the next couple days the wing will be back to good and she'll be ready to fly back to her family.

Crazy mini and my quilty muse

I'm planning a wall hanging from the blocks I received from my crazy quilt swap. I decided on a 3x3 arrangement and since I ended up with 10 blocks I decided to make one a little mini. This block came from Randi and compared to the others I received the embellishments read a little pink so I decided to make it my mini. I spent Saturday afternoon embellishing away and finished it off in the early evening.


Close ups of the details



Yesterday I was cruising around my bloglines and happened to see this adorable mini Colene had made for her partner in the doll quilt swap on the about.com forum. I thought it was so cute I whipped out my red and blue scraps and made one of my own. (Of course mine is not quilted yet-I'm not that speedy!) This one measures about 16 inches square.

It was such a fun little quilt to make-thanks Colene for being my quilty muse!


I'm hoping to tackle something truly tiny soon-I've been working on some teeny little 3 inch log cabin blocks that have something like 21 bars each but I've been so busy with other things that they've been set aside for awhile-maybe it's time to dig them back out.

Booty Dilemma

Ok folks-can I probe your brains, delve into your psyche, and snag some opinions?

I got my partner info for the miniature booty swap and I'm debating fabric choices. I'm planning on a floral appliqué block surrounded by some kind of border. I don't usually pick borders until the center is finished-it seems to work out better if I wait and see what the top needs when the center is done.

I have my purple and green combo-there would also be a smidge of yellow in there-I forgot to put it in the photo. I don't have a focus type fabric for this one but I'm sure I can find something at the quilt store if I need to or I can do a fun pieced border with the purples and greens.



Then I have these lovely tulip FQ's and some coordinating fabrics. I adore these fabrics but I know orange and yellow don't do it for everyone.

So (this is where the probing comes in) if it was your quilt which color combo would you prefer? Purple and green? Orange and yellow? Both? Neither? (Oh please, please, please don't say neither-I don't want to dive back into my stash and look for more fabric.)

Birthday Beauties

I've been pleasantly productive today. It's a rainy, dreary day here and DD has been content to play on her own and watch some movies so I've been putzing around doing little odds and ends of quilting. I attached the binding to my postage stamp quilt and have it sitting on the couch to hand sew the back. I also marked the quilting design on the tiny 9 patch and got it sandwiched and pin basted so it's ready for quilting and did some embellishing on my crazy quilt blocks.

Last year I participate in the first round of the Birthday Block swap that Kate hosted. I was in two groups-in one group my theme was Halloween-I requested stars in any size divisible by 3 with black backgrounds. Here's a pic of the blocks I received.


The second group I was in I requested a chocolate covered cherries theme-I asked for chocolate browns, burgundies, and soft pink stars on cream backgrounds and this is what I received....

I was a little worried with the cherries group because when the blocks started coming in they were all so different I wasn't sure they'd go together in the end but once they were all laid out I loved them. I'll probably make a few more to tie them together. The Halloween blocks will be a quilt for the couch-I'm pondering settings for it- I was thinking maybe staggering the rows so they aren't lined up all matchy matchy.

Land of the Littles

I was so good yesterday and worked on lots of things I needed to do-really yucky stuff like cleaning the kitchen and some fun stuff like cutting out pieces for the next round of the the birthday block swap. See my little tub of cut out blocks-I actually have patterns picked, fabrics selected, and even some of my fabric cut for about half of the blocks and I even made one this weekend-not because it was the first one due but because I just had to try out the pattern. You won't have to wait too long to see it-I think it's one of my August blocks.


This morning I got up and was really in the mood to make a little quilt so I dug out my tub of 2.5 inch squares and this is the result.

It's about 16x18 inches. Since my tub of 2.5 inch squares is overflowing it was nice to use up a few of them-although 42 squares doesn't make much of a dent. I just randomly picked out a bunch of squares I liked and then played with the layout until I found one I liked. It took awhile to find a border fabric-I finally picked this one-18 of the 42 squares had some green in it so I thought the green border tied it all together nicely.

I found a piece of muslin for backing and after a short hunt through my pile of leftover batting pieces I got it sandwiched and did a little hand quilting on it. It's just the right size for hand quilting in the summer-it's far too warm to do anything that actually covers my lap.

My little postage stamp top only took an hour to make-I made it while I was watching Diagnosis Murder. (Yes, I know, it's a show for old people and it's cheesy as all get out but I can't help it I love that show.)

Since I was still in the mood to make something else I dug out my brown and pink strips and put this together while I watched a 2 hour Matlock movie. See about note for Diagnosis Murder-all I can say is my grandpa watched me a lot when I was a kid and I have the TV viewing taste of an 80 year old man.

This one is about 15 inches square-the 9 patches and solid blocks are 3 inches finished.

I'm still brainstorming ideas for my quilts for the Miniature Booty Swap-I think I've found the pattern that I want to use but I'm not off the fence yet.

churning them out

Check it out folks-3 posts in one day and 2 of them are actually productive. These are Kathi's rows for her row robin that I've been promising pictures of. I think these are just so lovely and elegant.




I made the row of double shoo fly blocks on the bottom. When Kathi posted her theme I thought shoo fly blocks would be so pretty in the soft, subtle taupes. When I got to her quilt all the rows were 12 inches. I decided 4-12 inch shoo fly blocks would be too blah and 8-6 inch blocks would look out of proportion with the other rows but 16-8 inch blocks doubled up would be just right. I'm really happy with how it turned out (and really hate to send Kathi's quilt onto the next person-doesn't it look like it wants to live with me?!)

Crazy for crazy quilts!

I got my blocks back from the crazy quilt swap I participated in and just had to take pictures to share-aren't they gorgeous!

Here's all my blocks together-I'm going to have so much fun playing with these.

Nell made this one...

Randi made this one...
Terri made this one...
Lisa Jo made this one...
Lou made this one...
Faye made this one...
Kathi made this one...
Linda made this one...
Lucy made this one...

I'll do some further embellishing on these and then they'll get trimmed down to about 8 1/2 inches and turned into a miniature quilt. Lol-see-I've got miniature quilts on the brain!

Look at me go!

I was all set today to show you my progress on my mini quilt for the ALQS swap I'm in but in a fit of productive energy last night I finished it! Ok, ok, I still have to write on the label so 99.9% done.

Here's the top...


Close up on the quilting...

A look at the little hanging tabs on the back.

This is the first mini quilt I've ever made and I found the process to be quite enjoyable. Good thing too since I've already signed up for the next round of the Miniature Booty Swap. We should be getting out partner info for that swap soon.

I learned a couple things from this swap-one is that it's nerve wracking trying to make a quilt for someone else! I really hope my partner likes this.

I think the next one I make I'll choose a block where there's not so many seams meeting in the corners. The points where 4 star blocks come together were definitely bulky even using a smaller seam allowance and it was definitely a challenge trying to get those points to match up.

DD is going to Grandma's this weekend so that means some lovely quilting time for me so hopefully I'll be showing you pictures of my row for the Row Robin I'm in either tonight or tomorrow.

I also signed up for the Birthday Block Swap Round 2 so hopefully I can work on a couple of those blocks with weekend. Not really because I need to but just because they're so darn fun. This is one of my favorite swaps. Last year I was in two groups-one theme was Halloween stars and the other was Chocolate covered cherries. I got gorgeous blocks from each of those. This year I'm in one group but it's a big one so I'll get as many blocks as I did from the last swap where I was in 2 groups. Instead of picking a theme I picked the Brasstown Stars block done with batiks on black backgrounds. I can't wait till September when I get my blocks!