Charming Snowmen

Yesterday I gave you a sneak peak of my newest Sewing for the Seasons project which I'm calling Charming Snowmen. I used to be a swap addict and these charms are from yet another swap on the HGTV Quilting Forum - 6.5" snow themed squares. It is always amazing to open a swap package and see the variety. I really love fabrics... vintage, modern and anything in between!

I'm following this pattern - Bill's Cozy Quilt from a Leisure Arts book called "Quick & Scrappy Quilts" - except I'm not using flannels and mine will be super scrappy.

Since the charms are laid out in 8 columns of 6 I started out by sorting my charms into 6 groups: green, mixed/large scale, not snowmen, country red, bright red and blue.  Then I filled in each group until I had 8 charms in each pile.

Next they went up on my design wall to "simmer" for about 24 hours while I looked them over from time to time and made some adjustments.

Now I'm adding sashing strips of this cream snowflake fabric to calm them down a little. I haven't decided if I'm going to use scrappy cornerstones or one fabric... I think I have a few snowflake fabrics in my stash. I'm thinking a blue border at this point to keep it looking more like winter than Christmas.

I've gradually shifted in an unplanned way to doing my piecing on Mr. Juki (TL2010Q) so yesterday I pulled the scrap batting and other things that Julia (Juki F600) had accumulated over her cover and was shocked to find that her walking foot was attached. This means I last used her when I quilted the borders on Scrappy Snowball using her serpentine stitch the 1st week of October - way longer ago than I thought! Poor neglected Julia. :-(

Next week when I get Mr. Juki set up for quilting it will feel decadent all over again to be able to take a break and do some piecing on Julia. I have had both of these machines for almost a year now and I could not not be happier. It has been so much fun connecting with other Juki lovers and providing information to/enabling new buyers.

Christmas UFO X2

Getting good pictures is so hard this time of year! I'm sad because I can't seem to capture the beauty of this quilt today, but I'm going to go ahead with the post and I'll try again for the money shot another day. The close up pictures are so much better. Too dark inside... too cold outside! After about 10 minutes my eyes were watering so bad I could barely see and of course my glasses were fogging over too. I see now the right edge is snow dusted a bit! Authentic Minnesota winter for you...

The pattern for this quilt is from the December 2003 issue of McCall's Quilting and it is called Christmas Fantasy. I remember getting the magazine in the mail and getting online immediately to start buying the fabrics I needed - Robyn Pandolph's Christmas Folk Art line - because I wanted the EXACT same quilt in the magazine! I was less than a year into my quilting journey at that time. I still find these fabrics to be breathtakingly beautiful.

When I pulled out all of my UFOs to take pictures for my UFO Page earlier in the year  I fell in love with these fabrics all over again and it was my dream to have it ready for this Christmas. So I am keeping the name Christmas Fantasy because (pinch me!) it is done. Merry Christmas to me!

Cindy at Tops to Treasures was so wonderful to work with on this quilt. She gave me two options to think about and I just could not be happier with the end result. Thank you again Cindy!

Moving back indoors for the back side of the quilt...

Cindy's work shows up better in this light even though the pretty fabrics don't. The rail fence blocks were from an online swap that I hosted on the HGTV Quilting Forum back in 2007. I had assembled them into a top and put it on a hanger. When I put the borders on Christmas Fantasy I started looking through my stash for some backing fabric with no luck at all.

But when I pulled out Christmas Rail Fence I thought hmm... and emailed Cindy to see what she thought. No problem she said. And amazingly it was about the same dimensions so I added the border and that's how you finish 2 UFOs in 1!

There are lots of fun Christmas novelty prints in these blocks which I have a bit of an obsession with. My Christmas stash could generate at least a dozen quilts (and I might be underestimating by a wide margin actually) so I'm excited to be able to flip the quilt over for a different look. Isn't the quilting gorgeous?

I'm linking this UFO Finish X2 up to TGIFF@Quilt Matters, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop@Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Link A Finish Friday@Richard and Tanya Quilts, Needle & Thread Thursday@My Quilt Infatuation and Finish it Friday@Crazy Mom Quilts.

And I am linking up to the Mid-Month Check In and will be linking it up to A Lovely Year of Finishes at the end of the month because this is my finish for that Challenge. Done early for the 1st time EVER!

A Finish for WIP Wednesday

My quiltathon is still going strong... here is my ABC Charm Quilt which is one of my Q3 and September Goals. This is also UFO Finish #40 for 2013. The charms in this quilt are from an online 2008 swap on the HGTV Quilting Forum. Each of us was assigned a letter and cut our fabric into 26 6.5" charms. It was a fun package to open when the swap was complete!

My letter was "A" and I found a print with aliens on it. You can see it below followed by Bugs and Candy Corn in the top row. I shopped for the cute teal alphabet print to use for the 4 corner squares/cornerstones and added the striped sashing. I used teal thread from Connecting Threads for the quilting.

I always find it interesting to see which fabrics jump out and catch my attention once the quilt is finished. As I'm doing the quilting on these scrappy UFOs I really enjoy studying the fabrics on each pass. And, it is rather amazing to me how good a quilt made from fabrics contributed by 26 people sight unseen can look!

Can you identify the letters in both pictures? The Guitars on red are one of my favorites. I'm not much of a fan of Spiders but the ones below are pretty cute. "U" is kind of a tough letter but the Utensils are perfect!

I had enough of the alphabet print to use as backing and since I'd already used a stripe I chose the black & white polka dot for binding. I had to show you the Queen of Quilts and the Wolves too!

I'm going to be sending this quilt to a little boy in our extended family who just turned 3. I hope he has fun using it to learn his letters and of course cuddle up in too!

What's Hot:

• Puppy Baby Quilt - My tension was off while I was quilting it so Mr. Ripper had to get busy... then I unscrewed Mr. Juki's throat plate and cleaned out gobs of lint. Oops! Cue round 2 of quilting.
• Thimbleberries Jacob's Ladder - It is sandwiched and next in line.
• Four Patch & Friends - Just a few more seams for a flimsy... then it's going in the mail after photos are taken to my LAQ.
• "And Sew On" QAL - September's block is coming along and I'm loving it!
• Blue & Yellow Strings - They are going up on the design wall - might be a flimsy yet this month.

What's Next:

• October and Q4!!

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday@Freshly Pieced.

Robotics and Scrappy Sunday

After being so focused on quilting during our long winter I am finding it hard to find a balance between sewing time and all of the other activities going on. End of school year events, graduations, yard work... May is a busy time of year!

Yesterday our son's Robotics Team competed at the State Tournament. Robotics is fairly new in Minnesota but is rapidly growing with over 180 teams state wide. As our son says "It's a sporting event for nerds!". Our team was very excited just to make it to State (first time) and ended up being the 3rd ranked team out of 30 in the qualifying rounds, winning their quarterfinal alliance match and competing for the state title!

Photo from TwinCities.com - Robotics Venue at U of M Campus

This years challenge was to build a robot from a starter kit that shoots frisbee discs into the slots that you can see at the top of the competition area. There is also a climbing pyramid that the robots attempt to climb for extra points at the end of the match. It involves strategy too as you can play defense to block the other teams robots from getting clean shots.

Teams compete with 2 other schools in Alliances which are random draws during the qualifying rounds and the 4 highest ranked teams get to pick other teams to join them for the finals. 3 robots from 3 schools vs. 3 robots from 3 schools compete against each other (and the clock) to score the most points. Another element of strategy - do you pick a high scoring robot or one that plays good defense? I can't tell you how many times I laughed hearing some of the team names (The Fighting Calculators was my favorite!).

A bit of background on our son... he is 1)very smart 2)very introverted and 3)prefers to do his activities on his own. When he was in golf my Mom and I went to one of his events and he was not at all happy with us! I was used to following all of our daughter's activities and wanted to do the same for him, so it has been a learning experience to adapt to his wishes.

Because of this we didn't travel to the meet. We were able to watch the alliance matches online and saw his team receive their 2nd place trophy and medals while communicating via text with our son. Last night they returned to the school with an escort of our local fire brigade and we met them in the parking lot. I actually got a big hug from him (very rare!) and loved seeing him so animated and beaming with his medal draped around his neck. We stayed up late hearing him tell us as all about their trip and their day.

I just love it when kids are able to enjoy success, especially when it is unexpected which seems to make it even better! And, while I would have liked to experience the event firsthand, it was pretty special hearing about HIS experience through HIS point of view last night. He was happy and that's all that mattered.

I did get to some scrappy sewing this week. After finishing my RSC13 blocks I was still in a piecing mood so I pulled out one of my UFOs to work on. This is Weed Whacker from Quiltville.com. I'm making these blocks in sets of 4 using 6 2" strips in different combinations, I had 16 blocks made and added 20 to my bin.  I need to decide how big I want this top to be, the blocks are 9" finished.  They are fun to make and qualify for easy mindless sewing.

Yesterday while I was burning nervous energy over the robotics competition I cut 5" charms and coins for a HGTV Quilting Forum swap I'm participating in. Yellows, blues and brights are the themes.

I'm linking up to Scrap-Basket Sunday@Kim's Big Quilting Adventure.

Fun Mail

I received my box of pincushions from the HGTV Quilting Forum swap today!

My quilting room is certainly going to have more personality... with a pincushion for every mood. My photo doesn't pick up the beautiful beading along the sides of the yellow one very well (we are having another gloomy day). Aren't they super cute? I might have to buy some more pins!

I recently won two giveaways that I wanted to share. The first was from Sinta at Pink Pincushion who had a week of DST (De-Stashing Time) giveaways. She sent me this Jo Morton book and 4 packages of Moda "Candy". It's always fun to have a new book to browse and you know how much I love pre-cuts!

Then last week I received these goodies from Linda at life, quilts and a cat too who held a giveaway during the Stitch Me Up Embroidery Blog Hop. I was expecting the needle threader and the spring closure hoop but she put in a few surprises. She included a super cute charm pack for my Project Linus work and a bright yellow microfiber cloth (she had asked for my favorite color).

She wrote that she uses microfiber cloths to hold the strands & bits of thread and floss while she is stitching. It works like a charm! I spread it across my lap when I was using Mr. Ripper on Saturday and all of those pesky little bits of thread clung to that cloth instead of my fleece pullover.  I highly recommend you give this a try.

Thanks again HGTV swappers, Sinta & Linda for brightening my days with fun mail!

Pincushions & Paper Piecing

My pincushions for a HGTV Quilting Forum swap are stuffed and ready for pins! I used an easy to follow tutorial found HERE at Very Berry Handmade. The only change I made was to cut my fabric strips 1 1/4" instead of 1" because I wanted them to be bigger, mine finished at 4.5" instead of 3".

I went with 2 versions highlighting different colors from the black fabric which I also used for the backing. It had been awhile since I've used polyfill stuffing - it felt like I stuffed and stuffed and then stuffed some more!

The March block for "And Sew On..." is called Just Spoolin' Around.

While I'm very happy with how the block turned out (minus the corner that I'll be fixing), I'm mostly just relieved to have finished it. Quite frankly, I'm starting to wonder if my paper piecing skills/methods are at the level these blocks require. 

It doesn't help my confidence level much when I realized just now that my January & February blocks are about a 1/2" smaller than my March block. So, I have several things to figure out before I make April's block.

• Obviously I did something different when I printed my pattern for March.
• I've read on blogs about using freezer paper for PP and I think I need to find out more about this method. I'm currently using paper from That Patchwork Place made for foundation piecing.
• There has to be a better way to make sure the fabric stays where it is supposed to be! And, I was taught to leave the paper in until you are done but that makes the tiny sections so bulky to work with. 

If you have any advice or can recommend a good tutorial or book on complex paper piecing please help! I love this pattern but when I start looking at some of the upcoming blocks I have a sinking feeling that I'm not up to the challenge.

At least I can click off 2 March Goals as DONE - yay for that!

Fun With Fabric

I have been happily sidetracked from UFOs for the last few days by taking over our family room and playing with my stash instead. I'm just about done putting my "rainbow" stash on comic boards. By the end of the day these will be sorted by value and put back into my stash closet.

I absolutely cannot organize without making a huge mess! I've been listening to audio books while doing this and love it - I'm not much of a multi-tasker anymore but this works for me. I listen to a chapter, take a break and then I want to listen to another chapter so I keep at it. I watched Season 1 of Downton Abbey on Netflix the day I started, but found I was doing more watching than working!

Upstairs I'm cutting fabrics for an HGTV Board swap and cutting up odd lengths of stash fabric into squares and strips...

with my trusty helper Jax. Yesterday it was J-Meow who kept me company while Tucker and Jax snoozed on the sofa.

Jax is always hungry so any activity in the kitchen brings him running. And who can resist rewarding that sweet little face with a treat - not this Grandma!

I'm linking up to Freemotion by the River.