How I said Goodbye to 2016 .....

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  

We had a lovely Christmas and, as is our habit, a nice, quiet New Year's.  Although we have no family near us, we are surrounded by good friends and fun things to do during the holidays.  I was especially happy to have a few days filled with nothing but puttering in my studio - it was heaven!!!  I managed to finish out the year by cranking out a few little Christmas projects and even a couple of finishes.

My favorite finish is Hello Mr. Moon - I made two of these!  One was a gift for my sister and the other I am keeping for us. =^..^=

This adorable little quilt is designed by Teri Henderson Tope, and you can find the free pattern at Bernina's We All Sew site.  I loved the freedom of the "messy" outlining she calls for around the cat and moon, and it was great fun learning how to do the swirly quilting design in the background.

I also made these Christmas Tree mug rugs for my Quiltfest group, using my buddy Kevin the Quilter's tutorial but eliminating the bottom row of the tree so they would be small enough to fit.  Thanks Kevin!!! 

The blue one is for Belinda who shares my love for all things BLUE!!!  (Yes, I have a blue one cut out for me too!)  And Joanne is my bird-loving friend, so hers has a beautiful seasonal bird fabric on the back.

This was a really fun project, challenging myself to use only my crumb scraps for the pieces.

I even pulled from my brown crumb jar for the tree trunks... who knew there could be so many colors of brown?????

One more of my Folk Art Album blocks is finished....

This is the 10th Folk Art Album block completed!  I have enjoyed this hand Applique project, especially finding ways to make it a little bit special...

Can you tell that I used metallic thread for the red buds?  I also added those french knot clusters in the center of the three-leaf section that looked a little boring to me before.  I have to admit, I'm ready to be done with this project.  Only 2 more - this one is next up for stitching.  Don't you just adore that hummingbird???

I shared my January Christmas UFO project, I Believe, with you in THIS previous post.  Since then I have finished two more blocks ....

I Believe Block #4

I Believe Block #5 - Yikes!!!!

Of course, as soon as I pulled this photo into Blogger, I saw the mistake!!!  That will have to get fixed first thing tomorrow morning :*)

In order to finish this top assembly in January (from start to finish!), I've committed to making a block per day on the days I am at home.  This week has been impossible - I've had activities every day!  Starting this weekend, this project and my En Provence blocks will be getting lots of love :*)  I'll share more about my thoughts on EP in my next post.

En Provence Clue #5 complete

Some friends are coming over to sew tomorrow, so I need to go get things set up.  As I type, it has begun to snow, so hopefully we won't get "snowed" out!  Actually, we're not expecting anything more than perhaps an inch at the most.  I'll be back this weekend to share my January goals with you.

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

A Few Fun Projects - and More on the Horizon

We took Sara and the grandpuppy Link home on Wednesday - what a nice visit it was!

One of our main goals was to get Sara reacquainted with her sewing machine, gifted to her by a sweet friend during her last visit.  She had decided to leave the machine at my house until she was at a place in her life where she could devote more time to sewing.  Although she is finishing up her senior year and plans to start college courses in a few months, she is excited about doing some small projects at home this summer, so we've sent the machine and some basic tools home with her.

As promised, while she was here we each made a cuter-than-cute Shark Pencil Case which I told you about in this earlier post.  This is a design by Patchwork Posse which can be found as a free download on Craftsy.  I got to play with a lot saved-up crumbs for this project....

Sara's case is done in her beloved vintage-inspired pastels....

..... while mine is done in a fun mix of grays - one even has quilting text!

This was a fun project, so much so that I was seriously entertaining thoughts of making one out of each color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge next year - right up until time to add the zipper - UGH!!!  The designer says this can be a bit "fiddly" - riiiiiiight!  I even had to call in the Snoopervisor for help on this one!

Unfortunately, he wasn't much help.  He's decided zippers are not his thing!

In fact, he was plumb tuckered out by the time we got that sucker in there
and declared an emergency nap break =^..^=

  

It was nerve-wracking to tell the truth, and I had to do quite a bit of hand-stitching to close in the ends properly.  But they are well worth the effort I have to say. These turned out so darn cute and Sara was delighted with her accomplishment.  She did all of the sewing on her shark herself except for the zipper.  I put that in for her - I didn't want the poor child traumatized at this early stage of her sewing career :*)

And here's mine before the button eyes were added ....

I even used "scraps" for the buttons - these are buttons I've saved from recycled men's shirts!

No quilting was done on the Blooming 9 Patch while Sara was here, so I didn't meet my Guild UFO Challenge for June.  We were just too busy, and I had a couple of non-quilty things going on that needed a lot of my time and energy.  But Rocky volunteered for some overtime hours in the Studio to stand guard over the quilt until I can get back to it ....

One reason I ran out of time is because we celebrated the 80th birthday of my dear friend, Joanne!

Yes, she's 80 and still fabulous!!!

And she runs rings around me!  This is the Joanne who often shares her long-arm machine with me.  She had two parties, one given by her daughter for all of her many friends at church, book club, women's groups, as well as a few of her quilting friends.  The second was a small surprise party at the home of one of our Mountain Quiltfest ladies, Susie.  I made the cake for this party and put a lot of love and time into planning and executing it, especially since it had been ages since I had decorated a cake and I wanted it to be perfect!

Joanne loves birds and birdhouses, especially cardinals, so naturally I had to put a couple of those in the birdhouses.  You can just barely see the white picket fence behind them if you look closely.  I let out a deep whoosh of relief once that was done ... I was definitely reminded of why I no longer decorate cakes LOL!!!

I did manage to finish my latest See-N-Go Project bag.  This is the back of the bag featuring a Kaffe Fassett Corsage print ....

And the front with a vinyl see-thru window - I just LOVE Kaffe's purple and pink dot fabric lining showing through - so bright and cheerful :*)

This is a pattern I designed for Jacquelynne Steves for her Summer 2014 Summer E-magazine.  Some of you told me the links I shared in my last post for this pattern no longer work, so she gave me new links for you to get this pattern from her......

Please sign up for my free newsletter and emagazine here http://jacquelynnesteves.com/my-emagazine/

and when you sign up you will get a welcome email with a link to the archives page with ALL of the previous issues. The bag project was in the Summer 2014 issue.

You also can read the online magazine issue without signing up for my newsletter herehttps://issuu.com/jacquelynnesteves/docs/the_art_of_home_summer2014

If you have further questions, please email me at comments@jacquelynnesteves.com

I highly recommend that you sign up for Jacquelynne's FREE e-magazine - it's always full of fun projects, inspirational ideas, and even a few delicious recipes!

A teensy bit of hand stitching has been worked in here and there when I can.  I always enjoy linking up with Kathy's Quilts for her Slow Sunday Stitching linky party - today she talks about multi-tasking and the value of slowing down.  It's a great post - be sure to go over and check it out!

My 3-D braided tree is almost completely stitched down in my Blue Collection center....

And I am finally getting back to playing a little with my Patchwork of the Crosses blocks.  This is the latest one in progress ....

Even with the best of intentions, I didn't find time to join in on these great QAL's, although I fully intend to make a start this coming week.....

   

I really, really want to do both of these.  I love starting something new and fresh, don't you?  I plan to keep both of these pretty simple so they don't end up on my UFO list for next year LOL!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

Linking up with the following fun parties:
(links will show up when the party starts :*)
Slow Sunday Stitching
Tuesday Linky Party
Scraptastic Tuesday
Oh Scrap!
Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?
Let's Book It

Loving Me Some Rainbows!!!

Pretty little BLUE crumb blocks in the SNOW!!!!  Yes,  my friends, we got SNOW here in Nashville last night!  Oh JOY :*)  Okay, so it was only about half an inch, and it was gone by noon, but it was a real, true-to-life, bonafide, honest to goodness SNOW!  And it was so lovely on the ground when I awoke this morning, I just had to run out and take a picture of my crumb blocks in it before it melted :*)

One of my favorite blog parties is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge with Angela at So Scrappy, and I was delighted when she said she would be hostessing again this year.  I decided that the crumb jars would figure in my plan of attack, so I dumped out this month's color jar - BLUE! - and got to work (or should I say play?) ....

Every jar in every color is full to overflowing, so something's got to be done with them.  I love the freedom and mindless sewing of stitching up all these fun leftover pieces into a serendipitous quilt that will be loved and cuddled up in just like the planned quilts that were made from the original yardages :)

I love the "anything goes" mentality - stripes and solids, plaids and florals - throw them all in there and make something sparkling and new!

These are a great start, and we have another week yet to play with our BLUEs before a new color is announced.  All my pieces are still poured out next to my machine, ready for any spare moments I may find to churn out more lovely little crumb blocks :)

And speaking of RAINBOWS- I made a good start on the first block of my Arcadia Avenue quilt this week!

Click on the button in the sidebar to learn more about this quilt :)

I hit a little bump in the road as I started to cut the pieces for this first block - one of my fabrics was only a fat quarter instead of a half yard!  Apparently I had never unfolded it to be sure.  Duh!

So I had to go back to the stash and on the right is the fabric I chose to replace it.  I loved the orange elements in the first fabric, but I wasn't sure where I had bought it (I suspect in NC), and the online pictures were not close enough for me to be sure I would be ordering the same exact colorway.  As small as these pieces will end up being cut, I'm thinking it will be fine.  I actually ended up exchanging several fabrics for those I had originally picked ....

I'm using all stash for this quilt except for the Dark Raspberry which will be my medium constant, and the soft gray polka dot, which is my light constant.  The black is my dark constant from my stash.

I'm loving the fact that this project is paper pieced!  It's been so long since I had the pleasure of making a paper-pieced quilt.  I think one thing that appeals to me is the flow of it.  I always work on multiple sections at a time and chain piece ....

..... and having all the pieces laid out ready to stitch appeals to my organizational soul :)

Of course, I was quickly reminded that it is not very wise to try to watch TV and chain piece a paper-pieced project .... LOL!!!

This is going to be such a fun quilt and I am glad to finally get started on it :)  Sassafras Lane is hosting a Quilt Along for anyone working on this quilt, so if you're interested, you can go HERE to get all the juicy details ♥

In the meantime, be sure to go HERE to see all the other lovely BLUE blocks shared in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this week!

Also linking up with BOM's Away HERE and Tuesday Linky Party at Freemotion by the River:)

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

Scrapping and Stitching!

Sunday is the day I always enjoy sitting and stitching with my friends over at Kathy's Quilts.....

And today I'm still working on finishing up my Bertie's Year blocks.  Above is the November block - all ready for sandwiching and quilting.  And October is done too.....

I have to say, I'm not as happy with this one.  It just seems dull to me.  I looked at maybe using the orange fabrics for the border, but that was too much.  And with 3 more still waiting for their embroidery and embellishments, this one will just have to stay the way it is!

I'm currently working on the embellishments for July Bertie.....

All the stitching is done except for Bertie's claws in gold.  The seeds and fly stitch on the watermelon were a lot of fun!  If you look closely, you will see that I had already done a decorative fly stitch by machine, not realizing that the pattern would call for that in off-white by hand later.  After the hand work is done, I'll pull out that green machine stitching.  (And then again, maybe I won't *vbg*)

I also did a little touch up work on the berries.  The sample picture shows pretty blueberries in a nice blue-purple color......  you can see the original looks like actual wools, not flannels :)

Original sample quilt by Bonnie Sullivan

But the flannel they sent with the kit is a blah gray.  I really didn't want to have to take them off, find another fabric, trace ..... right - all that nonsense!  Then, last night I spied my colored pencils on my desk - the pencils I paid a fortune for last year because the teacher in one of my classes at Quiltfest required that we bring this exact brand of pencil, and we NEVER TOUCHED THEM! - yes, those pencils :)  And I thought, why not color them a brighter color?

I think it worked just fine!  You can see in the picture on the right where I had begun to color them, first with a bright blue, then a purple over that.  The bottom left berry just has the blue and is waiting for the purple top coat :)

I hope to get the hst borders on this one today, and that will leave only these two for me to embellish.

If I work quickly, I  may even get them done before I receive the last December kit!  Of course, they all still need to be sandwiched and quilted, but that really doesn't take very long.  One day ought to do it :)

I've also done some machine sewing!  I've joined in on the Scraptastic Tuesday fun with Nicky at Mrs. Sew and Sow and Leann at She Can Quilt  - here are the two blocks I made the other day out of my RED crumb jar....

Aren't they cute???

You can read HERE about my determination to empty out my crumb jars.  Since I've discovered that no project ever gets done unless I actually start the process of working on it, I thought it a good idea to pull out one of the jars and get to it .... amazing how that works, isn't it?  LOL!!!  

So I dumped out some crumbs....

..... and began haphazardly sewing a few pieces together - working two blocks at a time so I could chain piece of course :)

And before I knew it, I had sections big enough to trim down to a uniform 6-1/2 inches!

Wow - this was really, really fun!  So freeing!  No worrying about whether the fabrics "matched" or were the "right size" or even about having a perfect 1/4" seam!!!  Just put a couple of pieces together, sew, and repeat.  I loved it!!!

This is my November NewFO Challenge project - getting in there early, right?  For sure, this will be my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project to use up my crumbs next year!  I may even have to cheat and do a few more before then :)  They are like potato chips, you can't make just one... or two .... or .... well, you get the picture!  Be sure to check out the other projects linked up at Scraptastic Tuesday!  And don't forget the RSC at SoScrappy - November projects are going to be in Baby Blues - and you know I love me some BLUE!!!!

Linking up with:

Rainbow Scrap Challenge
November NewFO Challenge

Slow Sunday Stitching

Design Wall Monday

Tuesday Linky Party

Scraptastic Tuesday

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Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=