I'm making a sheep wall hanging for the guild raffle for April.  I made some quilt blocks and auditioning colors to see which background color to use.

Doesn't it sort of look like they're standing in the meadow?

I need to buy some little buttons for the eyes.  Or maybe embroider them?

I saw this quilt pattern and I loved it called Sew Little Time made with one quilt block and rotated back and forth.  They used a fabric line called Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater for Moda.  I loved it and pulled out some fabrics from my stash and got a few more from Joanne to mimic the one I saw on Pinterest.  It was made with cream color instead of white but the fabrics I had needed the sashing to be white.

I'm looking forward to getting this on the quilting frame!

Since I never posted LED's finished rainbow heart quilt, I took some pictures today.  Here is Sky posing with the quilt.

Here is BLR (my niece, posing with the quilt and a lovely purple petunia which came back from last summer.

BLR, LED and Sky.

Sky's got nice white teeth! 

One more outside.

This quilt was washed and now has the nice bit of crinkliness!  Don't you love the rainbow colors !

You've heard of the cat in the hat?  Here is the cat in the bag!   Ready to pounce!

The Boy Scouts had a potluck/ cake auctioin fundraiser.  I made this bunny cake with 2 round pans (you cut the ear shapes from a round and then you have the shape of the bow tie.

This rainbow heart quilt is also an I Spy quilt.  Can you spot something for today's holiday?

Update 2018:  Some instructions for making this quilt

Debra asked for some pointers and so I typed up a few instructions and figured I'd update this orignial post in case anyone else is interested.

 I really still love this quilt  My daughter uses it for her 10 month old baby son to sit on with his toys.  It's well washed and a little faded but still charming!

    Here are a few instructions:

The squares finish at 1 1/2" (so 2" unfinished).  Originally, I started with scrappy long strips of one color family and made the hearts each in one colorway with complementary color borders (like a scrappy purple heart would have a green border) but when my daughter saw the blocks, she said, I thought you were going to make the hearts multi color and so I took apart parts of the blocks and put them back together with another color block and they mostly have just 2 or 3 colors, but you can still see some strips of greens, yellows, or purples in the background of each block, which helps the hearts to stand out.

    I did sew about 3 strips together and then sliced them up so I was rarely actually sewing little 2" squares together (too time consuming).

For Each Block

1.  Gather colorful scraps and cut into 2" strips (or you could make them wider)  Divide the colors into "heart" and "background" colors. Just make sure that your background colors are different than your heart colors for each block.  You can have hearts and backgrounds in the same color, just not in the same block.  

2.  Make a 9 patch from heart colors

3.  Make two heart corners.  Two strips of 3 squres with half square triangle on two corners.  One of the half square triangles needs to be of heart color and one of background color.

4.  A background four patch in the top (one square makes the V indent of the heart)

5.  A background border 

6.  Sew all sections together

7.  Make as many blocks as you wish.  I put mine together on point.

A big cat on a red and white quilt;  found a cat on the bed and had to add some cat on the quilt pictures!

Curled up and comfy!

I started sewing long strips of fabric together to use as a quilt back but found it cute enough for a quilt top.  Here I've branched out with a new quilt design, other than meandering and it actually turned out pretty good.

sort of a leaf and rose pattern

here you can see several different patterns in each strip

Here you can see my first feathers

Here's the quilt on the bed.  Very Valentiny!

I love to sew for the season but usually can't get a project done so it's going to be at least a year because if the season ends then I'll have to start on the next season projects and put the current project away to finish next year.  These cute snowball blocks will have the snow man faces made of black buttons and orange felt but will have to be added on after it's all pieced together and quilted.  I have to wash some orange felt with white fabric to see if the color bleeds.

after having a lot of trouble when I previously tried quilting this I was able to do better on round 2.

This quilt top is complete unless I want to add more border onto it to make it larger.  As it is, it's about 55 inches x 72 inches.  I think I'll quilt it with beige thread.  I ordered some from Hancock's of Paducah, but it's on back order.

I should've flipped this picture so it wouldn't be sideways.  This is Susan Winget fabric I got at Joanne's.  Isn't it sweet?

I put a purple batik square in each corner and one in each side of the border.  I'l post more of this quilt when I get it quilted.

Here is this quilt completed and bound with dark blue fabric with little stars.   The girl who got it was very excited (I was told by her mom).   I am anxious to get more practice on my mid arm.  I sewed a lot of  Christmasy stuff together in Nov. and December but never got to the point of machine quilting anything and I'm long overdue!

Rainbow, primary, and fall colors!

A quilt made for a friends first grandchild.  Richard Scary, Busy town blocks and small machine free motion quilting.

I cut the striped binding on the bias and added colorful pinwheels to the corners.

I finally completed my daughter's rainbow heart quilt on the Sunshine 16.  I added green binding and quilted cinnamon rolls in each border block on my small machine.  I had a lot less trouble using the Sunshine 16, than with my fall leaf quilt.  Someone at my quilt guild said there's a two year learning curve when learning to long arm quilt.  That consoled me because for awhile I almost thought there was no hope!



My niece wants a quilt with these leaf blocks that we saw in a Better Homes and Garden quilting book.  I picked some real fall leaves and threw them down by the blocks to see if I'm getting the colors right.  Looks pretty good so far!

Fall leaf quilt -- tesselating leaves finally complete and ready to be slept under tonight!

the middle portion was quilted on the sunshine 16 but I had quite a bit of trouble.  I had to do all the sides, about a foot from the edge on my small machine with free motion quilting.  It has lots of flaws but I still love it and am so glad it's done!

I want to make some pillow cases in some of the matching fabrics with cordinating flanges.  Hope it doesn't take another year!

One of the reasons I let my daughter get a cat was so I could have quilt pictures with a pet lying strategically!  Hah!

Fall leaf quilt with tesselating leaves!

Finally I've been able to get some stipple or meandering quilting done on my fall leaf quilt that I started last fall, using my Sunshine 16.  The problems:  it seem only the King Tut thread in the bobbin works, but also increased the speed of the machine and am learning  better technique with how I move the machine.  Now I'm not really getting many loops on the back but I'm still getting some missed stitiches where there'll be a 1/2 -1 inch line of thread in spots.  Sometimes the thread breaks frequently but sometimes I can go for 10-15 minutes without it breaking.

This fall leaf quilt is made with tesselating leaves pattern.  I wanted a scrappy look using fall colors.



I really love the oranges, purples, browns and I threw in turquoise blue and some other colors for variety.  I pieced together the back out of left over fabrics.  I can't wait to finish it and put it on my bed!

Olivia's and Muriel's Quilts

This is a quilt for a baby named Olivia.  They are decorating her room in brown and pink and in the little character, Olivia the pig.  I remembered I'd purchased some Olivia the Pig fabric and so bought some fabric markers to paint in the black and white drawings of Olivia the pig.  It was fun sewing pink and brown!



This shows the detail on the border.  I wanted to put cute buttons, but worried it would be a chocking hazaard.

I also bought little dolls for baby Olivia's cousins, ages 1 and 5 and made them little doll quilts.

border detail

For the 1 year old's doll.

Muriels wall hanging all completed.



Hanging above her fireplace.

Showing the fabric painting.  I bought the fabric paint at Michaels.

Showing the detail on Muriel's wall hanging.

Other projects

Free motion quilting on Muriel's wall hanging (only 8 months late for her birthday so far)

40 inches square.  It should be very pretty when all done.  Still no time or mental prep to practice on the Sunshine -- but hopefully soon!

working on a Fenton's painting with "Up" characters for gift for the newborn twins