Friday Sampler

Today I am having some missionaries over for dinner and need a clean house. With a 3 year old and a 6 year old roaming the house continuously that's a problem.  I didn't know if I would be able to find time to make my blocks this morning, while keeping a clean house. It's almost 12 pm and my blocks are finished my bathrooms have been cleaned and all that's left is my dusting and mopping. Looks like I or more accomplished than I thought I would!

I chose simple blocks again this week just because I'm working in my skills and need to slowly progress in block difficulty. Ha ha, I learned I needed to do that the first week. Each of these blocks were really easy and it took a whole 45 minutes from start to finish (meaning set up, work, and clean up).

Farmers wife Block #2: Autumn Tints

Farmer's Wife Block #73 Rainbow Flower

I like the Rainbow Flower block much better than the Autumn tints block, but I think they both came together really good.  I like them both much better than I like last weeks creations.  

I want to thank Ellie from Craft, Sew & Create for helping inspire me with her beautiful colors!  She uses such bright, summery, colors.  My quilt is settling for the richer colors but I love the inspiration she gives me with her cheerful colors and patterns.  I'm now up to 8 blocks with a long way to go!

This coming week I will be working on another quilting project.  It involves lots of applique so we'll see how that goes.  My grandmother tried to teach me how to applique years ago just like a dear older lady in my neighborhood tried to teach my girls.  I didn't learn then and neither did they, but now is my time to finally learn how.  

New quilt

Looking at quilts the last little while online has become a tad bit addictive. To say the least!!! I did find one that I really liked that had been on the American Patchwork and Quilting magazine cover, in Feb 2008. The name of his quilt is "Windy by the lake".

I checked our local library the see if the magazine was in stock, and of coarse it wasn't.  Next I tried to find the pattern online.  There weren't even any pictures of this quilt online, except for the quilt from the magazine cover and a small 4 block design of it made to show random color arrangements.  Not any help!  eBay did randomly have the pattern for sale, but not currently.  So, it was left for me to design.

Lets just say I love drawing and I love mathematics so drawing on grid paper is the best!!!  Here is a picture of my grid drawing:

I letter the blocks with color choices:

A- background

B- light Main color

C- Main color

D- medium Main color

Here is my coloring in I started to do to show how the quilt will be laid out.  It's taking a while to do this so it's incomplete as of now

This is another version of the quilt I don't really like, but it's a variety

So it's an idea, if it goes anywhere I'll post it on here.  I do love drawing blocks though and I have a few more quilt patterns in my head that I'll be creating soon.

Fabric find

The last few weeks while shopping for fabric I have learned to love the different Riley Blake and Moda fabric lines. Yesterday, during that super busy day, I happened to run into The Cotton Shop here in Provo. They were sharpening both of my ginger scissors and since I had Hailey with me I needed to stop by. Hailey is going to start making a 4 square quilt soon and I love their fabric lines so that's where we went to choose it from. Here is the type of quilt she is going to make:

The fabric is from the Adornit Owls Coral line.   I had never seen Adornit fabric before, they are a scrapbook company that makes paper and fabric to match.  Hailey and I both loved the colors and designs.  Here is a quick shot of the fabric.

My sister is expecting her baby really soon.  I already have her gift, but when I saw this flannel by Riley Blake, I had to get more!  Riley Blake is one of my all time favorite fabric designers as I have said before but I was set on not getting more fabric.  Yet, this fabric was so darling I couldn't say no!!! When I was in the store Thursday the bolt was brand new, Friday at noon it was almost gone showing how fast this fabric was going!  Here is a sneak peek:

Looks like I got a lot to keep me busy!!!

Quilt blocks

I sewed together 2 new blocks today. My daughter had her birthday party today with 21 girls! I also took her out for lunch to our favorite Brick Oven. Together, these took away lots of my sewing time. With all of this I managed to Cut, Sew and Create two blocks......really simple blocks!

Block one is called The Propeller: I think it turned out really well (it will look better when it is ironed)

Block two is Farmers Wife #81 Snowball block.  I will be redoing part of this block, the triangles just don't look right.  

I'm linking this up to Ellie with Craft, Sew and Create and giving thanks to her with her wonderful inspiration!

Here is my redo on the 2 edge blocks

Baby blanket #2

I've been randomly working on this second baby afagan, trying to finish it before baby Giles is born. He is due to be coming in 2 weeks and so tonight I finally finished his blanket. And no, I am not expecting a baby boy! My sister-in-law Kamelle is expecting this baby 10 days before my sister is expecting her baby. I can't wait to see all these new babies in the family!

Today I also spent the majority of the day canning strawberry jam. Having daughters to help and lots of canning experience helped get the job done quickly. I ended up with 13 half pints and 17 pints, can't wait to have my peanut butter and jelly sandwich with this Strawberry Jam!