Mesh wreaths

I decided that I needed a new wreath for my front door.  I have beautiful Christmas wreathed, fun fall door hangings and a beautiful Halloween wreath.  But during the summer it hangs bare.  

I have loved the fun mesh wreaths I see hanging all over and i knew they couldn't be to hard to make so I decided to try.  After spending $65 at hobby lobby here is what I came up with. 

This is my summery wreath, it really is more springish with the color choice.  I used an old wooden wreath that I purchased for $.25 at a second hand store as the background and anchored everything on with pipe cleaners.

This is the second wreath that is now hanging on my door for the next few weeks.

 The reason my purchase price was so much is because of all the sprays and spinners coming out of this wreath.  Yet I love it's look!

Now tonight I finally have time to quilt and quilt is what I am going to do.  This quilt has been waiting almost 5 months to be finished!

I'm linking this up with freshly pieced! WIP and Let's Bee Social

Farmers Wife Heritage Quilt week #2

My "Heritage" quilt, I have really enjoyed finding blocks for this quilt.  Most of the blocks will be from my Farmers Wife Quilt book, but I will continue to look elsewhere for other blocks that represent some part of my heritage.  My goal is to work on and complete two quilt blocks a week, I am just starting so I know to begin with, they will take longer. I know that I should start with really easy, square block.

Today I was a little crazy and picked two very detailed blocks, what was I thinking!  Both blocks I worked with today had so many triangles!!  The material is just some random cloth in my stash, sorry I can't tell you where it came from.

First, you need to know my history, I was raised in a farm town in a valley in Colorado.  While my father is not a farmer anymore, he has been at different times in his life, and I was raised like a "farmer's daughter" would be.  This is a 6" block.

Block #32: Farmer's Daughter

My second block is called "Wyoming Valley" and well Wyoming isn't any part of my heritage, but Colorado is and I am from a Colorado valley.  These two blocks both shared many similar characteristics and went well together.

As you can see in the picture below, the block is not finished...... I messed up and sewed a few things the wrong direction.  It will be corrected soon and I will get this block finished.   Sorry about the unfinished block!

Block: Wyoming Valley

If you would like to see some really great blocks pieced together go here: http://craftsewcreate.blogspot.com/ this blog has become my inspiration

Denim quilt

Last summer when my brother in law came to visit, he begged me to make him a denim quilt.  In his prior divorce, his X took the denim quilt I had previously made for his family and he needed another one.  I was fine with that and put it together in 4 days.  Cut, sewn, tied and bound, it was quite and accomplishment!  After that I knew that our family needed another one also.  The one we have stays in the back of my car and it gets used at parks and games all the time.  When soccer season rolled around in September, I finally decided to start this blanket.  By the end of soccer season it was half way done and it got put away until now.... soccer season starts again next week.

The reason we need two is that sometimes I drive to the games and sometimes John drives and we randomly take different vehicles.  We forget to change the quilt from this car to that and so the easiest thing to do is to have two denim quilts, one for each car.  Yesterday I got this quilt out and today I finished sewing all the squares together.

The quilt is made of 6" squares, when sewn they are 5 1/2" square.  I made this quilt quite large, 15 blocks wide by 16 blocks long.  I wanted it to be big enough for the entire family if being used at the park for a picnic.  

Next week I will be tying the quilt together, the only step before that is stitching the two back panels together, a piece of cake!  I'll try to show this next week finished!

It's spring!

We have had the longest snowiest winter that really needs to melt! My house is also north facing, so it tends to melt last.

I can't do much about the weather, but I can bring my moods up by adding color to our lives.

 One tip is get help (it takes a lot of little helpers :))

I saw multiple posts on how to create flowers out of coffee filters (thanks ointerest) and so I decided to give it a try.

First I dyed the filters in food coloring and water.

You can see how wet they are

 Next I cooked them in my oven 200 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

When this is all done fold the filters into quarters and cut a middle circle out leaving 1- 1 1-2 inches around the edge.

 On a 12-15 inch piece of tape fold the middle circle first and push on the tape.. Do this to two or three filters at once, spacing them out only 1/4 inch.

Then place the long strips on the tape, crinkling as you go. 

Roll the tape up, starting with the middle pieces (which will be the middle of the flower)

Create lots of flowers and hot glue onto a wreath.

Here is my outcome:

And here this is on my front door.

Here is the Easter wreath we just made for our entrance