Friday Sampler

Every week I think to myself how I am going to get so many blocks made for my sampler quilt.  Yet, each week time goes by as I run here an there with my children and I don't seem to have any extra time to pursue my hobbies.  Here is a quick shot of what I was doing last Friday:

I was running along side her, trying to keep her going.  That only started my day and it was the calmest day of the week!

This week has been much better and yesterday afternoon I even had time to set down at my sewing machine.  Let me say we ended up having Papa Murphy's pizza for supper and that my 3 year old got covered in mud during that time and had to have a bath before the band concert last night.

I am finally getting into this craft blog again and I have posted more in the last 2 months than the previous 2 years, hopefully it's starting to look a little better.  My family blog has been lacking for a while.  Maybe now I can get it caught up too!

Well, that all being said here are the blocks I worked on yesterday.  I was so surprised that all of them came out to a perfect 6 1/2 inches!!!

  

I love this block, it is definitely one of my favorite patterns so far.  That could be because my corners were PERFECT!!!  

This is Joanie's Basket, Block #3, as you can see the basket handle is missing.  I haven't figured out yet what I will be doing here.  Applique or ribbon, I'll decide today.

I really love how the colors worked together on this block.  It's a great block to do when busy because it took about 5 minutes from start to finish.

Not quite sure about the colors for the bats wing...  I do really like the block and it was an easy block also.

I rotated the colors a little here and love the outcome.  Definitely a favorite!
This is a Block of the Month (BOM) for the Cotton shop here, they're an awesome store!!!  This doesn't look anything like the original block in their store because I (intentionally) flip flopped the triangle block, putting the colors backwards.
They have a fun blog and Hailey is going to their Kid's sewing camp this summer.

Hop on over to Ellie's to check out everyone's Friday blocks!!!

HMQS

While surfing through some blogs about a month ago, I found a quilting show coming to the expo center near here.  It was a quilting show for home machine quilting, both long arm and not.  I don't have a long arm and I don't think I'll have one anytime in the near future but I have wanted to learn to machine quilt.

I signed up for a class their on machine quilting on your home machine and it was wonderful.  Kay McCain was the teacher and we each had a fun Bernina machine to quilt on.  

She taught us the basics on everything we needed, fabric, batting and thread choices and where to get the best patterns from.  I didn't do the best, but as she told us all about 10 minutes a day and in a month well be prepared for a project. We'll see;)

I did get to do some fun shopping and purchased just a few little items.  They had some great deals, but I took cash only so I wouldn't spend to much.  It was my only was not to succumb to temptation, and there was lots of temptation today.

There was also a quilt show, my favorite was all the Riley Blake fabric quilts made, here are a few:

This one was tons of fun with a quilt coming out of the quilt, so creative!

Then these are just some quilts that caught my attention:

Storytellers Scraps

It's about time that I did some scrapbooking again!

Every month I get a scrapbook kit from Storytellers Scrapbook club, and I have been a member of their club for going on 8 years and a design team member for 6 years. It seems like forever! I still love scrapbooking and I love the ease of their kits, so cute and so easy to put together.

For Aprils kit I created 4- 2 page layouts and 1 single page (so far, there's still more to do).

My favorite part of the kit was the "Blue Jean Girl" set. Here are two layouts with this set:

The first one is of Abby on her 4th birthday:

This is the "All about us" kit, so fun to work with!

And here is the "My Sunshine" kit.

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.