brown squares

Norene made this small throw out of lots of little brown and white squares.  

I decided to practice some ruler work and did some random sized concentric rectangles and meandered every other rectangle.  

It turned out ok, but i think a more simple design would have been better. A zig-zag perhaps. I know it is hard to see the quilting here.

Sweethearts and more hearts.

I have a quilting finish to share!

Remember this little thing?  I completed this Sweetheart tablerunner top about a year ago, just after Valentine's day.  (I shared this wip post) So I was in no hurry to quilt it until a few weeks ago.

Here is a link to the free pattern.

I had fun quilting each heart differently, and making loops in the negative space.

I made one orange heart just for the heck of it.

I used a bright pink thread throughout.  This is the one and only decoration I will put out for Valentine's day.  (assuming I ever get my table cleared off. ha ha.)

The back is pieced together with some old pink fabrics.

And while we are on the subject of hearts, this was our block for February in my do.Good Stitches Haven circle.  It is called pixelated heart and uses 2.5 inch squares.

Happy Love Day!!

(Daniel tiger reference)

Christmas cards, quills & arrows

So, I started sewing selvages onto 6.5 inch squares a year or so ago.  I just thought that some of the selvage projects I'd been seeing were pretty neat and thought I'd start saving some of my selvages for a small project. Well, my Mom caught wind of this and has since started saving her selvages. She gives me a small sack of them about every time I see her! And now she even has a couple of her friends giving me their selvages too! Ack! So my little pile of squares grew and grew as I tried to keep up, and my idea of a small project has turned into an overflowing drawer of selvages and enough squares for a throw quilt! So, I came up with a little solution to use some of them up. I made little mitten ornaments.

I put them on my Christmas cards that I sent to my 2014 quilting clients. I got lots of nice compliments on them.  I also sent one to each member of my Haven do. Good stitches circle. They were so fun and easy to make, I already have plans for next year.  I got the idea for these from a flickr fave.

Here is my Do.Good Stitches Haven circle quilt for October.  I had purchased a few yards of this bold zig-zag fabric on clearance and decided to find an arrow block for it.  After some searching I found this block called Quills and Arrows.

Each block is paper pieced and each member made 10 blocks. There was a slight snafu with the sizing of the blocks-- about half of them were 1/4 inch smaller than the rest. The scale box on the pattern was only verrry slightly noticeably smaller if you didn't size it right.  So I had to trim some of them down.  You may notice some arrows are a bit bigger than others, but only if you look close. Luckily because of the layout of the blocks, it really doesn't matter if they are the same size or not--the arrows aren't lined up at all.

I swear I put the blocks together randomly!