Tiny Tuesday - Sea Star

Today I got Midget block #90 Sea Star completed. I started the hand piecing of the center on Sunday night and finished the paper piecing this afternoon after a lot of running around this morning. Today is day two of swim lessons. One will put his face in the water a bit... the other is not happy at all.

Sea Star

I now have 102 of these 4.5 finished Midget blocks completed. Some were not true Midgets but resized from other projects. It it is going to be fun to get these all the same size..... some are big (not trimmed down yet from applique) and some came out a bit smaller. Oh well, I'll deal with that later this year.

102 Midget blocks

Slow down Sunday.

Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts reminds us to slow down on Sunday's and enjoy the process of quilting or other hand work. Today I am going to sit back and relax a little bit with some hand piecing of a midget block. The middle parts will be hand pieced and then attached to some paper piecing later. This block is called Sea Star and is free over at Sentimental Stitches in the Midget section if you want to try it. I believe she is planning to retire another set in July so if you'd like to do some midgets go save them off today.

Head on over to Kathy's and see what other hand work projects are being worked on today.

Graduation quilt is FINISHED!

I was able to get this all quilted on Tuesday and then made and attached the binding that night while the kids were watching Alice in Wonderland. The next two nights (and parts of the days) were spent hand stitching the binding down and adding that label I keep forgetting to put on when I machine stitch the binding! This is called Kaleidoscope from Don't call me Betsy's blog.

I took a couple of pictures of how I quilted it since there were a few inquiries and I don't think I described it well in my answers. I started each 'line' off from the quilt

Did a straight line up until this spot and pivoted. You can see where I turned on the black side here.

Straight through this part which helps to push down anything popping up there. Hey - that is a pretty good middle =).

I pivoted here again to follow the line about 1/4 from the seam. 

Then I finished the line across off the edge of the quilt. Hope that makes sense. I figure it took me about 4.5 hours to get this baby quilted this way but I do love how it turned out.

The back 'stars' are pretty cool I think. This fabric is much more teal blue than the washed out grey in the photo.

Finished quilt. Oops - looks like a little bit was bunched up on the side. 

The results after a nice ride through the washer and dryer. A nice little crinkle to the fabric.

I hope she likes it. Now to just make a quick pillowcase to store it in and it will be ready to ship up for her graduation party next weekend.

Rain rain go away.....

Since the weather is not listening to me I decided to pick out some nice sunny yellow to play with today.

Here are two yellow snail trail blocks along with the others from this year.

I also made my 16 patch block with the 2.5 inch squares. I think I need to make a pink one to add to this bunch.

Then I cut a few lemon peels out for hand work this month. I have a couple of blue ones to finish off first from last month.

Since the kids were going stir crazy inside, I remembered when I was younger Mom making cream puffs and then putting pudding in them. I had to call her this morning to get the name as I could not find   it looking through my Betty Crocker cookbook this morning. It is amazing what water, butter, flour and egg can make. Then add some packaged pudding and you have an instant dessert after lunch. Doesn't it look yummy? I got the leftover chocolate and vanilla from the kids.

Saturday I'll hook up with SoScrappy for the RSC challenge of yellow. Come back tomorrow for a finished reveal........

Grandmothers Choice - Art Square

This weeks block over at the Grandmothers Choice BOW is called Art Square: Women in a box.. It is amazing that not too long ago women were not mentioned in art history of any kind, and yet I see some amazing quilt artists around in blog land every day. I know they have been out there for centuries and yet there never is a mention of them in history. Very sad.
This block was a very easy one to make up this morning while the kids are 'finding' things in the play room as they dig through the bins for something to do on a rainy and dreary day.

Yesterday afternoon as the rain was pouring down and his sister was napping, Aidan designed this little rail way system all by himself without having to have anyone in there with him (major change as he always wants someone with him.) His request was for more of the male/female connectors since you usually only get one with a set. I found some online and they should be here tomorrow for future building projects this summer. Excuse the mess - this is the garage area that was finished off into an office before we purchased it. It is the kids play room, which they are finally starting to play in!

Tiny Tuesday

I went ahead and picked out a quick one that is rotary cut and machine stitched. I need to take a day and prep a bunch of them for hand stitching and applique as a lot of my next ones are calling for that.
Today I did #99 - Rope & Anchor. Only two colors to select this week and some easy cutting and sewing and I can cross another block off my list. There are 150 blocks so far on the Midget page over at sentimentalstitches.com and 51-150 are free right now. Head on over and give one or two a try. I'm warning you though... they are addicting! This block is 5 inches and will finish at 4.5 inches.

Slow down Sunday.....

After a wonderful day without kids and having a fixed sewing machine I was able to get started on the graduation quilt. It is much bigger (60x83) and taking much longer than I was thinking.... but I'll keep plugging away at it a little bit at a time over the next few days. I am just doing a walking foot straight line stitching 1/4 inch from each of the seams. I saw that in one of the finished quilts from the original quilt along with the Kaleidoscope quilt and loved how it looked. I went to start the quilting and realized..... what thread can I use? I only had a teal that was anything close to blending and so far I really like how it is working out. I'm using a new batting for me - Fairfield low loft 80/20 from Joann's Fabrics. So far I love how it is coming out. The test will be after washing it when it is all done.

When not working today or being in the sewing room adding a few rows of stitches to Jillian's quilt, I will be hand stitching some stars onto the white spaces of the QOV quilt. That one is all machine quilted and hand bound, it just needs some stars in those open spaces.