Belle Wave Blocks

After arranging all of my June do.Good Stitches blocks, I knew I had 2 orange and 2 purple blocks to make to finish up the pattern.  It was a bit more difficult for me to complete the orange blocks, because it's the color that I have the least amount of fabric in my stash.  It made me laugh a bit, because I have never bought any orange fabric unless it was required for a project.  It's interesting when you notice what colors you gravitate toward and which you avoid. 

Fishie Friday

I really like this quilt top.  It's so whimsical.  Perhaps I'm just giddy because this is my first completed quilt top in several months.  It feels good to be sewing regularly again.

Do.good Stitches

This month's block for the Wish Circle is actually from a tutorial Erica did herself.  It's a large block - 17.5" unfinished, so we are only making one this month.  We were pretty free to use what scraps we liked as long as the background was white or off-white.  Here's what I came up with:

Piecing Fishies

After a several month hiatus, I'm finally piecing together a quilt top.  It feels so good to be working on completing a whole quilt instead of a block or two for a sewing bee.  It's even more fun when you're piecing together fish!  They're so cute.  I only have a couple done, but I had fun using a range of fabrics for the fish.  I was also pleased that all of them were made from my scrap bin that is currently overflowing.

The blocks are a good size at 12.5" unfinished.  The background is Kona Fog and I really like the color.  It's a bit of a more subtle blue.  They're not very difficult to make.  The tutorial is here.

Today was even more fun, because for the very first time Little Man and Little Lady were at school at the same time and BB went down for a nap.  I had an entire hour to myself!  It felt luxurious. The funny thing is that I spent that hour cleaning up and organizing my fabric stash.  I very much enjoyed myself as well.  Now that I can find all of my fabric again I'm brainstorming new projects, and thinking of more fun things to make.  I am also completely cutting myself off from buying anymore fabric for a while, because um, I have a lot I need to use, and my scraps bin is bursting at the seems.  It's time for some scrappy quilts around here.

Little Dresses for Africa

This past month at Church we made pillowcase dresses for the organization Little Dresses for Africa.  I had never heard of them before, but it's a really cool cause.  Using a pillowcase, bias tape, and elastic you can easily put together really cute dresses.  The pattern isn't very difficult, so all levels of sewers can help out.

These 2 dresses were actually made out of regular fabric that we then made into a pillowcase before making the dress.  Janni showed us the coolest way to make a pillowcase ever!  It's called a Burrito Pillowcase.  It's really easy.  There's a video tutorial for it here.  I think I'm going to be making pillowcases for the kids for Christmas this year, because I'm in love!

The coordinating cuteness is almost more than I can handle. 

This is my first time using Ric-rac and now I'm trying to find excuses to use it on other things.  I like it.  I like it a lot!

Friendship Star

This month's block for do.Good Stitches Wish Circle is the Friendship Star.  When choosing colors, Steph asked that we match it to the backing fabric for the star and then scrappy off-white or low-volume prints for the background.  I like this color scheme a lot, but probably would have never of thought to did it on my own.

Backing fabric

Bird Leftovers

Remember the lovely bird who decided to make her home in my front porch light?  Well, after the eggs were hatched and the nest was abandoned we were left with quite a mess.  There were sticks and bird droppings in every crevice of that lamp.  I'm pretty sure we would have started a house fire just by turning on the light. 

A simple cleaning job turned into an actual project.  The whole porch light had to come down.  We looked like white trash for a while, because we had to put a bag over it to keep the wires from getting wet.

When all was said and done we had to go out and purchase a new front light.  Joel did a nice job of putting the new one up, so now we can be respectable neighbors again.

Disappearing 9-patch

The 9-patch is typically one of the very first blocks you learn as a quilter.  I think back to my first experiment with the 9-patch and cringe a little.  I think my very first time doing it was making a baby blanket for Little Man. 

As you become more advanced you try to spruce it up a bit and make things a bit more fancy, but there's something so fundamental and useful about the 9-patch that you never really leave it.  The July blocks for the Building Blocks Quilt Along gave a fun little twist to this classic block. (Yes, I'm a month behind on the quilt along.  It's been a bust Summer)

You make the block like normal, but instead of stopping there you cut them in 4ths and rearrange them to make this block.  It's a fun change up to a classic.