June pizza box exchange

This month for our Pizza Box Exchange that we're doing in my quilt group, Material Girls Idaho, I picked Robyn's box and she's requested red and white or cream blocks. I decided to do a Card Tricks block.
Don't all the blocks look great together now. We have just 4 more months so we'll each have 19 blocks. Each box I pick up looks amazing! We only get to see our own box for a brief few minutes at the beginning of our meeting each month, so it will feel like Christmas when we finally get to take them home.

Bee Blocks

Here are my bee blocks for Bee Scrappy, a flickr group. I'm a bit behind, but we only have one more month to do, so it's not bad. This block was inspired by Oh Fransson's mod mosaic floor pillow block. I used this same method for the center of a quilt here. It takes some thinking and some time, but the end result is a fun look.

Fresh and modern

I finished this top today. It's fresh and modern and it looks like it belongs outside. It's from a pattern called Flower Show from the spring edition of Better Homes and Garden magazine, Perfect for Precuts. It's a twin size quilt and I'm anxious to put it on my friend's quilting machine because I could really use some practice. For years now I've been doing all my machine quilting on my home machine, you know, feed dogs down, and away I go. But I really need to give the big machines a fair chance. The first time I tried, it seems like it took forever just to put the top, batting and back onto the machine. I also just made large stippling waves all over the quilt. This time I'd like to change things up a bit and try some new designs, a few florals, leaves and even some pebbles.

I have two machine quilting idols that I follow in the quilting blog world and they both have amazing talent. The first is Natalia over at Piece N Quilt. The second is Don't Look Now who not only has beautiful quilting designs, but her applique is a one-of-a-kind. I keep thinking if I just stare at their work long enough and often enough that it will rub off on me and next time I attempt the big machine, it will then magically flow onto my quilt.

Wish me luck...

Fabric Flower Frills

These are fabric flower frills. We made them this past weekend from a template put out by Clover. Here's a good video tutorial on how to make them also. I made the small one, attached it to a pin and wore it that night. I got lots of compliments. I didn't know that's all it took to get a fun compliment, just wear a fun new fabric flower.

They were very easy, my young girls didn't have any problem with them. You can see they wanted to make the large ones and of course, they can wear it and look like island beauties.

Nikki decided she wanted to put a button in the middle of hers and make it a bit different than the rest of us. It looks beautiful against her black hair.

New grommets

When I first made this purse I used the traditional round grommets, but I had some trouble with a couple of them and I cut the holes a little too large. So as I used the purse, it began to pull and eventually the fabric came out from behind a couple of grommets. While I was at market last week, I saw these square grommets made by Rido Deko and thought they might be perfect for covering my extra large holes. I was right and I actually love how they look better than my original round grommets. Here's how it looked originally .

A little more from market

Our booth seemed like it was constantly a buzz with people stopping by. I met so many wonderful people. I don't know how the quilt shop owners are able to weed through the vast variety of options and decide what to purchase for their stores. But we were thrilled that so many of them stopped by our booth and placed orders.

Here are a couple of our new patterns we offered. Suzy Swirl makes into a darling little skirt with a tutu underneath. The pattern also includes a pattern for leggings which is always a must for any little girl. I love the looks on the girls' faces in the pattern. So cute.

This honeycomb smocked apron, as it is now named, comes in an adult pattern as well as a child's pattern. This was probably our biggest hit of the quilt market. My sister Toni was in the booth the entire time demonstrating how to do the smocking. It's amazingly simple to do yet it looks like it took you quite a while. The directions for the smocking as well as a grid to follow are included in the patterns.

Here's another favorite. It's called Emma's Pocket Dollhouse quilt. It's a fun fusible applique with pocket options for little dolls or accessories. The great part about this quilt is all the individualizing you can do with each room in your fabric selections. I think I want my little girl bedroom to have lots of polka dots...

And occasionally we'd have the pleasure of meeting with some pretty amazing designers like Amy Butler. She always seems to have the time to stop and chat and share. She's a very talented woman with a very down to earth personality.

Back Home!

International Quilt Market in Salt Lake City. How fun was that! Just got home thismorning and I'm so tired, but it's a good tired. I think I walked 10 miles each day just within the convention center alone. The convention center is huge and I tried to walk around as much as I could so I could gather in all the new ideas, touch all the newfabric coming out and chat with the fun men and women at quilt market, some of them old friends from the very first market I went to five years ago and some of them new friends from this market.

I was there to help my sister Jan's company, The Apron Lady designs. She has darling new apron patterns and a fun new applique quilt. We were busy with business almost every minute of each day. Here are some pics from the first day.

Sample Spree was our first big event to prepare for. It's a whirling frenzy of shoppers for just a 2-hour period of time. They line up outside the room sometimes up to 6 hours before the doors even open.

Then the countdown begins and the doors open. I was almost hoarse after the 2 hours was over.

Here's some shots of our booth all prepared and ready for our first customers. I'll post more pictures later.

Off to Market

I'm off to the International Quilt Market tomorrow in Salt Lake City. This is quite the event for anyone involved in the quilt, fabric world. My sister who owns Apron Lady Designs always asks me to come with her (if she didn't ask me, I would virtually beg her to go any way). She has some fun new patterns this year and I'm excited to see how they do at market. I'll post pictures when I get back.

For now, my design wall will just have to stay as it is. I'm in the process of making Let Your Imagination Bloom by Natalia Bonner. I'm using Moda's Fresh Flowers line. I saw the pattern here on Moda Bakeshop.

Hope to see some of you at market!

Another scrappy top

A few years ago I came home from quilt market with a large bundle of leaf print batiks. Of course I had a plan at the time to make something awesome with them, but they slowly found themselves under a pile of other pieces of fabric that were meant for something totally awesome. The other day in my spring cleaning I discovered them and decided to do something about it. So here is my latest quilt top using all scraps from my stash.

It was a really windy day, but it felt so good to be able to be outside after a long winter that I just had to take the picture outside. My daughter was hoping her green converse tennis shoes would show up for the picture. They are her prized possession and yes, they are a beautiful compliment to the quilt :).

Material Girls

At my quilt group this week, Material Girls Idaho, we each made a cute little pin cushion from two circles of fabric. The bottom piece is wool. They were easy and fast, my two favorite things and my homemade pin toppers look great on it. Follow the link and check out the photos from our show and tell. The recipes from our luncheon are even included.

Pizza Box-black and white

This month I had Mary's pizza box and she's doing all black and white squares. So I improvised a square this time and I think it turned out cute(sorry it's a little blurry).

Here are all the blocks in her box so far. I know she'll love making a quilt from all of these.

Dinosaur Eggs

Thanks to a post and tutorial on Our Best Bites, my girls and I decided to make dinosaur eggs last night. This morning when we unveiled/peeled the eggs, it was a fun surprise with each one.

Once they are hard boiled and cracked, then they have to stay in the dye cups overnight.

In the morning we peeled all the eggs and to our surpise even the inside of the peeled shells were a piece of art.

Some of the eggs were easier to peel than others, but each one is quite unique and of course very pre-historic looking.

Scraps galore

I've had a huge stash of batiks for quite a few years now. I use them for lots of things, but it never seems to make a dent in the pile. So here's yet another attempt to use several of my leaf print batiks and I actually think my pile went down quite a bit for this one. I'm still working out the details of it and some of the things are just pinned together but I'm liking what I see so far.

Neon anyone?

Here's how the balloon wreath looks in neon. My daughter decided she wanted to join me in my class and she chose to do her balloon in neon and I liked hers the best out of all of them.

Balloon Wreath

I was asked to teach a class at our church for a craft day called Super Saturday. At first they wanted me to teach a birthday banner class which would have been fun too, but it would have taken too much time. So I found this cute balloon wreath complete with tutorial on Our Best Bite's blog and it's much quicker from start to finish. I still need to add a few more balloons and tidy it up a bit. It takes quite a few, about 200-250, but this is the overall look and I think it will be fun to hang on special days, birthdays, etc.

Dr. Suess's birthday-again...

As long as I have a child in elementary school, I will always know when it's Dr. Suess's birthday. I can't tell you how many times I've done some version of Cindy Loo Hoo's hair. Nikki was so excited about today that she had a hard time getting to sleep last night. She had everything planned out-the hair, the braid design, the dress, the tights, the shoes. She's at an after school activity right now at church and still wants to keep her hair this way. I have a feeling she'll ask me if she can sleep in it too.

Here's what's on my design wall right now. I had a charm pack that desperately needed a home. There are very few patterns out there that only require one charm pack. So I made all of them into half-square triangles, put them up on my board and starting playing with design. I landed on this one and have them sewn in rows so far. It will probably be a medallion for a quilt or else a table topper for my square kitchen table. I used every charm square except 3 of them. I'll put them on the back.

Big purse

I finally made a big purse. It's one I've been eyeing ever since I saw a couple friend's of mine with theirs. I love the grommets-all 8 of them.
I love how large the opening is, but also how it looks like a regular purse once it's closed. With the wide mouth opening, I can easily put my notebooks, church books and iPad all in it with room to spare. The pockets are a nice size too.

Now that I've made one and worked through all the kinks of a new pattern, I'd love to make another one. It goes together quite fast and I'd love to make one as a gift.

Looking Back

I was looking back over some of my photos and found pictures from my Material Girls Idaho group from several years ago. Wow! Have we been a productive group and such creativity. Here are just a sampling of a few I found. The snowman quilt was one where we all exchanged fabric at one meeting, learned how to make the quilt and then several in the group made their own version of it.

Flickr block

Finally finished my January block for my Flickr group, Bee Scrappy. Somehow I got behind last month. I really enjoyed making this block, it was a new method for me. Here's the tutorial that we all used to make these liberated churn dashes:
I can see lots of possibilities using this same method for several other classic blocks.

Scraps and stash

So many people including myself are looking for ways to use up our tons of stash from projects past and I've always loved this particular technique called Snippets. It's so easy to do. I've shown a few of my snippet blocks and quilts before, but I had forgotten about the method and was trying to think of some ways to use up my stash, a personal goal for this year. I whipped up this little block in about 30 minutes. There are a couple of books outlining the technique, but you basically just put Steam-a-Seam on the back of your leftover fabric pieces, free form cut them into shapes. I chose to do flower petals, leaves and a vase. Take the paper backing off and stick it down on your background fabric. The shapes are removable and you can re-position them several times until you get a look you like. Once you like it, iron and it's permanent. Make a huge bouquet and you've used quite a bit of your stash!

This next block was another Pizza Box block. I used the same design as last month because both quilters had such similar colors.