5.01.2011

Moving Time

I've moved my blog over to wordpress...

Please follow me over there!

4.15.2011

Something new...


With a little bit of free time, I hand dyed some fabric..my first time doing this, and something I've been wanting to try for quite some time.

These colors are a bit brighter than my norm, but I do like the way they marbled/mottled.  They are fat quarters.



I had a couple small pieces of fabric leftover, so I rolled them up, wrapped them with string, and poured the leftover dyes over them, and I got these two small pieces of tie-dyed fabric to play with too!


Have fun everybody!  Deb

3.25.2011

Soldier Star

I have never made a star block before.  Reading about Moda's 'Just One Star' to comfort soldiers, I knew I had to give myself a shot at making a star.  (You can read about their challenge here.)

Here's my block:


They are going to trim the blocks square so it looks like I am done!  Maybe I'll make a few more though.

Won't you join in too?

3.15.2011

Scare the Gators....

I had some free time this past weekend to do a little bit of work on my quilt.

I managed to get the sashing around the blocks finished and everything sewn together, but only after I sewed it all together and took it all back apart THREE times!  Nothing was lining up, at all, and it was bugging me.  If it had been 'off' a little bit, I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but that was not the case.




I still needed to make it bigger so I made a black, red and white skinny border to go around it that you can see in the pic below.


I am currently auditioning fabric to make a wide border to go all around, but my choices are limited, and my goal has been to use only what I have on hand and not purchase any new fabric for this project.  We need the finished quilt to be big enough for our bunk in our camper.  (It is currently 48" x 70")  My man says this quilt will scare off the gators and raccoons, it is so bright!  ha ha

3.04.2011

Quilting Fun

Hey everyone,  I won't bore you with lots of photos of my pre-progression on this quilt, but if you missed it and want to see what I originally posted, you can find it here.

Here's what I started with recently, which was shown in my other post:


I decided to take away the cactus green and the stripey fabric and sash the blocks with a variety of solid colors, and it turned out like this:




Tried my hand at sewing lots of strips of fabric together and then cutting at a 45 degree angle.  (so that the borders around the solid sashing would be diagonal.)  Well, I completely failed at that, even with the help of my husband who was laughing really hard (I guess I cut them all wrong), so I cut the pointy ends off those diagonal strips and I sewed them together and added more strips of fabric so that I could cut up the strata and make the border that you see in the photos below:



I really am getting good vibes from this quilt!  Here's a closeup of my stripey borders and you can see where there are a few diagonal pieces mixed in here and there.  (That turned into a GOOD mistake, I think!)


Have a great weekend - Deb.

2.27.2011

Playtime quilt

I took some time to work on my playtime quilt -- this is what it looked like when I first posted about it...I have since added more blocks, and took away a few that I thought were too dark and boring...


A majority of these 9x9 blocks were originally a 20" block that I cut up.  Yesterday I decided to sew them into 18x18 blocks by sewing the 24 blocks together in sets of four.  Then, wanting to make it all BIGGER, I added some horizontal strips that I had pieced together.



That done, I wanted to make it WIDER and so I added a vertical strip with the same fabric as the horizontal strips, by making thicker cut strips this time...


This quilt top needs to be way bigger.  I'll decide how to do that my next go around.  I'm thinking it needs some more blocks, or some black and white wild borders, or maybe some red....or purple, or even orange.  Maybe I'll add some borders on the individual 6 blocks...that might be cool.  Yes, that might be just what I need to do. I'll have to see where my thoughts are when I get back to work on it, but it will grow!  It's way too soon to start sewing it together, no matter how much I want to piece it together already!

2.21.2011

Playtime!

I've been hanging out at 15 Minutes Play for several weeks now and have been playing with my scrap bin blocks.  I just love making these blocks!  Here's a few that are complete.  Hope to make two more rows and then it will be ready to sew together and quilt.