Bound for Atlanta!

Both this adorable Hunky Dory baby quilt and me!   I'm leaving next week with my brothers to attend my Dad's retirement party and will get to meet my newborn niece, Piper, and present this quilt to her while I am visiting.  My quilter said that every person should have a quilt with Minkee on the back - I think I agree.

I'm going to mail the quilt ahead of me so it won't take up room in my suitcase.   How does a gal from Seattle pack for HOTlanta?   Plus, I may need some extra room in my suitcase, as I've been promised a shopping trip to Little Quilts to spend my birthday gift certificate!

Lemon Zinger!

Whoa - guess it has been a while since I posted - yep, I had to log in to Typepad again, it's been *that* long.

I've had fun playing in my sewing room since my last post.   Yesterday I finished the quilt I started in that last post, which I'm calling Lemon Zinger.  It's the most fun I've had making a quilt in a really long time.   The Wonky Cross blocks designed by Elizabeth Hartman at Oh, Fransson! are so much fun to make and require no fussy piecing or matching - my favorite kind!

I decided to make just every other block an X and intersperse the Xs with all the fun black, white, yellow and grey fabrics I was able to find.  There are so many wonderful prints out there, and my quilt ended up like an adult "I Spy" quilt.  Some of the prints were just too cute to cut up and make Xs through (but maybe part of it was me being too lazy to make 72 X blocks!).  At any rate, I couldn't be happier with how this quilt turned out, and I've already started on my next Oh, Fransson! quilt - the Crazy 9-Patch Lattice Quilt.  Again, so much fun, I couldn't stop sewing last night!

Play time!

My quilt shop coworker, Kay, is working on an orange and white 9-patch quilt.  She was buying a few fat quarters at the shop on Wednesday, and said how she'd found a lot of forgotten oranges in her stash.   I offered to bring her my bin of oranges, left over from my favorite ZuZu's Petals quilt.   I won't see Kay again until Sunday, but I put the orange tub in my car and have been driving it around and admiring the fabrics I can see through the plastic for the last few days.

I felt the need to make a fun quilt, and maybe use some of the oranges again before I gave them to Kay.   I looked on the Oh, Fransson! blog, because she always has really cool color quilts.   I found a link to this tutorial on Sew Mama Sew, and this fun block, Wonky Crosses.   I realized I didn't have large enough pieces of orange in my stash to make these blocks, but seeing the photo made me think of the perfect use for those black, yellow, gray & white fabrics I have been collecting!

In just a few hours, I made 11 of these cute blocks!   Well, I made 15 but some of them were a little TOO wonky!   I don't know how big this will wind up being, but I'm going to make blocks until I run out of fun combinations.

I hope you were able to have some fun in YOUR sewing room this weekend!

Anna's in da house!

Or more accurately, Anna Elizabeth is ON the house, since I tacked her up on my garage door to get a photo.   This is my version of Carrie Nelson's wonderful Elizabeth pattern (also available in her new book, Spice of Life Quilts).

I knew when I saw the small version in a magazine using these fabrics, that I had finally found a use for my Anna's Starry Nights yardage.  This is an old Moda group by Blackbird Designs and I loved every minute of making this quilt.

I didn't have enough of the backgrounds from the collection, so the blocks are made with a Lakehouse fabric.   But I realized that I did have bits and pieces enough of the collection's backgrounds to make the setting triangles.  I like how it brings in more of the beautiful fabric to frame the quilt.

Thanks, Carrie, for another wonderful quilt pattern - every piece fit together with absolutely no fussing.   Always tried and true!

A partridge in a pear tree

I finished my Anna Elizabeth quilt today, but it's such a rainy, dreary day in western Washington, I will have to wait for clearer skies to get a good photo.

After finishing, I set to work on my first block for the Fat Quarter Shop's 2010 Designer Mystery Quilt.   I love Kate Spain's 12 Days of Christmas fabrics, and this present block designed by Gudrun Erla is super cute.  I can't wait to see the next block!

How I spent Sunday

 To start the morning off, my friends and I did the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure - we completed the 5K walk.   It was raining in Seattle, as it has every day for what seems like forever, but it was a warm day and we didn't get too wet.

That's Charlene on the left, me in the center and my BFF Cecilia, a breast cancer survivor, on the right.   (Note:   My mom reminded me that I neglected to mention my Grandma Lois was a 39-year breast cancer survivor.   Believe me, I thought about Grandma many times yesterday.)

I got home around 1 p.m. and went straight to my tidy and inviting sewing room.   I'm calling my current project Anna Elizabeth.  I'm making Carrie Nelson's Elizabeth quilt and I'm using an older Moda collection from Blackbird Designs called Anna's Starry Nights.   I've had these fabrics for ages, but when I saw a small version of this quilt using these fabrics in the Small Quilts magazine, I knew I'd finally found the perfect project for my Anna's Starry Nights.

I don't have any of the background fabrics from the collection, but I found a Lakehouse fabric with cursive writing on it.  I'm having to take this slowly - one block at a time - because the background fabric is directional and I want to make sure the lines of writing are all parallel.   They're not necessarily facing the same direction - some writing is upside down - but I decided not to be *that* finicky.   So far I like the quilt.   And it's really fun to piece.

Holiday weekends are good for projects...

The closet under the stairs in my sewing room hasn't been accessed for years.  Why?   Because it was so crammed with stuff - wall to wall and floor to ceiling - you couldn't get in it.   Just opening the door, you risked a shower of junk raining down upon you.

My sweet and helpful DD helped me clean out that closet today.  From something you couldn't get into, to something that has 2 organized stacks of quilt project boxes and room for a skinny 10-year old to lay down in between.   The cardboard boxes behind the project boxes are my old Barbie collection and DH's comic book collection.

Ah - it feels good to be organized.

I didn't find as many forgotten quilt project treasures as I had hoped for, but I'm happy with the progress we were able to make.

Now to tackle the one remaining closet in my sewing room, and I know that one is only quilt fabrics, so I'm bound to unearth some treasures within.

I hope you're all having a wonderful, long, relaxing weekend.