Crumb Snatchers

Crumb Snatchers is the name of our little sewing group - my two eight year old granddaughters and me. They first learned about seams by sewing together old sheets I had ripped apart into strips. Now they have moved on to crumbs and strips and are making their parents a little pillow for Christmas. And after that they will make a hotpad for them.  Here Belle (aka Isabelle/Izzy/Bellarina) models with a chunk of mushroom fabric she chose to work with because her family loves to go mushroom hunting.

Here she is with the front of her pillow which is stuffed but the opening not yet sewn shut. She picked fabrics with things her family loves...birds, hot peppers, roses, and anything Irish...

...and here's the back of her pillow with fish and mushrooms and a special strip on which she wrote some lovely sentiments as well as the date she made it.   I think she also noticed she her pillow had a big indent in it which we decided to call character.

 And here is Crumb Snatcher Kayla still working away on her pillow back. Unfortunately the pins in her seam were facing the wrong way and after I told her that her smile was not as big.

And here is the front of Kayla's pillow.  Of course her main fabric has hearts. That is so Kayla.   And now I'm wondering why Belle is in the background looking so grouchy.   I think she wanted me to show her how to hand stitch her opening shut and I told her she had to wait until slowpoke Kayla had hers stuffed so I could show them both at the same time what had to be done.

Birthday Stars - August Goal for Lovely Year of Finishes

Last year I participated in a birthday block swap. I asked for any 12 inch star in jewel tones on black.

I was surprised by the number of blocks that included purple. No two blocks were the same.  I added the 5 inch sashing and little 5 inch stars randomly placed. 

I'll use a dark purple for the backing. 

Getting this UFO quilted and bound is my goal for Lovely Year of Finishes. 

So far I've completed each month's goal and have a lot of UFO turned Lovely Finishes to show for it! 

Seeing Red

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month is red.  I started with a bag of crumbs and ended up with four 12.5 inch red crumb blocks.  I'm not sure what I'll do with them.  One of the things I liked about Grandma's quilts when I was a little girl was that there were so many different fabrics to look at. I guess that's why I like scrappy quilts.  There's sure a lot to look at in crumb blocks. 

I was already in the middle of making some Tall Stars (6x9) since it is the block of the month at Block Lotto.  All of the red backgrounds came from my 2.5 inch strips scraps.  The stars were scraps too.

These would make a fun quilt for kids or for Quilts of Valor.

And finally, the red 2.5 inch strip scraps that didn't read solid red went into some "Little Monkeys"  The should play well in a quilt with the aqua ones I made last month.


See how everyone else out there in blog land is using up their red scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this Scrap Happy Saturday at the SoScrappy linky party. 

A Rainbow of Favorite Things - Finished !!!

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My 6 inch hexagon quilt is finished

It is completely hand pieced and quilted. No machines were involved.

Paper pieced and then hand quilted with perle #8 in a rainbow of different colors. 

It's a rainbow of my favorite things. 

I started in the middle with black - the absence of color and some crayons, then a mix of colors in some of my favorite things - buttons, ice cream, cupcakes, butterflies, candy...

Red is for valentines, strawberries, zinnias, roses, cherries, tulips, tomatoes, candy canes...

Orange is for pumpkins, peaches, oranges, carrots, daffodils...

 Yellow is for bananas, daffodils, lemonade, sweet corn, roses, sunflowers...

Green is for christmas cookies, kiwi, broccoli, peas Irish, basil, pears...

Blue is for blueberries, butterflies, merry-go-rounds, unicorns, iris, fairies, aprons, hoarfrost...

Purple is for pansies, plums, clematis, fairies, grapes, hydrangeas...

 The back is a multi-colored batik I picked up on sale.  I sometimes don't have very even stitches so I didn't want them to stand out too much on the backing.

I'm glad I'm finished with this. I've been working on it off and on for a very long time so it feels very good to be able to cross another UFO off the list.

Since I have a finish I'm linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.   And, since I really think I deserve a Whoop, Whoop I'm also linking up at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  And, I'm also off to give a Weekend Update at Block Lotto. 

Design Line Monday

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Fall Lottery

This quilt will be donated to Wrap a Smile- quilts for kids undergoing cleft palate/cleft lip surgery.  It is made from 6 blocks won in an autumn color block lottery hosted by the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild and some other miscellaneous scraps, pinwheels and wonky stars. 

Isn't that Scottie Dog cute? They are looking for more "boyish" quilts so hopefully this could be appropriate for a girl or a boy. 

I quilted it with loops and stars on my plain Jane DSM. Looks like I should have gotten a little closer to the edge with my quilting  but that's the way it stays now. I'm also getting better at machine binding. I actually enjoy sewing down binding by hand but I do understand that machine binding is better for kids.

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 "Happy Cats"

This quilt will also go to Wrap a Smile and I think either a boy or girl would enjoy it. Who doesn't love a happy cat? 

Looks like I hung the quilt upside down so maybe the cats aren't that happy now. 

I think I have a bottomless box of happy blocks in different themes waiting to be made into quilts. 

Quilted on plain Jane DSM with spirals. Looks like I made it closer to the edges on this one with my quilting. And, again, binding is sewn down by machine. 

And now I'm linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. But I guess since I don't have a design wall but do have a clothesline now you know why I titled my post today Design Line Monday. 

Almost Finished Except For...

 ...Labels.  I have to stitch on some labels to finish up 4 quilts - 3 for Quilts of Valor and one for a wedding gift for my niece and husband-to-be.   I hate adding labels. Don't exactly know why I procrastinate for so long.  I want to ship off the quilts and the wedding is coming up so this is on my to-do list for tonight. 

And my Rainbow of Favorite Things Hexie Quilt is almost finished except for a few red and orange patches. I might get that finished up tonight also. This quilt has been made completely by hand.  I couldn't decide how to finish off the edges. I ended up turning under 1/4 inch on top and backing and stitching the two together with ladder stitch. I think that's what it's called. Might be called blind stitch. At any rate...I'm almost finished~!! 

To see what other Slow Sunday Stitching is going on in blog land visit Kathy's Quilts. 

This is the last day of my staycation so it's hi ho! hi ho! It's off to work I go tomorrow.  I did get a lot of weeding done and a lot of flimsies made so watch for some finished quilts here soon! 

Lotteries

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for July has been teal, blue-green, aqua, turquoise. The only scraps I have left of that color are some 2.5 inch strips left over from various projects. So, this morning I made some 9 patch blocks from those scraps and combined them with some miscellaneous 6.5 inch squares that I've received in various swaps that seem "boyish".  I ended up with 4 - 12 inch blocks that I will probably send in to the August lottery for Sunshine Online Quilt Guild.  The August theme is "Boys". The way the lottery works is  - for every 2 blocks sent in one goes to the lottery and the other goes to Tammy who runs the lottery and makes quilts for Wrap a Smile and Quilts Beyond Borders from all the "second  entry" lottery blocks.  

To see what others are doing with their teal, etc scraps visit Scrap Happy Saturday at the SoScrappy blog. 

And speaking of lotteries...I joined up with Block Lotto and made some 6x9 I Spy Houses which is this month's lottery block.  I think these houses would make a fun quilt for some grandkids who love story telling. Oh, the tales they could tell about some of the people in this neighborhood!