It's A Wrap . . . . .

I finished my "He Knows When You Are Sleeping", aka Red Snowball Challenge, quilt top today! I could not be happier with the end result, plus the piecing was a breeze. Thanks Nicole and Allyson, I would never have made the quilt if it weren't for your challenge.

It's a rainy day here today so I could not get enough light to get a good picture of the finished product, so instead I'm sharing a couple of techniques I used to assemble the quilt.

First, I arranged all my blocks on my design wall, to get the best placement and to avoid duplicate fabrics being side by side. But when I started sewing the rows, unless I worked with two blocks at a time, I was all the time mixing up my perfect placement.

Since my quilt had 8 blocks per row, making 4 sets of 2 blocks, I numbered the heads of these pins to keep track of their order. (I just used a permanent marker) So working on a row at a time, I would mark the blocks of the two block sets 1 through 4. Once the singles were sewn together, it was easy to keep track of which sides should be sewn together next.

Here's number 1.

Here's another little tip for piecing your border strips, "stay out of the crotch".

If you think of these two strips of fabric as legs of pants,

it's easy to remember not to draw your line the wrong direction if you think, "stay out of the crotch".

See how this line stays out of the "danger zone".

When I go to sew the pieces, I line my needle up right on the drawn line, then hit the needle over button on my machine one time. The stitches run right down the side of the drawn line.

Easy Peasy.

I hope these little tips help you the next time you're assembling your quilt top.

Hopefully the sun will shine soon and I'll be able to share pictures of my top. It probably won't be quilted in time for the holidays this year but it will be ready for next year. After reading all the Cross Country Christmas Blog Hop posts today with all their Christmas quilts, I've decided for sure, "I need more Christmas quilts" !

Progress . . . .

Things are progressing at my house......I got some of my Christmas Village Houses set up....

Before......

And After.......(typical November at my house, Christmas decorations mixing with the fall decorations (placemats).)

And a few more over here.....22 houses unpacked, plugged in and ready for Christmas, 40 more to go.

I'm also making progress on my Red Snowball Challenge, or as I'm calling my quilt, "He knows when you are sleeping". I've got all the blocks made! If you follow the pressing instructions they really go together easily. I hope the rows go together as easily.

As I mentioned Monday, I'm throwing a few Santas in the mix with my cream snowballs. I've decided on 9, here's the random pattern I'm going with.

The Santa faces are so appealing, this one looks like he's deep in thought.....probably wondering if Thelma's been naughty or nice . . .

Here's one Santa with another Santa sneaking in......

I think this Santa looks tired but he's got a great beard......I love each little rosie cheek.

Nicole, at Sisters Choice, had a blog yesterday about shoes, which made me remember of funny shoe story of my own.

I'm not really a shoe person, it's just not in my blood. The first year after I retired my primary shoes of choice were tennis shoes. Summer, winter, fall, spring, I was in tennis shoes, and loving it!

One day my husband mentioned that maybe I could wear some shoes besides tennis shoes. I'm guessing he had some shoes in mind like the ones above. Which are beautiful shoes, but they have a better shot of being a decoration in my living room than getting on my feet. So being the dutiful wife that I am, I went out and bought new shoes.....

these...they're Rocket Dogs!! My husband laughed when he saw them, but they are all me!!

I do have one favorite pair of shoes that aren't tennis shoes.....

Santa Shoes!!!

It's Beginning To Look A LITTLE Like Christmas . . . . . .

Hello, how was your weekend, it was a busy one here, the time just flew by.

We started the process of getting ready for Christmas this weekend. My husband helped me get all my Department 56 Christmas Village houses down from the attic. It's definitely a two person job. I get up in the attic and drop the boxes down one by one. My husband does the catching and stacking.

I started collecting these Christmas houses over 20 years ago. I would get a few each year as gifts from family and before I knew it I had a whole town. Every year I say I don't have room for any more, then a new one comes out that "I just need" to complete my collection. I set them up all over the house.

I get them out before Thanksgiving for several reasons. First, my daughter is only home for a few days at Christmas, so I like to get some of the decorations out for her to enjoy at Thanksgiving. I also like to take my time setting them up, I enjoy looking at each one, the details amaze me every time. But mainly, I just like having them out, they are the first decorations up and the last I put away.

From the beginning I've always written the date I got the piece and the name of the person who gave it to me on the box. This one was from my Grandmother in 1992, she sadly passed away a couple of years later. But I think of her often, and always when I get out this house.

Looks like I picked this one up while on vacation in South Carolina in 1991.

I could not pick a favorite if I tried.

Although this pie shop is pretty darn cute.

Even the back of the houses, which folks don't normally get to see, have interesting detail. Here's a coat and broom by the back door with snowy logs stacked on the step.

Stay tuned for pictures as I get these houses all set up for the holidays.

I also squeezed in some sewing this weekend. I worked on snowballs for the Red Snowball Quilt Challenge.

I thought I had all my red snowball blocks done. I thought I counted 40 plus 3 extra.

But when I put them on my design wall for this picture I came up short. Not only did I not have the extra, I didn't have the 40 I needed. I'm not sure where I went wrong. My goal was to have all my red blocks done this weekend, and I had the time, if I would have counted correctly.

That's OK, I have plenty of half square triangles made up ( as I've mentioned before, I'm an over cutter) so I'll make a few more then get started on the cream snowballs.

I've got around 40 different red fabrics in the red blocks.

It's No Picnic . . . . .

Here's the pattern for November for the Year of Schnibbles challenge, "Picnic".

I was so excited when I saw the pattern that Sinta and Sherri had selected. As I've mentioned before, I'm fairly new to quilting , so I have a long list of first quilts that I want to make. My first basket quilt is on that list.

While I loved the fabric used for this pattern, I was not in the mood to work with what seemed more like summer colors, but that's OK, I thought maybe I could switch things up by going with a "Christmas baskets in the snow" type theme.

Well you know me and Schnibbles, we don't see eye to eye on size. Schnibbles are very clever patterns that use charm packs to their biggest advantage. The patterns seem to run in the neighborhood of 33 inches square, give or take. I like to supersize my Schnibbles to more of a lap size.

So as soon as my pattern arrived in the mail I did this to it. True the quilt was now more of a size that appealed to me, but as a basket quilt I thought I could do better.

Then I ran across this, Miss Rosie also has this pattern called MoJo. It finishes at 76" x 76", a size I like. I liked this pattern better than my super sized Schnibbles pattern. Then it dawned on me that if I made this pattern, it would not qualify for the Year of Schnibbles Challenge, which made me rethink the whole basket concept. One thing that popped into my mind was that I really like the baskets with handles. While Miss Rosie's baskets are as cute as can be, I was missing the handle.

So I was off to find the best basket pattern for me when I found this.....

This pattern is called "Gathering Baskets" and is by Primitive Pieces by Lynda . This pattern is so me, the red, the black, the flower, THE HANDLES on the baskets. It's a nice mix of modern and traditional and is 80" X 86". So I've decided that this will be my first basket quilt.

So I'll be eagerly awaiting the Picnic Parade on the 1st of December, sadly I won't have an entry, but I will have a basket quilt in my future!

Fringe On The Fringe . . . . . .

I could not be happier with my Rouenneries Fabric. I'm going to make an ocean waves quilt with some of the fabric. I think I also have enough fabric to make something else, to be determined later. There's something very interesting about this fabric that I have never seen before........

look, there's fringe on the fringe..... isn't it lovely!!

Here's a better picture of it!! What do I do with this? If someone has or has seen a clever way to use this fabric edge please let me know! I would hate to chop it all up THEN find out what I was supposed to do with it!

Also, I would like to add some green to this family, has anyone run across a good green that matches?

Thanks to All!!

Snowball Challenge and Challenging Shopping . . . . .

I've decided to participate in the Red Snowball Challenge.

Allyson saw this quilt in a shop in Utah, Nicole fell in love with it, so the two of them decided to share the fun and host a challenge, thus the "Red Snowball Challenge" was born.

The pattern is by Evelyn Sloppy, this is one of the first quilting books I bought. Not only are the patterns amazing, Evelyn's strip set directions are wonderful. I incorporate her stripping methods whenever I can. I will even rework a pattern to use strip sets. I think pieces are easier to fit together when they start out as a strip set.

The red snowball quilt pictured above is this pattern, "Leftovers Again?" Isn't it amazing how different this quilt looks totally scrappy versus red and cream scrappy?

At first I considered doing this pattern using scrappy pink and scrappy brown civil war fabrics. But you know me and red, even though I have two red and cream quilts and two red, white and blue quilts, I figured I could always use one more. Plus I have so many cream and red fabrics, I didn't need to buy any new fabric to make this quilt, you know what that means, it's a free quilt!!

Here are a couple of sample blocks I made to get a feel for the project. The finished block measures 6 inches square. Since I have so many red quilts hanging around my house year round, I thought I would add just a little something to this one to give it more of a Christmas feel.

I'm going to add some of these Santa faces to the center square of a few of the cream snowball blocks, no more than 8 or 10.

I'm also going to add this fabric as a border. I just love this fabric. I made a Irish Chain quilt with this fabric a couple of years ago, it lives in Los Angeles.

I'm naming my quilt, "He Knows When You Are Sleeping". Another blogger mentioned she was going to use flannel for the backing, I plan to do the same, making this a warm and snuggly quilt that I plan to nap under.

Since I'm adding a border, but also wanting to keep it around the original pattern size of 58" x 70", I'm going to make fewer blocks. Which translates to fewer half square triangles!!

Yesterday Nicole blogged about how she's using the Easy Angle to maker her half square triangles for this project. I gave it a try and like this method. I still like to make them a little bigger and square to perfection, but it's really not necessary. If you cut your strips accurately, the hst are pretty much spot on. I sure didn't miss drawing that line down the back of all those little squares. So far I've made 120, only 200 more to go!!

On another note, over the weekend I had the opportunity to visit a wonderful quilt shop in Indianapolis, Indiana, Quilts Plus, it was a Better Homes and Garden Quilt Sampler Shop in 2005. They do not allow pictures to be taken in their shop, but if you visit their website, you get a feel for what they have to offer.

They had many beautiful quilts on display, all with available kits. They had a kit for Miss Rosie's True Blue pattern that was lovely. They also had several of those wonderful fabric towers for many gorgeous families of fabric, like Rouenneries, Aster Manor, and Wiscassett. This shop is also participating in the Bonnie Blue Block Sampler and had their finished quilt on display, I loved it! So I wandered all over the shop, visiting with the friendly shop folks and trying to decide what to buy. In all honesty, it was overwhelming, there were just so many things that I loved......so after considering all my choices, after swooning over everything in this shop, this is what I bought.....

1/4 of a yard of three fabrics! No towers, no kits, no patterns, three 1/4 yard cuts of fabric that I liked but really have no plans for!! I spent a whopping $7.77

Could I be a bigger ninny!!

Goodbye Leaves, Goodbye Faceted Jewels, Hello Wallhanging...

Hello!! The time between my Friday blog and this blog seemed like ages. There really wasn't much going on in general in blogland this weekend. It feels good to be back and I'm eager to see what everyone was up to this weekend.

Remember this tree, full of fall loveliness......

all you folks in California and Florida who left comments about missing the colors of fall,

look what colors I have now....none,

And this ...

is now this.

We had a lovely warm and sunny weekend, just what everyone needed to rake all those previously beautiful, but now dead leaves. This is what I get to look at for the next 5 months. This is why I plan trips to California in February!!

Well it's official, I have my first real UFO!!

I packed up my "Faceted Jewels" project this weekend. This is the first time I've started something and instead of finishing it, I put in a storage box!! I had a pretty good record going, 52 starts and finishes. I thought it would maybe make me feel bad, to start this project and postpone when I would finish it...but it didn't!! It was really a relief!! With the holidays rapidly approaching, my monthly Schnibbles, plus my snowball challenge, I didn't think I would have the opportunity to spend time on Faceted Jewels. So instead of leaving it out collecting dust, I packed it up. My plan is to get back to it in February, when the decorations are put up, the snow is flying, and working an a colorful project is what I'll need to get through the dreary winter.

It's going to patiently wait for me right here in my closet.

Have you ever made a Harmonic Convergence quilt? It's a pattern created by Ricky Tims.

I can vouch for the book cover, they are mysterious, magical, easy, and fun!! The inside of this book is pretty amazing too. There are some very clever and artistic folks out there!!

All it takes to make a Harmonic Convergence top is four 14 1/2 inch squares of fabric. You cut the squares into 1, 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2, 3, and 3 1/2 inch strips, mix'em up, sew'em up, then cut'em up, mix'em up and sew'em up again. And then you get this.

Some afternoon when you are wanting to feel like an artist and not a quilter, give it a try. I'm giving this to a friend for Christmas. It's quilt # 45 and is 31 inches square.

Well, it was 31 inches square before it was quilted, something happened after it left home to make it a little wonky and ripply. Do small projects get distorted by long arm quilting? I told the quilter I did not want an all over pattern, I think she did a nice job.

I'm still waiting for my Schnibbles Picnic pattern to arrive in the mail!!!

Patchwork Party 2007 - Part Two . . .

This is the second quilt I made from the Patchwork Party Fall 2007 sampler blocks. It is called "Clara's Enchanted Nutcracker Dance Quilt" and it's by Bittersweet Blessings.

This quilt is 66 x 66...a little more than half the size of this one.

Don't the twelve sampler blocks looks so different in each setting?

I couldn't pick a favorite, so I did both.

The quilter quilted these tops one right after the other, and she did an amazing job on both. She also tried to quilt the blocks as similarly as possible. The borders do have the exact same quilt pattern.

I like this spinning whirlygig quilt pattern thing.

Here's a close-up of the center. This top has just a little applique going on, just enough for me to be able to do it!

This is the back. This is quilt #30.

The large quilt will go on my bed after the holidays, (I have a Christmas Quilt that I use during the month of December) and the smaller quilt will hang on the wall beside it.

50th Post .......

Yesterday was the 50th post on my blog. Wow, how fast did that go!! I decided to have a giveaway for the folks who left messages on my 50th post.

Cara, Rene, Nicole, Allyson, and Mary are in the running for this:

a Gingher seam ripper.

And the Random Number Generator picked....4! Allyson you're the winner. I've got your address so consider this on the way to your house. Thanks to all who left messages.

(I have no idea how those clever folks cut and paste that random number generator box on their blog...I had Cooper verify the results.)

Speaking of Cooper, he got a birthday card, his first card on his first birthday.... He loved it!! Cooper looked just like the pup on the right when he came to live with us, cute, quiet and shy. That's definitely his sister on the left.

Patchwork Party 2007 - Part One . . .

Are you familiar with Patchwork Party Quilts? It's kind of like an online shop hop/block of the month combination. A group of twelve online quilt shops each offer a sampler block using the same family of fabrics. You have a couple of months to visit each shop and purchase their block. Each shop also offers a finishing kit, with each shop creating their own design. I participated in Patchwork Party 2007 Fall Edition. The blocks are made using Marti Michell templates. I figured while I was making one block I might as well get some extra fabric and make two. With Marti Michell it's all about the cutting.

This quilt is called" Snowbird Migration". The finishing kit was created by Creative Quilts and the pattern designed by Rose Wojnar. The fabric is "Home for the Holidays" by Faye Burgos for Marcus Brothers.

A few times I have mentioned my Lessons Learned Journal, and how one project taught me to pay attention to the size of a quilt before I start. This is the quilt that taught me that lesson. It is 112 x 120. I started this project in January 2008, and finished two different kits by the end of February. I just got it back from the quilter. She did a custom job that's amazing, it was worth the wait.

Each sampler block is surrounded by red sashing, then black sashing, then the flying geese. Each one of these large sampler blocks finish at 26 x 26. You think I would have noticed that these were rather large blocks but the size of this quilt really didn't hit me until I started sewing these large blocks together.

Here's a little close-up of some of the quilting.

Friday I'll post pictures of the other quilt I made using these same sampler blocks.

Patchwork Party Fall 2009 is going on right now.

This is quilt #29.