Jackpot

When I came home from getting my hair cut this afternoon, I discovered I had scored at the mailbox.  Lucky, lucky me!  First, I received my doll quilt from my partner, Sharon over at Vrooman's Quilts.

Sharon makes the most amazing doll quilts, and here's the quilt she made for me this month.

The theme was to use one solid fabric, and she used a solid white for the background.  I love, love, love the colors she chose.  So simple and yet so interesting.  And if that weren't enough, Sharon makes the most precious primitive cloth dolls to go with all of her doll quilts.  Is this little lady the most charming thing you've ever seen?

And Sharon has promised us a tutorial and PDF showing us how these are made.  I'm waiting..... (cue impatient foot tapping).  For now, I'll be content to just hug the one I have.  Thank you so much, Sharon.  I absolutely love these little sweeties.

And then, I won a Connecting Threads sponsored giveaway over at It's Sew Kiki last month.  I had a choice of fabrics, and I chose this Rose Manor 21-fat quarter collection.  Our comment to enter the giveaway was to say what we would make with these fabrics.  Can you believe that I said I thought they would be great fabrics to use to make my first fabric doll?

Can't you just see a little dolly dressed in some of these lovelies?  And do you think it's a coincidence that Sharon's cloth doll (the one I want to try making myself) and these fabrics would arrive on the very same day?????  Well, I don't.  I think the time has come.

So, I'm a happy cat lover this afternoon.  Mike is going out with some friends tonight, and so I'm not cooking...or doing anything else this afternoon, for that matter.  I think I see some sewing in my future.

How's your Wednesday going?

A Day in the Life of Mr. Bear's Quilt Top

8:00 a.m.

11:30 a.m.

12:30 p.m.

2:00 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

Mr. Bear, you are finished!

This is Mr. Bear's back side.

I'll be linking this post to:  

Design Wall Monday: May 12, 2012

It's been a very busy week at the Three Cats Ranch.  Pretty much everyone had a birthday.  Matthew was home to help celebrate.  George spent most of the week in the hospital.  I cooked a birthday celebration.  With all of that going on, it seems as if I didn't spend much time sewing.  I did manage to finish a couple of projects, however.

The last of the Mr. Bear blocks is finished.  I'll need to add the borders to the block, and then I'll be ready to sew all the blocks together and finish the quilt.

The Winged Dreams quilt came back from the quilter.

I think my quilter did a good job on this.  I like the combination of flowers and butterflies she used, and I like the red thread.

I still need to bind this quilt and I'll be using that same red fabric that I used in the border.

Finally, I spent the better part of the week finishing up this stadium blanket I've been making for Erik and Mae.

I turned this quilt

into an easy-carry, all-in-one bundle.  Check out my tutorial to see how I did it.

For more inspiration, visit Design Wall Monday at the Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday: May 7, 2012

This week I knocked most of my monthly sew-along and swap blocks off the to-do list for the month of May.  Here are all the blocks I made:

For the Blogger's BOM:

For the Hello Sun BOM:

For the Promises & Borders BOM:

and for the Vintage Miniature Sewing Machine BOM.

Oh yes, and I almost forgot the swap block I made for my partner in the Block Swap Adventure.

Also, I finished top-stitching all the butterflies for the Butterfly Garden doll quilt I'm working on.

My biggest goals for this week are to quilt the Butterfly Garden doll quilt, and to finish up the Oregon State stadium blanket I'm making for Erik and Mae.  I'll be posting a tutorial about how to make a tidy easy-to-carry package out of this quilt.  Watch for it if you're interested.  (Notice I'm making the huge assumption that my idea will actually work.)  And then I have a few more monthly incremental projects I'd like to make some progress on.  

For more design wall inspiration, visit:

Design Wall Monday: April 30, 2012

This week I completed three quilt tops.  Last week, I was only showing pieces of a mystery project.  Later in the week, I couldn't stand keeping the secret any more.  My face was turning purple holding my breath, trying to keep from blurting it out.  Then buttons started popping off my shirt, and that was pretty embarrassing when I went to the grocery store.  Since I couldn't hold it in any more without setting off alarms somewhere . . . for something (who knows what might have happened), I decided to reveal it.

It's a wonky school house for my friend Lisa who teaches fourth grade.

It's all finished now except for the quilting and binding.  Also, I want to embellish it with some buttons and beads.

After that, I completed the top for the Mother Goose quilt that I've been restoring.  My mother did all of the embroidery around 70 years ago.  It was originally sewn into a comforter when my kids were babies.  Recently I got it out, took it all apart, repaired the embroidery motifs where the black thread had gone all poopy, then gave it a sashing and a border.  It too needs quilting and binding.

The green sashing is a little brighter than I imagined it would be.  I'm going to use the same fabric for the binding, and I think that will help balance it out.  

Then Saturday, I finished this Winged Dreams quilt top for my friend Sue's September birthday.  This one needs--you guessed it--quilting and binding, but I'm handing this one over to my long-arm quilter.

Finally, I made a test block for the We Bee Learning block bee.  It's my month to choose the block, and I wanted to make sure the tutorial made sense before putting it out there for the rest of the bee.  I found this tutorial on Canoe Ridge Creations.

There are now three quilts waiting to be quilted, and so I'm hoping to get one of those quilted this week.  First, I need to top-stitch down some appliques, however.  And then it'll be time to get started on my block swaps and blocks of the month for the month of May.  A busy week ahead.

I'm linking this post to:

and

Design Wall Monday: April 23, 2012

Looking for my giveaway?  Click here.

There isn't a whole lot on my design wall this week.  The weather brightened up some around here, and so I didn't do as much sewing as usual.  I did manage to get my BQ2 quilt going . . . the one that I said I was going to start way back in August.  I've decided to call this quilt Daisies and Dots.

The major components for the blocks are made.

When they are all sewn together they'll look like this.  I need 30 of these.

Then, when I sew the blocks together, they will be configured like this.

But when I got to that part, I was getting bored with this project, and so I set it aside for another day.  Then I started on my mystery project.  I can't show it to you because it is a gift for one of my readers.  Here is a sneak peek.  This is the backing fabric.

That should give you a hint.  Here are a few peeks at the project.  It is a small applique wall-hanging.

That's all you get for now.  And then, my Beaver Believer quilt came back from the quilter this week.  I'm going to rig up a way to roll it up and tie it when it's not in use to make it easy to carry.  Of course, it still needs binding.  I haven't done any more to this since getting it back.  Here's the front.

The quilting shows up better from the back.  It's for my son and daughter-in-law to take to football games with them to keep warm.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about putting the borders on the eighth of nine blocks for the Mr. Bear quilt.

And since I've turned this project into a personal BOM, I'll be linking this post to

For more design wall inspiration, visit:

Design Wall Monday: April 16, 2012

This was a week for doll quilts.  I finished and mailed the quilt I made for my partner in the Doll Quilters Monthly doll quilt swap.  I mailed this on Wednesday morning, and it made it's way from Oregon to Alabama by Friday morning.  Hooray for the USPS!  By the way, there is a FlickR group now where you can see all the doll quilts that have been made for the Doll Quilters Monthly doll quilt swap.  Join us if you like.  We're always accepting new members. 

The optional theme for this month's quilt was "Three Colors".  It was harder to come up with three colors than I thought it would be.  In the end, I decided on these fabrics.

It seemed a little busy when it was all finished, and so I opted to keep the quilting pretty simple . . . just some straight lines.  And here's how the back looks.  I call this quilt "Mixed Up".

Then I spent most of the rest of the week making the last of the five doll quilts I've been making for my friend Lisa's granddaughters.  This one is for the youngest of the bunch, Allison.  Allison's mother asked for butterflies in red and purple, and this is what I decided to do:

This design was inspired by a quilt I saw in the book entitled, Joined at the Heart, by Ann Moscicki and Linda Wyckoff-Hickey.  I still need to top stitch the butterfly appliques somehow, and decide how to quilt it.  I'm going to use the same floral print I used in the border on the back.  For now, I'm setting it aside to think about it before moving on.

Then I worked on the next set of blocks for my Amish sampler quilt.  These are the hourglass blocks:

I'm not happy that there isn't more contrast in the center block.  I might decide to redo it.

Also, I started working on the BQ2 quilt I'm making using these fabrics:

This is my official April NewFO project, but the two doll quilts are also NewFO's for April.  So far, I'm still working on doing the cutting.  This is at the top of my list for the coming week.  I'm also hoping to get some more done on my Mother Goose baby comforter that I've been re-making for my future grandchild(ren), and I want to do the Free Motion Quilting Challenge this week.  I picked up some tulle at JoAnn  for that purpose.  And, let's see, what else?  Oh yes, I'm hoping to make some more progress on the Winged Dreams quilt that I'm making for my friend, Sue.  

There isn't much else on the agenda this week except sewing and possibly doing some gardening . . . always weather dependent.  

For more design wall inspiration, visit: