Taming the Beast and Giveaway Winners

Even though there was probably a thousand other things I could have been doing this weekend, I decided to finish the last three 12" blocks in the Solstice Quilt and piece the beast together.  For a quilt I basically threw together with no fabric plan, I have to say I couldn't be happier with it.  David asked me what I was going to do with it (it's a pretty big quilt).  My answer, quilt the crap out of it and hope that one day it makes many living room forts (you know grandkids).  His comment was it would also make a nice watch-the-fireworks quilt.  Whatever the case may be, I now have a really big quilt top that will need to be quilted...join the club big boy, there are many waiting.

Also, a huge Thank You to everyone that stopped by and left comments on the release of Star Blossom!  An even bigger thank you, if you stopped by my Craftsy Store and picked up a copy!  There was a total of 69 comments left on the blog post and 4 left on Bloglovin for a total of 73 comments.  I used a random number generator on my phone to determine the 3 winners. 

So congratulations to...

Lisa J (Sunlight In Winter Quilts)

KaHolly

Nicole S. (Bloglovin commentor)

I will be sending out an email shortly to the winners with their copy of Star Blossom.  If you would like your own copy of Star Blossom, it is for sale in my Craftsy Store.  It is a beginner friendly pattern and includes four size options. 

Well, this wraps up this Monday visit here in Wonderland.  Let's all start this week off with a smile and try to spread some love each day this week.  Hope you will stop back by later on in the week when I share my finished version of Sandra's Free Fall Quilt and the crazy up and downs I had while quilting it.

Crazy Quilt Along Lady

Mark you calendars!  Even with all the craziness of the quilt show and Strawberry Festival, I managed to stay completely caught up on all the QAL's and BOM's.  Above are all the Aurifil Designer Blocks of the Month to date.  This month's block was called Faux Weave and was by super talented and fun guy Matthew Boudreaux, better known to most of us as Mister Domestic (read Pat Sloan's interview with Matthew here).

The color of the month was red--hot, hot, hot!  This block was much fun to put together and contained some very thin strip sets.  My "weave" had some wobbles and bobbles, but if I tried weaving in real life, I feel pretty sure I'd have the same result, so score!

After all the hotness of Faux Weave, I decided to chill a bit and work on Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilt's Have A Jolly Little Christmas Quilt.  The block was called All Wrapped Up.

All wrapped up in adorable cuteness!  The next block, Holly & Berries, is due to be released this weekend.  Hopefully, the long weekend will allow me time to stitch it up.

Then I moved on to the Medallion Quilt BOM by Cindy at Stitchin At Home.  Broken Dishes is the third of the twelve 12" blocks.  

Squares in squares always make me nervous, but with Cindy's instructions, I breezed right on through and ended up with blocks the size they where suppose to be.

And last but not least, the beast in my living room, Pat Sloan's 182 Solstice Challenge Quilt.  As of the second I'm typing this, I am caught up completely on this monster huge quilt (for a quilt along quilt anyway).  This is not the best picture, but I had to get another picture of the quilt "all together."

After making the big block in the lower right hand corner, Weather Vane, I pieced the entire bottom row together.  I also pieced the last checker board section and attached it to the Day into Night block.  The only thing left to do is wait for the last three 12" blocks to be released over the next three weeks, then this top will be finished.  How in the world did I manage to stay on top of this one?

Well this concludes today's installment of the Crazy Quilt Along Lady.  Join us next week to find out will she stay ahead of the Solstice Monster or will it wrangle her completely to the ground?  Will the Jolly Christmas Quilt snowball and roll right over top of her leaving her flat and cold?  Will she piece together all of her Freefall Blocks or pile them together and run through them?

Or will she just start 20 more projects and laugh madly?? 

Today I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Wednesday Wait Loss.

Counting Down to Summer Solstice

After another weekend of sleeping, I finally am feeling like myself again and that means, prepping for the Strawberry Festival and tackling the Summer Solstice quilt again.  When I picked this project back up, I was behind quite a few blocks so I needed to regroup.  I had sections B and C completed and decided to tackle section A.  I still needed to make three blocks, so I picked my fabrics, cut all the block pieces and the black and gray/white fabrics I'm using for the checker board fillers.

For me this is the quickest way to work on the blocks.  Chain piecing  everything as I go and using the checker board pieces as leader/enders...score!  The On The Go and Precious Fabric blocks went together super quick.  The Board Game block took a bit more time...it's not pictured below.

It was after completing these blocks, my body decided to crash again and I went into hibernation, but I woke up a new woman, ready to go again.  It was at this point I realized that I had made enough checker board pieces to complete section E and only needed to complete three more blocks to complete section F...it's almost like I have a whole quilt!

So on to piecing Hugs & Kisses, Honey Bee and Tile Time blocks.

I ended up completing two out of the three blocks as of tonight.  Unfortunately it is time for it to got back to sleep for a few days.  The rest of my week will be consumed by all of the small town festival events.

But I couldn't really stop just there...I HAD to see what this quilt is looking like.  So out came the portable design wall and up went the blocks.

This thing is HUGE!  I kind of wonder if I should have planned my fabric choices a little better, but you know, all those prints make me smile.  One of the points of this quilt is to finally give a home to all of the fabrics in my stash that I have dearly loved, but been to afraid to chop up.  All fabrics deserve a good home.

So the fabrics for the next two Solstice blocks are waiting for me, along with the fabrics for Mister Domestic, Mathew Boudreaux's, block Faux Weave.  Until I can get these pretties all cut up, I will leave you with festival pictures.

I snapped this picture on Tuesday before we began prepping the quilts for judging....the quilt show before the quilts.

I also volunteered to create three different boards with pictures taken through out last year, that will hopefully explain to those that attend the show what a quilt guild is and some of the things that we do.

The first board shows three different charity projects that the guild has taken on.

The second board shows group projects that we have participated in; including two classes and Cheryl Brickey's, Meadow Mist Designs, Meadow Mystery Quilt.

The last board talks about what a guild is, what we do, and how to join.  Our hope is that by seeing what we are about, maybe we can see an increase in our membership.  I've ran into several people that have expressed and interest in joining but where afraid they didn't have enough experience or didn't exactly know what the guild does.  Hopefully, by seeing all the fun we have together others will find encouragement to join us in all our fun.

Does your guild have any special things that they do in order to try to encourage membership growth?  I would love to hear about it if they do.  Until next time, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  May good weather find you and lots of free sewing time.  I will be getting fat on funnel cake and of course strawberry short cake.

Today I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social, Wednesday Weight Loss, and Midweek Makers.

QAL's-Haulk Mode

I'm still plugging away over here, working on QAL's and getting that pattern ready to release.  After my crazy productive week the week before, last week I kind of hit a brick wall.  I didn't really do anything-at-all.  It happens.

David has been gone since last Friday for work again, and I knew I needed to buckle down and be productive over my quiet weekend (well as quiet as it gets with a teenage daughter in the house).  On Friday it was like my batteries recharged.  I hit the coin box and found that flashy star on Super Mario Brothers that warped me into moving at super quick speeds.  I turned on quilting Haulk Mode (no I didn't turn green).

Saturday, I popped into a local quilt store, Helen's Hen House, to pick up a few FQ's to add to my Solstice challenge quilt.  That's where I picked up those yummy pieces above...I think I'm going to need more.  What was suppose to be a quick trip ended up being a 1 1/2 hour event.  The place was hopping and I ran into quilting friends and made a new quilting friend.  But the quilt store magic had to end...I had things to do!  So back home I went.

I was able to quickly finish the straight line quilting on my pattern quilt, which leaves me with one more to quilt.

I was able to get that quilt basted and cut binding strips for four quilts.

Next up, was the Freefall 1/2 blocks.  Sandra at mmm!quilts had emailed me the instructions for the next set of blocks so that I could test them before she released them on Monday.  Making that a major priority, I knocked those out pretty quickly.

Here are all the blocks playing on my design wall.

I needed a carrot chocolate bar on a stick, dangling in front of me as a reward.  I decided to do a fabric pull for the three blocks I need to make to finish section A of Pat Sloan's 182 Solstice Challenge.  I will only allow myself to work on this project once everything is completed.

Now on to the blocks I completed.  I had three blocks to catch up on;  Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts had released the Santa block for the Jolly Christmas Quilt and he had yet to visit my design wall, April's Aurifil block needed to be completed, and Pat Sloan released The Children's Library May block two days early.  I cut the pieces for all three blocks and slowly (and carefully) worked on them all together.

Santa finished up first.  Isn't he just the jolliest? 

I even pieced one of the five rows together.

The Children's Library Block for May was Green Eggs and Ham.  I dug into my stash of green and went to work.  This block goes together log cabin style and for some reason, I always end up with a wonky block.  My 1.5" piece blocks got a little bit off, but I didn't sweat it and improvised.  As long as I ended up with a 12.5" block that looked dag gone close, I was happy.  I think Dr. Seuss would agree, whimsical is better than perfect?

And here they are all together.

Last but definitely not least, was the Aurifil BOM by Sue Marsh New Direction.  I put this block off for half of a month because the templates and triangles scared the crap out of me.  Something I've never really worked with.  I cut very carefully and took my time sewing.

I have to say the block turned out much better than I expected.  Once put together, I did lose a few points on the arrow, but hey some times in life, the arrows that point us aren't quite as sharp as they should be.  This is just one of those times. (It's not done losing points either...shhhh)

And here are the start of my rainbow blocks, ranging from blue to red purple.

So this is what my list looked like at the end of Sunday.

Not bad if I do say so myself.  I also finished making a pressing board to use for bigger pieces of fabric, but I think I'll save that for another post.  This one is about eye candy.  

So for now, my Haulk muscles have retracted and I've returned to little ol' Tish N Wonderland.  I still need to keep the forward momentum going, but for now I think I deserve a nap.

Today I'm linking up with Freefall Linky, Wednesday Wait Loss, Midweek Makers, Let's Bee Social, Main Crush Monday and Linky Tuesday.

Changing Up My Game

If you were visiting my sewing space and sewing along with me right now, you'd probably think I'm crazy.  I'm tackling my projects much like I clean house, by getting distracted and not finishing something before I start working on something else.  Unlike, cleaning house, I do feel like I am making progress, but my game keeps changing.

I am still quilting away on our pattern release quilts.  Above is a little teaser shot of my baby quilt.  That was the first time I've used a hook swirl and I'm 100% sure it will not be my last.  To give myself variety and my poor wrist a break, I am working on my QAL projects in between quilting sessions.

The Children's Library Blocks

So far I am update on The Children's Library BOM by Pat Sloan, and Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilt's Jolly Christmas Quilt.  I am also up to date on Sandra's Free Fall QAL, but we will talk about that one more on Monday.  I also just got caught up on Cindy at Stitchin At Home's Medallion QAL.  Since finishing the center medallion (although I need to add the bottom border), I fell behind making the first two 12" blocks.

  

First up was the Friendship Star Variation Block, 

followed by the Rosebud Block.  Both blocks sewed up super quick.

Here they are hanging out with the center block on my small portable design wall.

Next let's talk about Pat Sloan's Solstice challenge.  I am actually several blocks behind on this one, but don't fret, I have a plan.  This quilt will be a beast (as far as QAL's go) when it is finished; 86ish inches I do believe.  I decided very early on that I would make the asymmetrical quilt layout, which looks like this...

I realized that I am at a point where sections of the quilt are actually starting to come together.  My new plan is to work on sections as they can be completed.  That way I'm not stuck piecing all those blocks together when the last block's instructions come out.  Also, since I'm going stash scrappy, maybe I can make it look a bit more put together.  

So looking at the chart, I already had two of the three blocks in section C completed.  All I needed to do was make one block and add strips to either side of the heart block and BAM in about 20 to 30 minutes I had one completed section.

So I took that momentum and charged forward to section B, which is going to be a bit more work.

This section will live beside section C and will require one more block, border around the large bottom block and my first checkerboard filler.  I decided on a floral and a blue print for the Spring Fever block, a maroon/ red border for the large block (it is actually in the gray print fabric) and...

black and gray for the checkerboard filler block.

As of now, I'm still in the middle of piecing all of this together, but this is a sneak peak of my plans moving forward.  As sections and rows of things can be pieced together, I'm going to go ahead and do it to save myself time later.  This will actually apply to all my current WIP QAL's.  The last thing I want is for WIP QAL's to become UFO's, OMG that's a lot of letters!!! :)

When I end up with a ton of completed blocks that need sewed together, I can feel weighted down by them and that is what I'm trying to avoid.  Do you ever feel that way or maybe have a better plan for tackling such things?  Or do you just wait till the end of the project and sew them all together?  I'd love to know your thoughts.  Until next time, I will be still sewing my way out of my hole.  I still have the Aurifil block to make, one stitch at a time, one stitch at a time.

Today I'm linking up with TGIFF, Let's Bee Social and Weight Loss Wednesday.