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Maple Stars

3/25/2015

Maple - syrup for French toast, big beautiful shade trees on a warm summer day - just that word brings to mind all kinds of sweet things. I have been admiring the Maple Star block for a while and never made one before. Aunt Brenda gave me this little calendar flip book where I again spotted the Maple Star block that called out to me. I have been needing to make some new table runners for my Etsy shop, so I decided to turn some Maple Stars into table runners.

At the Little Foot Quilt Shoppe I found and fell in love with some charm packs of the new Moda fabric line called Fresh Cut. This particular block utilizes the 5" square with very little waste. I also bought a coordinating gray print for the background. I cut fabric to make 6 blocks, and then I'll decide what to do with them from there. I pieced 2 blocks early this morning, and they only took about 10 minutes each, so pretty and quick!

I have a new sewing accessory at my desk. Uncle Dave made this special bowl for my snippets of string and fabric to replace the old recycled Cool Whip container I was using. Quite an improvement, don't you think?

Thanks for visiting and checking out my quilting projects. I'm going to link up at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday. Have a nice day!

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Quilting for Terry and Sherri

3/20/2015

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I have had a steady stream of client quilts coming which has been great. Over the past week I finished this labyrinth star for Terry with an overall stipple stitch. I just love this pieced design! This is a beautiful gift of love, comfort, and support Terry made for a friend who is battling some health issues - just wonderful.

The quilt below belongs to Sherri. It is the Double Slice pattern that can be made with a layer cake, but Sherri added the green sashing which give it a whole different look. She chose the pantograph Novaya Zhizn (yeah, I don't know how to pronounce that either :-) and a gold thread. The leafy design really looked pretty on these fabrics.

Up next is another of Sherri's quilts, a wall hanging. I used the pantograph Entangle. I have a thing for star blocks, I just can't help it.

Isn't that darling? Thanks so much, ladies, for letting me quilt for you!

Happy first day of Spring, and thanks for visiting. I'm linking up over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop!

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Diamonds

3/10/2015

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One of the really cool things about where we live is we get to see rainbows frequently. Up on our hill I know when the weather conditions are just right and I have everyone check out the doors and windows for rainbows. This happens a lot and has become sort of a joke around here with my husband and kids (because I'm usually right :-). We have seen rainbows in winter before, but not this winter, only inside with fabric.

My new little quilter, Lydia, chose this diamond pattern for the quilt she is now working on, and she wanted me to make one, too. I knew I had a nice collection of black and white fabrics in my stash, and so the same day she had her fabric shopping trip at The Little Foot Shoppe, I chose a pretty pink fabric to use for my diamonds. I had all my fabric together and kept thinking that just the pink and black and white wasn't enough. The pink is kind of a tone-on-tone print and I thought it would blend well with some other brightly colored batiks that I already had. This is what I came up with.

The pattern that is my inspiration here is called Emerald City from the Cut Loose Press. I didn't actually purchase it, but I am using the picture found here as a reference. The blocks are made using the Scrap Crazy 6" templates from Creative Grids which are AWESOME for cutting accurate pieces. There are a lot of possibilities for quilt designs with these templates, and I highly recommend them.

I made my own diagram to help with fabric cutting and placement of the blocks. I don't own any fancy quilting software (though that would be fun), but I used some scrapbooking software that I'm pretty good with to do this. I assigned each black and white print a color and glued a little scrap onto my diagram so I could remember what was what.

Yeah, that's right... I already had all of this fabric in my house waiting to be used someday except the pink diamond fabric, and I'm pretty sure I could have found a pink fabric here already without trying very hard. Bummer that this quilt isn't a project from my UFO Challenge list.

I cut the fabrics and separated them into stacks - one stack for each colored diamond row. You can see above the pinks and purples that still need to be stitched together. Actually the piecing has been very quick. Planning and cutting took the most time. I am just adding rows as I get them done.

Aunt Brenda thinks this might be a good choice for Quilt Camp 2015. What do you think? This can be done easily with a layer cake, and I am planning on making another one that will look very different with some pretty printed fabrics to show another example of this pattern in a completely different, more traditional style.

I have really been doing a lot of longarm quilting, and I will show you some lovely finishes on Friday. Please come back and visit!

I'm linking up at Freshly Pieced for Work In Progress Wednesday. You can visit there, too, and check out some other WIPs.

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Maple Stars

Quilting for Terry and Sherri

Diamonds

This is me...

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