Blog Anniversary and a Giveaway!

It's hard to believe that I have been blogging about quilting and farm life for four years already. A lot has happened in these 4 years, there have been lots of ups and a few downs during these years. Up has definitely been the arrival of Alexander and Oliver and being married to the most wonderful man I know, up--but also not easy, has been the finishing of the house (well--almost, still need to do some painting when we finish the busy time of the year). Down has been the drought and my trigeminal neuralgia (which I haven't been disturbed with in a long long time so maybe it will not return?) And through everything quilting has not gone away. I still love quilting! And now more than ever if that is possible!

So, I've also most recently started an etsy store to sell bits of leftover fabrics and maybe one day quilts. Many people have asked me if I sell my quilts and it is so hard to answer that question. Most quilter's would understand this, but for those of you who do not quilt the simple answer is that it is not economical. Making quilts is about the process and the passion for color, fabrics and design. It is not necessarily about the end result, although I do enjoy a quilt that has turned out like I envisioned or better. In the future, I may find a way to do to make quilts without compromising what it is that I love about the process enough sell what I make. It might be a journey that will take a little time for me though.

Ok, so for the giveaway! Please check out my etsy store here and let me know which charm pack you would chose if you won this giveaway. I will give up to 3 chances for you to win if you blog or follow in addition to commenting on this post, just post extra comments telling me that you have done so. I will do the draw next Monday, December 6th, so all entries must be in by the 5th. Good luck!

Green, Blue, Brown- 5" Charm Squares

I've been doing a bit more cutting! This group of 5 inch fabric charm squares are available in my Etsy store here or my Australian Ebay store here. There are some really nice fabrics in here from the best of my stash including Flea Market Fancy, Kei Kerchief Girls, Monaluna, Blossom by Urban Chiks and others. What you see here is what you get!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Unfortunately, this year we are in the middle of shearing and we weren't able to celebrate like we did last year. I did my best and bought a roast chicken with stuffing and ate it alone tonight. My husband won't be home until at least 10 or 11 tonight:( I'll be glad when this hectic time of the year is over and then we can have some more time as a family!

Sunshine Quilt Finished

Here is a quilt I hae had a long time in the making! These fabrics were from a Moda line called Sunshine by April Cornell. If I remember correctly, I got the inspiration for this quilt from out of the book called Quilt's from the Quiltmaker's Gift. For me, I can tell that this is one of my earlier quilts by the lack of precision in the piecing. I guess I have improved quite a bit, but when I started making quilts I didn't want to get all bogged down with trying to make everything perfect. I just wanted to get on with things and practice. I guess that is the way I feel about free motion quilting now. I know that I am new at it and it isn't going to look perfect, but sometimes you just have to get on with things and practice! I did do one thing very new with this quilt in that I used wool as my batting! I was inspired by the sheep toile print that I used as the outermost border. I think it's quite nice even after washing and I would use wool again from what I can tell so far. Support wool farmers! :)

Amy Butler Lotus Quilt Finished

This is a quilt I have had a loooong time in the making. I just finished sewing down the binding and took a few pictures. I bought the fabrics for this quilt as a kit because I really loved Amy's Lotus line and just wanted to make something quick. Where I bought it from, she had two kits, one in the pink/green colorway and one in the blue/green range. I remember thinking that I preferred the blue but wanted try something that was out of my normal comfort range. I was amazed how many people seemed to love this quilt when I posted pictures of the finished top. I can't say that it is one of my favorites, but it was fun to make. In particular I am quite proud of the free motion quilting I did on it with the daisy pattern. It is an easy pattern to do, but since I am new at the whole free motion quilting on a domestic machine thing it is quite exciting. I can't wait to do more quilting actually. I have A LOT of quilt tops to finish so I will be doing more finishing of projects instead of starting (HA! HA! -- if I tell myself this enough it might actually happen -- or not!) in the next year or so.

Heather Ross Octagon Quilt Finish

I've had this quilt finished for quite a while but I thought I would post a picture of it so you could see how it turned out. I really love it and use it all the time for Oliver to lie out and do tummy time and such. I free motion quilted it so it is quite sturdy and I've just washed it and it has turned all wrinkly cosy the way I love a quilt to be. I felt so decadent using the gnomes on the back but I do feel that fabric is best used to be enjoyed and looked at rather than sitting on a shelf so even though gnomes are going for crazy prices on etsy and ebay... So what! I think pretty soon I'm going to be calling myself the Octagon quilt lady. I've done soooo many already!!!

Red and Aqua Destash

If you have been following my blog for any length of time you will have seen a few of my quilts made of the red and aqua fabrics that I have been collecting for some time now. I have decided to let a little of my fabrics go and will be listing a bit more fabric charm goodies over the next few weeks. If you are interested in a 5 inch charm pack of 40 different prints (most of which are rare including Heather Ross gnomes and Flea Market Fancy by Denyse Schmidt) click on to my ebay store here: red and aqua charm pack or my etsy store here: red and aqua charm pack I will ship internationally as well!

Orange Dogs!!

I really do love Heather Ross's fabric and here is proof. I made a ton of clothing items from her fabrics for the boys and now that the weather is warming up I have been able to dress them up in their outfits. Poor things! It just gives me yet another reason to stare at them all day. *Sigh* I never get tired of just looking at them.

Patterson's Curse

Yesterday I took the kids for a drive to take some pictures of the Patterson's Curse growing in one of the farmer's fields. Of course this is a weed over here and is toxic to the animals so it really is a problem. But still, it was brought over here as a garden plant and then started to take over so obviously it was regarded for its beauty. I like to look at it... I thought that I should post some pictures to show what a wonderful spring we are having over here at the moment. It doesn't happen very often! I attribute it all to the arrival of Oliver--he seems to bring us luck:)--the sweet little thing.

Neptune Quilt Finished!

So, today I finally finished hand stitching the binding down on my Neptune quilt and managed to take a few pictures of it hanging on the clothesline as well! I so much love this fabric by Tula Pink that I was surprised as I was reading on one of my Flickr groups today about how many people are Not too excited about this line. What!! Just shows how different everyone's tastes are. My husband has a joke going that if he likes one of my quilts it's sure to be not too popular. This one happens to be one of his favorites that I have made so far...

I had a really good time free motion quilting this quilt. I just discovered that freemotion quilting is not as hard as I had always thought just before Oliver was born and had a spree of quilting for several weeks there on several quilts. (Don't even ask me how I managed to get down on the floor and pin baste all those quilts being so pregnant!) In fact, I've determined now that freemotion is easier than straight line quilting--especially on larger quilts where maneuvering the huge quilt through the machine gets so difficult at times. I can't wait to get the opportunity to do some more of it soon. I usually get an hour free at night to go to the sewing machine, but whether I get there or not depends on what kind of day and night previous we had!! Last night Alexander woke up at midnight screaming because a blowfly was in his room. Must have scared him something terrible. So, after about 5 times of going in to try and settle him--waking up Oliver in the meanwhile, dad went into his room to sleep on the floor next to his cot so he could fall asleep without being scared. What a good dad!!!

Dr. Seuss!

I ordered a fat quarter bundle of the new Dr. Seuss fabrics some weeks ago and they arrived last week. They have been staring at me and I have been wondering what I will do with them. Then suddenly as I was browsing through my flickr favorites yesterday it came to me what I will do with them! Can you believe that I was able to whip these blocks up in two hours last night??? I was a woman on a mission. Some people get nervous cutting into their fabric stashes--not me. Cut cut, sew sew and off I go. Of course I get upset when the vision doesn't match the reality and I feel like I've ruined the fabric by my choice. But, this one I think is going to turn out the way I imagine. Now I now what fabric I need to order to finish the job!!! Can you guess what will go around each block?

Winding Ways Red and Aqua Finish

So, today I was thinking I better keep up with my blogging before more time melts away. I like to keep up with my blog as it is a good way to show a few pictures of my life and family here to my non facebook people:) This morning we woke up to the beautiful sound of rain! What a lovely way to wake up, but even better than that it was a thunderstorm! We don't get too many of those around here -- at least not in comparison to Michigan standards so I treasure each and every one of them. It was so snug and cosy--Ollie sleeps in bed with us mostly so lately Alexander has been wanting to climb under the covers too! I think it is so cute how he always wants to snuggle up with Ollie, he's even learned to say his name though it sounds a bit like owie:)

I wanted to say thank you and sorry to all of my blog readers who commented that they were worried about my lack of posting! I admit, I was a bit worried about myself there for a while too;) Just kidding! But, if anyone says having kids is a piece of cake and it's only good times, I don't believe them. However, I do believe every moment is worth it-even during the moments when I am living in a schreihaus (which are often).

I finally got a picture yesterday of the red and aqua Winding Ways quilt that I was working on before Ollie was born. Just in case anyone was wondering I used a template set to make the blocks. I think they were by Marti Mitchell. And even though the curves look difficult, they are not too bad. Give it a try! The quilting on the other hand was a little slow going. This is the quilt I was quilting when I broke my walking foot! I ended up taking my machine to a different place than where I bought it to get serviced after a nasty experience with the owner. I bought a new walking foot from the new place, but the guy that was looking at what happened said that it couldn't have happened quilting! It did! I also found out he designed the foot! Anyway, he was good at servicing my machine and I have no other complaints. Watch out for curved quilting though--I did stitch the whole quilt in the ditch!

Ok, now back to the Schreihaus...