Fall!

Fall comes slowly to Texas!!  We are still walking around in our summer clothes and a jersey and jeans still seems to be far off on the horizon.  However, I can make believe by putting fall things out in the house.  We have had rain this weekend and the light has not been good to take photo's.  I will post some more this week when the light becomes brighter again.  The top photo is my mail shelf on the wall next to the computer in the kitchen.  I made the little pumpkin doll.  The pattern came from a Create and Decorate magazine.

The oven is a favorite place of mine to place holiday dish cloths!

 This little chap is needle punched. I really enjoy doing needle punch.

 A fall themed arrangement in the entrance hall on top of the piano.

I finally got around to adding a row to my folded oblong centerpiece.  Sooooo many folded triangles!!!!
I wish you a great Sunday and week ahead.  Thanks for stopping by.

A Finish - Christmas Twilling Project!

These cute little baubles inspired this next project.  I love sewing small things onto Christmas quilts.  Twilling lends itself to beading as you go.  

 So the next step was to draw a pattern.  Believe me there are not too many patterns out there in the marketplace for twilling.  Made a simple Christmas tree design and started twilling.  Of course I ran out of said little ornaments and had to go hightailing it to the craft store for more.

 Here is a really bad picture of progress.  I guess I must have taken it at night, on my phone.

Embroidery done, trimmed down and borders applied.  I did a simple nine patch on the corners to add some interest.

 Here the quilt is sandwiched and basted, ready to start the quilting process.

 Found a cute fabric from my stash to bind it with.

Ta Da!!  Done!  Off to perform the VERY SATISFYING deed of crossing this project off the list of UFO's!
Hope you are having a wonderful day and that you are getting some stitching time in!!!

Hexagon Love!!

 The weather is turning just slightly cooler! (I live in Texas)  When this happens I start thinking of knitting and crochet!!!  Look at this bucket of yumminess!  Why not make a hexagon afghan?  I have so many other hexagon projects on the go.  I showed my husband this block and he said: "You really like hexagons, don't you!" Ya think???

 Anyway, this is the progress I have made so far.  Also nice and portable until the last row when you crochet the hexagon to the rest of them.  I am liking this so far.  I am using a sportweight yarn (double knit to those outside of USA).

Hope you are having a good Monday.  The weekend really went by too quickly!

Little Tumbler Blocks!!

 Have I ever told you how much I love little pieces of scrap fabric?  To me it is not rubbish waiting to be thrown out, but a small, wonderful piece of possibility.  Also remember, your scraps cost the same as your stash.  With that said, I am always looking for ways to turn those scraps into something wonderful and useful.

 My darling daughter gave me "Quilt Savvy" for my birthday a few years ago.  What I love about this book is that the patterns lend themselves to scrap quilts.  Enter, all those little beauties that I stash away.

 I loved the look of this wonderful scrappy tumbler quilt.  The little thimble is tiny and that suits me well too.  I love tiny!!!!  (It's a mental condition which creates a lot of work for oneself!  Ha Ha) Anyway, I have been cutting tumblers and slowly working on this quilt - on and (more) off - for about three years now.  I recently pulled it out and have added quiet a few rows to it.

I trace the tumblers onto little scrap pieces of fabric and then stack them up to cut out when my son skypes us from college.  This way we can settle into a good chat and my hands are busy too!

Progress on Oblong Centerpiece

 I am just loving how this centerpiece is coming together.  I have completed round four (each round is done in two stages).  There is a bunch of stitching and folding and pinning and ironing etc.  But really worth the effort.

 Here is my helper passed out half on the table and half in the bucket of scraps.  He looks so comfortable.

Have a wonderful day and thank you for stopping by.

Oblong Folded Centerpiece!

 My dining room sideboard needs a runner of some sort!  I thought the oblong folded centerpiece would be the perfect thing for it.

I chose my ten fat quarters and them commenced cutting and ironing a million folded rectangles.  I burnt my poor fingers until my thumb felt well roasted from the steam.  Necessity is the Mother of Invention.  I discovered that I could fold them and secure them with a pin at the corner and then iron them down with no hands holding the fabric.  It works like a champ.

 Here you can see row two completed.

I have stitched row three and pinned row four.  I will post updates later this week.  I hope you are all having a good week with lots of quality time spent at your machines!

Journal Cover!

 In a previous post, I showed a journal cover that I was making for my daughter.  I mentioned how much I love composition books.  Her journal cover turned out so well that I decided to make myself one too.  It is so cute and happy looking.  I also love the feel of it in my hands.  I am sure that I will be making more of these!

String Piecing and a few houses!

 Happy Friday to all!  I wanted to try string piecing last weekend.  It is so unstructured and fun to do.  Also a great stash buster.  I cut out 8 inch muslin squares to use as a foundation.

 Next, I upended all my strings on a chair next to me for easy picking!  I also hauled my scrap bucket from upstairs and plonked that down on the other side of me!

Then I just started selecting pieces of fabric and sewing them down.  I look at the quarter inch marking on my walking foot to keep me on the straight and narrow.  

 Place a string right sides facing onto your existing string block.  Sew down using a quarter inch seam.  Iron it open and trim roughly so that you can make out your square shape.  (You will trim your block down to 7.5 " when you are done - squaring up!!!)

 Strip pressed open!

 Four blocks stitched together to make a big block.  I have been pondering and I think that I am going to do sashing to show off the blocks.

Meantime, I am so behind on my Building Houses from Scraps that I am stitching a few of the units as I string piece.  Both projects use small scraps.  Since my hugem bucket of scraps is down here I am just making a few houses too.

Try string piecing!!!  It is a lot of fun! Thank you for stopping by and have a great weekend.