Hidden Diamonds

Here is another mini quilt I made for Konda's new book.

I LOVE these fabrics!

More chain piecing.

I ABSOLUTELY love this fabric!

I REALLY loved working with the 2.5" mini charm packs.  They are SO cute!!! :)

Aly's Quilts Arrived :)

Isn't it pretty on her bed.  Now I just need to get the shams finished :)
The finished quilt is blogged HERE.

I Know What I Am Going To-Do Today...

I am SO happy with all things sewing in my life!  I was able to get WAY more finished this past week that I had hoped :D  PARTY!!!

Last Week's List!

#1 Madly Finish the binding on two more quilts for Emily before she leaves for market early Tuesday morning :/  DONE with an hour or so to spare ;)  Happy Happy!

#2 Sew hst quilt top together (wouldn't it be cool if I surprised us all and finished it all of the way?) Surprise!!! it's DONE DONE DONE!!  You know it baby :)  Deets blogged HERE!  I am entry #258 over at the Bloggers Quilt Festival :)  I'd LOVE your vote if you have a crush on Rainbow Fishes ;D  You can vote HERE

#3 Work on Ash's Weekender Bag DONE DONE double DONE!!!  Blogged HERE!

So, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO THIS WEEK?

#1 Will's birthday Quilt 

#2  A quilt disassembled and resembled as pillows (for hire)

#3 Start on the knitted socks for Christmas.

WIP's -in some form of progress...

Mario Bros. QAL

The April $29 girl quilt

The May $29 quilt

Challenge quilt for next year's quilt show
"Letters to my Daughter" block of the month

Back Burner Purgatory... lol!!! ;) (I've got the fabric for these, but no chop chop yet)

Chrisann's quilt (the AWESOME kindergarten teacher)

Mandy's quilt

2 Twin Size applique quilts for my nieces

The June $29 quilt

My bed quilt

July $29 Quilt

Civil War Layer Cake quilt

Christmas Presents Completed!

Anna's Gamer Quilt (Blogged HERE)

Ashley's Weekender (Blogged HERE)

Need to Do for Christmas

Socks for my girls

Mario Quilt for hubby

Ladybug quilt for Kate

Something cool for my boys!...any thoughts?

So, what are you up to this week?  PLEASE share with me :)

The Bloggers Quilt Festival Rainbow Fishes

WELCOME to my blog :)  I am SO happy you have stopped by for a visit!

I am a new quilter and have gone a bit bonkers with quilting over the past 9 months.  You can read about my quilting beginnings HERE.

I am so excited to be participating in the Fall Bloggers Quilt Festival!!  Whoo Hoo!!!  I am entry #258.  If you like what you see, I'd LOVE your vote :)

Check out the Festivities and vote HERE

I have had such a hard time trying to figure out what to say about this quilt.... (it's late, I am tired and for some strange reason, I am out of words!) lol (if you know me, I am almost never short on words)

So, on with the quilts story..... At my mqg we received 75 different 6" squares to make a hst quilt.   I surfed the internet looking for what I'd like to do with them.  I fell in love with Red Pepper Quilts HST Overload quilt.  I had my heart set on making mine just like hers when my sweet hubby lost his job and I needed to make due with my cute little stash :\  No worries!  I had a pile of AWESOME green that would not only make due, but turned out pretty FANTASTIC! ;D 

I used THIS method for making my hst's.  It's the BEST!! :)

Super EASY and no trimming!  Oh the joy's of bias.

The back is a piece of fabric ended up with in an odd sort of way.  My sil got it out of her grandmothers home after she died :(  It is WAY old, but it totally works!  Happy day :D

Now for the reason I call this Rainbow Fishes!  Can you see the fishes?  I always thought the blocks looked like fish, but my visions were confirmed when my 11 year old son walked in the room and exclaimed, "HEY MOM!  THOSE ARE COOL FISH!!!"  

My other children now all concede that they look like angel fish :)  Score one for the mom!

NOW, here is the deal about the layout.  I was thinking that the blocks should be laid out randomly, but the thought came to me that I should arrange them by color.... but how.  I tend to try rows and stripes, but no, I didn't like that.  That is when this "round the quilt" color wheel came to be.  If you will start at the top right of the quilt and move around clockwise (or counter clockwise) you will see that the colors change and blend into the next color on the color wheel. :)   Yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, red, orange and back to yellow.

In order to make this quilt square, I had to add 6 more blocks.  The original 75 did not include red, do I added the red to give me the full(ish) spectrum! :)  In my additions I accidentally added a duplicate print :(  Can you find it?

I bound it in the same green after auditioning many different fabrics.  The green binding just disappears and lets the rainbow shine :)

Here are the quilts stats:
62" square
Quilted my me and my cute little Pfaff and it's AWESOME squeaky walking foot ;D
HST's using THIS method
Best Categories:  home machine quilted quilt, ROYGBIV (color wheel) quilt, throw quilt

Weekender Part Deux is Fini!

Oh yeah, baby!  You read that correctly!!

Ashley's Weekender is all done :)   It is going to be her present for Christmas.   With my husband unemployed, we are trying for a homemade Christmas :D

Can you see the "A" for Ashley?

The Sleeping Beauty fabric is especially for my sweet Ash.  Ash isn't one of those teenagers who sleeps in all day, but she does go to bed with the chickens when ever she can get away with it ;D

If you will notice the Eiffel Tower and other cool French looking ladies....they came from my mom's Weekender bag she made last week.  I am really liking adding a few personal touches like this to my bags.

Here are the shots of the interior.

Say, Ahhhhh!

This is the long divided  interior pocket.

Actually, the interior is not hand sewn in yet :(  I have to wait until after the election to recycle a campaign sign for the bottom.  That plastic corrugated cardboard they use works AWESOME for bag bottoms.  ....and it's free!!!

My friend, Annette the Magnificent, is going to embroider a tag with Ashley's name on it for me.  I may have her embroider it directly into the lining of the bag.  Ash will be taking this bag to college with her.  I'd be SO sad if it went missing!!! :(

This bag took me considerably less time to make than the first one.  The first bag took almost 26 hours to make.  This bag took about 15 hours, with still some hand stitching time still to be added in.

NOTE:  Trimming the batting to a generous 1/2 inch smaller made a HUGE difference in putting the bag together!  Also, when I sewed the front and back panels to the zipper/bottom/ring thing, I pinned and sewed with the zipper/bottom/ring thing facing up/on top.  I felt like the bag was much more manageable to sew around.  I also used my piping foot for this step.  My piping came out beautifully.  I only had to resew about a 1.5" section where some fabric got twisted and a raw edge poked it's way out :\

Weekender Prime is blogged HERE.

Pulled Taffy

I made this quilt a while back for Konda's new book coming out at market this weekend.

It is SOOO cute!

All chained pieced one way

Konda also had me make it in another color way :)

Sand Dollars

I was hired to make this quilt by Konda for Timeless Treasures' booth at Fall Market.  I had to wait until the week of market to share it with you :)

I had to giggle because my least favorite color combo is brown and blue 

and I DON'T LIKE Batiks! ;D

I took the job anyway ;)

Being unemployed will do that to ya!

"Hmm.... maybe these fabrics aren't too bad?"

"I sure like how these little strips are looking."

(The blocks all sewn and laid out)

"Wait!  Do I possibly like this quilt?"

The rows sewn.

The top in sewing progress.

TA-DA!  Ok, I REALLY like this quilt!!

 Konda came and got it for Quilting and then returned it to me for binding :)

 Yeah, so I had to eat ALL of my words because I LOVE THIS QUILT!!!