American Jane GIANT Star...

......for the BEST first grade teacher in the WHOLE world!

Seriously, Ms. Lundell is one of the most wonderful teachers my children have ever had.  She has been all three of my boys first grade teacher.  She comes by it rightly, as her mother was an AWESOME teacher as well.  Her mother, Mrs. Lundell taught my oldest and my youngest daughter in third and first grade, respectively.

Now that I make quilts, I was thinking about how I should decide which teacher, if any, get a quilt made for them?  I decided that if they taught three or more of my children, they get a quilt.  Now, please note that I think ALL of my children's teachers a FABULOUS(!!!), I just can't afford to make them all quilts :/

I don't know if you can make out the words in the quilting below, but it reads, "First Grade Whisperer."

Ms. Lundell is absolutely magic with the kids.  The children are calm and peaceful whenever she is around. (I am not kidding, she emits Zanex or something...)  The children in her class are so well behaved that EVERYONE notices.  She ROCKS!  (I need to take lessons)

The label on the back.

I have to say that I am sad to be finished with first grade and Ms. Lundell.  My babies are growing up and I will miss their first grade sweetness!

Vote for me and your wildest dreams will come true!

The Bloggers Quilt Festival voting is underway!  

You can vote for my quilt in the Baby Quilt category HERE,
if you'd like to ;D  My quilt is #18

AND  you can vote for my quilt for the "Viewers Choice Award" HERE

Two different places, two different awards :)  

(SO exciting that my quilt was nominated for the Viewers Choice Award!  I am in shock!!!   There are nearly 700 quilts entered and only 24 made it into the Viewer's Choice category.  I am feeling pretty humbled ...and a little cool ;D) 

You can view the original post HERE.

xoxo

PS- I'll be posting a new post later this week.  We have had a funeral and lots of family in town.  That coupled with the last week of school and Memorial day = not so much time to sew :/

Flying Geese Goose Me :/

Geeze Louise!!!  These flying geese gave me some serious grief!  First off, I cut out FOUR times as many white squares as I needed for the project :/  THEN, one side of the quilt was TWO inches smaller than the other 3 sides :/

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I remedied all of the issues and FINALLY got two sides of geese sewn on. :)  Happy?  Well, almost!  I sewed the third side on THE WRONG DIRECTION :/

After staring at it for a long while, I unpicked all 85" of it, and fixed it.  I made sure to sew the final side on correctly.... I checked about 301 times ;D

Two more borders to go :)  One will either be stacked bricks or half square triangles.  The final border will likely be some kind of paper pieced castles with Heather Ross sleeping beauty corners.

I'd like to have this baby all finished so I can enter it into the Peteetneet quilt show this year.

(not sure it's gonna happen)

I Know What I am Going To-Do Today!

So much CRAP... I mean special wonderful things to do!!!!  This week is going to be VERY busy!  I have LOTS of quilts to quilt AND much of my husbands family is coming to town for his uncle's funeral this week.  ...not to mention that it is the last week of school.  Aye carumba!

WIP's -in some form of progress...
Challenge quilt for The Peteetneet Quilt Show  DONE!!!!!  Blogged HERE

"Letters to my Daughter" block of the month (10 finished out of 25)

Medallion Quilt for the Utah County Modern Quilt Group Flying geese!!!  The flying geese are made, but I have one side of my quilt that is much smaller than the other three.  I am having to rework some of the last border to see if I can fix the issues ;D  Aye carumba!!! ...for the second time in this post ;D

Moms mothers day gift DONE!  Blogged HERE

Ms lundell quilt The top is finished and I have started the quilting.  Must keep quilting!

Terry's quilt quilted

Kate's skirts

Anna & mikes pillows

Annette's medallion

my medallion center

knitting baby blanket

Ashley's skirt

Voile skirt for me

bee blocks for june

Operations Sunshine quilts for Myra

Quilt of Valor quilt quilted

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

2 Twin Size applique quilts for my nieces

Will be linking up with Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts, Quilt Story  and Lee over at Freshly Pieced.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am SO excited to enter this quilt in AmysCreativeSide's 2013 Spring Bloggers Quilt Festival :D

My quilt is entered into the baby quilt category #18 HERE (VOTE for me there too ;)

Each year for our local quilt show, The Peteeneet Quilt Show, there is a challenge fabric.  

The challenge fabric for this year is a darling print from Emily Herrick's fabric collection, Going Coastal.  Specifically, it was the bottle caps print. (Which is my FAVORITE!!)

I used prints from Emily's Going Coastal and Shore Thing collections to make this quilt.

Last year, I turned the bottle caps into 1.5" hexies.  ...and set them aside for a bit (like 8 months ;)

I used English paper piecing for my method of hexifying the fabric ;D

My original design for the quilt was totally different from what I ended up with :)

The bangle design was inspired by pictures I saw on Instagram of hexies made from Sarah Fielke's new book Hand Quilted With Love called Bangles.

I have been crushing on English Paper Piecing (epp), so I came up with a paper template that would get me an EPP bangle.

I have become TOTALLY obsessed with EPP.

Deciding how to quilt this sweet baby was really hard.

I finally came to the realization that the quilting would have to be a hybrid, 

a little hand quilting and a little machine quilting.

(The back)

With the nautical theme, the white fabric required small pebble quilting.

The hand pieced English paper pieced bangles and border hexies required hand quilting.

For the hand quilting, I used pearl cotton embroidery thread.

I used white for the bangles and navy for the border hexies.

Fussy cutting lent to an AWESOME hexy in the border ;D

This quilt will eventually belong to our future (someday) grandchild. ;D

You can read all about this quilts evolution HERE.

Quilt Stats

• Quilt Measurements- 35" x 33.25"
• Special Techniques used- English paper piecing, hand applique, entirely hand pieced.
• Quilted by ME! ;)  I used my home machine for the pebbles and hand quilting for the English paper piecing.

Spring 2013 Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side.  

You can check it out  HERE

TECHNICOLOR Quilt

More fun stuff I have been working on with Emily Herrick's new fabric collection TECHNICOLOR!

This quilt was designed by Emily.  The pattern will be available at Market (today).

I stitched this baby up and got it all ready for market.  I have been DYING to show you!!!

 

Technicolor Pincushion

Since market is under way, I can go ahead and show you some of the things I have been working on with Emily Herrick's new fabric collection TECHNICOLOR!

I have to say that these colors and prints are SO much fun!!!  I can't wait until y'all can get some of your very own to play with :)

This is a little pincushion that I made for a dear friend of mine :)

I used the tutorial over at Moda Bake Shop by Kim Niedzwiecki {gogokim.blogspot.com}

So much fun!  So cute!  SO so fast to make!!!

Triple-Zip Pouch American Jane Style

What is that saying?  Better late than never?

Well, due to many different mishaps (most of them in my head) my mom's Mother's Day gift didn't get finished until Tuesday :/

I decided on the Triple-Zip pouch from A Quilter's Table.  The tutorial can be found HERE.

I have made one of these before for myself.  You can read about it HERE.

My mom loves the 1930's reproduction fabrics.  Especially the red, blue and yellow ones :)

I thought this little pouch would be perfect for all of my parents little weekend getaways.

***I modified the pattern a little bit this time around.  I used heavy fusible Pelon instead of fusible fleece.   I also made the whole thing wider.  The original pattern calls for the pieces to be cut at an 8" width. I increased all widths to 10" (my tooth brush gave me trouble getting into the original).  I also added a 1/2" to the main exterior fabric length.  The measurement I ended up using for the main exterior print was 10"x10".  Other than that, I used her tutorial to the the letter. ...oh wait, I did finish it off a little differently than she recommends.  You can see what I did on my previous Triple-Zip Pouch :) ..blogged HERE.

I Know What I'm Going To-Do Today!!

WARNING!!!  Blog post in progress!! Come back later to see if I get it updated ;)  I have some serious demolition I need to do on my boys room!!! xoxoxo

Blog post updated :)  I spent ALL day Monday cleaning the boys room.  Three little boys packed into a TINY room.  One is a pack rat, the other two are just plain SLOBS!  Bad combo!  Good thing they are SO darn cute!!!  Here is a pic of them from a few years ago :)

Man, oh man, do these three get away with murder! (I think it's the eyes)

As a side note, I FILLED one of our LARGE garbage cans.  

Five, 33 gallon garbage sacks FULL of their "treasures" aka CRAP! ;D

...not to mention two loads of clothes and shoes to the little boy across the street.

WIP's -in some form of progress...
Challenge quilt for The Peteetneet Quilt Show  It is all finished... I just need to block it and photograph it... and then blog about the whole thing :)

"Letters to my Daughter" block of the month (10 finished out of 25)

Medallion Quilt for the Utah County Modern Quilt Group Flying geese!!!

(here is my crazy list from my tablet)

Moms mothers day gift

Ms lundell quilt

Terry's quilt quilted

Kate's skirts

Anna & mikes pillows

Annette's medallion

my medallion center

knitting baby blanket, Blogged HERE

Ashley's skirt

Voile skirt for me

bee blocks for june

What I finished this past week:
Marianne's Hobo Bag, blogged HERE.

My MIL's Mother's Day Table runner.  Blogged HERE

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

2 Twin Size applique quilts for my nieces

The June $29 quilt
July $29 Quilt

Will be linking up with Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts, Quilt Story  and Lee over at Freshly Pieced.

Delicious Wishes Table Runner

First off, let me wish all y'all mothers out there, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

:-)

For my birthday I received two generous gift certificates for Gracie Lou's in Salem, Utah.

One of my purchases was a fat quarter bundle of Delicious Wishes by Jane Nielson.

I decided to bust into it to make my mother in law a table runner for Mother's Day.

I had so much fun taking pictures, that I posted WAY too many, as usual ;D

Some days the sun and the trees are just too pretty :)

I decided on a swirly fmq to go along with the candy like theme of the fabric. 

Each granny square is different.

I really want one for myself :)

Now to decide what to make for my mom.

I hope that they fix me a yummy breakfast tomorrow!

It is also my hubby's birthday Sunday too.  We decided that Mother's day trumps his birthday because we can celebrate his birthday all week long!