Spring Chicks

I needed a little gift for a sewing friend. So I made her a pin cushion and, of course, a few for me too. One might say they are Texas chicks with their big hair. They are really cute all posed together.

I have had the chicken pin cushion on my list of things to make for a while.  One is stuffed with the lizard litter (ground walnut shells) and most are stuffed with a combination of polyester fiber stuffing and lizard litter.  You need that poly to shape the points.  Really they need to be a bit smaller to be a pin cushion or the needles will get buried in all their fluffiness.  I will happily make a few more.

This guy crashed the photo shoot!  Glad they aren't the real thing! 

I followed this tutorial by Jenny at Missouri Star Quilt Company.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sorting and Sewing

Here's a few pictures of what I have been sewing over the last few days.

I have done some incredible scrap busting this past year.  I was determined to get down to the bottom of the bins on these two projects.  I would sew the long strips on the string squares and then use the shorter pieces left over on the Spiderweb blocks.  I am using the foundation papers here and here from Missouri Star Quilt Company. 

Hopefully I will get them sewn together sooner rather than several years later.  I have set them aside for the moment because I have started another project.   I am super excited about making some Flowering Snowball blocks.

Linking up with other Scrappy Stitchers at She Can Quilt's Scraptastic Tuesday.

Thank you for stopping by!  

Super Size That Quilt

I have my FINISHED enormous Nine Patch Delight quilt on my bed and I wanted to show you all how pretty it looks!  

I wasn't kidding about how big this quilt is.  I finished this one rather quickly.  It takes up a lot of space when it is folded up so on my bed is the place to "store" it.  Most people think a "quilt" has to fit a bed. When I offer to make a quilt for family member they say, "Make one to fit my bed."  I don't make many large quilts. I have my reasons. I don't want to take the time that it takes to make a big quilt. It takes tooooo long. A big quilt can take a least a year to work on with sewing and life mixed in.  It takes over my sewing room. I have to interrupt sewing on a big quilt to sew on my smaller custom orders. A big quilt won't completely fit on my mid arm quilt machine.  I lose interest in a big quilt.  I like to move on to the next quilt idea pretty quickly.  I have to really like the design to stick with it to the end.  It is expensive to gather fabric, batting and backing to make a big, big quilt.   So to see a BIG quilt that I made is a kind of a big deal for me.  

   

  
My bed is really my little dog's bed. Meet Little Brown Bear.  He is in my bed much more than I am. By now he has found a way to get beneath the covers and snuggle down for the day's nap.  He wakes up around noon and around 4:30 hoping for a good dinner snack. He gets really upset when I sew in the evening...he thinks I need to be with him on the couch during evening TV time.  Then it's back in "his" bed for the night 

At first I was not so enchanted with this quilt.  As I saw it come to life, I began to see her potential and re-discovered the era in which I purchased all those fabrics.  I dug deep into some old fabrics to make those colorful nine patches in the border.  I thought I had out grown those fabrics but I have come full circle to really enjoying their appeal and the quilt is really me after all.

Thanks for stopping by today!

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Source of inspiration:

I talked about this quilt here.

Nine Patch Delight

Designers: Sarah Maxwell and Dolores Smith of Homestead Hearth.com If this quilt inspires you, their business is alive and well. They carry a great line of fabrics and you can make this quilt too.

From this issue.  Sew Scrappy. Better Homes and Gardens American Patchwork & Quilting Issue 110 June 2011 

Binge Binding Blitz!

Six total quilts bound and finished!  I finished the quilting on the two quilts I talked about in my last post plus a few more. Six total.  So that means it's binding time! 

Knowing I would be heading out of town for the last two weeks in March,  I needed some projects to work on when I wasn't playing with my grandson.  I quickly sewed the binding on the six quilted pieces. I took along thread and gadgets I knew I would need to get the job done.

The following is the result of having extra time to relax and sit and hand sew bindings.

First is the Nine Patch Delight I wrote about here and here.   

This quilt is KING sized....it is folded in half over the four foot fence.  I machine quilted most of it until it got so big in the throat of my mid-arm machine.  I hand quilted the rest and I really enjoyed doing that.  I used the big stitch method that I have seen by other bloggers.  I used some beige crotchet cotton thread I had on hand.  I so enjoyed stitching around all of those nine patch blocks in the borders.  

  Had to have a photo with Texas Bluebonnets.  We love our Texas state flower. 

The backing is a mauve plum color and goes well with the theme of the nine patches. With the left overs cut from the edges, I trimmed down the lengths and was able to use all the fabric I purchased to back and bind the quilt.  

I will be using this quilt on my bed.  I have grown to like this quilt, especially the variety of fabrics used in all of those six inch nine patch blocks.

Next up is the hexagon quilt I wrote about.  This quilt is high up there on my list of all time favorite quilts that I have ever made.   

.  I love the fabrics and colors on this one. Dots, stripes, lime green and splash of red, my favorites!

And I hand sewed the binding on these four scrappy projects too.  Four totally scrappy quilts.

This top, of course, is very scrappy, These scraps represent many years of saving scraps.  The batting is pieced scraps and I even used as many bobbins with bits of thread left from other quilts. I like how it turned out.

  

This is a collection of chicken prints set against red and light beige four patches.  Very cute quilt.

I used various scrappy 2 1/2 inch squares with solid white Kona cotton squares to make this crib sized quilt.

This little mini used some 1-1/2 inch squares to form a single Irish Chain pattern. 

I wanted to get this post up so I would be able to link to JulieKQuilts for her March Binding Blitz link up. Check out Julie's blog and other quilters who finished quilts in March.

It was great incentive to finish some tops that have been waiting and waiting to be finished.  

Thanks for stopping by!  Happy Spring sewing!