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Head over to the Moda Bake Shop to see the tutorial I wrote for the Hourglass Star Quilt using Bonnie and Camille's April Showers collection.  This pattern is super quick and easy, it is made up of half square triangles, and it was a great way to use a Fat 8th bundle.

Thank you for all of the wonderful comments on my last post, I am already feeling more focused! I even cooked last night (from scratch, nothing frozen or from a can) which is something that I have not felt like doing in a long time.  An embarrassingly long time.  I think my children were shocked. By the way, check out the pillows I made with the new  Ann Kelle Boombox prints .  I LOVE the colors in these prints and they are so cute. photo from here And I have made some progress on my piles of projects: I finished all of the blocks for my Scrappy X quilt.  I just need to put them together. Have you heard about the Radiant Orchid quilt challenge ?  As soon as I saw it I knew I needed to participate, especially since purple is my favorite color.  I have been working on a very purple-y baby quilt for the past few days and now it just needs a binding.  Unfortunately my elbow is a little sore (darn those sewing injuries!) so I think I need to give it so...

*warning: this post has very little to do with sewing or quilting Yesterday we drove up to Los Angeles to visit for the first time since we moved 5 months ago.  I kept telling myself that I don't miss the traffic and the smog and that I love living in San Diego so I can't really miss LA all that much.  I was so wrong.  There were lots of tears as we drove through West LA and were able to visit friends (and of course Sew Modern). I miss it so much more than I realized and a big part of that is the friends that we made over the past 7 years.  This has made me reflect a lot on friends and the importance of having good friendships in my life. I love that I can get together with friends I haven't seen in a few months or talk to friends I haven't seen since college and we are still friends.  And I am so grateful to have made friends through quilting and blogging.  In a way you are all my friends, some of you I know better than others and some of you I hope to get...

Finally it is done.  Making a queen sized quilt really exhausts me - all of the steps take so long and the quilt is so heavy.  I enjoyed making the blocks but the whole actually basting and quilting and binding required lots of breaks.  But it is done and I am so excited. I decided to use the Rocky Mountain Puzzle block ( tutorial here ) after seeing this version .  It is a fairly easy block, but since I made 64 of them that was a lot of half square triangles to trim! The colors for the quilt were inspired by Teagan Whites Fort Firefly collection .  I LOVE this collection, but I loved mixing it with other prints even more. The backing is Heather Moore's Cut Out and Keep and it is really soft and I love this print.  I just barely had enough but I am so glad that I did. Thanks for everyone who put in their 2 cents about the binding. After debating I decided to use another Heather Moore (Skinny Laminx) print for the binding.  I actually DID have enough ...

Happy Valentine's Day!  I will be spending V-Day volunteering at my daughter's school and then binding a quilt on the couch while I watch About Time for the third time this week (I love it!).  My husband left on Wednesday to go to Washington DC until the end of the month :(  At least I get to spend the day with my kids, my husband is spending his with his co-workers. My daughter is very particular about clothes and always picks her own outfits.  She has been excited to choose her Valenetine's outfit and wanted me to take a photo of her this morning before school.  You  might think that this outfit would be cold for Valentine's day except it is supposed to be 80 DEGREES TODAY! I am moving along with my Farmer's Wife blocks.  Since my goal is to make 10 blocks per month and making all 10 at once last month was a little too much, I though I'd try doing them in batches of 5.  Five blocks was much more manageable. I just cut the pieces for all 5 block...

The pillows on the couch were in need of an update considering that we are in a new house with a new rug and new couches. And all new colors.  April Showers is a really nice match to the living room (gray couches, blue rug, red end tables) so I made this pillow (and will be making one more) with some April Shower scraps. This pillow was inspired by Quilt Improv (I know I already said it once, but I love that book). I bound it with the Scrumptious bias stripe print, but I wish I had enough of the April Showers bias stripe for the binding because it is amazing!  I will definitely be getting yardage of that print in every color. And I'm not even going to try to think of an excuse to post this photo.  I'm just posting it because this kid is so hilarious and cute I can hardly stand it!

After many, many, many hours, I have finished quilting this queen sized quilt.  I quilted it with randomly spaced, straight-ish lines which is my favorite texture for a quilt.  But it takes forever. Now I need to decide on a binding fabric.  I almost never buy more than a 1/2 yard of any given print and since I need 3/4 yard to bind this one my options are pretty limited.  Maybe I need to buy something new . . . In addition to finishing this up I have been working on a new Moda Bakeshop project with April Showers from Bonnie and Camille (it is gorgeous!). Watch for that in early March. And I have been reading.  I love to read, but I don't do it often because my other responsibilities get a little neglected.  The house gets messy, the kids watch too many movies, I forget to brush my hair.  It's not pretty.  But I have gone through a dozen or so books in the last couple weeks including a couple that I loved: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion Elean...

I spent the last week relaxing, reading, and catching up on some rest.  I even went to bed before 9pm one day.  On Friday I turned THIRTY which I found more exciting than scary.  It was a good week.   I did a little birthday shopping and really love the Bark and Branch and Catnap prints that I picked up.  I may need to buy more from these collections. I started a new project after buying Quilt Improv last week.  It is a wonderful book and (in my opinion) the more inspirational quilting book I have seen in a while.  This is going to be a scrap quilt for my youngest sister and has been so much fun to work on. A few people asked where they could buy a copy of Easy Quilts that has my California Dreamin' pattern.  It should be available in stores now and you can also buy a digital version of the pattern from the Fons and Porter website.