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I finally, finally finished up this mini Swoon Quilt.  It is for my friend's new baby girl (well, she was born in January, this is a little late!) and I am going to give it to her in person tomorrow. This was made using Camille Roskelley's mini swoon pattern .  It is definitely not a quick project to make a baby quilt out of the 8" blocks, but I am pleased with how cute and tiny the little swoon blocks are. And despite being time consuming the blocks aren't difficult. Originally I was a little stumped where to go with the colors for this quilt so I showed my friend all of the prints in my stash I had saved away for baby quilt backings.  She chose this Wee Wander print (find it  here , here , or here ) which is great because I love this collection. I quilted it with Aurifil in an all over swirl pattern.  It has been a while since I did free motion quilting and I could definitely use some practice, but I think it turned out okay overall. The binding is a stripey, coral D

This month for do. Good Stitches Becky asked us to make Bell Wave blocks.  She wanted us to each choose a color and then make 2 blocks in that color, one with a lighter value and one with a darker value.  I chose yellow.  This should be a really fun quilt. In addition to working on these I have been taking the kids to swimming lessons, going to the fair, and somehow being entirely more busy than I was during the school year.  I thought this was supposed to be summer vacation ? I have also been struggling to find a replacement iron after I dropped my Singer Expert Finish onto the ground.  It did not survive. I liked the Singer iron okay, but didn't love it so I have wanted to replace it with something better.  After some suggestions on Instagram I bought an Oliso  which I really liked until it stopped working after 5 minutes.  I would consider trying this iron again since so many people seem to love it, but it's an expensive iron for 5 minutes of work! Next I tried a Rowenta w

A few weeks ago I decided to sign up for the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap .  This was probably not the best idea since I knew that I was going to be short on time, but I really wanted to participate so I made it work.  I have participated in several swaps in the past but it has been a long time. I am a little worried that this may be a little out of my partner's comfort zone, but she gave me a lot of freedom and not much inspiration so I just went the direction that felt right.  This mini was inspired by the Spiced Chai book by Katie Clark Blakesley in the Vintage Quilt Revival . The center fabric is from Rashida Coleman Hale's Koi collection and it is one of my absolute favorites.  I used the colors in the print as inspiration and made half square triangles that are 2" finished.  The background fabric is one of my favorites: Carolyn Friedlander's Crosshatch in grey. This used up all that I had left so I will be needing to restock (it's available here and her

We are in the middle of the super fun process of refinancing our house and today we have the appraiser coming over so my sewing room really needed to be straightened up.  I figured this was a good time to take some photos. It is not exactly a room, I don't really know what you would call it.  When we were looking at houses we tried to make it a priority to find a house that would have 1) a home office for my husband since he works very long hours and this way he can work at home sometimes and 2) a sewing space for me. The house we ended up buying has an addition that was made for the previous owner's parents to live in.  It is basically an extra bedroom (my husband's office) plus an extra space between the living room and the office.  I don't know what the previous owners used this space for, but it is my sewing room.  A couple challenges of using this space are the lack of a closet and the number of doors and windows in the room.  There are 4 doors (one is a giant slid

This little baby quilt (using Camille's  Mini Swoon  pattern) is the reason you haven't seen much from me lately.  It may be small, but it has taken me FOREVER.  I have had some family in town twice since I started working on these blocks so that definitely made things go a little more slowly, but it has taken more than two weeks to finish these up.  Good thing they are cute! I am still planning on adding a border to the edges, but I was out of energy last night and was just pleased to finally get the quilt top put together.  Making this little quilt top definitely took longer than making my big Swoon quilt top! This quilt is going to have to be set aside for a few days while I make my Schnitzel and Boo mini quilt for the swap and get my June blocks finished up.   And the winner of the Southern Fabric gift certificate is . . . Congrats Barbara!  You will be getting an email soon.

Happy Friday!  Today I have a giveaway for a $25 gift certificate from Southern Fabric .  I hope you all have a fun Father's Day weekend planned; Sunday is also my son's birthday so I am looking forward to a weekend of cake and presents and family.   In addition to the celebrating with family, I am also looking forward to doing a little fabric shopping (of course).  Southern Fabric is having a great sale with layer cakes $25 and under.   I have my eye on this Color me Happy layer cake:  And this Witch Hazel layer cake would make such a fun Halloween quilt: What about you, which layer cake catches your eye?  To enter the giveaway visit the sale here and leave a comment letting me know which is your favorite.  For a second entry, follow southernfabric on Instagram and leave a second comment. I will choose a winner on Tuesday evening. The giveaway is now closed.   Have a wonderful weekend!

Things have been a little slow around here.  In addition to end of year school activities and trying to refinance our house, we had my husband's sister and her family staying with us for a few days and very little sewing has happened. My main project right now is making a baby quilt for one of my best friends in the world.  Her baby was born earlier this year and I made this quilt for her, but it did not feel like the right quilt for her so I am starting over. I struggled with what to make and finally settled on a quilt of mini swoon blocks.  It has been quite time consuming, but I think that the end result will be worth it.  I am currently trimming a zillion HSTs down to 1.5".  I am also participating in the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap.  The deadline on this one is approaching quickly and I haven't even started, so I pulled a quick pile of fabric and scraps earlier today an an effort to jump start things. I will probably use few (or none) of these but at least I go

After I posted my Verdant quilt a few weeks ago I had a few requests for a tutorial.  Since this is not all that difficult to put together I thought I would put together a quick tutorial. I thought I'd change the name of the quilt for the tutorial since Verdant referred to all of the green in my quilt and you can use whichever fabrics you would like.  My daughter is in kindergarten and her teacher is always reminding them not to have "kissing words" when they write, which means that there words touch. Since the edges of each color of diamond touch I thought that would be a fun name :) Cut the diamonds. You will need 217 total diamonds.  For my quilt I used 5 different colors: 45 green, 45 peach, 37 blue, 46 orange, and 44 yellow.  Some rows need 8 diamonds and some need 7 so depending on your layout you may need a couple more or less than that number. To cut the diamonds cut a strip of fabric 5" x WOF, leaving the fabric folded.  I used a fat quarter here but you co

My daughter's kindergarten teacher this year has been fantastic.  We moved in a month after school started and Harper really struggled.  Her teacher made her feel welcome and has been positive and encouraging.  So I wanted to make sure to do something special for her. I know that her favorite colors are royal blue, purple, and pink so I wanted to incorporate all of those colors.  I had a couple prints from Aneela Hooey's Hello Petal which just happened to involve all of those colors, plus they seemed perfect for a kindergarten teacher. Because I have had a lot on my plate lately I did a simple plus quilt with 5" squares.  I think that because the squares are so big it makes the quilt look smaller than it is: it is 63" x 72".  It is quilted with crosshatching since apparently that's all I do anymore, ha ha.  But seriously it is my favorite.   The backing is a Shelburne Falls print that I had on hand and the binding is (I think) Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater.   A