Quilter's Blog Hop giveaway day

Are you on Santa's good list?  Are you ready for lots of giveaways?

Today is the start of the Quilter's Blog Hop Party with the Quilting Gallery. 

Im giving away some great Christmas Fabric from my stash! 

Some is new and some is old but all free fabric is good!

(not actual fabric-my camera died last night!)

You will recieve fabrics totaling about 2 yards. 

All you have to do is comment for one or all of the following. 

The more comments the more chances to win!

1.  Be a follower and let me know you are.

2.  Tell me about your favorite Christmas tradition.

3.  Tweet, facebook, flickr, or blog or any other social media way of sharing this giveaway.

That's it!  Check out the other giveaways on the Quilter's Blog Hop Party!

12/11/11 Update:  Camera working! Here is the picture of the fabric sitting under my small angel tree that sits in the upstairs hallway.

5 different fabrics from 1/4 yard to a yard in size.  More than 2 yards in total.

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Christmas tree in my library.

Quick and Easy tree skirt

Do you know the very first thing I ever pieced was a Christmas tree skirt?  About a zillion years ago when I was around 20 years old(ok only 22 years ago), my mom asked me to finish a project for her.  She had bought about 10 or 12 yards of Christmas prints at Piece Goods to make a tree skirt.  Mom had cut out 5 inch squares(probably with a cardboard templete) and had stopped there.  So on Christmas vacation home from college I assembled a tree skirt.  She had cut so many squares that I had enough to make two!  One for home and one to put away for me!  It was the easiest pattern ever that I figured out. 

Just piece a large square.

 

Here is a tiny version I made this week for a tree I put together for my sister's boyfriend. When I opened my Christmas scrap bin I saw I still had lots of that old fabric.  So some of the scraps used above were from the old tree skirt.

  The secret to making it is to keep the rows at an even number and leave the center seam on one side halfway open.  I dont use batting or quilt it, though you could if you wanted to.   I sew the backing on like making a pillow. 

 Make sure to sew around the backing at both sides of the open seam being careful not to catch the edge of the fabric on the opposite side.  Cut the backing fabric to create the opening before turning. 

 If you are sewing for a real tree with a thick trunk create a square with an odd number of rows.  Leave out the center block.  That was how I made the larger tree skirts. 

It is a fast and effective way to make a tree skirt of any size.  You could cut the top into a circle to make it round as well. 

I have one for my tree at school that was not scrappy.  I tied red buttons at the intersections of each of the squares.

keep dreaming...Colleen

My October black for my partner.

Catching up on some swaps

I decided to wrap up this year with my monthly Bee swaps and then take a break in 2012.  I have a pile of UFOs that really need to be finished.  But I still have some blocks to make and here are some reccent finishes.

This was my November block for my partner in Block Swap Adventure.  She wanted card trick in any colors so I used some DS Quilts Picnic and Fairgrounds fabric.  I really love this line.

This block was totally improved. I focused on the teal color and found scraps from my scrap box.  I then improvised the pattern I think I'll call garden star.  This was for my October partner.

This is a view of my new design wall.  I finally got so frustrated with the tiny fleece one.  I was at Joann's and noticed the felt was on sale.  I bought 2.5 yards of a 90"' wide light blue felt.  Notice I now have room to leave all of my Bee blocks at the top.  I love it!

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Beautiful basillica in Asheville, NC.

Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving! 

 I know I am thankful for another year of life behind me. 

 I didn't mention it earlier in the month but November 5th was an important anniversary for me.  No one else seems to remember it anymore but me.  It has been six years since my last chemo.  I survived that horrible time of uterine cancer that robbed me of years of my life and killed my future children.  Sometimes the pain of loss hits me. 

 But I am thankful for my life, my job, my home and my family.  And my cute cat Kalli.

I hope everyone has a great day with family and friends.  Me I'm off to make zuchinni bread-yum! Then to mom and dad's for fun day.

I know I've been silent for the last week and a half.  As a teacher librarian I've been dealing with a book fair and not a lot of sewing.  The last two days I've been making up for lost time and have a lot of sewing to blog about.  Also my trip to Asheville two weeks ago.

Keep dreaming...Colleen



Georgeous golden leaves of the ginko tree.



Mini quilt party

Did you know amylouwho is having a party!  A mini quilt party! 

So I thought I would join in and share a recent swap finish.  Why is it I'm always sending my favorite finishes to others?  Ah such is the way of a quilter!

Have you seen this loveliness?

And this loveliness?

 

This is fabric the first DS  Quilts (Denise Schmidt) line, Picnic & Fairgrounds, found at Joann's.  Some of us are alittle obsessed with Denise Schmidt fabrics at Joann's.  So obsessed we have this flickr group to discuss and share it.  And there are two other lines since this one was released last spring.

We DS Quilts devotees are so obsessed we decided to do a DS Quilts Doll Quilt swap using just Picnic & Fairgrounds!  I was all gun ho to use my Kona Ash for the background and made these little squares and tried them.  I liked it alot!

However when I posted to the group I got lukewarm response so I tried it against a white.

Everyone like this version, but I wasn't thrilled so I put it away for a while.  I felt like it didn't represent me. I designed new quilts in my graph pad. Finally as the deadline approached I was hit with inspiration.  My paper pieced stars!  I love making them!  I have been doing them since I first used them as a border for a round robin quilt in 1994.  Set the original part on point and put a star in each corner!

I love how it turned out! (though I still want to do it in ash).  The yellow was just right for setting off the  center.  I decided not to put an outer border on it.

When quilting I don't draw out lines or think to far ahead.  I guess I just(forgive the cliche) let it speak to me.  If you look closely in the center I did a series of squares with narrow and wide widths between.  In the center I turned the squares on point.  I had fun quilting around the stars too.

I used a darker blue and red small scale print to bind it.  I love using these clips to hold the binding in place!

I think it turned out pretty great and my partner really liked it!

Don't forget to go back and check out all the mini quilts at the party!

Keep dreaming...Colleen



This is the DS Quilts doll quilt my partner Leona sent me!  It's awesome!