Laying out a quilt, of course, what were your thinking?  Trash, that is what you were thinking!  Shame, shame....

With the children tucked into their beds, I spent some time on the kitchen floor auditioning layouts.  I think this one won!  Hope to sew her up soon.  This picture is terrible and does not show off the true beauty of these fabrics, but this quilt will be stunning, if I do say so myself.

P.S.   To all you hard working, self sacrificing lovely mamas out there, Happy Mother's Day a tad bit early!

I decided to join the Bloom Bloom Pow Quilt-Along hosted by Freshly Pieced.  As soon as I saw the pattern I knew I wanted to make that quilt!  I also knew that I wanted to use fabric totally from my stash.  So I started digging and stumbled across some hoarded Flea Market Fancy Legacy by Denyse Schmidt.  Oh I love the colors in this collection.  I also added two prints that aren't from that collection, but ones that I love and match, I figured, why not?  So I pulled out the stack, set it aside and waited for the first post about design strategy.

Once Lee had posted the first step about design, which primarily took advantage of light, medium and dark fabrics, I realized that wasn't exactly going to work for me.  This line of fabrics is primarily mediums with some slightly darker prints, but nothing stood out as light.  So then I started rethinking things.  Determined to use this fabric, I decided to stick with it for the main petals, and for the lighter background part of the petal, I decided to use solids, and in most of the cases solids that were slightly lighter.  I know going into it that the quilt won't exactly have the same effect, but I am hoping that it will create its own unique take on the pattern.

This past week, Lee posted the cutting instructions, so I took the time this weekend to cut it all out!  Oh my, it took way longer than I thought it would, but I am happy to say that I am done and ready for the next post this Thursday!  This is the first time participating in a quilt-along that I have actually been keeping up each week, which is really fun and I'm really excited to start piecing this week!

I also did something that is rare for me, I thought ahead to the backing fabric and when one of the online stores recently marked down fabrics to $3.00 a yard, I ordered enough of the above print (praying that it matched) for the backing!  I am happy to say that it does match and I really think it is a beautiful print.  One of those that looks so much prettier in person than on the screen.

Anyone else quilting-along?

At the beginning of the year I stumbled across a great block of the month starting up over at Gen X Quilters.  It is named the Sister's Ten Modern Block of the Month and the finished quilt was presented right up front, no surprises here.  Perfect, I knew what I was getting into!  So I dug through my fabric stash and pulled these wonderful fat quarters from designer Melissa Averinos, the line is named Swoon.  I added in Kona Snow and got ready to start making these blocks.  Each month a new pattern is released, and you make two blocks from the same pattern, just different fabric placement for each.  I am making the 12" version, which will result in a large twin size quilt.

January's blocks are named Grandmother's Frame and had quite a few half square triangles, but it was simple enough.  I love how this block features a rather large fussy cut center.

February's block is named Susannah and the construction of this block was pretty simple and quick.  I love how different each of my blocks look!

I have been keeping up with this block of the month so far, I just forgot to take pictures until recently.  I haven't done March yet, but I think I still have some time!  If you want to follow along and see a TON of great block made by others, you can visit the Flickr group HERE.

I just thought I would pop in to share my fabric choices and first block constructed as part of the Dancing Stars Quilt-Along hosted by Amy Ellis over at Amy's Creative Side.  I only need to make 14 of these blocks because I am making a table runner, and I will not lie, they are time consuming, but I think the result is totally worth it.  It is also nice to brush up on my paper piecing skills.  I am using some Kona solids, this great letter text print and some of my precious Liberty of London fabrics from a swap I participated in last year.  So fun!

The whole family had this terrible stomach virus yuck last week, so it is nice to start a new week fresh and hopefully done with the sickness (fingers crossed!)  Maybe I will actually get some time to make a few more of these blocks.

Interested in joining in this quilt-along?  You can follow along or join over on Flickr.

Wow, I had no intention of taking a two month blogging break, but alas it happened and nothing I can do about that, so Happy New Year!  I am starting this New Year with a fresh approach, fresh outlook and fresh new goals.  I'm excited!  This is the first year in many that I made a New Year's Resolution!  Oh my!  This is a big deal for me, I'm normally not the type, but it feels good and I'm going with it.

Last year I started organizing and taking stock of the unfinished quilts and works in progress I had laying around and stuffed in cabinets and drawers.  Low and behold I discovered that I have 14 unfinished, started on, in pieces quilts.  Yikes!  So, my solution is to finish one a month for twelve months during this year and knock out the majority of them.  Most of them have all of the blocks done, they just need to be put into a top.  A few are finished tops, and a few need more work than that.  I am only focusing on one at a time, until it is finished.  Hopefully I can keep up!  If I finish it early in the month, then I will go ahead and move on to the next!  Below is my mosaic showing all 14 unfinished quilts.  Below that is my intentions for the next three months, and I will be linking up with She Can Quilt, who will be hosting the quarterly Finish-A-Long this year.  Monthly I will be following along with Cut To Pieces, who is hosting the Flickr group Project: UFO 2.0.  Wish me luck, I'm excited about this challenge and ready to get to work!

1.  January - Two Christmas table runners, made from these 10 blocks (see photo above.)  I need to construct tops, sandwich, quilt and bind it.  I have all of the supplies needed.  Good to go!

2.  February - One quilt made from these blocks, throw size.  I have either 15 or 16 blocks ready to make a top.  I just need to figure out what I am doing with them, make the top, sandwich, quilt and bind it.  I have all the supplies needed for this quilt too!

3.  March - Time to finish up Cosmic Burst!  The top is done, so all I need to do is sandwich it, quilt it and bind it!  Once again, I have all of the supplies needed.  Easy peasy!  This will be a wall hanging quilt.

4.  Anytime During the First Quarter - Construct three pairs of pajamas.  I have all the needed supplies, just need to cut them out and sew them together!  I want them ready for the boys to wear next winter.

That is it folks!  Interested in following along or joining in yourself?  Click on either photo below to go to either of these ladies lovely sites!

It is Blogger's Quilt Festival time again!  My regular followers have seen this quilt before, earlier this year, but for those of you who are visiting for the first time, hello and thank you for visiting!  I chose to feature this quilt for the festival because it is my favorite quilt I have made this year and one of the first quilts that I actually started and finished in a timely manner.  Normally it takes me a year to finish a quilt, but this one was done within a month, a new record for me!  I won't bog you down with all the details because I have blogged about this quilt before and you can read the extended story of this quilt HERE.

This quilt was my entry into the Patchwork Prism Quilt Along hosted by Sweet Diesel Designs, though I didn't place in that contest, I was very honored to be a finalist In the Summer Sewing Contest over at Ellison Lane Quilts, though I didn't win that contest either.  Aww... do you feel bad for me yet.  Ha, I'm sure you don't and shouldn't because this quilt is a winner!  A few weeks ago I entered this quilt into the Cottonport, LA Festival of Quilts and placed first!  I was beyond thrilled to see that blue ribbon on my quilt, even though it was displayed sideways (I'll get over it.)  It was so nice to receive a ribbon for my work and even more honored to be displayed and judged against so many beautiful quilts.  There were 98 entries into the Festival of Quilts and I'll share some of those other beautiful quilts in a future post. 

The photo above illustrates both the machine quilting that was done around each "prism of solid color" and the hand quilting that was done inside of each prism.  I really love the combination of both machine and hand quilting, it gives the quilt the best of both worlds, in my opinion!

Quilt Specifications:
Pattern - Patchwork Prism by Anna Maria Horner for Janome
Size - Wall Hanging 24.5" x 27.5"
Fabrics - No duplicates with the exception of the solid "prisms" and mostly from a 5" charm swap of designer cottons that I participated in earlier this year.
Batting - Cotton/Poly 80/20 Blend
Backing - Cotton floral print by Alexander Henry
Quilting - Machine quilted with tan thread. Hand quilted with pearl cotton in the "prisms", all quilting was done by yours truly.
Binding - Lisette sateen print from JoAnn Fabrics
Special Techniques - A combination of machine and hand quilting.  I also added four small ribbon loops to the top of the back (sewn in with the binding) in order to hang it on the wall.

Category - ROYGBIV (Color Wheel) Quilt, Wall Hanging

Be sure to head over to Amy's Creative Side and visit all of the other fabulous entries into the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

I just wanted to pop in and share with you guys an awesome event that I am participating in and you have the opportunity to participate in also!  The Tula Pink Sew Along hosted by the lovely Sara over at Sew Sweetness!  I made a quilt for this sew along and you can see the pattern below, Le Petite Salon.  I will be sharing this quilt on October 3rd!  I'm so excited to share it with you guys and be part of this awesome event!  You can find the full details and schedule below, and keep reading to find out how you can participate in order to win some great prizes!  Oh and there are some discount codes down there too, just in case you want to purchase this pattern yourself...or maybe buy some fabric!

A bit disappointed that I was unable to attend Sewing Summit later this year, also disappointed that most likely I won't be attending Quiltcon.  Really extremely disappointed that I couldn't be part of the Anna Maria Horner embroidery retreat also.  Do you see a trend here?   I do.  Blah.  Being in the funk that I was, I started thinking about taking Rachel's Handstitched Class.  You know, the Rachel from Stitched in Color.  It would be fun to take a class this summer, so I bit the bullet and signed up.  I will admit that I have done a bunch of these techniques before, but there were a few that I had never attempted, and I thought it would be great fun to learn something new.

We are already in Week 3, though we have one week of lessons and one week off, so it is really like we are in Week 2.  Unfortunately for me, I am already rapidly falling behind.  Seven projects have been introduced, and alas this little needle book is the only project I have completed at this point.  I do so like it though, and this is the first time I have ever done reverse applique, which is really neat and has so many possibilities.  The blanket and running stitch are not new to me, so I decided to take liberties with Rachel's pattern and create my own design, thus my little needle book features raindrops and a sassy little umbrella.  I didn't have a fancy button, so I went with a clear one that would show off that funky thread that I saved from some packaging I received in the mail one day.

I thought the raindrop lining fabric was appropriate!  If you were wondering what is next to the scissors, it is my seam ripper, never leave home without it!

Below is my selection of fabrics for the Medallion Quilt we are making in the class.  A different palette for me, but I love the modern fabrics.  I was getting everything ready to start, but alas had wax paper instead of freezer paper, and yes, there is a HUGE difference.  Oh well, everything is a learning experience.  Hopefully I can locate some freezer paper soon!

It is absolutely amazing to me that I was nominated as a finalist in the Summer Sewing Contest over at Ellison Lane Quilts.  Thank you so much!  Wow, I am truly blown away.  If you have already voted for me, thank you, I truly appreciate it.  If you have yet to vote, you can HERE, and no, I'm not asking for your vote, there are so many great finalist, you should vote for the one you love, but if you love mine, I'm number 11.  Just saying.

In my original post about the Patchwork Prism, I shared that we were considering hanging it above our fireplace.  Well here it is, in all its glory!  We both love it and boy does it brighten up the room!

I also have a few random bits I would love to share:

I read a great blog post over at The Sometimes Crafter about the various evolutionary stages of a quilter.  I loved it and thought it was so appropriate.  You can read it HERE.

I am in desperate need of a new iron, and am seriously considering this model HERE.  Do you know anything about Singer Irons?  I am also in the serious researching stage of this sewing machine found HERE, to be used exclusively for machine quilting.  Any thoughts or advice?  That's it folks....

Other than a sneak peek that I gave you guys this past week, I haven't shared any of this project with anyone.  Not sure why that is, but I think I honestly got so wrapped up in making it, I didn't want to stop and take pictures and blog about it.  Hope you don't mind!  The pattern is from my favorite designer, Anna Maria Horner, and is called Patchwork Prism.  I just love the pattern, and I just love this mini quilt that I created.  My husband wants to hang it above the fireplace, which actually is a big deal since he never wants to put anything above the fireplace, and I might just let him.

I made some modifications to the pattern so that it would actually be do-able for me, and allowed me to use fabric totally from my stash (yippee!)  The pattern makes a 70" ish large quilt, so I reduced the template on my copier some odd amount like 63% in order to get the template small enough to fit the triangle on a 5" charm square.  You see I participated in several large rainbow charm swaps this year and have quite the collection to use, this quilt ended up being almost totally from those charms, with the small addition of some scraps from my stash.  There are no duplicate prints in this quilt, with the exception of solids, which I had to duplicate, since they probably don't make that many yellow solids.  The main thing that I chose to do differently with this pattern was to ignore the light, medium, and dark value fabrics, and to rather highlight the "prisms" by making them out of solid fabrics.

You can see here that I chose a rather wild floral Alexander Henry print for the back that highlights all the colors, but I do wish I had done something less crazy because alas it is near impossible to see all the quilting on the back, it is just too busy.  Oh well, lesson learned.  If you look closely at the photo below you can see several things.  First, I chose a Lisette sateen print from JoAnn Fabrics for the binding.  It is a triangle geometric print and I thought it just highlighted the colors on the edges perfectly.  I love it.  Second, if you look closely you will see that I chose to do both machine and hand quilting.  I started machine quilting hexagons around the solid prisms, then I just went from there, radiating out, and then adding more hexagons where there were "blank" spots.  This is the heaviest quilting that I have done to date, and I am quite pleased with the effect.  After I was finished machine quilting, I went back and using variegated Pearl Cotton size 8, I hand quilted inside of each prism large chunky stitches.

This wall hanging measures 24.5" x 27.5" and I added little ribbon loops to the top back in order to hang this rainbow on the wall.  Sorry, I don't have any photos that show the loops, but they are hot pink and really small.  I used a cotton/poly (80/20) blend batting, which seems to be the norm for me, it is what I like, so I use it!  It was machine quilted with a neutral tan color that I wanted to "blend into" the quilt, which I think worked out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself!

I am linking up with Sweet Diesel Designs Patchwork Prism Quilt-Along and with Ellison Lane Quilts Summer Sewing Contest.  Be sure to stop by each of these great blogs and check out all the other fabulous entries, because I promise there are some GREAT entries!

A few "artistic" shots...