School's Out Giveaway Time!

Today was the last day of school for the children.  I have a week and a bit more before I can truly say that I am on holidays!  I knew that this was more than the right time to celebrate with my first giveaway!!!!!

What do we have?  2 fabrics.  Half metre cuts of each!!!!   Strawberry Fields in Robin's Egg and  Henna Gardens in leaf both from Sandi Henderson's Meadowsweet 2.

EVERYONE HAS 3 CHANCES TO WIN!!!

1) Leave a comment below

2) Become a follower (or tell me if you already do) and leave a second comment

3) Share the giveaway on your blog and leave a third comment

One winner will be selected randomly on Tuesday, July 5, 2011. The winner will be contacted via email. Please make sure your email is visible in your profile or added to your comment.


And sadly, I can only welcome entries from the US and Canada.


A sidenote... Sue loves her quilt.  She was most surprised and was found several times during the school day wrapped in it.  While it is lovely to keep a quilt and use it, I must say that it feels good to give a quilt away.  

Labelled!

I am delivering this quilt tomorrow so I think it is safe to show the label.  Especially since I know what my dear friend Sue is going to be up to this evening.  Yep, we are going to see the movie "Bad Teacher."  Pretty funny as we are both principals.  Our other friend thinks it is a hilarious idea to go to this movie with 2 principals.  The movie looks absolutely hilarious and I have to say that I have great teachers on my staff!

I made this quilt for Sue.  2 years ago, she was appointed my vice-principal and we became great friends.  Sue is going off to be principal at her own school and I felt that a quilt would be just the ticket to say how much I have enjoyed these years and how much I value her as a friend and as a colleague.  So... snuggle up Sue with some Fresh Flowers for you!

You can scroll down to yesterday's post for all the details about fabric and pattern, if you are burning with curiosity!

And some real fresh flowers blooming today in the garden.

Linking with with Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday... Check out all the lovely projects!  Check in here tomorrow for my first giveaway ever to celebrate the end of the school year!

Fresh Flowers Quilt Finish !

Another finish!  That takes another "to do" off my work in progress get it finished list.  This quilt is a gift for a friend. I think it will be delivered in the next day or so.  I used 2 scrap bags of Deb Strain's Fresh Flowers line  for Moda.  I bought the scrap bags at one of the local quilt shops.  Along with some green dots from my stash and some thrift store yardage for the back, this quilt came together bing bang boom.  The pattern is from Me and My Sister Designs and I think it is called Baker's Square.  Nice and simple so the fabric is the star. I stippled the quilt all over in white. The fabric is so bright and cheerful and fully reflects the personality of the friend that I have made this for.  I am tickled to give it to her.

The quilt is being modeled on the grape arbor at the barn and an old apple tree in the yard.  If you look closely, you can see a poppy peaking out from behind the quilt at the barn.  These poppies are so pretty and are an unusual colour...  see?

And I am linking this finish up with {Sew} Modern Monday and tomorrow with Fabric Story Tuesday. Tomorrow I will pop in a picture of the label and tell you a bit more...

Flea Market Finds on a sunny day...

With trips to the thrift store, a garage sale and a flea market, I found some good stuff this weekend.  First off, some vintage sheets.  Very exciting.  With good colour range too, including the really snazzy brown floral!

And some fabric.  Almost a meter of a pretty floral for only $2!  Not too bad at all.

I love this type of vintage print.  The print is called Garden Steps and is in lovely shape.  I bargained hard at the flea market and took it home for $10.  Still a bit pricey but much better than the vendor's original $20.

Today was a good day for some pretty china.  A stack of 5 very nice dinner plates and then 3 delicate and OLD side plates below.  These were all for a donation because it was a charity garage sale.  Husband was delighted because they had free Tim Horton's coffee.  I also found a hummingbird feeder to add to the 3 we already have, and the newest one  is already in place and attracting the little birdies.

I am going to link up to Sophie's flea market finds!  Check the finds this week!

FLEA MARKET FINDS

Farmer's Wife first blocks and a quilt sandwich

Block #32  Farmer's Daughter

Block #74  Ribbons

Okay.  So far so good sort of.  The Ribbons block came out smaller than the Farmer's Daughter block even though I think I was very true to the little itty bitty templates.  There is a great tips thread that Angela at Fussy Cut alerted readers to for the Farmer's Wife Quilt Along.  In this tip thread, I found that a saintly quilter had combined all the templates onto 15 pages.  What a relief.  The author of the book has the templates on a page each all by themselves.  Hello?  What?  Talk about not being kind to trees, never mind how long it would take to print each separate page!  The tip thread has a great discussion about some of the issues around block size. I am going to try remaking the ribbons block to see if I can get it more the size it should be and then go from there.  The Farmer's Daughter square is perfect at 6.5" unfinished.  Ribbons came out at 6" unfinished.  Ya, darn it.  Several quilters suggested just adding a wee border to the whacky sized blocks but I want to try to get it right.

 Fresh Flowers quilt is now a sandwich.  I found this pale green Henry Glass print in the stash.  It was a thrift store buy and was an awesome steal if I remember correctly.  I have a lot of it... probably enough for 2 quilt backs at least.  I pieced the back with some leftovers from the top in a simple scrap happy stripe and I will quilt this baby tomorrow.  But only after I drag Husband to a garage sale that might just be a good one!

Finish it up check in...

So this week I finished up one of my projects and got a fantastic start on another.  Vintage sheet quilt.  Done.  But I said I wouldn't post another picture of it because I don't want to overload your sensibilities.  If you have not seen it yet, then you will need to check the link.  : ) Here are some farm pictures instead!

My work in progress list includes...

1) Paper pieced scrappy string quilt

2)  Clovers or Card Tricks quilt

3)  Sparkling Cider Vintage Sheet Quilt

4)  Fresh Flowers Quilt (only just cut out!!!)   Now a quilt top!

5)  A hexie pillow cover

Fresh flowers quilt top

Check over at Meg's to see what other finishers have been up too! I will be linking up there too!

The Farmer's Wife!

Well!  There are no excuses now, my book arrived!  And since the quilt along has already been in play for a few weeks, I have a bit of catch up to do.  I started printing off templates last evening.  It was a little frustrating because each template is on its own sheet.  What?  Kind of crazy but there sits the lone little template in the middle of a giant sheet of paper.  Once the catch up happens, the goal is about 2 blocks a week.  No problem?  No problem this summer but we will have to see what happens once the school year begins again in September!

Husband took this picture the other day.  He calls it quilt quality control in action.  There she is, Miss Senior Citizen kitty of the year.  All 15 years old of her, giving her stamp of approval of the French Roses quilt.  She is giving him quite the look!

Wednesday!

Next work in progress is at the quilt top stage.  I am making GREAT strides forward on my work in progress finish it up list.  I have completed the vintage sheet quilt and will end up finishing this Fresh Flowers quilt this weekend.

My mum mentioned to me that she wanted to see the whole vintage sheet quilt so I have one more picture of it and promise that will be it.  Thrown out on the lawn, it looks like it is floating!

The school year is finishing up and with the wind up is a flurry of crazy activity at school and in the evenings.  I am squeezing in the blogging in the midst of all of the frenzy.  We can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I must say it has been a fabulous school year.  It seems that each year flies by faster and faster.  Crazy!

And the super good news for us quilty folk is it looks like Canada Post will be back to work soon.  When they are well and truly back to work, I am going to have a giveaway to celebrate summer holidays!!!!  So stay tuned people!

Happy Monday and a quilt finish!

Lots of pictures of this one!  Here it is my vintage sheet quilt using the pattern, "Sparkling Cider" by All Washed Up quilts.  Completely made with vintage sheets, including the back and binding.  This quilt measures 65" x 85".  I free motion quilted it with loopy loops and I love it.  This is a really nice size for throwing on a double bed or snuggling on the couch.  It is wonderfully soft.  Husband thinks it should be a gift for a little old lady who can use it on her bed and drink lots of tea under it.  But I am going to keep it for me.  He will probably make some remarks about me being an old lady.  : )

I have to give credit to Jen at In Colour Order because she totally inspired me to make this quilt with vintage sheets and using this pattern when she blogged about the quilt she made with this pattern.

I kept the colours to more of the pinks and yellows with a bit of green.  I am going to make another one in just blues and purples because it is just so much fun.  Vintage sheets are great!

Today I am going to link up with (Sew) Modern Monday and tomorrow I will link up with Fabric Story Tuesday.

Flea Market Finds on a Sunday

 We went over to visit my Aunty for her birthday.  We gave her the pillow I made the other day for her birthday gift and she gifted me with some thrifted goodness.  My relatives are feeding my twin addictions for milk glass and vintage sheets! Thanks Aunty!  I love it!  The taller vase is a match to one  I already have, but the other one is totally new to me.  I have never seen that shape before!  Woo hoo!

And a lovely sheet to add to my vintage sheet stash. Just so you know, I actually have been doing something with all these vintage sheets.  I have not just been hoarding them.  Sneak peek alert!  I finished my vintage sheet Sparkling Cider quilt.  It was raining too much today to take a proper picture so you just get a sneak peek.  Totally made from vintage sheets including the back and the binding.  Free motion quilted in loopy loops by yours truly!

A thing of beauty!  Soft and lovely, it passed the snuggle on the couch test early this morning.  Happy Father's Day!!!!!!

And I will be linking up with Sophie's flea market finds.  Don't forget to check out all the lovely treasures found this week!

FLEA MARKET FINDS

Happy Saturday!

Okay.  I am taking this Finish Up Challenge seriously.  Today, I sewed the Sparkling Cider vintage sheet blocks together.  Sandwiched and spray basted the quilt.  Made the binding and am almost finished quilting this puppy!  It was a rainy day (big surprise!) so I tackled this quilt totally guilt free.  I am trying my hand at loopy loops and once I got going, it went very well.

On our adventures this morning, we did manage to find a quilt shop.  It was such a sacrifice to have to go inside but alas, I did.  I picked up a package of this stuff.  I am hoping it will help use up the big chunks of batting that are not quite big enough for a quilt.  Has anyone tried this before?  I imagine that you fuse uncut sides of the batting together and then you are away to the races!

Have a super fabulous Father's Day tomorrow!

Finish it up Summer 2011 Challenge!

Meg over at Fashioned By Meg has issued a challenge and offered group support to get those lingering WIPs finished up and off your list of to dos!  By August 15, 2011!  This is so achievable and I am in!  Pop on over to Meg's blog, grab the button and get busy!

My work in progress list includes...
1) Paper pieced scrappy string quilt
2)  Clovers or Card Tricks quilt
3)  Sparkling Cider Vintage Sheet Quilt
4)  Fresh Flowers Quilt (only just cut out!!!)
5)  A hexie pillow cover

And these are all in various states of not done!  Yippee!  This is a great way to get it going on!

Okay, where is summer? And next quilt on the go.

The clematis is blooming and is it ever so wonderful this year.  Like every year, the white crowned sparrows are nesting in the flowery mess of blossoms.  The clematis climbs Husband's workshop so every time we near the workshop (a.k.a. the Troll House), the sparrows give us what for.  They make a terrific noise in an attempt to scare us away.  It doesn't work but we give them a lot of credit for their intense efforts!

 I picked up this pattern awhile ago.  It looks really great made up.  My fabulous local quilt shop does a great job of making up a quilt to entice the unsuspecting shopper into purchasing their wares!  I think it will go together in a flash and that is the plan.  I used the scrap bags bought last weekend using the Fresh Flowers line and some small dots from my stash.  It was easy to cut and you might notice that this pattern is layer cake friendly.  How nice is that?

I have to say that some patterns have great, simple, clear directions and some do not.  I like the cutting directions to be really straight forward.  Some patterns are not like that.  The cutting instructions are all over that place and make it difficult to determine what the heck you are cutting and why.  This pattern was so easy to follow that you could pretty much get your dog or maybe even your cat to do the cutting.  I love it!!!!

And I took the pictures outside because it is so cold and dark and the lighting over my sewing table needs to be brighter.  Husband is always telling me that my pictures are too dark.  These bright fabrics are trying so hard to be cheerful on a cold and dreary June day.  Oh, where, oh, where is summer?????

Wednesday, Game 7, Hockey Night in Canada

Pillow made.  String pieced top with Fresh Flowers scraps.  The simple envelope back is a ? solid and some Henna Garden with some Meadowsweet dots.  I am happy with it and it will be a gifted this weekend.

Husband is watching the hoceky game as I type.  I think this will be a nail biter for sure.  We played the Good Old Hockey Game over the school PA system at the end of the day and the whole school cheered.  The Vancouver crowd is so loud that it is difficult to hear the commentator.  CRAZY!

And with all of that , the flowers continue to bloom...