I've fallen in love...

   Have you seen Edyta Sitar's book Seasonal Silhouettes?
         There are 12 gorgeous blocks in this book.

 

All the little details are so pretty!

Looks like I have about 11 more projects on my pile!

LOL!

Thanks Edyta...

This book is fabulous!

 

More scrap bustin

 

Here it is...the naked truth. No cleaned up photos, just raw images!  LOL

Complete with strings and threads that haven't been trimmed yet!

And you thought you would never see naked here!

hahahahahaha

A couple posts back, I shared my strip sets

and the blocks I turned them into

Well, here is a peek what they look like stitched together.

This is the actual block.

It takes 16 stripy blocks for each big block.

An alternate pattern emerges as you put your big blocks together.

Kinda cool huh!

 

 Best yet, anything goes...

  

You will find a little Christmas, Halloween, Southwest, Brights, Oriental...

 

A scrap soup so to speak!   Some of these fabrics were so old, that I don't even remember buying them. Who knows where they showed up from. Some were hideously ugly.

 

But finished they played together nicely.

 

Break out the sunglasses for this thread. 

It did bring it all together.

A little bit of my hand dyes for the inner border 

and

a bright butterfly fabric outer border and backing all came from my stash. 

Something I bought years ago, for a project I have long forgot about.

I am delighted to tell you that I only have about an 8"x10" piece of the butterflies left.

Now is that luck or what.

Yes, this is what quilting all started out to be.  A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Whatever you could get your hands on.

I refer to these as my "freebie" quilts. I didn't purchase anything new to make it, so it's free to me!

:-)

Oh how I love this "Trashcan Treasure". If you get a chance, take a class from Pat Speth the Nickel Quilt lady. She shares the pattern for this in her classes!

It's a keeper!

:-)

You know it's summer when...

 

The fabric dyes come out and the fun begins!

I dyed a rainbow, so to speak!

Mixing dyes and seeing new colors bloom is such a joy.

 

This time I played with some tone on tones.

 

What great results they gave me.

 

Best yet, they were all from left over dyes. Once I dyed my main fabrics, I just poured off the extra liquid on these. That's why they are more pastel. They just soaked up the leftover dye. It's always a bit of a mystery as to what will happen.

Not bad results, but there are a couple I might re-dye next go round.

 

Here are some solid extras too. They just don't have the same punch as the tone on tone, do they?

 My main goal this time was solids, but when I was at the end and had some dyes leftover, I played with dumping them together and squishing them into a small container of fabric. I do love the design that happens.

It was a good dye day.  47 yards in all!

I found a bolt of Bamboo fabric hidden in the ole sewing room, that needs to be dyed. 

Hidden with it was 12 more yards of fabric ready to dye.

My quilting Sista bought me some white PFD batik... Ohh I can't wait to play with that.

and today I went and bought 12 more yards of polka dot tone on tone. 

I've got a plan....

It's gonna be a Happy Summer!

 

Scrap bustin

 

I absolutely love scrap bustin.

When I had to move things in my sewing room, I realized just how many scraps had managed to build up again. They are like bunnies, I swear!

It was time to do a little house cleaning and use up the old stuff.

 

Out came the civil war fabrics and a little bit of wool.

I even found the perfect place for these cool buttons, I bought a very long time ago.

This little cutie is just 27.5" square. A nice little doll quilt size.

  Buttons and Bows by Jenifer Gaston.

www.woolenwillow.com

That being said, I have a HUGE file of patterns I have downloaded online. 

I'd love to share where I found this at, but for some strange reason, I can't seem to locate it.

I have the copy I printed out with the above information on it...but I can't find a link to it.

I'm so sorry. Maybe one of you is better organized the me and can help solve this problem!

;-)

Till then...

I'm still scrap bustin!

A little bit of this and a little bit of that!

                   It's been a weird weather year so far this year...
            Mothers day brought us over 24 hours of rain and snow.
Who would have thought, that we would have managed to collect this much show in May!

Once the snow stopped it was pretty chilly for days.

I took advantage of the low temperatures to shovel rock

That's 5.5 tons of rock. 

And yes I shoveled every bit of it myself. 

Oh it was heaven, working in 40 degree weather.

I will never have rock brought in again when it's warmer than that!

Best exercise I ever got.

LOL!

Oh the finished results, were well worth the work!

We took out a lot of overgrown bushes and broken down raised flower beds.

I'm much happier with the clean look and low maintenance now.

Then, last week it was tornado's and hail. Thank goodness I was out of town for this event, but friends posted photos from the airport on Facebook.

 Why is it that we go thru all this tornado training, and the first thing everyone does is run to the window to see it????  So much for heading to the shelter away from flying glass. Thankfully it didn't do any damage to the building, but there was plenty of hail damage to planes on the ground.

But finally last weekend, we had sunshine and warm weather. Enough so, that I headed outside to start on my yard.

 

First up, my swinging bear planter box. This has been in the back of my mind for a few years now.

My youngest bought me this bear, at a chain saw carving event at the International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque a few years back.

Finally this year he got a good home hanging out over my new flower box.

Yeah, I split the wood...guess I will have to replace it, LOL!

It was the first time I have had the wood working tools out in years, so one little split didn't really bother me!

It did get my interest peaked in woodworking again.

It's been way too many years...

Next up...for those who just don't have enough toilets to clean!

 My toilet planters!

I think I only had 1 last year, but this year it was joined with a friend!

;-)

It's the ultimate in recycling!

 

I think the pink and blue snails make it.

Oh, I know it's not for everyone...

It takes a certain sense of humor!

:-)

I do not have a green thumb by any means, so seeing even a few flowers in my garden makes me very happy.

 Oh and I took a fabulous class from Pat Speth, the Nickel Quilt lady!

I have traded and saved these things for years...

 While my nickel quilt is in progress, I couldn't help but be captivated by "Trashcan Treasure".
I dumped out my scrap drawers and collected all my strings to make these strip sets.

 Turned them into these blocks!

It looks like "Trashcan Treasure" is a pattern you have to attend her class to get, but you can find other great freebies on her web site.

 http://www.patspeth.com/

and, you can visit her blog for her 365 quilt blocks she is designing.

http://nickelquilts.wordpress.com/

*****

Soon I will reveal both of my quilts!

;-)

Oh and did I forget to tell you, and in the midst off all this,  I got an email from a friend a couple of miles away, sharing these photos...

 

Yes, it's a fairly normal looking neighborhood, only with news crews and police everywhere...

4 doors down from her all this chaos erupted!

Yes, you see it right!  That's a plane that flew thru her neighbors house.

 The pilot got out and walked out the front door. 

It was big news for a few days...accident you say, maybe, but it turns out the pilot used to live in this house. There has to be more to this story here...

It dropped out of the news as fast as it dropped in!

So who says there is no excitement around here?

Happy Summer!