Big News

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't been blogging very much lately; we just found out we will be moving to Seattle in about 3 weeks from now! My husband had several job interviews (for one job) and we were hoping he would be offered the job but weren't sure until earlier this week. So now we are hurrying to get our house ready to sell and get our stuff ready to move. I started on the organizing/decluttering a few weeks ago and it has felt good to donate and trash a lot of the extra clutter around here. I did find out that neither Savers nor Goodwill will accept a fake Christmas tree in August, though. I still have a lot to do but I am trying to do some of the deep cleaning each day now along with continuing to go through all our stuff. It is going to be really hard for our family to leave our friends and neighbors here, and I know being in a new place will be challenging too, but we are excited to start a new adventure!

I don't have a lot of sewing of my own to show off but I did get my quilt from DQS11 in yesterday's mail.

The quilt was made by Karen, who goes by Fun & Comfort Quilts on flickr. She was so generous and included workbooks for each of my kids and a quilting book for me, along with vintage zippers, trims, thread, and chocolate. Amazing. I really like the gorgeous color gradation in the quilt and the triangle blocks are so cute.

Also, I mailed my quilt for this swap on the last day which was Tuesday, and Marilyn got it yesterday. I had a lot of fun making a quilt for someone that I actually know this time. She sent a really sweet thank-you email yesterday... as much as I love getting my quilt in these swaps, I have really enjoyed making quilts for someone else, especially when they really love it. :)

I also have a little toddler dress to show you:

 

This was made with the peasant top pattern from Little Girls, Big Style, with a few changes. I folded out some of the ease in the bodice front and back pieces, and the skirt tiers aren't as full as the pattern suggests in the book. I had to cut the whole thing out of this remnant of shirting fabric I had that was just under a yard. I shortened the sleeves, too. I like it, and I think my girl will be able to wear it into the fall and winter with long sleeves underneath and leggings or tights.

So... I will probably not be posting here very much for the next little while. I am still not sure if I will be able to have my sewing machine while we're in temporary housing so I am thinking I need to put myself together a little hexagon hand sewing kit to keep myself busy.

Farmer's Wife Blocks 7-10

Top left--block 7, Birds in the Air. The lesson I learned is that even if things look contrasty, they might not be so much on a really small scale. Also, I got a Parisville fat quarter stack and am excited to use some of the Parisville purples in my purple-focused Farmer's Wife quilt. :)

Top right--block 8, Bouquet. Done is better than perfect!

Bottom left--block 9, Box. Adding in some darks.

Bottom right--block 10, Bow Tie. Kind of monochromatic.

Finished Doll Quilt--DQS11

I finished this up the other day and decided to share the final product.

I did mostly machine quilting, but the houses are hand quilted with 2 strands of embroidery floss.

So glad to have this one done!

DQS Quilted

I did the quilting on this today. It was fun, and I like it! I will be sending it off to my partner soon...just needs binding and a label, and it will be done!

This was going to be a "quilt blocks" post

But I kept going and got all of my Punctuation blocks finished and sewn together.

This is pretty much what a whole jelly roll makes. I have about 6 blocks left over to sew into a strip for the back. Each strip of the jelly roll made 2 complete blocks with about 2.5" left over at the end. Right now this is 48" x 54", and I'm going to get some yardage from my LQS to add solid borders just to the top and bottom. These blocks were really easy to make, with only two trips to the ironing board needed. I love the bright colors and the letters. My favorites were the strips that had 4 prints on one strip (like the yellow one on the bottom row.)

And here are some quilt blocks I've finished recently:

Blocks 3-6 of the Farmer's Wife quilt sampler. I am having fun using purple in each block, and some new fabric arrived today that is greatly increasing my purple stash. I'll show you later.


And, some more blocks for my DQS project. I'm going to make a little row sampler, with these stars and squares, and some of the houses I made earlier. (Oh yeah, and one more row that isn't done yet.) I hope my partner likes it!

Finally, I have an idea for a fun little quilt using these:

It's going to be a baby quilt for my niece who's scheduled to arrive anytime now. I got the solids from Tammy at Marmalade Fabrics. Turns out she's pretty much my neighbor. It was super sweet to be able to drive just a few minutes and see her cool little fabric shop last night. Thanks for letting me stop by, Tammy!