Cottage Garden

I love seeing a patch of densely blooming flowers. I also love cottage gardens. In my own garden, I have drought tolerant plants that form areas to create the look of a cottage garden. Each year I add new and different flowering drought tolerant plants in those areas to form a more densely cottage patch. 

This year, I have been inspired by my garden to make numerous quilts with flower motifs.

After seeing these beautiful batiks in a jelly roll, all I could think of was flowers and half-hexis.

Twice now I have arranged hexagons to make quilts with a flower theme. One quilt I did as a quilt-as-you-go and that quilt went to a friend in Japan. The other quilt I own and has a very wide border that is quilted with arcs.

After arranging the hexagons into flowers, I stitched them into rows and then the rows were stitched together. I opted out of doing this quilt as a quilt-as-you-go. Instead I basted the layers in prep for quilting.

I decided to go with arcs, but no borders. 

It took a week for me to quilt the arcs. The arcs represent the blowing of the wind through the flowers.

I opted for a blue binding with a pink flange instead of a border.  I'm into using flange bindings this year for most of my quilts.

The back of quilt is this pretty floral flannel. Come dead winter when I'm in need of "Spring" this quilt should keep me warm.

In my own garden, I have a rose that is a green flowering rose. The quilt has one green flower with a green center that represents my green rose in my cottage garden.

Hawaiian Hanabi

This quilt for my daughter was inspired by her resent "I want-to-get-away" trip to Hawaii and her love of Japanese fireworks, Hanabi. 

While she was in Hawaii, I came across just by chance the Missouri Star Quilt Co's Youtube tutorial on the Burst Block quilt. It's a totally tiki look, Hawaiian vibe!

I ordered the Burst Block template, along with all the 10 square batiks and blacks that I needed to use for the blocks.

I picked out colors that gave me a Hawaiian feel of ocean, land, vegetation, and lava.

I had to watch the tutorial a couple of times to pick up important tips on placement of the template. The black 10 squares got cut as shown above and the colored batiks were cut in half as shown above. The black triangles and batik triangles are placed right and left side from center black cuts. 

After sewing the batik triangles to the black center, the ruler is placed first on right side with the single dot/line on the sewn seam and the template's small tip as close to the center black's tip while keeping the line on the seam. Cut on right side of template. The cut off triangle fabric is set to the right side to keep order for future placements and cuttings of right side block.

After right side is cut, flip ruler so writing is down, as in above photo. Again match up single dot/line with seam and small tip as far down as possible to center bottom, and then cut on left side of template. 

Single dot/line is goes with first seam, two dots/line with second seam, and three dots/line with third seam. It is important to make sure the small tip of template is as close to the bottom tip of the black center, which helps in keeping consistency of the bursts. When working on right side of block, the template is placed with words read correctly. And when working on left side of block the template get flipped so the writing is down. Also very important in making the blocks, one needs to keep the fabrics for right side of block on right and fabrics for left side of blocks on the left. 

Squaring up the block is done by cutting off the excess fabrics as shown above. Having a rotating mat was also helpful in cutting and squaring up blocks.

After all blocks were assembled, I then arranged the blocks for the effect of ocean, sand, land, and lava.

The back side is 108" width fabric that reminds me of fireworks. Since the back was all the one fabric and I used that same fabric for the binding, I added a white flange on the back side to give the back more bling and charm.

Wall Flower

 I saw the Wall Flower quilt on Missouri Star's Instagram post back in February and I immediately knew that I wanted to do this pattern as a quilt-as-you-go. I even liked the yellow and blue batik fabrics that they had used for that cute quilt.

So I ordered my mini peel, Heat & Bond Lite Sewable, Kona White Ten Squares, Floral Wave Batik Ten Squares, Batik backing fabric, and 5" x 15" ruler. The ruler made cutting the 10" squares down to 5" so much faster; I love this ruler. I just followed the Missouri Star tutorial on Youtube for the pattern and easy instructions.

I used yellow thread for the yellow based batiks and blue thread for the blue based batiks to stitch around the petals. 

I quilted each block individually since I was doing a quilt-as-you-go. I had gotten half way through quilting the blocks when I realized I wanted to make the Prairie Flower quilt for my son. (Yes, I watch a lot of Missouri Star Youtube.) So, this project was set aside for three weeks while I worked on my son's birthday quilt. 

Second week in June I finished all the quilting, arranged my quilted squares, and stitched them together.

One inch sashing was used to cover the seams on the backside of quilt. Since I didn't want any additional stitching/quilting lines to show on the front side, I hand stitched all of the sashing strips down. Hand stitching is not one of my favorite things to do, but for this project it was a must do.

 

 I finished the quilt with the flange binding method that I'm enjoying to use on my quilts this year.

 

Prairie Flowers

 My son is living in Phoenix for a couple of years.

 He has tried growing some flowers on his apartment deck with no luck in the heat of the summer. 

He recently purchased a hammock for the deck instead of investing in more plants that just die from the heat. 

For his birthday, I'm going to surprise him with flowers that should never die.

I love watching Missouri Star Quilt Company's Youtube videos.

Recently, I saw the Prairie Quilt video and I immediately thought of my son, prairie flowers with yellow centers and green leaves.

I decided to quilt in arcs to show movement, the wind.

It looks great on my hammock! 

Project Between Projects

 I saw Joann Fabrics had an excellent sell on their outdoor fabrics. 

My outdoor cushions that I have had for at least a decade are needing a change, something cheery! So, I saw a motif that I like! And the fabric was a great deal for outdoor fabrics. 

The insides of the cushions were still good and clean for use in the updated cushions. So while waiting for other fabrics to arrive for another quilt project, I went to work on bringing new life to the cushions.

Now just waiting for the weather to warm up so that I can sit outside! 

Evening Project

 Another Christmas gift completed! This just took a number of hours in the evening while watching tv.

I thought the fabric would be nice to use in an apron for the male chef in my family. 

It's a Baby!

 I haven't made a baby quilt in years. One of my mother's friends recently became a grandma. Yeah, my mom is in her early 90s. So, most of her friends should be great grandmas. This person is about my age. She became a dear neighbor to my parents decades ago. She still chats with my mom even though my mom has dementia.

Every so often I'm in touch with my mother's friend. When I heard that she had become a grandma for the first time I was so happy for her! She stated that for the next six months she will be babysitting the granddaughter.

                  

About seven years ago, my mother gave me her fabrics since she was no longer quilting/sewing. Dementia had already stopped that activity for her. Well, knowing that my mom would have given her friend's daughter a baby gift, I decided to give the friend the gift. I collected some fabrics from mom's stash to use in a baby quilt that the proud grandma can use while babysitting her granddaughter. Yes, this is a baby gift for the grandma!

I also looked through my stash to see what fabrics would add to the cuteness of the quilt. I had enough flannel fabric from a pervious project that became the backing fabric.

Baby quilts go together quickly! Looking forward to making more in the future.

Sparrows

 In April, the sparrows frequent my yard! I love watching them hop around the yard looking for food.

When I saw that Lindsey from Pen + Paper was going to do the Sparrow Quilt Along and Keepsake Quilting sold the pattern and kit for this too cute quilt, I was all in for my first quilt along. 

Or almost! I'm not good at group projects or totally following directions. 

After figuring out the directions for cutting of the fabrics and assembling some of the blocks, I decided that for me to do the type of quilting I wanted to do I would need to do the quilt-as-you-go method to make the machine quilting easier.  Alterations were made in the directions to assembling. 

I sandwiched the layers with the batting being an 1/2 inch smaller than the top all around. A decorative stitch was used around the three triangles.

And the birds' bodies and tails were quilted with curves. 

After all the birds were quilted, I started assembling the blocks together. This was done like a normal assembling using 1/4 stitch. There is no stashing on the top.  I did lose points to the triangles. The pattern needs adjustments for it to work well as a quilt-as-you-go.

The back side has the stashing to hide the seams.

I decided to use a binding with a flange; this might become my way to do the binding work this year.

Sparrows now decorates the back of my sofa. Spring is officially here!

All Access Bags HoHoHo!!

 Finishing up on some more Christmas presents!

I followed Missouri Star Quilt Company's tutorial video "At Home with Misty" to help me on assembling these bags. They also sell the pattern for these too cute bags.

It's almost like eating candy when making these bags. Once you have mastered one, the others were easy and quick to assemble. I used up some of the sample interior design fabrics that my mom had given me years ago.

Neko bag for one lucky gal!

For one of my travelers! The blue fabric outside was used to cover my sewing room chair.

Pina Colada bag for the bartender!

Beach and waves!

Europe and Rome!