Happy Holidays!

Just wanted to quickly let you know about my latest tutorial on the Birch Organic Fabrics blog.  It is for this quick and relatively easy tree skirt using two of their newest fabric collections - Flight in Canvas and their new Organic Cotton Fleece.  

The fleece is wonderful!  I think I'll be backing a quilt with it very soon.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

See you in 2014.

I am speechless!

As some of you probably know, I have organized a "little" blog hop the past two years.   A few months after I started this blog, I timidly emailed some of my new online friends who were also new bloggers to see if they might be interested in a blog hop for new quilt bloggers.  If I remember correctly, everyone I contacted responded with an enthusiastic "yes!"  What I had originally thought would be a short hop with 10 or so bloggers grew into a 6 month blog hop with almost 100 stops.  At some point, I realized that we had to cap the numbers and we had a final blog hop week for the Let's Get Acquainted New Blogger Blog Hop in October of 2012.

In May of 2013, after much deliberation, I decided to organize another blog hop for new bloggers.  Again, the response was overwhelming.  For 2013, I decided to make it a bit more manageable for everyone by limiting the hop to the first 75 bloggers to respond and scheduling more bloggers per week so that the hop would only last two months.  

So, what does all of this have to do with the photos?  Well, late last week, I received a package from my friend Em from Sewing by Moonlight.  I couldn't imagine what she was sending me - and here is where the speechless part comes in - it was this quilt made by the bloggers from the 2013 Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop for New Bloggers!!!  Wow!!!

This quilt is filled with blocks from all over the world, I mean, seriously, all over the world!  Every single block in this quilt is beautiful and special - while I don't think I can match every block to the blogger who made it, I think I would guess right for several of them!  The blocks were pieced together and quilted by Em (who will be posting more about the quilt soon.)  Again, wow!  For the back, she spelled out "Let's Get Acquainted 2013" in paper pieced blocks and then there are blocks with notes and signatures from everyone who contributed.  Okay, one more time - wow!!!  I really am speechless.  I had absolutely no idea that they (you) were planning this.  

So, to any of you 2013 blog hop people who are reading this post - Thank you for this beautiful quilt.  I will treasure it always!  What a fantastic and special way to remember the fun we had this year.  I am so happy to have "met" each and everyone of you.

Ipanema Blocks Quilt

Surprisingly (to me at least), I have several finished projects to write about.  I'll take them one at a time though and start with this quilt.  I know I already showed this photo on Monday but I wanted to dedicate an actual post to this quilt.

This was another project I did for the Birch Organic Fabrics blog.  You can see the tutorial by clicking here.  And you can see all of the fabrics in this collection by clicking here.

I really like this fabric collection.  As with their other collections, it is a truly wonderful mix of fun novelty prints and seriously awesome blenders.  I especially love the yellow geometric print  - it also comes in blue - I can see using that print again and again.  

The design I used is very beginner-friendly and is easily customizable.  I really like figuring out designs that allow you to vary your block sizes for personalized fussy cutting.  

That's it for today.  I'll be writing more posts soon including letting you know the outcome of the projects I talked about in last week's post as well as a post about something very special and totally unexpected that came in the mail yesterday that seriously left me speechless!!!

And if you haven't already, click here to enter the giveaway of some of this gorgeous Ipanema fabric from Fabricworm/Birch Organics Fabrics.   

Ipanema Giveaway

I was so excited when I saw the latest fabric collection from Birch Fabrics.  Ipanema is full of so many fun designs and the collection also includes several awesome blender fabrics.  My tutorial for this quilt will be on the Birch Fabrics blog today.  I'll write more about it later in the week but since today is the big giveaway day on Sew Mama Sew, this post will be about giving you the chance to win some of this fabric!

Today's giveaway is from Birch Fabrics and Fabricworm.  They are generously offering the opportunity for one lucky person to win this Fat Quarter Bundle of the soon to be released Ipanema fabric collection.

You have 3 chances to win!

1. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. Any comment will do but if you'd like a topic, how about recommending a good book - an exciting novel you just couldn't put down, a fun book for kids, a quilting book, or even a cookbook? (one entry)

Bonus Entries
2. Plum and June blog followers - old and new - get a second entry. Leave a comment indicating how you are following. (one entry)

3. Fabricworm/Birch Fabrics followers - old and new - get a third entry. Follow either the fabricworm blog (click here) or the Birch Fabrics blog (click here) or sign up for the Fabricworm newsletter (click here) - your choice - just leave a comment indicating which one you did. (one entry)

So you can enter up to 3 times! This giveaway will remain open until December 13, 2013 at 5pm PST and a winner will be picked at random and will be notified by email by December 15, 2013.  The Ipanema fabric line is expected to be available later this month and will be shipped to the winner upon arrival.

****And unless you are sure that you are NOT a no-reply comment, please leave your email address in your comment.****

And be sure to stop by Sew Mama Sew for links to the rest of the giveaways!

The giveaway is now closed.  The winner is #506:  Simply ECDecember 9, 2013 at 7:10 PM

last week

{started working on the woodland sampler again}

{knit another honey cowl - I think this is my 4th - I probably should find a new knit project to try}

{I let my 10 year old daughter use some of my AMH fabrics to make herself a large quilt.  More to come soon}

{finished a quilt but not sure how much I like it - I'm going to wash it to see if that changes my feelings and then I'll write a post with more photos}

a simple doll blanket

If you look back at my early blogging days, you would see lots of doll quilts.  I used to make them all the time for my daughters, for gifts, for quick finishes in between larger projects, for trying out new techiques and designs . . . well, I guess I had lots of reasons for making them.  I don't make doll quilts very often these days but recently I had a reason to so I took out some of my favorite fabrics and put this together pretty quick.  

I wasn't even thinking about writing a tutorial so I didn't take any photos of my process but it was so simple, I just wanted to quickly tell you what I did.  Basically, you just need one fat quarter of flannel, one fat quarter of backing fabric, and some scrap fabric.  I used QAYG (quilt as you go) to make a log cabin block the size of the flannel.  I then put that right sides together with the backing - stitched around the perimeter leaving a small opening for turning and then topstitched the perimeter (I actually only top stitched the top which is where I left the opening but if I was to make another one I would probably top stitch around the whole perimeter because I think it would look nicer on the back.)

And then my little helper and I went into her sister's room to take some photos!

triangles

I had no real reason to make this quilt.  In fact, I had lots of other quilty and non-quilty things I should have been doing but when I was cleaning up my sewing space, I somehow put a few of these fabrics together and just started sewing.  Okay, maybe not "no real reason," I was organizing the room so that I could start a new quilt, I just didn't know it would be this one.

My first thought was to make a simple patchwork squares quilt but that just didn't quite seem right with these fabrics.  Right before I started cutting the first square, I thought - maybe I should finally try triangles.  When I tried piecing triangles last year, it didn't work out so well but I figured it was time to try again.  

I think only one triangle on the top row has a point but by the time I got to the bottom row, I was closer to figuring out the piecing triangles thing - well, kind of.  I still had several missing their points but at least more triangles had them than didn't!

I used a textured solid fabric for sashing between the triangle rows which I really like and will definitely be using again.  When I was looking at the photos, I was surprised to see that it looked like the sashing fabric was the same color as the fabric in some of the triangles.  But you can see in the photo below that they are actually at least a few shades away from each other.  

And quilted it with straight lines spaced at about 1/2".  It would probably be more accurate to call it organic straight line quilting as not all the lines are actually straight and not all are exactly 1/2" apart.

I wasn't sure what to do for the binding but ultimately decided to use sketch in mist.  And then I finished it by carrying the quilt around my house taking about a million photos!  I figured I'd only use 7 for this post though.