The Snow ate my Days

Snowpocalypsepaloozageddonicane pounded Chicagoland and dumped 20" last week.  Lines of cars were abandoned mid commute on Lake Shore Drive.

The hurricane part of the blizzard left 4' drifts against the house.  We had to dig out before using the snow blower.  And the boys had two snow days last week.

We were cheering for the Steelers last night. 

Appropriate for all the Cathedral Windows I'm working on!

I finished up a large pillow for my Mom's birthday - but I only took this one picture!  Pillows are so hard to wrap.  So I left the insert out of the package. I'll have to get some good photos next time I visit them.

Confined to the house, I also finished up my February blocks quickly.  This one I paper pieced for a Project Linus scrap quilt put together by Sew Fresh Fabric.

And one last block for the Vintage Sheet Bee.  

These are going to make a fun vintage rose garden!

quilt as you go | vintage

With both the quilt-as-you-go quilt along and my month for the Vintage Sheet Bee on my mind, I decided to try Penny's original QAYG style with my vintage sheets. It was a fabulous success.

I haven't squared/trimmed up my blocks yet, as I'm not sure what I want their finished size to be. So they're a little ragged on the edges, but I love them.

I like the look when most of the blocks have a light outer edge, so that's what I was going for with these three. I realized while I was doing it that I would not have a whole quilt worth of light edges that contrast enough with the centers. So this will be perfect for my Bee! I can't wait for November now, when I send batting off and see what wonderful blocks the group comes up with.

We had lots of fun this weekend, including family - picnics at polo fields - and pumpkin bars.

Yumm

Rainbow of Happiness

A fun rainbow block for Bee Beautiful - Vicki sent us a pile of 2" squares, asked us to add a few of our own. I had to send it back quickly, before I kept it myself.

When downloading my pictures, I realized I hadn't looked at the ones I took during Becket's first day of preschool this year.

The first thing he did was draw a Star Wars battle on the big chalkboard.
{They're wonderful, old chalkboards. Original to the old, one room schoolhouse building the preschool lives in}

(I just noticed that I spelled 'their' wrong in the photo - but now I have to make all new photoshop layers and stuff because I flattened and closed the file. Totally annoying...I don't have time to fix it.)

Then he spent a bunch of time at the paint easels. This year they have pallets and extra brushes available to them.

His teacher showed how he could mix his own, custom paint colors. The teacher said he's there every day now! His favorite color to mix is green.

I have a rainbow pile waiting in vintage sheets. Ready to become a QAYG block. I think this will be my block for the Vintage Bee I'm in.


But I have to clean and stuff - bunch of family is arriving for the weekend, and we'll be having a 2yr old birthday party for my nephew.

Lots to do!

Bees Really are Awesome

Even though I have a million things to do - quilty and non-quilty, I keep joining bees and swaps.

The positives of doing them definitely outweigh any time issue negatives.

Here I have some yellow and gray disappearing nine-patch blocks I made for a swap. Kind of like the purple, I'm not a big fan of just gray and yellow. Even though I've been seeing it around a lot - it's obviously a hot color combo - I often feel the values are too similar and they can fall flat. I liked the push to make myself think a bit more in value and pattern contrast when I trying to create blocks I would be happy with.

I'm surprised how much I like this spider web block for my Vintage Sheet Bee. Although I really love several of the bolder vintage sheets, I'm definitely not a pastel person. For this spider web, the softer patterns were specifically requested. While making the four separate parts, it was pretty much a mechanical process for me.

Once I joined all four parts it was like the a little glow of happiness. My month is coming up in November for this bee - and I'm excited to try out a few test blocks that include some of these softer prints!

Hurray for fun Swaps

I'm getting twitchy.....

I haven't posted on my stash use lately. Mainly because there isn't much to say - good or bad. I haven't bought a single thing for a couple of weeks. {This will change once Tuffted Tweets is available - I'm thinking the whole FQ set is in order}

Anyway, I've only used about 2 yards because I've been making lots of bee blocks in my available time. Bee fabric in/out doesn't count either way.

First there's Jacquie's cool red crosses.

I just finished Penny's pretty, scrappy, huge tulip.

And I made two more cross blocks for my vintage bee.

Finally, I'm almost done with Flying Geese for Amy in these wonderful solids. I have a flying geese phobia, and she said we could make our geese in any shape - even wonky if we wanted, so I took the liberty of drawing up a big paper-pieced block 'o geese.

The last row will have to wait, as it seems I'm missing something. Oh, it's my machine!

My machine was taken to the shop. It skips more stitches than it makes. I'm hoping that it only needs a tune-up and will be back quickly.

Good thing I took up hexagons!

b.i.p.

Bees in Progress...

As I mentioned before, I got a great pile of Vintage Sheets and then lucked out and found a Vintage Sheet quilt bee to join right away. It is a bit of a challenge since I usually don't work with either pastels or florals! And there isn't a lot of value contrast with these vintage sheets. But I'm loving all the soft, spring blocks everyone is making.

I'm nearly late finishing the March string block.

But way on top of the April pinwheel - we needed to use the blue/green floral and soft yellow solid - but free reign after that. If you click on over to the flickr group, in Jane's instructions she has a FUN gallery of crazy pinwheels. I can't resist a wonky log-cabinish block, so that's how I went.