Throwback Thursday and More Debbie Mumm Memories...

Well last week's photo shoot for Throwback Thursday included sunshine and blue skies... this week is gray and my lawn in soaking wet so I'll have to settle for photos in my living room. Ta-dah!! This blast from the past includes two of my favorite things... Stack N Whack blocks and Debbie Mumm!

Again every piece of fabric in this quilt is Debbie... she did lots of great striped fabric that were wonderfully suited to do Stack N Whack and I'm pretty sure all of these hexagons came from one fabric. I was particularly fond of Frank and he is featured in all four corners...

although somehow I only took pictures of 3 corners...damn that math stuff! And this was back in those halcyon days when I never thought she would stop designing fabrics and the entire back is a Debbie Mumm stripe...oh be still my beating heart!

Now this quilt is definitely older than the one I showed last week. It has minimal quilting in it...just stitched in the ditch around the hexagons and along that border stripe and I highly suspect that is has a polyester batting in it.

It is a still a fun quilt and right now I have it displayed in a little cabinet in my living room along with the pumpkin overflow...I do LOVE pumpkins!

I'm linking up again with Krista Quilt's Throwback Thursday which you can go check out here...and if you have a blog why don't you join the link up...the more the merrier.

happy stitching-
carol fun

Throwback Thursday and Home Improvements...

Well I was just thinking the other day that it would be fun to do a Throwback Thursday post for the quilts of our past...the one's we made before blogs....before the internet... before civilization as we know it commenced...LOL.  I considered how to add a linky thing to my blog but this morning I found that Krista of Krista Quilts is doing one on her blog so that's where I'm linking up...you can find it here.

As it is a glorious Fall day I thought this quilt would be oh so appropriate to show...my Debbie Mumm Falling Leaves quilt. The leaf pattern was a Thimbleberries one fron eons ago.

A long long long time ago when you had to go to physical fabric stores to purchase one's stash I was BIG into Debbie Mumm fabrics (and I still like them ... A LOT). This quilt is a bit of a charm quilt in that every one of the 56 leaves is a different Debbie Mumm fabric.

I have a rather obscenely large stash of Debbie Mumm fabrics and I'm a bit melancholy that she doesn't produce fabric like she use to. All of the fabrics used in this quilt are Debbie Mumm...I'm a bit, a little,  heck, a whole hell of a lot OCD about using ONLY Debbie Mumm fabrics in my Debbie Mumm quilts. That quilts..plural...as I have a few, a bunch, a whole lot of Debbie Mumm quilts I've made in the last 25 years or so. The sashing is a leaf print and the cornerstones are acorns.

I love the squirrels that run around the border...

Even the back of this quilt is Debbie Mumm fabric...isn't that a great feather print?

Now I wish I hadn't use all  that yardage for a back as you can hardly find any Debbie Mumm fabrics anymore (although she did do a small Christmas line this year). But back in the stone age I just assumed she design fabrics forever.

As since I dragged this quilt out to take pictures on my front lawn I thought I'd show some of the home improvements I've made this summer. Here's my little house on the corner of the block.

You see the little U loop of wire above the window box and to the left of the second story window.. that cost me $1000. Turns out someone somewhere in past disconnected the electricity to my house by cutting the line and then they just smooshed the ends back together and covered it with a wad of black electrical tape. I had 3 electricians give me an estimate on the job and all agreed it was very unsafe and they were surprised the local electric company hadn't seen it and cited me for it as it is a code violation.

And you can see that I've been busy with my flowers... ignore the fact that the bushes need to be trimmed...suppose to happen next week.

I've got mums in my flower box...which is also a home improvement this year as the old window box literally fell apart. I went out one morning and the side had given way. This one is solid PVC plastic instead of wood that would rot. Should last a millennium.

And I had  new house numbers put on the eave, and my front porch floor painted, and a new light fixture put up and I had the ceiling of the porch painted blue... sky blue... that's what the color was called...I picked it for the shade of blue it was and didn't see the name till I got it mixed at the paint counter... it was meant to be!

I spent a chunk of change on the outside of the house this summer but it lots of projects were a one time deal so next summer shouldn't be quite so expensive.

Hope you are having a lovely day... the weather today is one I'd love to bottle and live with for a long long time.

happy stitching-
carol fun

Throwback Thursday and #sewphotohop ...

I've been participating on Instagram  in the #sewphotohop for the month of August and today's prompt is "pattern that changed my life"...well this is it for me... from the 1999 book by Freddy Moran called Freddy's Houses. You can still get the book here on Amazon.

The following is a repeat of a post I did in 2011... I was complaining about the weather even then  LOL...this quilt was a pivotal moment in my quilting life. Up until this quilt, I did  traditional quilts with tradtional fabrics. While the house block is traditional my choice of fabrics and colors were not. And this quilt pushed me in other ways as I had to construct this quilt with nothing but the picture in the book to go on. As I mention in the 2011 post I fell in love with the quilt on the cover only to find it was in the "Gallery" section...no pattern included!  Not only did I build my own houses I also built a fence, a yellow fence to surround my little village...I'm still very proud of this quilt!

Hope you enjoy this flasback...PS...it is raining here today so a bright quilt it is an antidote to a gray day!
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Previously posted May 11, 2011


I watched the weather report last night. The 7 day forecast is for some rain every single day from now to eternity. Ok maybe that eternity part is the voice in my head, but it sure seems that way. So to counteract the gray that will be omnipresent I broke out one of the most colorful quilts I have every made. A quilt that totally changed my quilting palette. Here it is.....



It is affectionately titled Carol's Crazy Kitty Cottages or as my oldest son refers to it - the Crack House Kittys. There are 36 different crazy cottages and each one features a different cat in the window. (I love novelty fabrics!) This one is my favorite.



A cat wearing a polka dot underwear. I know that just makes you shake your head and mutter to yourself that "this is just wrong on soooo many levels" but it makes me happy, which clearly shows the depths of my mental issues - LOL! And here is another one that makes me smile...



I love the expression on this cat and that he seems to be peeking through the foliage.

And I was so proud of myself for figuring out how to make that bright yellow picket fence turn the corner.



This quilt was created from the 1999 book Freddy's House by Freddy Moran. This book blew me away. First it has beautiful pictures of her color saturated house and studio. Red, electric purpley blue, turquoise accents, a sunny yellow studio with a black and white checkerboard floor. I covet that studio! And her quilts are just a riot of color and pattern. This book focused on the house quilts Freddie has made and she has made A LOT of them.

When I purchased the book it was love at first sight with the quilt on page 86 called "The Stars at Night". I couldn't wait to start this quilt and it wasn't until I got the book home that I realized that this quilt is in the "Gallery" section - you know the quilts for which no patterns are included. arggh! Okay, I will figure it out myself- and I did! I made the houses 8" square and every one is a different combination of doors, walls,roofs, chimneys and windows. And that little square in the bottom left hand corner next to the door - I considered that to be the garden spot for each home and they are all different patterns too. I worked on this quilt for a whole summer when my kids were out of school and I even quilted it myself. I'm hanging it in my basement family room where my sewing space is and I can see it from my behind my machine and it makes me very happy!

Happy stitching-
carol fun