And it only took me...

Six months and two hours!  Okay I'm posting a picture of my Avant Garden Vintage Stars quilt top... I thought that I hadn't posted a pic of this top completed... and I haven't ... at least not totally completed... you know ready to go to the long armer... but I did post a pic of it almost done back in November, 2015... so think of this post as a clip show... kinda lame... sorry!

Here it is with the borders on the outside edges and it now measures about 85" square...  I have been procrastinating about putting on the borders for SIX MONTHS... it took all of about 2 hours to do and most of that time was spent getting the last side a bit smaller as the top measured 85" on one end and 87" on the other... sheesh don't know how that happened... I am feeling good about getting this done and I even ordered fabric for the back from Fabric Shack. They have some Momo fabrics marked down to $6.98 which is a great deal... I wanted an interesting fabric for the back of this one.

This is the little star in the center... it measures 4"... I think it is the perfect touch on this top. To recap... all the stars were made from one Layer Cake of Avant Garden by Momo... you know I LOVE MOMO! The background is a butterscotch Grunge and you know  I LOVE GRUNGE... and I LOVE anything yellow... so I LOVE LOVE LOVE this top.... then tell me why it took SIX MONTHS AND TWO HOURS to get it DONE ... insert shaking head in disbelief.

If you want to read details about what I wrote about this top six months ago you can read that here  and if you want to see Jen Baker's Vintage Star pattern you can read about it here.   You can make the Vintage Star any size... from a baby quilt on up...when you break mine down it is sort of 4 baby quilt sized Vintage Stars sewn together. I like the idea of getting a bed size quilt from one Layer Cake and some background fabric.

I have plans to break out another UFO this week but first I have to deal with some dental issues for my son and I want to do some gardening... the weather here is currently GORGEOUS!!! I want to work in my yard before the 90 degree temps come in on Friday. I'm off to pick up some mulch and another perennial or two... now if I can just come home without another petunia that would be an accomplishment.

Oh since both of the pics I've shown have been pretty much reruns here is a pic of something new... the latest stuff I've potted up...

I've done two pots like this...they sit on either side of my garage...white geraniums, purple verbena, some dynamite orange petunias that followed me home from Natorp's, along with some other little orange petunias (I think these are a million bell variety) and some creeping jenny.   I'll be watering like crazy come the weekend with those 90 degree days...hopefully these will have settled in by then.

happy stitching-
carol fun

Playing around with Layer Cakes...

Occasionally  I make a mental list of quilts I want to make and the order I want to make them in...and then out of the blue I get an idea and the list is totally forgotten...like my sainted Father use to tell me "you bounce around like a BB in a boxcar''....so true! And this is where my bouncing has taken me...

I snagged a bargain on a layer cake of Momo's Neco collection...lots of lovely good sized prints that I didn't want to chop up too much. I saw a part of a quilt that looked similar to this, somewhere out there in blogland and decided to make it work for me.

I cut the layer cakes in half so they measured 5 x 10" in a landscape fashion. Then I searched my stash and found some left over Robert Kaufman Quilter's Linen in a lovely gold color for the squares. I went together very quickly and it measures about 70 x 72 inches... a nice size throw. I love the colors of this line... to me it has a retro 70's vibe... do you remember Harvest Gold, Avocado Green, Coppertone Brown?  My Mom LOVED these colors and painted every room in our house with these latest hip colors in 1969. I still have fond memories of her with paint in her hair... tired by very pleased with her work.

Aren't these prints groovy??? BIG dots and dogs running free and polka dot trees... kinda psychedelic...

More running dogs and cats and what I'm referring to as hedgehogs...

Now they may actually be porcupines but I have a deep seated dislike of porcupines ever since that time when I was 10 years old and I came within inches of stepping on one in my bare feet...scared the bejesus out of me!

I really like the way this turned out and I will use this pattern again... it used almost the entire layer cake... I think I may have 1 square left over, so it shows off the entire collection nicely.

And then I saw a picture on Instagram of a quilt in a booth at the big trade show the other week and it had a rectangular Shoofly looking block. I was curious if I could make a block like this using a 10" square from a layer cake. Now,  I have a great pattern by Loft Creations called  String Beans that you can see here... I've made this pattern before and you can see my version here...It is an easy pattern and in thinking about it, you can probably make  a block with a 10" square but it wasn't the proportion I was looking for this time around.  I wanted a fatter Shoofly block... so I putzed around and came up with these blocks...

I started by cutting that middle piece 5 1/2" wide by 10" long... then I made half square triangles for the corners that finish 2"... I like how it looks but the block ending up being  an odd measurement of 9" wide by 13.5" high finished.. oh I am NOT a pattern maker...LOL!  Anyway it will work for me... I'm not sure how big a quilt this will be as I have enough problem figuring out how big a quilt will be with square blocks...rectangular blocks have me totally baffled. I will go old school and graph it out and then I'll have a better idea of the size of the quilt I'll be making... maybe... I just want to make a lap/throw size quilt using one layer cake and some background fabric.

These fabrics are from a  collection called Blueberry Park... I keep thinking Blueberry Hill and hear Richie Cunningham singing "I found my thrill..."  oh my mind is a very strange place. Here are the colors I haven't cut yet...

I read somewhere that this collection starts with Kona solids and is over printed with the graphic white designs... I am sooo NOT a solids gal no matter how pretty they are but this really appeals to me. This is the Cool line of Blueberry Hill... I mean Park... there is also a Bright line and a Neutral line.  The fabrics in the upper right corner are a very dark navy blue... I may leave them out of this quilt.

So I bounced from one thing to another but I'm happy with where I landed.  Lately I've been having a very good time in my sewing room. I got two tops off to Terry my long arm quilter 2 weeks ago, and I may have another two tops for her this week. I was even motivated to get out a top that only needs borders and I have them cut...just need to attach them and get the backs together...oh I am being soooo productive... along with telling me I bounced like a BB, my sainted Father also use to tell me I was a fantastic starter but on a mediocre finisher... he may be right about that too. But now and then I do get motivated to go back and finish what I started... my robust stash of UFO's always has something that needs to be completed!

Well, I've got a busy week ahead... something going on every day...so while right now I'm raring to go and sew sew sew, we'll have to see if I really get the time to do that... keeping my fingers crossed. Hope your week has some sewing time in it!

happy stitching-
carol fun

Slow Stitching on Sunday...

I know I've said it a hundred times before and I'll probably say is a hundred times again, but where does the time go???? I think I'm living in a parallel universe with a different measure of hours... I'm keeping busy and there is always more I want to do in a day than there is time...

Well this week is starting with a finish...ta dah!!!

My Lizzie Kate Summer Alphabet Sampler... I even got the little charms sewn on! I need to get in touch with Bev my framer friend and get this and several other pieces framed. I so enjoyed stitching this series... I've done all 4 of the seasons and display them throughout the year. There are so many cute seasonal/monthly pieces that have caught my eye. I'm going to start the little June one from Lizzie Kate... and I have a couple of the monthly pieces from With Thy Needle & Thread ...and since I have ALL of the monthly Prairie Schooler charts I want to stitch them...and IT NEVER ENDS!!!!

Also there is a sampler that I've been itching to start in my  basket and I thought I would start it today until I realized that I didn't have all the flosses or the linen...drat!!! So I picked up this one...

Fragments in Time by Summer House Stitch Workes... I'm about half way done with this one. Again I like the concept of working one square at a time... I can see my progress more easily. Now I was very very happy when that border met all the way around and when I got the dividing bands done... there was a bit of reverse stitching involved there. I still have to add the little flower buds in the outer border but that seems like great stitching for watching my British dramas tonight...oh carp... I just checked the guide and no Call the Midwife tonight...or any of the shows I like...well there is a special on Carol Burnett ...I'm sure I'll like that ...and I probably have seen all those clips when they were first on TV...oh I am getting old old old!!!!

Edited to add that 123Stitch has Summer House Stitch Workes charts on sale for 20% off this week...here is a link. 

Things are going well on the gardening front...my window boxes are filling out and I bought 3 trees to be planted in my yard. Two  Nyssa Wildfire Black Gum trees for the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street...hopefully they'll give me some shade in 5 or 10 years... they have pretty leaves that start out with a red edge and then mature to green...and in the fall they are a showy red! Right up my alley... I wanted to plant stuff that is different from all the other stuff I see in my neighborhood. Don't get  me wrong I LOVE all the trees we have... several 60+ year old oak trees... but I think variety is the spice of life and gardening.  And  I got this striking Physocarpus Diablo Tree-form to replace a Barberry bush that I detest!!!!

The links are just to general info on the trees... I'll post some pictures when I get them planted... first the Barberry bush MUST BE DESTROYED!!!  It is going to be a bear to get  out...luckily the guy who mows my lawn is going to remove it. Should be fun to watch...he's planning on yanking it out with his truck and a chain.

Well my lasagna for tonight's dinner is prepped... I was thinking of going outside and planting up some geraniums and petunias I got last week... I know MORE petunias??? yeah I couldn't resist they are orange... okay maybe deep coral but very orange-y... I'm going to pot them up with white geraniums and purple verbena and some creeping jenny and I forget what else I bought... however at the moment it looks like it is going to rain...I just opened all the windows an hour ago .. trying to air the house out while it isn't over 80 degrees... they are forecasting temps in the 70's this week followed by a 90 degree weekend...TOO HOT!!!

Soooo... back to the cross stitching... hope you are having a restful Slow Sunday... I'm linking up with Kathy's Quilts today and Super Mom - No Cape on Monday...

happy stitching-
carol fun

Dueling socks...

Well this week I have dueling socks on my needles!  My usual pace has me knitting one sock a week but somehow this week I have two socks going and... neither one is done.  Oh well... it has been fun knitting.

The sock on the left is a Frankensock using scraps of Opal yarn... the cuff, heel and toe will be a gray yarn of undetermined origin that I found in my stash.

Think I have enough scraps? Yeah me too!  I wound little 5 gram balls from a big bin of leftover yarn I have. I weigh them on one of those little kitchen scales you can weigh food on... if you are into that sort of thing...but I'm not. Funny aside, my older son who is a prosecuting attorney saw the little scale and asked "why do you have a drug scale?"... obviously his experience with this device is very different from mine.

And while I distinctly remember telling my friend that since I've discovered Frankensocks and ragrug socks I would never knit a pair of socks from just one skein of yarn, this skein snuck into my house and my heart!

This is Opal Hunderwassers in the colorway 2104...oh how I LOVE this skein! (I got it off of ebay and I did just google it and there are few skeins still out there in the internet.)  Varying widths of stripes ... big and little bands of faux Fair Isle... a touch of yellow!  However, while this sock is primarily from one skein I did do some alterations. The creamy white band is much shorter than the skein had it... a bit too much white for me so I broke the yarn and started back with that cute little red faux Fair Isle band. And when I got down to the heel I decided to use a solid creamy white... some older Paton Kroy.  This is very enjoyable knitting... totally mindless.  I think this sock yarn has a definite Frankensock vibe too!  Makes me happy happy happy!

Do you have plans for the holiday weekend?  I have an airport drop off to do and plan to go to Taste of Cincinnati one day and then nothing definite...I'm sure some knitting and cross stitch and sewing will find its way into the weekend... and if the weather cooperates some of it will be done sitting on the front porch...life is good!

happy knitting-
carol fun

Busy, busy, busy...

Oh I have been busy, busy, busy this last week or so... I've been bouncing around from one project to another but I have actually completed a couple of them. First, I've finished my Flower Basket quilt... the pattern is by Live.Love.Sew and you can see it here.

This is an almost free quilt...all of the fabrics except for four blocks came out of my stash... all the rest of the baskets and the sashing and even the back, were fabrics I already owned... for quite some time... I think some of those fabrics are at least 10 years old...maybe older. This flower basket is a well- aged Hoffman... I'm not sure if they are morning glories or petunias... since I have a penchant for petunias we are going to go with petunias. Notice all the cornerstones are different floral fabrics.

And this is one of the new fabrics... pretty dogwood blossoms by Moda... I shall be sleeping in a flower bed!

And I got the borders on the behemoth Hi Again quilt... you can find out about it here.

This finished at 104" square... I had no where to lay it out flat and even having my son and his friend hold it up they couldn't get it totally upright. I took both of these tops to my long arm quilter Terry for her to do her magic on them.  I even made the binding for both of these so I'll be raring to go when I get them back.

And I did a lot of gardening too. I've been waiting not so patiently to have window boxes installed on one side of my house. Here is the front of my house... it sits on a corner lot so I have 2 front yards... the house was designed to have the window box on the left hand side. It is hard to see in this picture but there are brick supports built out of  the house  for it to sit on. I bought new planter boxes for the porch that mimic the shape of the window boxes.  My color scheme is white and pink with accent of purple...wave petunias, geraniums and lobelia.

This is the side of my house...poor bare little windows...

And here is my house with the new window boxes!  The one under the picture window is 92" long...and the other two are about 52" inches long...pretty substantial size. It took my handyman about 4 hours to get them bolted to the side of the house. Then I filled them with potting soil and planted a total of 60 wave petunias in 4 different window boxes. I can't wait for them to fill in and spill over the sides.

This is a close up of the box on the front of the house which I planted about 2 to 3 weeks ago...I'm already seeing some growth but oooohhh it is so hard to wait.

 Additionally the pyramid of potted petunias has gotten plumper... (can you tell I LOVE alliteration!)

There are 11 different varieties of Proven Winner petunias...the bigger pots have 2 plants each in them and the smaller pots just have one. I am so happy with this display... it is a lot like buying fat quarters you can afford to indulge in lots of different colors!

Well I hope the burst of productivity continues for a while. I never ever run out of things I want to do. I've got two different sock projects on my needles and I've been switching back and forth between 2 different cross stitch project ... stay tuned for updates on them in the next few days.

Hope you are getting things done too!
happy stitching-
carol fun

Adventures in sock knitting...

Hello everyone... well another week is whizzing by and while I've gotten some things done other projects are languishing...oh well... as Scarlett said, "tomorrow is another day".   One of the projects I did work on was another Frankensock... this one only using Blue Moon Fibers Socks that Rock yarn...

This is one of those projects where first I LOVED it... then I was kinda hmmmm... and then I HATED it but I kept on knitting ...and then I came back to hmmm... and ended up at I LIKE it... I may even LOVE it.  The jury is out till the second sock is done.

I used about 15 different BMF STR in this sock... I wish I could remember all the names of the different yarns... I do remember Sunshine Superman, Count Cluckula, Farmhouse, Fire on the Mountain, Citrine, Sugar Pie, and one of my absolute favorites Crabby McHappypants!!!

In knitting these socks I usually join a new yarn by tying a knot with the old and the new yarn but about halfway down the foot I discovered another way to join yarn. I found it here on Jen Hagen's Instagram feed.  Go look at what she has done... she catches the tail of the new yarn into the back of the last 8 stitches of the old yarn, then she catches the tail of the old yarn in the first 8 stitches of the new yarn... no knot... no ends to weave in... pretty cool!  I did this joining method for the last 4 or 5 yarns I used in the BMF STR sock and I'm using it in my new sock.

These are all Opal leftovers... I LOVE Opal yarn too...(yes I am very fickle I LOVE LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of things...LOL) . The thing I LOVE most about Opal yarn is when it does that faux Fair Isle thing like that blue and white part of this sock.  I spent some time the other day winding 5 gram balls of some of my Opal leftovers... I now see that I need to somehow secure the ends of the little balls as what I now have is a big mess...ugh! (Update to say I've corralled all the loose ends with rubber bands and it make me happy!)

And as I was typing this post the mailman rang my doorbell and this lovely package appeared...

A gorgeous pouch to keep my yarn project in ... love those bright colors... this was a gift from Dar of Dar's Patchwork Garden and I do LOVE IT!!! Thank you so much Dar... it wasn't necessary... but I do appreciate it.  Blogging friends are so special!.

On the gardening front things are looking good... my rose bushes are just FULL of buds and some have opened...

These are a deep peach that fades to yellow... so pretty! I know I should clip off some of the buds so the resulting ones get bigger but I just HATE to do it... I want every rose!!! And I always dither as whether to leave them on the bush or cut them and bring them inside. Right now I'm leaving them as several neighbors commented on how they enjoy seeing them too... isn't that a nice thing to say? And on the petunia front four more petunias came home with me...

I put them into little pots and tucked them in here and there... oh this is getting addicting but SO MUCH FUN!! See those pink packs to the left side of the pic... those are Wave petunias... LOTS of Wave petunias. My handyman Dan is suppose to come on Sunday and hang my new window boxes and I am ready to plant!!!! I will show some before and after shots as I think it is going to be quite a nice addition to my house.

Well off to run some errands and maybe get some more crafty stuff done.. there is quilting and cross stitching calling my name... have a great weekend!

happy knitting -
carol fun

Quality time with my sewing machine...

It was a lovely weekend... I was able to spend quality time in my sewing room and I got lots done...now I didn't get everything done that I should but when you see what distracted me you'll understand why I didn't get the borders on the behemoth top...

So this was the distraction... isn't it pretty???

I only need one more block for my Flower Basket quilt from Live.Love.Sew. I love these BIG blocks ... they finish 16". I made a couple more blocks with my vintage Hoffman prints like this one with wisteria...

and this one with roses...I LOVE roses...and as an aside, the rose bushes in my yard are full of buds and some are just opening. I'm going to cut some today before the deer chow down on them.

However I regret to inform you that is no longer a FREE quilt... I was up at Fabric Shack and was seduced by these new fabrics...

Flowers that look cross stitched... I was powerless to resist!

And this Moda dogwood print... so pretty!

In fact so pretty I also got some of the smaller scale print too!

I plan to make each of 25 of the cornerstones a different floral fabric from my stash... lots of unfolding, cutting an refolding but it will be worth it!

And here is the behemoth top that still needs borders!!!!

81 blocks for a giant sized Hi Again quilt for my son and daughter in law!  At the moment it is already over 90 some inches and with the borders it will top 100" square. I have a seamless back and a king size batt waiting in the wings so I can take this to Terry my long arm quilter ASAP.

I hope that this week will give me time to finish up both of these quilts...and maybe start something new! So many quilts I want to make... so many quilts!

happy stitching-
carol fun