Dog Gone Cute Quilt

I am so excited to share my Dog Gone Cute Quilt with you all today! 

Thank you Lorna for sharing this fantastic pattern with us!  If you have not yet checked out this pattern, you are missing out.  Like all of her patterns, it is well written and easy to follow and piece. 

I chose to do the large dog blocks so I could have a nice sized lap quilt for my youngest dog-lover.

I am so pleased with how it turned out.

I started by making blocks based on our own fur babies.  Here is Doctor's block:

I altered the pattern just a little to make the center stripe skinny just like Doctor's fur. 

Can you see the tecture in the background fabric?  It is a denim linen.  The color and feel is amazing.


Next up was Captain's block:

Such a sweet baby.  I shortened the stripe on this one to match Captain's color.


Then we have a block to remember our sweet Nala, who passed away 2 summers ago.  We miss her so much.  My youngest was so excited to have her included.

I pulled the rest of my fabrics in "realistic dog colors" as requested by the youngest. 

It was so much fun to play around with all of the different variations of the patterns.

And check out the quilting:

Can you see it?  Swirls with hidden dog bones.  How perfect is that!

I had so much fun with this pattern.  Check out what some of the other bloggers have been doing with Lorna's pattern.  Below are some of the other blogs sharing today.

Abigail – Cut & Alter
Magdalena – i love neutrals
Jenn – (A)Quarter Inch from the Edge
Anne – Batiks by the Bay
Susie – Susie’s Sunroom
Tracy – Tracy’s Bits N Pieces

Thanks for stopping by!

Tracy

Friday Finish X 3

I have 3 finishes this week.  Woo Hoo!

First up, Evan's quilt.

It finished up at 50 x 80.  Perfect for a big boy bunkbed.

My favorite part is the big-stitch quilting in the stars.  I wanted to mimic the look of the red stitiching on baseballs.  Super cute and adds a nice feel to the quilt.

I backed it with a simple tone on tone blue and bound it with a scrappy red binding.

Here is a detail of the stitching on the back.  I hope Evan loves it and enjoys it for years!

Next up is a comfort quilt made from the scraps of Evan's quilt.

I had about a 1/4 yard each of the two baseball prints left when I was all done.  Rather than let them sit unused for years in my stash, I decided to use them for my October comfort quilt.  I was able to get five 8 inch squares from each.  I cut as many 8 inch squares as I could from the remaining fabric and then used the smaller pieces to make some patchwork blocks.  I was trying to be resourceful and I just LOVE the results!  I'm telling you that scrap quilts just make my heart sing.  I was only 4 blocks short so I cut into my red chevron to finish it off. 

The quilt finished at about 45 x 45.  I nice sized little boy quilt.  I machine quilted about 1/2 inch on either side of each seam.

 The back is pieced from a large strip trimmed off of Evan's backing and some large pieces of fabric that have been lingering in my stash for too long. I love a pieced backing.  I think it makes the quilt more fun.

I'm still working on my machine quilting,  I am a hand quilter by choice, but I am learning.

Finally, my red and white quilt.  The top was finished in January of this year and quilted this summer.  Sadly it has just been sitting and waiting on its binding.  This week the binding was completed and I have a finished quilt ready for Christmas/Valentine's Day.  She's a beauty. The linen gives it such a nice feel.

Look at those amazing dots on the back of this quilt.  You cannot go wrong with dots.  Ever.

I finished it with a bright red binding of course.

Three finishes in one week feels so good!

Have a great day!

Tracy

Spools and Spools of Liberty Love

Oh my!  This quilt has been in my mind for about a year now when I saw it in Liberty Love by Alexia Marcelle Abegg.  I have been squirreling away pieces of Liberty fabric and other lawns and florals that I found.  I have also been tucking away little bits of whites and black/grey materials for the spools.  It has all been sitting in a basket just waiting.  Last night the pull was too strong to ignore and I decided to just make one spool to test out the measurement changes that I wanted to make in mine.  One spool lead to one block, which lead to five blocks. And well, I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those quilts that I just can't stop making until it is done.

This quilt appeals to everything I love about quilts.

The variety of prints, the scrappiness and the theme equal quilty perfection.

5 blocks down, 20 to go.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tracy

Farmer's Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt

Like most other quilters, I have a million UFOs and WIPs.  I have a "dream" list a mile long.  And, I have baggies of adorable fabric pulls just waiting to become quilts.  And yet, I can't stop joining quilt alongs.  My most recent is the 1930s version of the Farmer's Wife sampler quilt. I was going to resist this one, I really was.  After all, I JUST finished a sampler quilt and still have a few from the same book on my list.  But, the Farmer's Wife blocks are EVERYWHERE!  The blogs and Instagram are flooded with gorgeous pictures just taunting me to join in.  So, I've given in.

We have these gorgeous shot cottons at out LQS that I have just been drooling over.  So, I am starting with those and matching up some fabrics from my stash to go with them.  This should be bright and cheerful and happy to play with.

I decided to just follow the color schemes of each of Laurie's blocks.  I figured that if I did that, my colors would be nice and balanced at the end.  :) I pulled out some floral fabrics that I just knew that I wanted to use and found some blocks with the same color schemes and was ready to go.  At least I thought I was.  The instructions for the blocks are not actually laid out in the book.  The book comes with a CD that includes templates, paper piecing instructions and some rotary cutting instructions for the blocks that are easily cut.  So you need to decide how you plan on piecing each block.  The first 4 I chose really lent themselves to paper piecing as they were intricate and tiny.  These finish at just 6 inches each.  Here are my first 4 blocks.

#15 Blossom and #82 Pharlemia

They are gorgeous, and I love them and they are so acurate for blocks so tiny.  But, they took FOREVER! Worth it in the end I would say.

Next, I did #5 Anne and #19 Carolina

I figured out with Anne that the paper piecing templates are not reversed, so my blocks are coming out the reverse of what is pictured.  Not sure how to remedy that.  But, so far it doesn't really seem to matter as the blocks are pretty symmetrical.

The Carolina block was my first attempt at paper piecing y-seams.  I'm really pleased.

At this point I decided to join in and follow along with the quilt alongs.  There are 2 going on, so I am going to try and keep up with both.

Angie at gnomeangel.com is quilting along by skill level, starting with the easiest blocks.

 

And Kerry at verykerryberry.blogspot.com is quilting along in numerical/alphabetical order.

 

They both started a few weeks ago, so I have some catching up to do.  I decided to catch up with Angie first because she started with the easiest blocks and that seemed a quick way to catch up.  

Here are those blocks:

#12 Becky and #16 Bonnie 

I used the rotary cutting instructions for both.  Super simple.

Next, #8 Aunt and #14 Betty
 More rotary cutting.

#20 Caroline and #13 Belle
I used some quilty math to figure out the hourglass sections of the Caroline block.
For Belle, some rotary cutting measurements were given, but I had to use a template for the 2 "house" shaped pieces.

#24 Coral and #78 Old Maid
The cutting instructions for Coral show HST instead of flying geese, but I used a little quilty math again to replace those with flying geese.
I paper-pieced Old Maid.

So, now I am all caught up with Angie and her crew.  Yay!

Next week, I will try to get caught up with Kerry.  They have sewn through block #12 this week and I already have 3 of those done.  Woo Hoo!!

Who else has gotten sucked into the Farmer's Wife?

Thanks for stopping by!

Tracy

Dog Gone Cute sneak peak...

Are you quilting along with Lorna over at Sew Fresh Quilts?

 

If not, hop on over and take a look, it is not too late to join in.

She has shared her patterns for the cutest little dog blocks and now quilters from all over are sharing what they have created with her patterns.  Check here to see some of the bloggers who have already shared their creations.

 I'll be sharing my whole project on October 29th, so make sure you stop back by to check it out.  Until then, here is a little sneak peak at the quilting.

Loops and bones, I almost can't stand the cuteness.

My first Farm Girl Quilt is Done

That's right, I said first.  There will be more.  My second is already under construction.

Here is some Farm Girl eye-candy...

We spent the day at our local pumpkin patch.  So, of course I carried my newly completed quilt with me to snap a few pictures.  The location could not have been better.

I have so many fun hours in this quilt.

I just love it so much!  Thank you Lori Holt for a fantastic pattern and quilt along!

Thanks for stopping by!

Tracy

A Baseball Quilt for Evan

A few years back I made a little lap sized quilt for my nephew Evan.  It was a sweet little baseball-themed quilt featuring adorable little baseball players, because Evan LOVES baseball.  Flash forward a few years and that quilt is starting to feel a little "babyish" for this now 3rd grader. His mom asked me if I could make a new quilt that would fit on his bunk bed and still have the same red, white and blue baseball theme, but without the cute little players.  In other words, something a little more grown up.  So, I found a few baseball themed prints, added a few new fabrics from the Varsity line and pulled a few classics from my stash and got started.

I decided to keep it simple with simple patchwork and a few random stars for interest.  I cut up a bunch of 5 inch squares and started playing with a layout.

I threw in a few plain white squares where I wanted my stars to go.

And then I started to build the stars.

I pieced each row and pressed the seams in opposite directions.  Then sewed and pressed pairs of rows together as I went.  (With 3 boys of my own in the house, I am usually pretty motivated to get this step done quickly so that the pieces don't end up run over or blown all over the house. Ha!)

Ta-dah!  Top done.

Today I will be machine quilting 1/4 inch from each seam vertically and horizontally.  Then I will be hand stitching inside of each star with chunky red thread to mimic the stitches on a baseball.  I am really excited to see how that turns out.

I have quite a few pieces of fabric left over, so I will be using those for my October comfort quilt.

I am also working on this adorable reindeer quilt from the Moda Bake Shop.  My goal is to have this one pieced together by tomorrow, so I can get it up off the floor quickly.  :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Tracy