Lots to show- received swap items, weather predictions and more!

 First, the weather prediction- we cut open some wild persimmon seeds.  See the spoon shapes?  That means we're likely to have a very snowy winter.  If they were knives, it would mean cold, sharp winds.  Pretty cool, huh?  It's usually pretty accurate, too.

 I just recently received my FLiQS quilt from my wonderful partner, Jana/megmormel.  I just love this little circle/rainbow quilt, it's darling and so well made!  She also included a mug rug and some salt water taffy, she lives on the Eastern Seaboard.  It's delish and I just loved everything, thank you so much, talented Jana!

 Lovely, isn't it?  She pegged me very well, she knew I loved rainbow/bright colors and those lovely grays in the background are the perfect foil for the brights.

 The back is darling, too.  She embroidered and pieced the label. 

 In the Bitty Block Bee, bouncypoodle/Pattiann picked sunflowers for her theme.  I made her this screen door block with a view out onto a farm scene.  The cute fabric is by Wilson & Wilson Folk Art Co, here in Eureka Springs.  It's several years old and I've been hoarding it.  :)

 The door opens....

 A few little 3D touches...

 I let the fabric do the sunflower work for me this time.

 And the other block I made for Pattiann- the center is full of seeds, all outlined by machine.

 Since the FLiQS quilt I made has been delivered, I can now show off the label.  It's a kaleidoscope quilt so I thought I should make a kaleidoscope label.  My partner was mollyjolly/maria and it turns out, she's always loved kaleidoscopes, which I didn't know.  Lucky coincidence for us, I think!

 I used a piece of Kaffe Fassett fabric, embellished it with beads and covered it with heavy vinyl.  Added a tiny binding and then stitched it on to cover the end of the hand-appliqued base.  It will swivel up so she can see the words.

 This is the front of the quilt, almost all Kaffe Fassett fabrics. 

 And this is the wonderful mug rug I received from Jodie/jm1122 in the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap!  I love it, it's got 2 sea turtles on one side and a fun octopus on the other! 

 She also send me generous pieces of her background fabrics because she knew I really liked them and treats for the dogs and cats, how sweet was THAT? 

Bizbee highly approves of the treats and has taken over part of the computer armoire, 

I think he likes my mouse!

 

So it's been a busy few weeks around with great stuff arriving in the mail and ooohing and aaaahing!  I hope you've been having fun, too.  I'm trying to think of a project to get me going.  We're going thru some issues with my mom and her health right now and I could use a distraction.  I'm tossing around using some of my bitty blocks to make a perpetual calendar. If I can BEAR to use some of them, that is, and if I can make myself actually make a real decision, I'm turning into a waffler and I hate that!

Finished Doll Quilt- FLiQS and some cute Bizbee-ness!

Had to start out with a cute shot of the boy sleeping on the doll quilt before I got it quilted. 

And here it is, quilted..... I just enhanced the light circles by quilting inside them and carrying it into the border. 

Here it is all finished....

...with a hint of the back showing.  

For a change, the binding worked well with the front and the back, yay.  The backing is cool, looks great up close, click on the photo for a closer view.

I haven't made a label yet.

And here's Bizbee snoozing on the quilt in the rocking chair.  

He obviously doesn't appreciate the lamp being on and shining in his eyes.  :)

He got neutered last week and came home from the vet, same day, 

feeling fine and playful and full of beans!   We were glad to get him back, 

we missed him that day for the whole 6 hours he was gone. 

Happy Labor Day!  I hope you are all off doing something fun instead of reading this blog.  :)

Bitties, Mug Rugs and a Fab Little Quilt to Swap...

 The themes for August were cats and Halloween- So I made everyone in my group a miniature Nosey Parker.  :)  This is a 3.5" take-off from a mug rug I made a while back, in the spring.  I can't believe I forgot to add whiskers to them, though!  They've all been mailed out whisker-less.  Dumb butt! Oh, well, I guess everyone can add their own if they want them.  I spent a long time on the handstitching on these, I watched a lot of Olympics while I worked on them. 

 For my Halloween blocks, I made some mini Amy Bradley vampires!  I love how they turned out, and I only had to embroider his mouth, yay.  :)  The fangs are white paint.

 My 2nd group got these- I saw something like this in a new magazine and loved it- a couple of people didn't get it, until it was explained to them.  YOU get it, right?

The summer mug rug swap- my partner likes beach/ocean things and I found a cute clipart drawing of a turtle.  He translated nicely to fabric.  A little seaweed, some sand and water and he's good to go.  I hate to send him away, because I have a special place in my heart for sea turtles.  They struggle from the moment they hatch to survive and only one in 5000 makes it to adulthood, they say.
Those are horrible odds!

And I just recently sent off an angel mug rug to the UK- a lady that was in our spring swap never received her mug rug so I made her this using a birdhouse bitty I had, and some Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  I hope she likes it. Better late than never, and better than getting nothing!  :)

And speaking of Kaffe Fassett, I am using his fabrics to make a mini doll quilt for my partner in FLiQS, Fab Little Quilt Swap.  It's a kaleidoscope quilt, paper pieced, and gives great illusions of light and dark large circles, which you can see beginning to happen if you squint at this.  Here's a small sample of it, this is 6 blocks, there will be either 25 or 30 in the quilt.  Each block finishes at about 3.25", so it'll only be 16" x 20", roughly, without a border.  But I'll add a border to try to tone it down a little.  It's going to be wildly busy.  I've got 18 blocks done now, only 7 or 12 to go!

 

So that's I've been working on, while Bizbee continues to grow.  He's getting his adult teeth now, currently he has 2 fangs on each side, and he's so rambunctious, almost crazy.  He gets neutered next week, maybe that'll calm him down a tiny bit.   Or maybe it's the teething making him nutsy, whatever.  I just hope he doesn't stay like this, he's a real handful right now!  Cute when he's sleeping, though!

 

Have a great weekend!  Jim's at an all-day firefighter class, so I've got the house to myself, I'm going to go knock out some more little blocks for my quilt!  What are YOU doing today?

Finished the Doll Quilt for the Fab Little Quilt Swap! And Nosey Parker and 2 bitties...

Finished!  Finally, I don't know how many hours/days/weeks I spent making this doll quilt, but I have a lovely partner and I think she'll appreciate it. 

 I really like angled shots better than straight on, I don't know why, I like everything else all tidy and square!

 The back is insane, but it was the only fabric that I had that really seemed to compliment the front.

 I made the label using a bitty block and writing the particulars around the edges.  Her name is covered so as not to ruin the surprise.

This month, the bitty themes are pirates and landscapes.  I'm only doing pirates, arrrrrr!

One group will get this block (they can opt for Scurvy Dogs if "bastards" offends them or they have kids.)

 And the other group gets a pirate who is a little miffed at that crappy parrot!  lol I had trouble drawing this out so I had my husband put on a baggy shirt and pose for me.  No, he doesn't have a hook or an earring or long hair!  

And I haven't shown you any shots of Nosey Parker lately- she's still just as cute and funny as ever and if she's the least bit cold, she seeks out a nice warm lap and pins you down until you think you'll never be able to walk again, your legs are so numb. 

We just love this girl!

That's it from here unless you want to see photos of our cleaned out closets and the linen "black hole" that has yet to be tackled.  We are decluttering and loving it!

FLiQS quilt progress and a couple of bitties...

 I finished the top of the Wheel of Fortune rainbow quilt.  The colored part measures 13.25" square. I've added white borders which I will trim down later, they're too wide right now.  516 pieces of fabric, not counting the backing or binding.  It's a good thing I enjoy doing crazy stuff like this, since I'll be mailing this little quilt off in a few weeks.

 

The back is, IMO, more interesting than the front.  :)

 Here's an angled shot-

 And a close-up of one of the best stars.  ;)

 Today I'll work on quilting it, then all I have to do is make a label and add a binding.  It'll be finished soon, I hope. 

Along with the Godzilla block that I showed you previously, I also made this little 3D glasses guy for a movie block.  Completely influenced from a clipart image, I added clear plastic to the glasses to make it more realistic. He was a big hit amongst the bitty block girls, all but one of them chose him over Godzilla.  He's so silly!

 And our other theme was "Bathroom", so I used a line drawing from a dentist's bib that I had gotten a few years ago and made this little trio for everyone.   People are coming up with some really cute ideas, I'll show you when they've all arrived. 

We are having some lovely weather here in the Ozarks, it's a little hard to stay inside to sew!  I hope you all are having a nice early spring, too!

New Swap, Old Quilt! iPad Cover, too, and one bitty...

 So I'm part of a new swap at Flickr called the Fab Little Quilt Swap, or FLiQS for short.  It's an invitation only swap of experienced, quality quilters who are proven to make consistently really good items and are known to follow all the rules of the swaps they've been in.  I got a really good partner who has a lot of similar likes and dislikes as I have, which always makes it easy and fun, so I decided to resurrect the quilt from last year that I made for my buddy, Dena Wayne, only this time I'd do it in a rainbow of colors. 

 Last time- The Wheel of Fortune Quilt in pinks and reds.

 This time- I had to go bigger to accommodate all the colors...

I started out with a sketch that was going to have me subtly changing the colors,

but that didn't look as good in real life.

 This is laid out like the sketch- I hated the lines between the yellow/green 

and the green/blue, so I needed another plan.  See the first rainbow photo.  :) 

The wheels spin better in the first photo, too.

It took me about a day to cut out all these fabrics, then another one to prewash them all 

and press them flat.  (All my fabrics are already prewashed, but because I'll be using so much white, 

I was afraid that something might bleed anyway and ruin it, so I took the extra time to 

wash a dozen bowls of fabric scraps and then rinse, rinse, rinse and then press. 

I was AMAZED at how much color bled out into the soapy water, it was horrifying.)

 Gravey is wondering how long it would take to rearrange all these for me.  :)

 A very dear friend of mine got an iPad for Christmas and was worried about dropping it, so she commissioned me to make her a case for toting it around.  She really likes red so I thought she'd like this. 

I used the Moda Bakeshop Bookkeeper pattern to start me off, changing dimensions as I needed to.  Added a hair elastic closure and a short handle for carrying, too.  

 Inside- just a pocket for it to slide into.

 The back-

Because I don't have an iPad, I was working with dimensions only and that makes it harder to fit something.  After I squared up the quilted piece, I got scared that the iPad wouldn't fit in it easily so I added an extra piece of batting, exterior fabric and lining fabric, then extended the existing quilting so it would be invisible.  That was a little tricky but I learned something doing it and it came out so well that I wouldn't hesitate to do that again.  (I used a tiny zigzag stitch and butted up another few inches of batting to the quilted piece.  Then I laid the black and white X fabric on top, RST, and sewed it to the exterior of the piece right next to the batting seam. Then I did the same on the lining side, being sure to not catch the added piece from the other side, but following that same line of stitching.  Trim those seams, then press both extra pieces over the batting.  Then I added more quilting, stitching in the ditch to hide it where I needed to.  My friends says she can't find the spot where I did all this, so yay, success!

 And here's a possible bitty block for our theme- movies.  :)  I have everything I need to make a different one and because I don't have enough of the dinosaur fabric, I can't make enough of this one for everyone. 

I really like him, though.  Wish I wouldn't have to buy a whole yard of this extinct (ha!) fabric 

to make 4 more bitties!

I hope everyone is doing well, I'm battling with my husband's cold right now, so not being too productive, unless you want to count mucous.  lol  Sorry, TMI, gross!