Collaboration

The quilt shop where I teach is launching a new blog.

Please take a peek!

Lisa Bongean, of Primitive Gatherings, recently taught at the shoppe and my friend, Cheryl A., took her class, Homegrown.

Cheryl used her Sashiko machine to quilt her project.

She did an awesome job!

The shoppe will be offering Lisa's new BOM, Words to Live By.

For more info, go here.
It was so beautiful to see in person!

I am also excited to announce that the shoppe will be offering
 Kim Diehl's Simple Whatnots Club.
I will be signing up!

Now for the collaboration part...I will be designing their first quilt along project,
Easter Baskets.
I would love it if you joined me!
To help launch their new blog,
I will be giving away a kit for the project.
Check back later for more details.

In the meantime,
check out The Olde World Quilt Shoppe here.
In 2009, they were featured in the BHG Sampler Magazine as a top ten quilt shop.
They specialize in reproduction fabrics, homespuns, flannel and wool.


This month is going by way too quickly!
 I need to get to work on my monthly goals!!!

I am in LOVE!

And the object of my affection is my new Sashiko machine by Baby Lock.

You can find out more about them here.

My good friend, Lin, and I drove up to Prescott last Friday to check them out and I came home with one.  Lin's comes in next week.  Needless to say, I came home and immediately tried it out.

I had made this little 6" block to demo a Tri-Rec ruler and thought it would be perfect as my first subject.  I used a 30 wt. Aurifil cotton thread in a golden brown hue.  I was so excited I just could not wait to quilt something else, so I rifled through the now infamous closet and found a UFO that would be perfect for this style of quilting.

Count Down to Christmas, a Monique Dillard pattern, I had pieced last year.

Here is a close-up of the stitch.  It looks like hand quilting on the front and a straight stitch on the back of the quilt.  I am fascinated by how it works.  The only thread is in the bobbin, and a ingenious industrial engineered combo of a hook and needle pull the thread to the front to look like hand stitches.

Needless to say, I am itching for another project to quilt.

So, I searched my bucket of future quilts and found the fabrics and pattern for a darling small quilt called A Rainbow Garden, designed by Glenda of Liberty Homestead.

You can see her designs here.

I forget that a small quilt can take as long as a full sized quilt to construct, so it will be awhile before I can use Sashi again.  

The pattern is from her book, Farmhouse Quilts, The Scrap Basket.

You can find it here.

It is the quilt in the center at the bottom of the page. Oops, it is the one in the top left corner!

Here is my first block:

Only 46 of those little 2" finished pinwheels to make!  And then there are the 6 baskets, the embroidery and then the wool applique. It will be awhile before I am back with a flimsy.

I have kept up with my monthly goals.  My pile of flying geese is growing, another set of blocks for my red and white quilt are done and my Le Jardin block is close to completion.

This one has been hard for me to keep on task with.  It is not my favorite block in the quilt from a design standpoint and all those tiny leaves!  Only 4 more to sew down.

Finally,

the beginnings of my red and green quilt.

Yes, I have been a busy bee.

Between the Australian Open Tennis Tournament and football playoff games, I have had a lot of time to sew!  Very sad my 49ers did not make it to the Superbowl, but I am a chameleon who now wears the Seahawks colors!

Back to making pinwheels. 

 Hope I can keep up this productivity with all the projects I have in the works.