cats and space

My 10-yr-old dd and I are working on a fun collaboration ... she did the cat stitchery a while back and I found it (among many, many other treasures) in her room the other day. I suggested we make it into a little wall hanging, and she helped choose the fabrics and arrange the strips for the wonky log cabin setting. I will now do a little echo quilting with perl cotton and add a black binding for the "frame." I love that she likes to do projects like me and with me!



Someone made a donation of some space themed fabrics to our Linus group and I made these two tops out of them. It is great to have something appropriate for boys, or non-girly girls, since usually the donated fabrics tend toward girly designs.


And here's a complete photo of my color-block quilt. It's small, only 36 x 42. It was perfect for practice quilting with my new machine and great to have a pile of swap blocks for making something at short notice.

scraps and swirls

A quilting friend from my guild was selling her Juki 95Q ... I had read lots of great reviews and seen her beautiful work on the machine, but never tried one myself. She let me use it for awhile while I decided whether to purchase it and I had lots of fun quilting this little placemat ...



And quilting this small lap quilt I put together from colorblock squares I received in a swap. It was wonderful to have the extra room on the machine, and my free form squiggles, waves and leaves all looked good. I happily took it off her hands and I'm looking forward to taking more time with my machine quilting now that I have a better tool.



I just love making these scrappy strip placemats - they always cheer up the table in such a fun way, and they are a great housewarming gift. These are trimmed and awaiting a black binding. I make them just like quilt-as-you-go blocks, stitch and flip the strips. I made a set for my brother's family for their new lake house, and he recently wished for a few more. Always fun to dig through my string bin and see what I have tossed in there.

a block of this, a block of that

I've signed up for several block exchanges / bees this year and it's fun when I just have a little bit of sewing time to make block. Instead of needing to finish an entire quilt, I can just finish a block and feel completely done. And I love getting blocks in the mail - almost like the "olden days" when I used to receive letters! Of course, putting all those blocks I receive into quilts is a project for another day...

These wonky log cabins are for Ebony in the Coast to Coast quilting bee - she selected the fabrics and I love them! I'm looking forward to seeing how she puts them together.


These blocks are for Carol in the 2010 Quilt Block Round Robin - this envelope of blocks will be sent around to each member for 12 months, each recipient adds one or two blocks. Carol made the top 3 to give an idea what she'd like, I added the bottom 2 blocks.





And these last 4 blocks are my February Quilt Block Exchange blocks - I asked for r/w/b blocks in return and will be working on a quilt for American Heros Quilts when I add some more blocks of my own.