Hoooowwwwllllll

or rather,

This is for Tonya if you haven't seen the wonderful things she does with words, check out her blog. Right now, she's gathering pieced blocks from her bloggie friends for two wonderful quilts in the making!!

And because my children served as photographers, here are a few more pictures:

Cheers,

Dionne

Lucky, Lucky Me!

Well over these last few days the postman has left some wonderful goodies for me!

Rhonda  has sent me a BEAUTIFUL apron!

I absolutely LOVE it! The fabrics are wonderfully cheerful and bright!

I had asked my husband where my daughter was, I wanted her to model the apron for me, when he kindly obliged. (I did warn him that the picture would be posted)

And only one short day later this lovely box arrived from SummerSadie

I was completely overwhelmed when I opened the box, it was stuffed to the brim with fabrics and pre-cuts and stationary and more!

Cheers,

Dionne

Milk Weed Skirt GIVEAWAY! (at Grosgrain)

Milk Weed Skirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

Follow the link to the GROSGRAIN website to enter.

Cheers,

Dionne

House Block Tutorial

I am taking part in an 'Around the World' swap of sorts. It's actually more like a 'Round Robin' swap, but with blocks instead of a center medallion and borders.

You might have heard me mention this swap, it's being hosted by SummerSadie.

I've created a cottage block, actually I wanted a block a little bigger than the wonderful cottage that Nanette made on her tutorial at Freda's Hive. So it's really more of a House block, than a cottage.

Now, everyone will be creating their own blocks for me, so they won't all be cottages, or houses or anything like that. It will be a mishmash of squares from.... around the world!

Anyhow, here is how I made my 12.5 inch (12 inch finished) house block:

• First I selected fabrics for the Sky, house, windows, ground, door, roof, chimney and cut them into the following pieces
  
• Sky: (a) 10.5 inches by 1.5 inches, cut 2; (b) 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches, cut 1; (c) 2.5 inches by 6.5 inches, cut 1; (d) 2.5 inches by 1.5 inches, cut 1
  
• House: (e) 4.5 inches by 1.5 inches, cut 2; (f) 2.5 inches by 1.5 inches, cut 4; (g) 4.5 inches by 2.5 inches, cut 2; (h) 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches, cut 1
• Windows: (i) 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches, cut 2
• Ground:(j) 12.5 inches by 2.5 inches, cut 1
• Door: (k) 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches, cut 1
• Roof: (l) 3.5 inches by 10.5 inches, cut 1
• Chimney: (m) 1.5 inches by 1.5 inches, cut 1

• Begin by sewing the house together. Sew 2 window blocks (i) to 4 house blocks (f)
  
  
• Next sew House blocks (e) and (h) to the top and bottom of the window bricks.

• Next sew the last house block (g) to the door block (k)
• Then sew the door brick to the window bricks. Now you have the main house brick assembled. You just need to attach the roof, sky and ground.
  
• Sew the roof (l) block to the newly assembled house brick
• Now to assemble the sky units. Sew the chimney mini-block (m) to the sky mini-block (d)
  
• Then sew blocks (b) and (c) to either side of the chimney brick
• Next sew the sky brick to the house brick.
  
  
• Now sew the last two sky pieces (a) to the house brick.
• Lastly sew on the ground piece (j)
  

This is a fun block, you could get particularly fun with the window fabrics.

Cheers,

Dionne

Howl - has begun.

Well, my kids have been a bit careless this week and we've had a few near misses and thankfully minor injuries.

My middle child burned her eye with splattering grease ~ but we were thankful that the grease hit the white part of her eye. It was right next to the cornea and it was a seriously close call, but her vision was completely spared.

Then only a day and a half later my oldest daughter slammed her finger in the car door and although she will lose her entire fingernail, her finger wasn't broken.

And just a few days earlier my son was kicked in the mouth, puncturing and 'de-gloving' the roof of his mouth! Two of these injuries were very bloody, and I don't do well with blood.

In all that I only managed a bit of sewing and even less blogging (less as in NONE).

Well, I started my 'Howl' block for Tonya. Actually, its quite a bit further than my picture, but for some reason I took a picture when I started to work on it, but not when I finished!



I apologize for the tilted picture. Blogger has an intermittent bug, and sometimes it will only load pictures vertically.

This picture shows the beginnings of the 'H' and also my planning page. Here you can see I'm not nearly as thoughtful and organized as some of the other ladies in this project.

I really like how it's turning out and I hope Tonya will like it as well. I promise to show more pictures this week!

Cheers,

Dionne

My Matisse Challenge is finally Finished!

Well, when I say finished, what I really mean is that the top is finished.

It took me more than 3 minutes, but less than any time I've ever spent on a top. That being said, it measures only a little bigger than a fat quarter.

Here is my quilt top:


Here is my Inspiration:



For more beautiful finishes, check out Victorias Blog, BumbleBeans.

Cheers,

Dionne

Another Sewing Machine Song

Opening scene from a 40s musical starring Betty Hutton. Hutton's most notable film role was the part of Annie Oakley in the 1950 musical of "Annie Get Your Gun."

Happy Mothers Day!

Breakfast in Bed:



Two Poems:

ME: Most of the time? ~ SHE: Mom, I had to be honest!

That's my Cricket!

A homemade stuffed butterfly and a beautiful flower statue:


And finally a masterpiece made by my young son:

Who could ask for more lovely gifts!

Cheers,

Dionne

Quilting is Everywhere!

The other day the local Children's Museum hosted a special event, and my family was fortunate enough to be invited. This museum is located in Seattle, but we are really just across the bridge from Seattle so its a quick 20 min drive.

There in one of the newly remodeled rooms was a large wooden display of the book The Quilt Isn't this wonderful!

I couldn't go, but my DH went with our children and he sent me this picture from his phone.


The display and painting is so brilliantly colorful, and in real life, it drapes wonderfully.


I also was able to dedicate a few more minutes to my Matisse Challenge piece hosted by Victoria at BumbleBeans. I had hoped to finish the top, but family matters took me away from sewing this week yet again.




I've divided the painting into roughly 3 parts and now I just have the center panel to complete. I'm telling you, free-form piecing is really much harder than I expected.

This weekend I'll be doing 'Howl' for Tonya's Holloween Sounds quilt. She has a listing with links of all the work everyone else has done for her and it's really spectacular! Check it out if you have a chance.

Cheers,

Dionne

Matisse Challenge

Victoria at Bumble Beans had a 3 minute challenge to make a free form, free style quilt inspired by a Matisse painting. Well, I'm a pretty average quilter, and I haven't 'honed' my free-style skills yet.

So I first, I completely forgot to do anything except the first step ~ pull fabrics. But when Victoria mentioned she was going to post the results, I sprung into action! 30 to 45 minutes later I had accomplished this:



Hardly a 3-minute activity. I ended up trying some weird fabric folding technique to get the shutters on the window to actually look like shutters! Then I spent another chunk of time fretting over the scenery in the window. Clearly I have missed the spirit of this challenge.

I am going to try again tonight to finish it. Maybe I'll use a timer to keep myself in line: set the timer for 5 minutes and do the bed bit of the painting. Then set the timer again to do the table, etc.

On another note, here are the first seven 9-patch blocks I did this week. Those were easy breezy! Doing a simple task like that reminds me that I really can sew.

Cheers,

Dionne

Weekend Mish-Mash

I didn't get much sewing done this last weekend. I finally added a label to baby Gabriella's quilt and mailed it off to my cousin.



We did drop some items off to goodwill and I found several XXL Mens shirts for SUPER-CHEAP ~ there is yards of 100% cotton fabric there!



But I really wanted to get some sewing in, so sunday night I decided to play catch-up. I started by starting something completely different... a Christmas runner.



Heh, heh... started by starting ~ great english!

I also got a wonderful bit of mail from Patricia at Bumble Beans. Isn't this fabric BEAUTIFUL!



I finished a couple of nine-patch units, which look very nice. I'm quite pleased with them. Forgot to snap a picture though, I'll try to post some more pics tomorrow.

I also worked a little more on my Sweet Star Gazing Quilt.

Only problem is that come 2:30 sunday night, or make that Monday morning I was still awake. When I woke up around 5am I was REALLY tired. I drove all the way into work, only to discover I had forgotten my laptop at home. Then I had to turn around and head home (in all the Microsoft traffic). What a bother that was!

Cheers,

Dionne