Blooms quilt show in Houston

One of the quilt shows was called Blooms, and it was comprised of the quilts made by Kaffe Fassett and Lisa Prior Lucy featured in the book of the same name.

These are some of the featured quilts...

many of them featured fussy cut flowers from his glorious fabrics

although this one featured beautiful applique by some sewing elfs,

I eally liked the frames that gave structure to this garden, 

I love flowers, especially Kaffe flowers!

Val's Quilt

One of my favorite patterns of the past couple years is Jelly Belly, by Zen Chic:

I've made it twice, and today I have photos of another version, sewn; up by Val,

 She sewed the full size version, and maybe added another row or two to the center, which makes it a bit more rectangular,

Jelly Belly quilt

 It uses a Jelly roll from Westminster fabrics featureing Kaffe Fassett fabrics, and she paired it with a gorgeous dark blue shot cotton,

I love how it turned out!  It is so much fun to see this quilt sewn up in different fabrics,

Odds and Ends

That's a funny expression when you think about it -- odds and ends.  Odd things that don't belong in a set, and ends to finish off things started.
Well. over the past several months, I've been a pinterest user, and have noted many little projects that I wanted to try.  This week I determined to do some of those little odd projects.

1. Paper piecing hexagon project.  

 I did a table runner last month using the paper hexagons, and enjoyed doing that project.  I wanted to try another project using another less common arrangement of the hexagons.
In this block, I just made 12 hexagons, sewed them together in a diamond shape, and appliqued the whole piece over a little bit of toile,

 then I appliqued the unit to the orange dot fabric, and after trimming it to echo the diamond shape, appliqued that to the blue flowered background.  I'm not sure what to do with this block now.

2.  Another thing I wanted to try was a Union Jack block.  

 It was harder to make than I thought it would be.  Partly this is because I thought I would paper piece the corner rectangle parts, but then I was having a little problem remembering how to do paper piecing.  Rather than apply my mind to remembering, I just used templates and pieced the thing. 

Union Jack quilt block

 I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  I sewed on a border and quilted it, and sewed it into a cushion!

3.  I wanted to knit a boxy basket shape out of wool on really big needles and felt it.  So I did.  However, the top edge didn't shrink up as much as the bottom of the box, and it was really floppy.  So I just folded over the wall to make it half as tall, and it is sort of rounded.  Whatever, it seems to work okay to hold stuff on the coffee table 

4.  Little key chain rings.  Pretty easy.  Just some free motion stitching holding the layers together, and the little loop to go over the ring part. 

 wouldn't mind trying a few more of these with some hand stitching on them sometime. 

 5. Little knitted Christmas trees.  The idea is to sew buttons on to the trees to make them look decorated.

 I might make them into Christmas tree ornaments, or something.  I'll see if they show up against the tree when we get it.

6.  When I got back to my sewing room here in Savannah last week, I saw that I had left these Sampler blocks up on my design wall.  So I decided to sew setting blocks and put them together into a top. 

 My plan is to use 21 sampler blocks and 21 log cabin blocks, set together in a "Straight Furrows" setting,

so, I have started sewing the log cabins. they will be half white and half assorted colors.  I like to cut out all the pieces before I start sewing.  I was somewhat surprised that after cutting out all the pieces I had made hardly a dent on my stack of 1930 reproduction fabrics.
Well, that's today's round-up on what I've been doing.  Except for one other project, which I will make another post on later.

On another note, I'm glad that many people are finding the coupon for 40% off an item at the store.   If you haven't used it yet, you can print off a copy of the coupon   here  .  It is good up until December 24th.  Also, Miriam sent me a photo of the Kaffe Fassett shot cottons that arrived!!!

they are wonderful!

My Monday Plan

 Spring seems to be making a leisurely entrance.  The robins are still fat, and trees are just starting to leaf out.

 Looking through the new Kaffe Fassett book, I am very attracted to the exhuberant color combinations.  I have a pile of orange fabrics just waiting for me to decide what to do with,

 But yesterday, I still had a pile of "monet" colored strips in a heap in my sewing room, left over from a recent nine-patch.  So, I decided to use them for another Kaffe-type pattern,

 the center is just a square, or a four patch, and then you sew rounds of fabric on to that center.  They don't have to be all the same width, altho each round is the same.  that is, you can add a skinny round, then a fat round, then a medium round, etc,

   I decided to make them different sizes and then "float" them in a sea of plain white fabric.  Later it might be fun to use a colored thread or something in the quilting to jazz up the white- or it might be nice to just leave it quiet.

 To sew them all together, I just divided them into 3 columns, then sewed strips on to the sides of the blocks to make all the blocks in one column a consistent width, and then sewed bars of white between the blocks to make the 3 columns the same height.
Since I still have a bunch of strips left over ---( of course!!!), I think I'll add a piano key border around the whole thing.  So, to get ready to sew that together, I've just sorted the strips into piles according to length-- more like a pipe organ!

 Well, that and a bunch of paper work should keep me busy for most of today!! Have a great monday!