Dancing Stars quilt top

I started to make the stars for this quilt in early November and then got side tracked to get the girls Christmas quilts ready for Santa to bring them to Ireland. I eventually got back to it yesterday and finished putting the strips together and added the border. I really love working in Batik and LOVE how this turned out. For this quilt I used a X-Block ruler which was a fun way to make the stars.

Dancing Star Quilt 

Close up of Center Star

For this one I am going to I am going to use my Embroidery machine to do the quilting, I found some really nice star quilt designs that I am hoping will be perfect. 

Not just Quilts

So I also tried my hand at working on some crafts that are not quilts and had fun doing them also here are some I worked on recently:

Tote Bags 

Any one want one?? Let me know your color preference they are fun to make and can be done in about 2 hours. 

Crayon Rollups

These crayon roll ups are also fun to do. This was the first one that I completed and have list of boys and girls to make some more for which should keep me entertained! Good thing I bought a big box of crayons! 

French Braid Quilt

This is one of my favorite quilt that I have worked on.  I spent at least 3 hours picking out the right fabric and love how the green to gold to cream blends in this one! I took the class to start it last September and have worked on it on and off since then. At Eddies, my local Quilt store, once a month they have an Open Sew Studio class where you being along projects you want to work on and there is a teacher there to answer your questions. So once I had all my braids done I went to an Open Sew studio and got great assistance from  Melody, the teacher who also happens to teach the French Braid class. She did a great job to help assist me with making sure the braids were aligned before I joined then together. It is also great to do this type at work at Eddies as they have tables big enough to lay larger quilts out. This is larger than any other quilt I have done as to take the pictures Lar had to stand on a chair!

And here is the finished top:

I have decided not to quilt this one myself first because it is so large and second as it turned out so nicely I think it deserves to be quilted on a Long Arm quilting machine. Melody has a business as a Long Arm Quilter and she now has it to work her wonder on it. I cannot wait to see how it turns out!

Christmas Quilts for Aoife, Aislinn & Eimear

Gosh I have not posted in a while, need to make up for that how about with some posts of some of my latest quilt creations. 

Here are pictures of the quilts I completed for Aoife, Aislinn & Eimear

And here is a slideshow with a some close up of the details. 

Winter has hit California........

......... I had to put socks on today at 4:30 pm as my poor toes were cold!!

Gordian Knot Quilt Class

I spent Sunday at Eddies Quilting Bee  at a Gordian Knot Quilt class and had a wonderful day. There was four of us all together in the class and Bev the teacher was a very interesting lady and taught in a very unique way.  We all worked on the same pattern but used different fabric which created very different results. 

 My good friend, Kathy, attended the class with me which also made it a special day as Kathy was the first person to bring me to Eddies and started me off on this wonderful journey of quilt making. 

Here are the pictures of the Knots created at the class yesterday:

And here is mine, which is finished off after the class by adding the border:

I love how it turned out, next step now is to layer it up with the batting and the backing fabric and actually quilt it. It is the right size for a wall hanging and I have already picked out the wall it will be hung on when I eventually get the quilting done. 

RONALD McDONALD HOUSE CRAYOLA CHARITY CHALLENGE

As I am such a internet geek, soon after I started making quilts I joined an online community on a message board on Hgtv.com. There I have "met" some wonderful ladies (and even a few men) who have years of quilting experience and I have learnt so much from reading their posts and they are so helpful with my beginner questions. A big part of the community is using their wonderful sewing gift for charity and I decided to join one of the charity challenges.

The Roland McDonald House Crayola Charity Challenge works as follows:

• Each participant gets three crayons from the crayola crayon box
  
• The crayons get mailed out and you have to buy fabric is those colors and only those  but you can use all shades of the colors both lights and darks.
• Any embellishment is allowed and can be outside the colors of the crayons. 
• The quilts have to be no smaller than 54 X 70 which is lap size and any pattern can be used. 
• All quilts have to be completed by December 15th
• From January 2009 - July 2009, tickets will be on sale for $2.00 each or 3 for $5.00. 100% of the proceeds of this raffle will benefit the Roland McDonald House.
• There are 40 quilts entered in the challenge and I got a sneak peak of a few of them and they are all wonderful

So I got my crayons in the mail at the end of August  and when I saw my colors I had to just laugh out loud as they were totally outside my color range for  fabric choice. It was going to be totally  a challenge for me!

 The crayola name for my crayons are Chestnut, Melon and Blush which when I look at them  they screamed BROWN, BRIGHT PINK and ORANGE. Here they are:

I took my crayons to my local quilting store, Eddies Quilting Bee and I was eventually found fabric that fitted into the right criteria for the challenge. I am not sure if they ever saw someone there sitting on the floor coloring on paper who was over 4 years of age!! I eventually got  the following fabric:

The first set of 10 blocks I made had a large space and as I just got my new embroidery machine I decided to use up the space with butterflies, here are a few up close:



And here is the finished top:

About two days after I finished the top, another fundraiser opportunity appeared on the board. One of the ladies lives in the Houston area offered to donate her time and her long arm quilting machine in return for a donation to the Mayor of Houston Fund for Hurricane Ike victims. I took the opportunity straight away as a long arm sewing machine does such a professional looking job much more so then I could do with my machine. 

So my quilt top and the backing fabric was mailed to Houston, Texas and I just cannot wait to get it back to see how it turns out. I bet Carol will do a wonderful job, she confirmed on the message board that it arrived and called my quilt top a " real beauty". This made me feel very proud as this was the fourth quilt top I have finished and the other 39 ladies in the challenge have been quilting for years. 

Once it is returned to me I will have to put the binding on and then mail it back to Texas to the person who is organizing the raffle. Here are some more pictures I took before I  mailed it off to be machine quilted.  

49er's Quilt is finished but they still didn't win...........

I eventually got to finishing the quilting on Lar's 49er quilt which was my second wedding anniversary present to him.  I had most of it done in time for our anniversary ( Sept 4th) but I was taking a machine quilting class in the end of Sept - Oct and wanted to wait to learn some new techniques before I finished it.

Here is a slideshow to show the quilt, some up close look at some of the quilting stitches and Lar enjoying it! Especially like the last two pictures where Lar found a creative way to use the quilt at the end of the Giants V's Niners game today. Enjoy!

We had a cute visitor for dinner on Wednesday

I tried to keep him but his Mama insisted on taking him home!! 

More Quilt fun.......

I was talking to Aoife, Aislinn and their Auntie Fiona on Skype last week and took the opportunity to show Aoife the fabric that I was using to make her quilt. At that point I didn't have all the rows finished and the border was in pieces, I am now happy to report that today I finished the piecing of the top and and here it is:

 

I really like how it has turned out.  The next stage now is to make the sandwich with the top, batting and back fabric. 

Aoife, call Uncle Lar and ask him to get busy pinning this weekend!  Then hopefully I will have it quilted in time for Santa clause to bring it to you. 

The other good news is that Mr. Frog is on its way to Aislinn and the postman should be delivering it sometime by the end of next week.  On the same Skype call, I showed Auntie Fiona Mr. Frog 

Aoife asked me " I thought you had given that to the postman already" and I have to admit that I was suppose to give it to the postman weeks ago.  

I replied "Well, I love it so much, I cannot give it away".  

A very cute 3 year old voice piped up and told me "Give it to the postman so I can have it and then make another one for yourself".  

Well, the real reason I hadn't given it to the postman was I had one more job left before it was 100% completed and that was to make a label and put it on the quilt. So this week I made the label and put on, here it is:




Hopefully this will make two girls happy as it makes me really happy to work on them!