Into the woods

Hi folks! Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are not too stuffed to sew! The hubs and I are having Thanksgiving at our daughter's house, which is great for me because it means very little cooking! I didn't bring my sewing machine, but I do have these to show you:

Don't they look festive? These are the next couple of blocks for the winter quilt BOM from Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles that I am working on for the next few weeks. This is a very easy quilt and is very relaxing to work on. Seriously, you can grab a few minutes here and there and make great progress. (You can buy the patterns HERE or HERE).

Here are the three blocks I've done for this quilt all together:

I almost have the major center row done! I am considering "quilting as I go," which is why I'm doing them in this order. I've never done that with a whole quilt before, but why not try it on this one?

Since this was a holiday week, that's all the sewing I got finished! Hey, I'm happy I got anything done. Hope you finished something too! I'm going shopping later for a backing for this. I'm thinking flannel. Sounds cozy and fitting for a winter quilt, doesn't it?

Back to our regularly scheduled projects next week, with some of this thrown in for fun. Enjoy the weekend! Happy sewing!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Amanda Jean at crazy mom quilts. Stop by and get inspired!

Cabin in the snow

Hi all! With this being a holiday week and many, many of us in a cooking frenzy, it's a good time to take a small time out and share my year-end project. I have been looking forward to starting this for weeks!

The end of October until the first of the new year is the most stressful time of the year for me. Really, everything is due all at once, plus there's this major winter holiday that is a lot of fun but requires TONS of preparation. A lot of it is fun, and much of what I have to do is very rewarding, but it's also very stressful. Since the sewing keeps me sane even in the worst of times I need a year-end project that I can work on that won't add to the problem. I know a lot of people will be doing Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, but that is just too stressful for me to take on right now. Instead, I've chosen to work on this quilt by Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles:

This is Cindy's quilt and her picture! Isn't it adorable?

This is such a cute quilt, and it looks pretty stress-free to assemble. Cindy has run it as a quilt-along on her blog all year. I had every intention of working along, but never did. So now that it's all finished, I'm going to do it all at once! You can buy her patterns HERE or HERE, and she has many other patterns that are very easy as well. (Go buy the pattern! You know you want to!)

This pattern generally uses same-sized squares, so I've been cutting some different dark blues to use for the backgrounds for a couple of weeks (a little at a time, you know?):

I cut up several quarter yards of dark blues with stars that I had in my stash, though most of the fabric comes from this:

Let's just call that photo "artsy," okay? This was a multi-purpose Halloween costume--witch, wizard, Merlin, etc.-- from years ago.  I know for sure it's made from quilting cotton because the selvages were still on the thing. I guess it was an emergency costume. Anyway, there were nearly 3 yards of fabric here, which got cut up and is being used as the main background fabric in this quilt. (Let's hear it for recycling!)

 And heaven knows I have a bunch of scraps for all the other colors and parts as well. No shortage of those around here!

So, I started with the cabin block, which is in the center of the quilt. Here it is:

I certainly would be happy to sit in that cabin and sew for a while, wouldn't you? It didn't come through too well in the photo, but the window there is actually yellow. Winter sunshine bleached it out pretty well. The pattern shows a brown cabin with a black roof, but I chose to use red and brown. It's cheerful, and what I had.

Cabin in the snow!

I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving! I say we all lock ourselves in the sewing room and make someone else stress out over the food. If you're not in the US, I hope your week is also full of food, family, and friends! And maybe a little American football and some shopping, too.

Linking to Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. Happy Thanksgiving!

Across the Drunkard's Path

Hi folks! We are still in a deep freeze here, and I know a lot of you are too. It feels like January, not November! Maybe a really early winter means a really early spring? A little optimism can't hurt, especially if it gets us through the winter.

I thought for sure I would have a finished Drunkard's Path quilt to show today. Instead, I have an almost finished Drunkard's Path quilt:

Check out the snow behind the fence!

Funny story about this quilt. See the lovely pink print that is the background for these blocks? That fabric was left over from the backing of another quilt. I thought there would be just enough for 9 blocks plus a narrow border. I was so confident that I cut the border before I finished the blocks.

What was I thinking? Because you know what happened--I had enough for 8 1/2 blocks. I need 4 more of the large pieces to finish the last block. I'm going to have to eke them out by joining some scrap pieces together and then cutting the template. Yeah, I feel stupid.

Even with all that, I think it looks great!  I love the colors and I'm happy with the layout. I plan to grind out those last pieces whatever it takes and then have it quilted so I'll get it back for a nice shot of spring in January. It's been so cold and gross here already that I know we'll really need it by then.

I discovered while making these that I really like the Drunkard's Path pattern. Yep, making another one. Jo, who has been reading along {waving--hi Jo!}, was kind enough to send me a few alternate layouts for Drunkard's Path quilts. There are literally dozens of ways to put these blocks together, especially if you use different colors. I chose this one for my next project:

Doesn't that look like fun? This is what the Frozen fabrics are for. I pasted them up on the "design wall" to see what it would look like in real fabric:

I am not sure about that purple Fairy Frost, but otherwise I like it! The Fairy Frost is not so bad in person, but it looks pretty lousy in this picture. I'll think about replacing it. I'll probably only make a quilt with 5 of the purple medallions because otherwise it will be gigantic. These templates make 4 inch finished blocks, after all.

That's it from the sewing room this week! Hope everyone stays warm this weekend. It's a good time to hand-stitch some binding so you can wrap up in the quilt at the same time. Just saying.

Linking up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict, crazy mom quilts, and Vicki Welsh's Drunkard's Path Quilt Along. Be sure to stop by!

Deep freeze

Well, friends, what has happened to fall? I would swear it was here just a minute ago. Instead the temperatures are in the single digits--with wind! Good thing I have some quilts laying around here, or we'd all be Popsicles.

In addition to getting my chattering teeth under control, I have been working on the rainbow triangle quilt diligently. Okay, only semi-diligently, but I am making progress:

Indoor picture! Too cold for outside!

Did you ever have a situation where you "forgot" how to do something that you've known how to do forever? That seems to be a theme with this quilt. First, I was working on making some more blocks to fill out the quilt center when I discovered (halfway through a block) that I had used the wrong size triangle paper. So now I have three lovely 4 1/2 inch 9-patches instead of 6 inch ones.

Adorable! And an inch and a half too small.

Then I kind of had a brain freeze about the sashing. For some reason, I kept getting the pieces mixed up and at one point ended up having to make Y-seams to add in the setting triangles. What? I Knew THAT was wrong! I finally went back to the way I almost always do the sashing-- block by block. I hate having to sew on long, skinny strips.

I think that somehow I started putting the sashing on the wrong sides of the blocks so that they wouldn't fit easily with the others and that messed everything else up. I have it straightened out now, though!

So, now I'm looking at possible border fabrics. These are my current choices:

Hmmm. I don't think I like any of them with the sashing. Any of them would have worked with a white sashing, but the black and white has me thrown. The stripes are definitely out, but they might make a nice binding. If I had enough of the black and white fabric I would just use that and be "modern," but I'm almost out. I may have to use a black, but I'm afraid that would be too heavy. I guess the ending will be a surprise--even to me!

I also did a bunch of cutting for a new quilt. Check it out:

I think you can guess what this will be! (The file name for this picture is "frozen parts." Ha! It certainly fits today!) I'm almost done with the pink and green Drunkard's Path (come back Friday to see) and want to start a new one. They are addictive!

That's it from here in the frozen north. Everybody stay warm! Happy sewing!

Linking to Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social, and also the awesome Angela at soscrappy for RSC14.

(Bonus blogging tip: when scheduling a post, make sure you click "am" and not "pm" for the time! Sorry to be late!)