Quiltmaker 100 Blocks {Blog Tour}

*EDITED*  This giveaway is now closed.  Thanks for entering.  

The winner is Amy @ Crafty Shenanigans

Hi Everyone,

I'm popping in for a little visit here with Renae.  

It's good to see you all, again!

Today is my stop on the Blog Tour for Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks (Vol. 7).

I was excited to have my block included in this edition. 

There I am, Block #652 on page 47.

Last year when I was in the throngs of quilt club block making I came up with this design.  It's not anything innovative or ground-breaking, but sometimes a little tweak makes all the difference.

After making a block for one of the ladies I decided that it needed a little extra punch.  So I chopped it down, added the white skinny strip and then added the framing border.  I love the addition of the skinny white strip.  In my mind that gives it the extra pop it needs.

 

Here is a little mock up of my block in and edge to edge design. 

Pretty cool, huh? 

You could definitely make this design in a million different ways.  I sure did!  

Here it is in brown and pink

 And purple and yellow.

And here is the quilt I made out of my red blocks.

 

As some of you may know, I LOVE red quilts.  I even have a pinterest board dedicated to them.  So this is my nod to my love of traditional red quilts.  All the blocks are made with the same layout, but as you can see value placement will changes the look of the block as well.

And now, for the fun stuff...

Would you like a chance to win a copy of the magazine??

I've got an extra copy (or 2) to send out!  All you need to do is leave a comment on this post.  I'll pick winners on Monday.  If you want more chances to win, hop on over to my new blog and leave a comment there as well.  The Quiltmaker Blog is also doing a bunch of giveaways, so make sure you stop there as well.

Thanks for letting me visit!

Emily

Ridiculously Small Granny

Mini Granny, a photo by simple girl, simple life on Flickr.

I joined another couple doll quilt swaps on Flickr. At this point you would be correct in assuming I am officially a doll quilt addict. For me they are surprisingly satisfying.

This particular block is for a round of the DS Quilts Doll Quilt Swap, where the only requirement is using any and all prints of Denyse Schmidt. For the record she would be my one and only fabric crush!

I am trying to stretch myself in all things creative, so for this project I am trying super tiny piecing. This block is, of course, the wildly popular granny square block from Blue Elephant Stitches. I chose to stay out of the granny square madness that was going on awhile back but now that it has died down a bit I'm ready to give it a go.

I started with 1.5 inch strips so this block finishes somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 inches. That  means each square is 1 inch finished.  Ridiculous, I know, but you have no idea how giddy it makes me to have such tiny blocks! Does that qualify me as a quilting nerd?? I think so. But I'm good with that. :) 

I've got a few more blocks to make before I'm finished. Then it's back to brainstorming for the last doll quilt swap I joined. Wish me luck...

Oh, Happy Day!

First up, the winner of the giveaway yesterday is rmb.  

Congrats! Your charms are on their way.

Now, on to today...

It was a happy day indeed when I received this beautiful hexie doll quilt from the lovely Melissa as part of DQS13. Isn't it beautiful?!  I thought she did a very good job interpreting my crazy mosaic. 

I love that she used some low volume prints, as well as bright cheery ones. Some of the fabrics are fussy cut so you have to look closely to see their awesomeness.  (Did you manage to find the tic-tac-toe fabric?)  I have yet to do anything with hexagon's so I'm happy she chose that design.

 

 She obviously stalked me well since she added 2 vintage sheet FQ's as part of my swag along with the other goodies I received.  Again, a very sweet surprise.

And lastly, a picture of the quilt hanging in it's natural habit amongst friends. :)
I think it looks Fantastic!!

Now if I can just get cranking on two more swap minis I have with looming deadlines...

The Last of the Red Blocks

  I had a goal of getting all the red blocks for my Anniversary Quilt set in a top before my last club meeting in February. Buuut...That didn't happen.

After laying out my original 15 or so blocks from my ladies I felt like I needed to make a few more to increase the finished size a bit.  I think I needed to make 6 more blocks for an even 20.  That would give me a nice 4 x 5 layout, as well as being a nice big throw size.

Here are the last three blocks I made!!

(I'm definitely ready to tie this project up as it's been almost a year in the making.)

The whole feel of this quilt is going to be "scrappy sampler" so I tried to add a variety of blocks.  I think these will go well with my others.

After all my tiny paper piecing madness on my doll quilt, I decided to enlarge the block pattern to make a 12.5 inch block.  I really love it!  My quilt club ladies wanted me to teach them some simple paper piecing techniques, so this is the block I taught them at our last meeting.  :)

A little improv...

I still need lots of practice, but who doesn't love a little improv now and then?

 And my personal fav: geese in a circle block.
I've made it at least three other times and am still not tired of it.

So there your have it.  By the time we get back from our sewing weekend these blocks will be in flimsy top form.  Yeah!
I'll show you next week when I get back...

Emily

BTW: I'll be posting up-to-the-minute photos of our weekend on instagram if you want to follow all the fun!  I am @ simplegirlsimplelife.

More Washi

While I'm frantically trying to pack my bags (and my fabric!) for our sewing weekend today, I'll leave you with a quick picture of my most recent Washi purchase. 

 For the record, I love this stuff!  

But it wasn't all for me...

The blue chevron and the ruler tape washi were for my doll quilt swap partner.

The aqua/orange floral, aqua pluses, and film reel pieces were for Leslie for her birthday.

And, well...the top two were for me.  

 So, what are YOU doing today??

:)

Emily

Washi Tape purchased from Pretty Tape on Etsy

Three Bestie Friends

 My youngest daughter is best friends with our two little neighbor girls, who happen to be sisters. Most days the three of them are inseparable.

This little project started way back in the spring of last year with these photos. As a recap: I was letting the girls play with my scraps while I was sewing bee blocks. After they were done "creating" I decided to be a fun mom and sew up their little creations into real quilts that they could use for their favorite stuffed animals. 

Well, a year later they are done!
 For starting out as a little playtime distraction I sure think they turned into cutie little quilts.

To finish off their blocks I raided my vintage sheet stash.
The girls were wanting anything pink or purple, so I found some scraps and worked them into a basic doll quilt size.  Each one has a little different flair, which I love. 

Here are the girls' favorite stuffed animals: Spotty, Horsey, and Dog enjoying their blankets.


The girls have been swaddling and cuddled their animals many times over in these little quilts.
It's been fun watching them turn into little moms.

As a side note, look at the cool design Lynn was able to add to the quilting!  Wouldn't that be cute in a big quilt as well?  

Happy Friday!

Emily

How To Cover a Paperback Like a Pro

 Today we are sharing a great tutorial on how to cover paperback books.  

This comes from our sister, a veracious reader, who has been covering her books for years.  

If you are a lover of paperbacks then you know that they can get dog-eared and destroyed pretty quickly.  Well-loved children's books can be trashed even faster. So, this little trick has been a life-saver to our family library.

To get started:

You will need contact paper and scissors.

 Contact paper comes in a roll, and can be found in the kitchen section of your local big box grocer near the shelf liner paper.  It comes in a shinier version and a non-glare version.  I prefer the non-glare version.

Begin by:

Measuring and cutting your contact paper, adding a few extra inches to the top and bottom dimensions of your book.  I prefer not to cut any off the width of the contact paper, if only because of pure laziness. For this particular set of books I cut my contact paper at 10 inches by the width of the contact paper.

 Fold your contact paper a little off-center to accommodate for the spine.  (The bigger the spine the more off-center it should be.)

Peel away half of the contact paper to the crease. It will be easier if you only do a half at a time.

Use the fold line as a marker to align the spine of the book to the center of the contact paper.  Smooth out any air bubbles from the contact paper on the back of book.  This might require you to reposition the contact paper a bit.

 After smoothing, cut a slit a quarter inch (give or take) away from the spine on the top and bottom, as well as front and back of the book.  Leave those "tabs" for now.

It will look like this.

 Cut the corners out of the contact paper as shown above.

 Fold and smooth the top and bottom flaps to the inside of the book, 

making sure you crease the folds really well.

 Fold and smooth the side flap to the inside of the book,
making sure you crease the fold really well.

 Repeat the above steps for the other half of the contact paper.

Peel, cut slits, cut corners, crease and fold.

 When you are done you will have these little flaps left over near the spine.  

Now is the time to cut those off.

 

Here is what the inside of the book will look like when you are done

 

Congrats!

Now go enjoy your book! :)

Emily

All my books were thrifted for around $0.75 a book. Score!

It's a "Baby" Mini

When I first started doing swaps I found it kind of difficult to send off all my hard work to a perfect stranger knowing full well I'd never see my project again. (Anyone else feel the same??) So early on I made a personal goal to make "copies" of my work to keep for myself.  It makes for more work, for sure, but in the end makes it a whole lot easier for me to send off my work.  Besides, why should someone else have ALL my best work?

 In that spirit, here is the "baby" mini copy I made of my quilt from DQS13.

It measures a tiny 12" square.

Everything else is the same: fabrics, paper piecing, hand-stitching, backing, and binding.  

I love it just as much as the original! Though I have to admit that the reason it's smaller is because I couldn't stand the thought of paper-piecing any more blocks.  Twenty-five tiny blocks was enough!

Here is a little side-by-side comparison for your viewing pleasure.

 I plan on hanging it on my mini quilt wall in my sewing room next to this and this.  One day I hope to have a wall filled with beautiful mini's!  These make for a good start, don't ya think?

Sincerely,

Emily (the Mini Quilt Lover)

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See more mini quilt awesomeness on my Mini Love pinterest board as well as on the DQS flickr page.

A Queen-Sized Preview

Besides doll quilting, most of my January was spent turning this lovely stack of fabrics

into this MONSTER of a quilt for my daughter's new room.

She is ecstatic about how it's turning out, which you know, as a mother is all that really matters.  To top it off, in Math she has been learning about proportions and fractions via quilt blocks.  Awesome, right?!  My daughter was able to take in her quilt to show her class one day last week, which made her super happy.  Her teacher was very sweet and made a huge deal about it, even letting her take it around to the other 5th grade classes for some show and tell.
Teachers can be so awesome...  As can learning about fractions with quilts.

Emily

DQS 13

Today I am putting the finishing touches on my doll quilt swap package with the hope that I might actually be able to get it in the mail by the end of the day.

I'm always a little anxious about sending out my work to a total stranger because you never really know how it will be received by the recipient.  I'm crossing my fingers that I was able to capture all that my partner wanted in this little cutie.  I really like it, so I hope she does too.

 I decided to hand quilt again. 

 I really like the look of hand quilting, though it can be very time-consuming -- I'm a slow hand-quilter!  But working on these smaller scale projects let's me get some practice time in as well as letting me get my hand-stitch "fix".  Win-Win!  

Call me crazy, but I still have a desire to hand quilt an entire large quilt... Someday!

 This round I tried to be a little less boring and make a "fancy" label.  

(Names are blacked out to protect the innocent :) 

Some of the swap labels can be pretty amazing.
Mine never has been. 

So now that it's done, I'm off to wrap it up with some goodies and send it on it's way to *undisclosed location* while I'm forced to wait impatiently patiently for my mini to arrive.

Oh, the anticipation!

Emily

Previous post about this quilt here.

Block tutorial here. 
Linking up to Finish It Up Friday

Blushing Squares {A Finished Quilt}

The weather is wrecking havoc on my picture-taking these days.  We are finishing up an entire month of  hazy, snowy, cold January weather, which doesn't look to be changing any time soon.  I've been holding off taking pictures of my finished projects because they all turn out "blue" and weird-looking.  But it turns out that if I don't have any pictures, then I can't blog.

So, with the wind howling and the snow falling around me, today I am showing my "blue" weird-looking photos.  Hope you'll not be too critical. 

Without further ado, here is my finished Blushing Squares quilt.  

 It's been done since early December.

You'll have to click on this post to see it in all it's pre-winter prettiness.  I wanted you to see the light-colored border around each block but our yucky weather is not picking up any of the color details very well.  Boo!

 Once again, Lynn's quilting is amazing.

I gave her free reign and she did not disappoint.

 I had planned on using the remainder of the awesome bold pink stripe sheet that I used here for the back, but in the end used this (sorry, you can't really see it) tiny pink gingham sheet instead.  The other one would've required me to piece the back and I wasn't really in the mood.  Sometimes our choices are between two equally good things, huh?

The binding is some Amy Butler coriander that I reclaimed from a project of Leslie's wwaaayyyy back in the day. I'm not ashamed to admit that I totally cut up her skirt and used the fabric.  It was still in perfect shape!  Thanks, Les.

As for the recipient, originally I thought I might sell it, but a certain someone I know and love is having a girl in early summer, so I think I'll save it for her.  Can I get a cheer for baby gifts being done early?!  Hooray!

Hope your city is less "blue" than mine today!

Emily

Previous posts about this quilt are Here and Here.  Seems I've been working on this quilt for a very long time...

Scrapper's Delight -- A Bowtie Block Top

Over Christmas break I pulled out some UFO's and tried to make a little headway on them. 

First up were my bowtie blocks which have been sitting around for some time now.  

They were in various stages of completion and needed just a few final touches.

After cutting and sewing my little heart out, my blocks...

turned into this lovely top.

It's not the prettiest quilt I've ever made, but definitely a scrapper's delight.
I think it finishes somewhere in the neighborhood of twin sized.  That's seems to be my go-to-size as of late.  But since we like BIG quilts to snuggle with I'm sure no one will be complaining.

I have no idea how I will finish it off or who the recipient will be, so for now it will go into the closet until I figure that out.  But another WIP checked off the list. Yea!

 

Happy Scrapping!

Emily

P.S. Another round of the Bowtie Block Swap is going on now.  Check out the flickr page for sign-ups and details.

Block directions Here.

Looming Deadline = Productivity

I have to confess that I totally spaced the fact that the deadline for this round of the doll quilt swap is mere days away (Feb. 7) until I was perusing the flickr pool and saw that some people had already mailed their quilts off! Ack!  Since I hadn't started (beyond pulling fabrics and ideas) I sort of panicked there for a minute.  

So, last night as my family went off to sleep I sat down to "start" on my quilt, and... well...

I went a little crazy, burned the midnight oil and busted out the whole thing.  Today I'm paying the price for my lack of sleep, but ultimately I am happy to have it done.  Definitely a relief.

Here's what I made:

 I can't reveal too much about my partner, but suffice it to say she likes bright, saturated colors.  I'm guessing this will fit the bill.

I chose to do some mini paper piecing.  These blocks are a tiny 4" finished.
I had a bit of trouble lining up the points with my first couple blocks but after some trial and error was able to get them perfect.   Then it went pretty smoothly.  I am very happy with it!  I hope my partner is, too.  

Now I have to decide on quilting... and fast!
...I'm open to suggestions.

:)
Emily

block instructions found here