Hands 2 Help Link-up

Can it be June 2 already?  It's time for our Hands 2 Help linkup.

Both my quilts are done, and just came out of the dryer.  They're both really warm and cuddly!

The first quilt is Times Three, which will be going to Happy Chemo.

 

I couldn't seem to get the whole quilt into the picture, but you get the idea!  This quilt has lots of fun stuff for a little boy - robots, cars, cats, Pokemon and pirates.  I hope it makes some little boy's chemo a little easier.  It has flannel on the back, so it's pretty cuddly.

The second quilt is going to Quilters Without Borders.   This one is full of happy, bright dinosaurs.

I had some fun with free-motion quilting with variegated thread on this quilt.  It's not perfect, but this quilt won't fall apart!

So now I need to find boxes to pack these quilts up and send them off to the correct places.  This was a lot of fun again this year, so "thank you" to Sarah at Confessions of a Quilt Addict for putting this program together for us.

I have one other finish to show for May.  On the cruise last August, we started this wall hanging, called Friendship Garden.

I believe this pattern was in one of the recent issues of Primitive Quilts and Projects, also.  The piecing was pretty quick, as it used a jelly roll.  We also added wool appliques and English paper piecing.   It took me awhile to get it finished because I hand-quilted it.  I used to do a lot of hand-quilting, but I haven't done much for awhile, and I was a little rusty.  This wall-hanging brings back fond memories of the cruise.  This quilt is hanging in my sewing room.

Now I've got to get back out to the garden and devise some way to keep the critters away from my tomato plants. Spring has finally come to Wisconsin, and everything is planted, so the critter-watch has begun!

April Recap

Wow, April sure flew by me!  I didn't even get around to blogging once during the month, but now it's time for my April UFO recap and plans for May.

I got three of my plans for April completed - that's probably a record!

 

This dinosaur quilt is my second quilt for Hands 2 Help - this one is going to Quilters Without Borders.  It's a dinosaur panel in the middle, with some blocks added on top and bottom to make it the correct size.  I did a lot of free-motion quilting on this one, and a machine-applied border, so it should stand up to some wear and tear.  It's a lot cuter than this crooked picture shows!   It's completely done, but I think I need to add a label.  I'm calling it done anyway!

This Bricks and Cornerstones quilt is also quilted and bound.  This was a scrap quilt from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville, and I made it as part of our guild's retreat day in March.  It will be a donation quilt eventually, but I need to show it in the guild show next April.  I'm done a year in advance though!

And all the appliques are on My Favorite Things, all blanket stitched and ready to quilt.  I'm not sure whether this will be machine or hand quilted.  I love the way Linda machine quilted the model at the store, but I lack that talent, unfortunately. I may give it a whirl anyway. 

So, that's three of my April UFOs done!  I'm pretty happy about what I was able to finish in April, but things will probably come to a screeching halt quilt-wise now that spring is finally here.  We had a cold, wet April (like most of the country, I think), but this weekend has been beautiful.  I can't wait to get out and do some gardening, but that's still a few weeks away.  I did pick some chives from the garden tonight - they are always the first thing to come up, and it's so nice to have something fresh from the garden.

For May, my UFOs are:
1.  Keep quilting on the wall hanging from the cruise - no progress on that in April, other than hauling it on vacation and back.  It had a nice trip south to find spring - does that count for anything?
2.  Finish the cross-stitch pin keep - no progress on this either.
3.  Baste and quilt My Favorite Things wall hanging.
4.  Finish my last two blocks from last year's BOW from Primitive Gatherings, called Evelyn's Album.  Their Block of the Week usually starts in June, so it's time to get last year's done!

On our way back from vacation, I found a new-to-me quilt shop called Inspirations in Hills, Iowa.  It's a very cute shop featured in this year's Quilt Sampler magazine, which is just now available.  They were giving their customers a free template to cut shapes for a braid quilt from 2 1/2" strips, so I may have to try that out this month.  I have a lot of 2 1/2" strips left, even after several scrap quilts lately.  If you're anywhere close to Iowa City, it's worth it to check out this shop.

That's it for April!  See you in May.

 

End of March Update

This was a pretty productive month!  I always feel like I didn't accomplish much, but when I list it out, it's more than I thought.

For my March UFO goals, I made some progress:

1.  Finish Times Three Quilt - done.  This quilt is going to Hands2Help.

2.  Get Winter Wonderland put together - done.  This top is finished, and will be put away until fall and I will quilt it then.  I wish the words at the bottom showed up better in the picture - it says "warm winter wishes" and is fine in real life!

3.  Hand quilt the wall hanging from my cruise - This is started, and I will continue working on it in April.  Speaking of hand quilting, did you know that you can't buy 1" masking tape any more?  It's all .94", at least around here.  I guess it's not a huge problem, but I was surprised by the change.  I use masking tape a lot to avoid drawing lines when hand quilting.

4.  Finish appliques on my Favorite Things wall hanging - under way.  I'm still blanket stitching some of the appliques, but I think everything is on here now.  That big blank area on the right side says "quilting" so there really will be something there!  I added the Easter basket, a watermelon, a pincushion, a dog and cat, and my initials and date since last month.  I think I'm done adding things.

I also got all caught up on my Bee in My Bonnet row quilt.  This was a lot of fun to make.

I'm not loving the basket handles - they are brown and kind of jump out at me, so I'm thinking I'll make some yo-yo flowers and try to cover up part of them.  We'll see how that goes.  My tulips got cut off in the picture - they are one of my favorite parts!  One of the giveaway fabrics I won was perfect for the inner border.  I'm excited about the fact that I didn't buy anything for this quilt - everything came from my stash, which doesn't look depleted at all even after all this.


So, what to do for April?  Here are my goals:

1.  Quilt this dinosaur quilt for my second Hands2Help quilt.

2.  Quilt this Bricks and Cornerstones quilt.  This was made for my guild scrap quilting day, and I need to have it done for our show in May 2014, so no giant rush on this one.  I'm trying to avoid a giant rush next April, though.

3.  Finish hand quilting the cruise wall hanging.
4.  Finish the appliques on my Favorite Things wall hanging.

5.  Finish this cross stitch pinkeep.  The cross stitching is done, and it just needs to be assembled.  See the little wool thing in the upper left corner?  That's a pinch coin purse that was our guild project one month - that got done in March, also.  It's the perfect size for carrying a spool of thread, thimble and little scissors.  Mine is wool lined with homespun.

That's all -  LOL.  I need to get these done in April, because when May gets here and our snow is finally gone, I'm going outside and staying there until September! The snow has been melting, but not fast enough to suit me.  I'm very envious of the flowers showing up on some of the blogs.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hands2Help

Have you heard of Hands2Help?  It's a charity project coordinated by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  She has chosen two awesome charities this year - Happy Chemo and Quilts Beyond Borders.  With Hands2Help, you sign up now, make your quilt, and send it off to the charity by June 2.  Easy, peasy and a great way to help others.  Sarah has linky parties, tutorials for easy quilts and even prizes a couple times during the spring to keep us all on track!  The signup is going on this week here.   You can sign up after this week, but Sarah is offering a prize to someone who signs up now.

This is the third year I've participated, and I plan to make a quilt for each charity.  I'm happy to announce that one is already done:

This is Times Three, and it was one of my March UFOs, and it is done, quilted and bound and ready to go!  This is a fun quilt for a little boy - it even has Pokemon in it

Is Pokemon still popular?  He sure was when my kids were little, but that's been awhile now!  Probably time I use up this fabric.  This quilt is going to Happy Chemo.

For Quilts Beyond Borders, I'm making this quilt

This was a fun panel, and I added a row of blocks on the top and bottom to make it the right size.  It's going to be really cute once it's quilted.  This quilt is going onto my April UFO list, so I can get the quilting and binding done.

So, if you have time to make a charity quilt, this is a great chance to do it and a great group of people to do it with!  Signups are going on here.

What a Great Week!

This has been a great week at Troublesome Creek Quilts!  Last Saturday, I came home to find a wonderful package from Dee at Mike and Gabby.   She's been having a series of giveaways, and I was a lucky winner.   Look what was in my package - wonderful spring fabrics!

I just love these pretty Moda fabrics.  The red rickrack will make a wonderful binding.  These are some fabrics I didn't already have in my stash, so I will enjoy using them, and they brought a welcome spot of color to dreary Wisconsin.  I can't wait to start something with them.  Thanks for your generosity, Dee!

And then on Wednesday, I came home to find a package from Buttermilk Basin - I was a winner in her giveaway, too!  This box contained some fantastic goodies...

The pink stripe is a kitchen towel, with a pattern and wool and floss to put the rabbit on it, and some great green rickrack to finish it with.  And this yummy bundle of wools, an Easter pattern, and even a chocolate rabbit.  I was already a big fan of Buttermilk Basin; I love her wool and stitchery patterns and have made quite a few of them over the years.  Thanks, Staci - I'm looking forward to making some fun Easter things, but I'd better get going, hadn't I?  I think it's only about 3 weeks until Easter.

I've been working on my March UFOs, but don't have a lot of new progress to show yet.  Hopefully I'll have a mid-month update.

So that's my week - it was a good one!

End of February Update

Well, I sure didn't get all my UFOs done this month - how about you?  I'm OK with February being a short month (a few days less of winter!), but it seemed to fly by.

I did finish one of my projects - this Girl Gang lap quilt started in 2002.  That's the only one of my UFOs that got done, though.

I got distracted by this other UFO:

I came across this in my sewing room and thought I'd better get it together before I lose all the parts and pieces.  I started this a couple winters ago, and the store where I got it has gone out of business, so I'm out of luck if I need more fabric for it.   It was already cut out and fused, so it just needs the stitching finished. (Oh, yeah, and sewn together, and quilted, and bound.)  It's going on the March UFO list!  I've made good progress on it already.

And I've been seeing all those cute row quilts from Bee In My Bonnet on everyone's blogs, so I just had to start that last week.  I'm months behind, but should be able to catch up.  Here's the progress so far:

This is in bright, happy fabrics so it's fun to work on in between my others.  I'm enjoying sewing this one.

So, here's the UFO list to work on for March (looks a lot like the February list)

1.  Finish quilting and binding the Times Three quilt.  The quilting is done, and the binding is made, so a couple hours ought to finish this one.

2.  Finish the applique on my Favorite Things wall hanging (also from last month).  I  did add a couple more things this month, but don't have a new picture of it.

3.  Hand quilt the wall hanging started on the cruise - no progress on this in February.

4.  Finish the Warm Winter Wishes Block a Month shown above.

Also, keep working on the Row Quilt, but that's a new project, not a UFO.

So that's my plan for March!  We have a guild sewing day on Saturday, so I'll no doubt have to start something new for that.  At least I'll never run out of UFOs!

A Great Week!

This was a great week, quilting-wise.  I won a giveaway on Amy Bradley's blog last week, and my prize came in the mail Tuesday.  This box came at the perfect time - we had another snowstorm Tuesday and opening this box was definitely the high point of my week.  Look at all the wonderful things she sent!

 This cute baby panel from her Bundle of Joy line, and...

the pattern for the Babies quilt, along with two fat quarters of each of these wonderful fabrics, also from her Bundle of Joy line from Timeless Treasures.  I just love the stripe, and the dots and babies are great, too.  This quilt is so cute, I think I'm going to have to make the big quilt, as well as make a quilt with the panel. 

Here's a picture of the full quilt.  This pattern is made with fusible web and machine blanket stitching, and the pattern has full size pattern sheets and very detailed instructions - it looks like it will be so much fun.  Thank you so much for this generous giveaway prize, Amy - I can't wait to get started on this.  Be sure to go to her website and look at all the fun patterns she creates.  She has a great sense of humor, and it shows in her patterns.

I bought another pattern by Amy Bradley a few years ago at the Chicago Quilt Show, and jumped into making it right away.  This is called Kitty City.   I had lots of fun collecting bright fabrics for this quilt.  Here's the top half:

  and here's the bottom half.

This is a pretty big quilt, so I couldn't get it all in one picture.  The cats all had cute names.  I think this one was Mona:

and this is Slim:

It's hard to see in the picture, but these are all machine blanket stitched with black thread.  It was so much fun to choose all the different fabrics for this one.  She has a quilt with dogs, too, that is really cute, and is on my someday list, as is a wall hanging of cows in swimming trunks. 

Mother Nature has cooperated fully with my wish to stay inside and quilt lately, with two snowstorms this week.  I'm ready to be done with that now!  Today was sunny and had a hint of spring in the air, despite the foot of snow still on the ground. 

I'm making progress on my February UFOs and will show some of that later this week.  Thanks for stopping by!