Valentine Project

I was inspired by Valentine's day happening recently to create a little project to use up some scraps. It's fun to put these doodads together for the girls that come to my class, and this small quilt was no exception.

Once again, some of these fabrics are from deep stash. A bunch of the pink scraps are from a very early quilt I made for Amy. The pink and red shirting fabric was one I bought from Carolea's Knitche in Sunnyvale on an early trip to the USA. Now I'm guessing that Carolea's has been closed for more than 10 years. Gosh that was a fabulous shop.

All that's left to do on this little one is to stitch the binding down on the reverse side, and I'll do that after tennis on Wednesday. I pretty much have my whole week scheduled out - it's amazing how busy life gets, and how fast it happens ... not complaining, just saying!

It's almost time to pick the little (but much taller than me) guy up from school, so I better dash. Chatter soon! xox

I dropped the ball for a bit ...

At the start of the year I had such plans to stitch for at least 15 mins a day, keep on top of being organised around the house, and a few other health related things. Can I tell you that the very day that Camo returned to school and all the other tennis commitments kicked in, I totally dropped the ball!

Ugh, this was not how I hoped things would be. I'm not saying that my home has turned into a cesspool, it's still tidy - and I'm keeping it that way, but I had grand plans to do more decluttering - and I'll still get there - I guess just at a slower pace.

My 15 minutes of stitching each day has amounted to a little unstitching at quilt group last week, and today I stitched a couple of blocks together to see how they look. But, I'm not going to beat myself up about this - and I resolve to do better going forward!

I will share something amazing (IMHO) that happened this week:

My mind just couldn't shift from the Civil War Dressing Gown fabric that I really wanted to use in my Phebe project. And I think the reason I just didn't like any other fabric in it's place is that I really was hooked on that darned elusive print. Here's the one I wanted in case you didn't see it earlier on my blog:

Because it's a real oldie, I knew I had little hope of finding it, but in a last ditch effort to hunt some down, I sent out an appeal to my buddies on Facebook. Well, let me tell you that my quilting friends came thru in the best way. A lovely local friend Julie has some that we think is a 100% match, and if that doesn't work out, sweet Rosemary Youngs has offered me some from her stash. My goodness I am blessed with the most lovely friends.

So, this evening I decided to put a couple of blocks together to see how it'll look. Oh my goodness wouldn't it be ironic if after all that hunting I didn't like the fabric?!? Never fear, I'm really pleased with it, and the next step was to decide on a fabric for the cornerstones.

Now the cornerstones are really quite tiny - 1 inch cut, so therefore half inch finished squares. At first I thought I'd use red, but realised they'd be abutting the red sawtooth border. In the end, I went deep stash, and found this little pretty:

I have no clue how long it's been in my stash or from where it came, but isn't it lovely? There is only a fat quarter, but I will only need about half of it with such tiny pieces.

So here is a quick picture of how just a few of the blocks, sashing strips and a cornerstone look when stitched together:

I am super happy with how this came together- and though the cornerstone fabric looks really bright when you look at the fat quarter by itself, its actually quite subtle when you see that little piece just there. I'm really happy with how the piecing looks, yay!

I don't know that I've done any more with the applique on the Phebe project since I checked in last, but it's my plan to get some more done tomorrow, so I'll check in with you soon! xox