Little Finish -- Happy Hearts Mini

I finished another little mini monthly wall hanging for my office! And I got it done just in time to hang it up for February!

Like its "mama bear" wall hanging that will get hung up at our apartment this weekend, this one has hot pink outer blocks and light pink inner blocks.

Instead of doing one large patchy heart, I decided to do three smaller hearts in red.

For the quilting, I did FMQ with simple diagonally directed loop-de-loops.

This one also has a mini-sleeve for hanging. I use an unsharpened pencil to hang it (and it's snowman friend) on two push pins on my bulletin board.

Its 9.5" by 12.5" finished!

For those of you interested in the Quilter's Choice Quilt Along for this year -- the information is available on the "QCQAL -- Row Quilt Edition" Tab or you can pop over to Craftsy and download the info sheet for free! It includes directions on how to pre-cut your sashing strips from yardage so you won't have to piece them!

Lately...catching up!

The rough thing about working two jobs and trying to keep up with this blog hasn't been the loss of sewing time (for the most part) but has been the loss of good picture taking hours due to being gone during all the good hours!

I finally got some sewing and picture taking time in yesterday so I'm here to share some updates!

My scrappy neighborhood has grown from five houses to ten!

The bad news is that I've exhausted my light blue fabrics, that is, at least those with pieces big enough to make a whole house. I'm not quite sure what this says about me as a quilter.

I've also been starting to get my January 2015 Stash Bee blocks in the mail! I made the four little blocks you see in the upper right and left hand corners and I think I will need to make a few more small stars as well once I get the rest of the blocks from my hive mates.

I'm very happy with all of the blocks overall! Lots of light blue so far (go figure!) and some beautiful blues!

I also have finished the top of my Wishes Quilt!

I loved being able to use lots of scraps for the border! I have about a fat quarter left of each fabric, so I am trying to figure out if I can use the fabric to make a scrappy backing for this quilt.

Don't forget to nominate your favorite blocks for our QCQAL round 2! Check out more information about the QCQAL here!

Today both Park Ranger Husband and I are on snow day so I'll hopefully be getting some more sewing time in today! (After I clean the kitchen...maybe.)

Happy Sewing!

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday and Linky Tuesday!

It's coming...QCQAL 2

Back by popular demand, we are hosting another Quilter's Choice Quilt Along (QCQAL) and this time the quilt will be a row quilt!

Good row quilts have a mixture of block sizes so I have designed the throw sized quilt to have 8 rows: two rows each in four different sizes: 12", 8", 6", and 4". All of the rows will be 48" long.

For the twin sized quilt, the rows will be 72" long and some of your rows will be repeated (or you can choose another block in the same size to make your additional row. The twin sized quilt will have three 12" rows, three 8" rows, two 6" rows, and three 4" rows.

Approximate Fabric Requirements:

For throw sized quilt: 2 yards background, 2 yards focus fabrics
For large twin sized quilt: 4 yards background, 4 yards focus fabrics

New rows will be posted on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of each month.

Schedule:

February 16th: 12 inch row poll opens, fabric pull link up
March 2nd: 12 inch row #1 posted, 8 inch row poll opens
March 16th: 12 inch row #2 posted, 12 inch rows link up
April 6th: 8 inch row #1 posted, 6 inch row poll opens
April 20th: 8 inch row #2 posted, 8 inch rows link up
May 4th: 6 inch row #1 posted, 4 inch row poll opens
May 18th: 6 inch row #2 posted, 6 inch row link up
June 1st: 4 inch row #1 posted
June 15th: 4 inch row #2 posted, 4 inch row link up
July 6th: Sewing rows together, finished top link up

A Tiny Snowman and a Curious Bunny

It seems like my scraps are multiplying faster than I can tame them so I decided that in addition to making my calendar wall hangings for in my dining room, I wanted to make tiny versions for my desk at work.

Unsurprisingly, this came together ridiculously quickly and I don't have any in progress pictures. Oops.

The background squares are 2 inches unfinished and the finished size is 9 1/2 by 12 1/2 inches!

The slightly frustrating thing was that it is ever, ever so slightly too big to bind with one width-of-fabric strip! I had to add about 4 inches to get it all the way around the little man.

In the meantime, I've started a tiny February wall hanging and am continuing to work on some more tiny houses (which you might be able to spot in the below pictures). I have been making an utter mess of the dining room and Clara the Bunny has decided that she must inspect everything.

For the first time she got brave and tried to run off with a charm square and in the process nibbled the corner off of it. Cotton is a natural fiber, right?

Linking up at Fabric Tuesday and Linky Tuesday!

January Stash Bee Blocks -- for ME!

The new round of The Stash Bee has started and it is my month to be Queen Bee!

For my block, I asked everyone to make nested sawtooth star blocks. My inspiration comes mainly from this quilt:

(original website here)

I love the look of the nestled stars and the mix of large and small stars together.

For my color scheme, here are my inspiration "tiles" (taken from Paper Source):

Here's my original pull from my stash:

Here's two examples of 16.5" nestled star blocks:

And here's an example of four 8.5" stars sewn together into one 16.5" block:

Here's the two test blocks that I made: (I have fabric for one more block cut out that isn't finished yet -- I will update this when I finish it!)

A few people have already made their stars! You can see them here, here, and here! I am very excited to see the rest of them and to start getting them in the mail!