Stacked Strips

My husband's annual Navy "Hawkeye Ball" was this past Saturday. I made a quilt to donate for a raffle benefitting the VVOSA. This year we raised a total of $4000! 

I made this quilt, start to finish, in TWO days! I did use a jelly roll so that helped. But I had a heck of a time squaring it up. 

Fabric: SoHo Chic by Sandy Gervais

Backing fabric is a print I picked up from Joann's since this fabric wasn't out yet in yardage yet.

Measures: 67"x79" (approx. I forgot to write the actually finished dimensions down)

One of my friends won it so I was happy!

Chevrons, Baby!

My sister wants a Chevron quilt for Christmas. So with the help of Crystal, she designed a pattern for me. I decided to make a "practice" quilt before I tackled a large queen sized one! Problem was that I'm not too bright and I read it wrong and cut all the wrong sizes of each strip of fabric. So I then had to add another row and play around with it a bit. 

After I was about 1/2 way through it I found out one of my husband's cousins is having a baby girl and her shower was in a week. So I cranked it out and got it mailed to her in time. Ended up working out perfect! 

A Quilt of Valor...Spreading the word for a fellow quilter...

Would you like to make a block or two for a good cause? Here's your chance!

Please read this post. I plan on sending a few blocks myself!

Looks like she needs blocks for the red,white, and blue quilt for the Quilt of Valor and also some blocks for quilts for his girls!  

http://www.scrappythreads.blogspot.com/2013/09/quilt-of-valor.html

One Panel done!

I finished and hung one of my curtain panels. I was going to make 4 but now I'm only thinking two because if I hang all four on this one wall I'm afraid too much of the window will be covered and we will lose all the great light. 

Anyway, here's the one finished and I love it. My husband loves it too. He said it looks like Stained Glass. 

Pasta!

I am by no means some wonderful cook/chef.

But when I come across a recipe that is REALLY good, I like to share it! 

This is one of those.

One Pot Tomato, Basil Pasta. Recipe found here.

My only alterations were that I added more basil (fresh from my garden, I might add!) and 1-2 cups of grape tomatoes cut in half lengthwise (in addition to the can of stewed tomatoes). Actually, the recipe may call for diced tomatoes but all I had were stewed so I broke them up a little when I added them to the pot. Oh and I used linguini for the pasta. 

Topped it with some shaved parmesan.....DIVINE! 

Almost one with one panel

12" to go on the bottom and panel #1 of 4 will be done! 

I'm loving these! Can't wait to get them up in the house!

What I'm working on

Curtain Panels! 

This is 1/3 of one panel and I need to make FOUR! I'm using the Bojagi Method and Crystal has a great tutorial found here.

I am in LOVE with this so far. It's a lot of work, but I know in the end it will be so worth it! 

Long Overdue!

I've had this quilt done for a while. I even mailed it and it was received a while ago! 

I love these colors and I'll be working with them again someday. My youngest wants one "just like it".

I attempted the "Dogwood Quilting Pattern". It turned out pretty bad, but thankfully after a wash and dry it wasn't too noticeable. I need way more practice, but it was fun trying something new. 

I moved successfully from Newport, RI to Southern, CA. I'm still getting settled and have a few more boxes to go. But my next big project is 4 panels of Bojagi curtains for our family room!  Mine will be in big blocks. I can't wait to get started on these! School starts the end of August and I'll have more time with both kiddos in school. YAY!!

fabric cut for next quilt..

(excuse the picture...it was taken with my phone)

FINALLY making a quilt with my favorite colors! I've been wanting to make a purple, green and blue quilt for ages now. I finally get to because a friend is having a baby soon and those were the colors she picked! I know when my girls see the finished quilt they are going to want one too, since purple is both of their favorite colors. I cut enough for a baby quilt and hopefully enough for 2 kid sized lap quilts...but we'll see..they may have to wait on theirs.

6 more weeks in RI and then we're moving to CA! Can you tell I'm excited?

Butterfly Quilt

I started this quilt in 2009 or 2010. It's not that it was hard or anything, I just got unmotivated to work on it. It was one of my very first fabric purchases I ever made. I bought a bunch of charm packs of Butterfly Fling by Me and My Sisters Designs. I think I bought it because at the time my oldest daughter loved butterflies. She was around 5... She's 9 now....her tastes have changed. But luckily I have a 4 1/2 year old that saw this and went crazy saying how she wanted it. So, I finished it up and now the little one has a new quilt. She's been carting it up and down the stairs everyday. She goes to bed with it on her bed at night and then brings it down with her in the morning. It's big too! 

It measures 62"x72"

Queen sized blue & green

One of my good friends requested a queen sized quilt made with the blues and greens of the Nicey Jane line. I'm finally running low on what I had but thankfully I have lots of other blues and greens. So I made her a basic patchwork quilt that was 90"x90". I think my squares were 10" finished. I gave it to her a while ago and she is a photographer so I told her she has to take the pics of it for me. ;) 

We went out yesterday and she took some family pictures for us since my hubby is home for 2 weeks before he moves to CA while we wait until June to join him. Anyway...it was SUPER windy, so we were unable to take pictures of it laying down on the rocks. We tried and as soon as we'd step back away from it, the wind would whip it up. SO frustrating! I couldn't even hold it up for pictures because it's so big and then wind was blowing it everywhere. So I ended up wrapping it around me and she took some pics of that! 

And here's our family picture. We didn't have much luck with these. My youngest hates pictures and the wind was bad and it was cold. But this one turned out pretty good!

Newport, RI (not sewing related!)

It's starting to dawn on me that I only have a few more months here in Newport. We've had a rough winter this year and though some of it was miserable, I'm sort of glad I got to experience it. 

Anyway, I've been driving around trying to get a few photos of my favorite places here in town. Thought I'd share some of them!

 This is a shot from the rugby field behind our house, looking across the water. This was taken after one of our first big snows.

Sachuset Beach (Third Beach) just after a morning dusting of snow.

 Chateau Sur-Mer

 The gate going into The Breakers

 The Breakers

Rosecliff Mansion

I went for a walk yesterday to Castle Hill Inn

This was taken this past October here at Fort Adams where I live. This is a usual siting here at the Fort in the Fall and then all through the Summer months. Always at least two cruise ships parked in the water right where I live. It's pretty neat to see but I'll tell you, living in a tourist town isn't that great! I hate the traffic and pedestrian traffic and I'm sorry to say this but most people are idiots. (that was really mean, I know! But it's super irritating to see people that act like fools because they are "on vacation" and think they don't need to follow traffic laws, lights, and direction.

Anyway, those are a few of my memories here in Newport. I may post more pictures again before I move in June. 

Lil' Rascals

One of the Military Wives that lives in the community I do is having a baby in a couple weeks. She's having a boy and I happened to have a jelly roll of Lil' Rascals. So I decided to make a simple patchwork quilt for her.

Then there was enough left over to make a matching doll quilt for the soon to be Big Sister.

Baby Quilt measures 39"x46"
Doll Quilt measures 19"x22"

binding

Just working on some binding. I'm trying real hard to get back into this quilting thing. I do have a few projects started, it's now just a matter of finishing them up!

Cowboy Quilt

Another one of my husband's cousins is having a baby. They are doing the whole room cowboy themed and thankfully I already had some fabric I'd been dying to use for a while. 

Fabric is Lil' Cowpokes and Lil' Cowgirl by Michael Miller. And there are some other fabrics from my stash thrown in there. It's kinda busy, but I like it. It's comprised of 10" blocks of the featured fabric (Lil' cowpokes) and then 16 - 2.5" (finished) squares of patchwork making a 10" block. 

Snowflakes....

I am in awe.

This has to be one of the most prettiest things I've ever seen in real life.

The wonder of a snowflake.

True beauties of Nature.

 

Sewing again

As some of you know that have been following me for a while, my hubby is in the Navy. Well this past year he's been at the Naval War College in Newport, RI so he's been a full time student and home all the time with no deployments. We've had a ton of family time and I've pretty much done very little sewing in the past year and a half. He left the beginning of January to go to a Safety School course in FL for a month and then 3 months in VA to re-qualify in his plane. Then he will move back to CA and we will join him in June when school is out. 

So now that he's gone, I've been sewing again! I completed a baby quilt in about 2 days but I can't post pictures of it yet since it's a gift. I'll be mailing it this week and the baby shower is in February, so I'll post pics after.

Last night I sewed these lovelies together...

And created a 90"x90" quilt top!

Then when I was all done sewing for the night, this is what my back yard looked like...

When i woke up in the morning, I was so glad I had my new Jeep that my hubby bought me for my Birthday back in November!

Have a wonderful week and I hope to be a bit more regular on my blog. I've got lots of OLD wips I'd like to finish up!