Rose-Colored Glasses Blog Hop

Oh, I do love a blog hop! A chance to look up from my pile of UFO’s and say, “Squirrel!”

The amazing Carol over at Just Let Me Quilt is your travel planner/cat herder for this hop and she is just amazing! Many thanks for all you do, Carol!

I, on the other hand, have not been amazing lately. I had Covid back in December which left me feeling pretty yucky but apparently my body didn’t get the memo that we didn’t like that because Covid made a return visit in March! (Before you ask, yep, vaccinated, yep, careful about where I go and, until recently, pretty consistent with masking.)

But, back to the important part…pink! (OK, so it says rose but rose is just another shade of PINK!) I really, really, really love pink! It is my all-time favorite color. I love it in all it’s shades from the palest blush pink to the deepest fuschia. So, I decided to pull fabrics from my stash to celebrate my favorite color. My plan was to make a trip around the world with these but I’m afraid I only got as far as the fabric pull and the strips.

I did finish this one up a bit ago and, despite the emphasis on the Emerald City, it has a lovely note of pink in it!

I really need to find a new set up for photographing my quilts…or ask the neighbors if we can extend the fence.

Since this seemed like a very miserly amount of pink to show you, I thought I’d show you a few more of my pink or pink-adjacent projects. This one was from Project Quilting this year and I never did get a full picture of it. I had such fun digging in my stash for a variety of pinks for this!

I’ve put together a little gallery of some of my quilts that were pink, pink adjacent or just had a sneaky peek of pink in there somewhere. I even added a picture of the office chair that we reupholstered for my sewing room in, you guessed it, pink! With any luck, I’ll find my sew-jo here quickly and you’ll see a rosy round the world soon!

Made with inspiration fabric from guild and donated back to guild.

“Big and Little” – a pair of charity quilts.

Please hop on over to the other participants and see what they are showing this week. There is so much talent in this group!

MAY 15^TH

Just Let Me Quilt

Selina Quilts

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

That Fabric Feeling

Days Filled With Joy

Words & Stitches

MAY 16^TH

Sew Many Yarns

Quilt Schmilt

Podunk Pretties

Quilted Snail

Quilting Gail

Texas Quilt Gal

MAY 17^TH

Inflorescence

Scrapdash

Karrin’s Crazy World

Beaquilter

Crazy’boutquilts

The Crafty Grammie

MAY 18^TH

MooseStashQuilting

Just Because Quilts

Quilted Delights

Vroomans Quilts

Karen’s Korner

Ms P Designs USA

Happy Quilting!

Beth

Little Green Apples Sew It-Show I

So, when I heard about a blog hop celebrating green I started to think Emerald City! I have this collection of Wizard of Oz fabric that has been waiting around for it’s time in to come out and shine! (Actually, I had such fun using up the entire “Little Women” bundle that I was itching to repeat the process!) I was casting around my brain for a fast and fun pattern to work these up in when I decided that it was time to revisit “Trip Around the World” which was one of my earliest quilts and one I’ve never repeated. I found a great free pattern on Bonnie Hunter’s website. I started playing and arranging my fabrics until I decided on this…

The accuquilt made quilt work of cutting my 3.5″ strips.

Hmmmm…it’s not quite as green as I thought it would be…but I like it.

Now, funny story about this green…my bundle was half-yard pieces but I found another 2-yard piece of this green at a thrift store. I looked all over the sewing room for that piece and came up empty. Then, when I was working on my final PQ quilt, there it was! Like the fabric fairies were just playing tricks on me! Or, the quilting leprechauns decided to do me a favor for National Quilting Day.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get as far on my project as I wanted (in part because the 22nd is not the 23rd and should not be thought of as such) so here’s a peak at the quarter section. My plan is to add a border of the green Emerald City print and a green binding.

Lots of thanks to Carol for putting this together! I’m exited to finish this up and see what lies a bit further along the yellow brick quilt road!

In the meantime, Milo has taken to the quilt from my husband’s shirts. He seems pretty content and I’m excited to see how the next one will come out.

Be sure to check out the rest of the terrific quilters on the hop!

MARCH 20

Just Let Me Quilt

Quilt Schmilt

Quilting Gail

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

DesertSky Quilting

Days Filled With Joy

Kathy’s Kwilts and More

Sew Many Yarns

MARCH 21

Creatin’ in the Sticks

Quilted Delights

Karrin’s Crazy World

For The Love Of Geese

Vroomans Quilts

Quilted Snail

Homespun Hannah’s Blog

The Joyful Quilter

MARCH 22

Inflorescence

Ms P Designs USA

Words & Stitches

The Crafty Grammie

Beaquilter

Texas Quilt Gal

Pinker n’ Punkin Quilting & Stitching

MARCH 23

Moosestash Quilting

Patchwork Breeze

Crazy’boutquilts

Selina Quilts

Samelia’s Mum

Just Because Quilts

Scrapdash

That Fabric Feeling

PQ 14.6 Facing Your Fears

Often, I need a day or two to come up with an idea to suit the challenge but this week’s prompt about facing your fears resonated on the second idea. I usually toss around ideas for the first and second day,  then get down to sewing.

My first thought was fusible applique.. this technique really scares me! But my next thought was of another project that has been lurking in my sewing room. I put my late husband’s shirts away with the intention to make quilts for the girls and me and, honestly it’s been hard to think of taking scissors to them. Of course,  it’s another late  night finish so here’s a quick late-night picture of with Milo making an appearance. I think he approves!

More in the morning! So, here’s the better picture…

The wind was gusting just enough to make getting a photo tricky and Milo has apparently bonded with this one! Although,  when asked,  I’ve always said that the cats’ favorite quilt is always the one I’m currently working on. The pattern is Scrappy Mountain Majesty which is a free pattern at Bonnie Hunter’s Quiltville website.

The back is yardage that was earmarked for another shirt.

I’m glad I had the PQ challenge to push me along it this.  It was a tough emotional project but I love the end result. It’s been a great season of Project Quilting and I’m grateful for all of Kim and Trisha’s work to put this together!

Happy quilting,

Beth

Dust Off a Book

Bea from BeaQuilter invited a bunch of bloggers to dust off a quilt book and play! Well, dust was a literal thing when I took a deep dive into my bookcase and looked for a book. After I finished sneezing, I landed on the very first quilt book I owned. (Not this copy…I actually had one of the comb bound editions that were among the first ones.) I had recently done a log cabin for the “Novel” challenge and was reminded how much I love log cabins. I made my first quilt using Eleanor Burn’s Log Cabin Quilt in a day in the early 80’s. I wish I could show it to you…it was soooo bad! Suffice it to say that my color sense and sewing skills have come a long way since then! I had been eyeing up a pile of nice browns and tans and wanted to give them a place to live. I added a bit of red for the center and some blues for the other side and I’m loving how it’s coming out. Unfortunately, I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. There are 25 blocks in various stages of done-ness and just not enough hours in the week!

In my first log cabins, the style was six colors and a center square. Now, I’m pretty much in love with a scrappy approach. My “novel” log cabin used one fat quarter pack of “Little Women” fabric and I simply sorted the fabrics between light and dark.

The great thing about log cabin is how many variations there are…this is another scrappy version of the quarter log cabin.

Be sure to hop on over to the rest of this talented group and be sure to thank Bea for pulling all this quilty goodness together!

Happy Quilting!

Beth

March 6th

Quilting at the Farm

Lemon Tree Snippets

Creatin in the sticks

Natalie (on Beaquilter)

March 7th

Quilting Gail

Thrift Shop Commando

High Road Quilter

Moosestashquilting

March 8th

Kathleen McMusing

Words & Stitches

Isabella’s Whimsy

DesertSky Quilting

March 9th

LC’s Cottage

Cynthia’s Ark

Ms P Designs USA

March 10th

Beaquilter

Karrin’s Crazy World

Quilting Patchwork Applique

Julie’s Quilts and Costumes

PQ 14.5 – Sew not a Square!

This week’s challenge was to make a quilt with no squares and that didn’t end up to be a square. I had such fun using up a cute fabric bundle with the last challenge that I decided to do it again. A friend who is excellent at scouting thrift stores and garage sales had brought me this little gem and I decide that this was the time to use it.

I wasn’t sure where I was going with this but I got out the accuquilt and cut the entire collection into 1/4-square triangles. My original thought was to do something with flying geese. Then I changed gears and decided to make the triangles into squares – after all, they’re still triangles.

I spent a fair amount of time debating background and layout. I had 50 blocks and no really solid idea…I just kept coming back to a quilt that was a PQ fail…I didn’t end up with time to finish because my daughter had routine surgery that ended up requiring a second emergency surgery and an overnight stay. I really loved it and finished it up later. Recently, I hung it in my cubicle at work.

I decided to recreate this with my triangles but had to do some seriously fancy footwork to stick to using only rectangles to set the triangle units in place. Retangles were allowed but no squares. (I don’t see the triangle units as squares since they’re really just a bunch of triangles getting friendly.)

I just managed to keep to the brief and the quilt is barely rectangular finishing at 54×60. I’d really love to try this one again in a bigger version. I think this could be a really fun bed-sized quilt.

As usual, this is a late night finish so I’ll add a better photo tomorrow.

Happy Quilting!

Beth

Sweet on You

The Sweet on You hop is this week and I was inspired to dig out a UFO that was in desparate need of a rescue! With one thing and another, aka Project Quilting (see my last post for the challenge quilt), I didn’t get the binding on yet but I’m excited to see this little quilt rescued from the “what the heck was I thinking pile.” I made this quilt back before 1996 and then something happened.

I suspect it was a cat vomit incident but some kind of spill caused me to wash the quilt top…in a washing machine. Long story short….the edges frayed horribly and the top needed some serious TLC. I kept sort of moving it to the “later” pile and this hop made me move it up to the top of the pile. Quilt projects are so very patient, aren’t they? My original thought was to take the cone blocks apart and make a super cute birthday cake block I’d seen and surround it with ice cream. But, for whatever reason, my younger self used a seriously small stitch length so I decided to try to rescue the whole thing instead.

The first thing I did was remove the old borders and fix a few little frayed spots. Then, I added new borders (thanks to my oldest for spotting the colorful border in the stash.) A bit of Frankenbatting and a quick seam to size up some leftover backing and, voila! Not bad for a very old UFO. Thank you sew much to Joan at Moosestache Quilting for putting together such a sweet week!

Be sure to check out all the other sweet offerings from the rest of the very talented bloggers!

Monday Feb 20

MooseStashQuilting

Karrin’s Crazy World

Quilted Delights

Selina Quilts

Sew Cute and Quirky

Days Filled With Joy 

Scrapdash

Tuesday Feb 21

Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting

Creatin’ in the Sticks

Quilt Schmilt

Ms P Designs USA

The Crafty Grammie

Vroomans Quilts 

Words and Stitches

Wednesday Feb 22

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilting Gail

Just Because Quilts

Bea Quilter

Samelias Mum

Kathy’s Kwilts and More

Lynns Blog

Thursday Feb 23

Just Let Me Quilt

crazy’bout quilts

Quiltery-For the Love of Geese

Pinker n’ Punkin Quilting & Stitching

Inflorescence

Purring Cottage

PQ 14.4 “Novel”

Sometimes the quilting starts just align.   When we were in Vegas (more on that later),  I discovered there was a “Little Women” fabric line from Riley Blake.  I’m actually named after the Beth in Louisa May Alcott’s classic story.   My mom always thought it was terribly unfair that Beth died.  Hence my name which is,  incidentally,  just “Beth”.  My mom didn’t like the other derivatives of Eliabeth.  

Anyway,  how often do you see fabric from the novel that gave you your name?  Of course I got an entire fat quarter bundle!

When the challenge was announced,  my brain went right to that bundle.  I turned to the internet and only found one quilt made with this line…a chunky log cabin.   Then I talked that the Log Cabin Quilt in a Day book was my first quilt book…. what a perfect pairing….one of my earliest novels with my earliest quilt book!

I cut the entire stack into 2.5 inch strips with my trusty accuquilt.

Then,  I started building scrappy blocks.  I mostly used light fabrics on one side and dark on the other. Some fabrics were wobblers so they show up as different values in different blocks.

I quilted this with flowers and loops,  freehand,  on my Qu,nique 21 pro. The flowers were a new one for me and I’m excited about how they came out.

I used a dark blue binding as a nod to Louisa’s service as a nurse in the Civil War. And here it is…bad lighting and all!

It measures 72×72 and I’m so pleased with it…who knows how long that fabric would have been on the shelf without this challenge?

Happy quilting!

Beth

PQ 14.3 – Fifty-four Forty or Fight

The challenge this week for Project Quilting ws the traditional block 54-40 or Fight. There’s a great history of the block on the Persimmon Dreams blog. It’s a block I’ve always liked, especialy the optical illusion of curves created when you use an alternate block. I had a fasle start with this one, I actually starting cutting out a different size block from other fabrics but it wasn’t sparking any joy. My friend found a photo online of a very scrappy version and I decided to scale down to 9 inch finished blocks. Primarly, I did this so I could use both my Accuquilt cutter and my Bonnie Hunter “Scrap User’s System.”

My Tri-Recs Ruler was a huge help to cut the triangle in a square pieces and after a couple of blocks, I adjusted my cutting so that each star is made from a single fabric. It’s not a great photo but I’ll post one tomorrow that shows the colors a little better. Everything in this was was made from bits and pieces around the sewing room. The light fabrics range from pink to peach to purple, white and yellow and the medium/dark contrast includes some fun bits including dragons and pigs. The border was the leftover 108″ wide back from trimming the pink quilt from the last challenge. Even the thread was a leftover 1/2-spool from another quilting project. I quilted it up with my favorite free motion swirls on my Qu’nique 21 Pro.

Now, I’m off to bed before the kitties riot. (We’re way past bedtime here!)

Happy Quilting!

Beth

Do you have the blues?

Have you been getting all the gorgeous blues this week? Even though pink is my favorite color, blue is like that reliable best friend that you know will always show up and be awesome. Blue is versatile and has that ability to range from sweet and soft to dark and moody. And, blue paired with tans is one of my favorite combos. In fact, I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate that palette into my house! Unfortunately, I also love color so while the thought of a coordinated theme is attractive, I’m not ready to give up my cranberry living room.

I had pulled a favorite UFO out determined to finish it for this event but life intervened. But, I did move this project along towards a finish. Just an inner border and a pieced border are left to go. This is Bonnie Hunter’s Jamestown Landing which can be found in her String Fling book. I used all kinds of blues in this one and a wide variety of lights.

I took a little stroll down memory lane and pulled photos of some of my other quilts featuring blues.

I love how many blue moods there are!

A huge thank you to Carla at Creatin’ in the Sticks for putting this together. I’ve been tapping (or swiping) this out on my phone because this is happening at my house…

A double snuggle!

So, if you haven’t checked this out yet, be sure to check out all the beautiful blues!

Happy quilting!

Beth

Monday, January 23rd

Creatin’ in the Sticks

Desertsky Quilting

Selina Quilts

Just Because Quilts

Scrapdash

The Joyful Quilter

Tuesday, January 24th

MooseStashQuilting

Kathleen McMusing

Den syende himmel

Karrin’s Crazy World

Artes de Paula Louceiro

Days Filled With Joy

Beaquilter

Wednesday, January 25th

Just Let Me Quilt

Inflorescence

crazy’boutquilts

Kathy’s Kwilts and More

Quilted Delights

Quilt Schmilt

VroomansQuilts

Thursday, January 26th

Ms P Designs USA

Lianne Makes Stuff

Quilting Gail

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Words & Stitches

Just Sew Quilter

Project Quilting 14.2 “Pink Tint”

I was SO excited when this week’s challenge was announced. I love, love, LOVE pink! It’s a color that I love in all of it’s many shades. I love eeverythings from soft blush pinks to bright flamingo pinks and into the deep dark shades of fushcia and the purply-pinks that live at the deepest part of the purple/pink spectrum.

I was out of town until Monday so I decided to go with a simple rail fence. This is my go-to quilt to teach as someone’s first quilt. It’s quick and easy and works up great in scraps. So, how’d I crank this one out in a week…it went like this..

Sunday – Challenge announced…I’m out of town so good musing time…I thought a lot to make.

Monday – Fly home, pull a random assortment of pink fabrics from the stash. (Also, grocery shop and get the pink solid for the borders and binding.)

Tuesday – Accuquilt to the rescure…all 64+ strips cut and ready to .sew.

Wednesday – make most of the blocks…seriously, these work up really fast!

Thursday – finish the blocks – internal detabate on how big to make the quilt- my original thought was “larger than lap sized” – did I mention that I lOVE pink?

Friday- Piece the quilt top, add borders (after debating the size for the piano key border nad resign myself to the fact that is going to end up in excess of 80×80″.)

Saturday – Get the quit on the frame and quilt like crazy until it’s time to the quarterly quilters tea then come home and continue quilting (I quilted this with my favorite looping quilt patter.) Resume quilting after tea and, eventially, finish quilting, trim and bind.

Saturday – swear to self that I will not make another 82×82 quilt for a PQ challenge!

Throughout the process, I had excellent kitty supervision.

All kidding aside, I’m really excited about my new pink quilt! Thanks, PQ team for getting my you-know-what in gear! (scroll down to see the finished quilt!)

Happy quilting!

Beth