February days...

The Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting last week was so much fun. Barbara and I rode together, it’s so nice to have somebody to drive with! We saw a lot of gorgeous quilts, learned all about color, and had a good tutorial using glue basting, which I am going to try soon with my Single Girl Quilt. It is always great to go to these meetings, so those of you who live in the Portland area should really come to them!

In other news, Jessie and I are working on an “I-Spy” quilt for her little cousin. I bought a package of 6” novelty squares from The Center Diamond in Cannon Beach about 3 years ago, and they have just been sitting in my stash waiting patiently. Jessie laid out the squares by herself, and pieced and ironed everything, look at her go! I am going to quilt it for her, she said she wants it to have the squiggly quilting with rainbow thread on top. How cute is she? So, we basted it the other day, here she is hard at work.

I started working on a new quilt, I always like having a dozen things going on at once to be creatively happy. So, I pulled out my Martinique Jelly Roll and started the pattern Garden Trellis in the Jelly Roll Quilts book. It’s the first time I am actually using this book, I’ve been drooling over the patterns for a long time now.

Martinique is an amazing fabric line, the colors are gorgeous. There are aquas, pinks, reds and a nice gray color. It was fun putting this together. I am halfway done getting the blocks sewn together.

It is supposed to snow today, you know Portland, it just rains most of the time, so snow would be fun.

Mermaids Riding the Wave

I've been hoarding fabric, nothing new really. The Mendocino Mermaids that Heather Ross designed are one of my all time fave fabrics. The colors are my favorite, it is ocean themed, and hello cute little girls? This quilt was started back in June of 2010. It took awhile to cut out, and then I didn't really get any further. This past month I finished the top up. It's really big, just the way I like a quilt!

The pattern is called New Wave by Elizabeth Hartman. The pattern had instructions written for all quilt sizes, which was great. I chose the twin size. I had enough fabric to do a king haha! I kept it smaller :)

I bought some really nice flannel at Fabric Depot for the backing, it's washed and ready to be basted now. I can't wait to get this quilted. And this quilt is staying at home with me!

We drove out to Sauvie Island again today to see birds and let the dog run and play. Mark took this picture of us, I loved it. Look at how big my kids are getting!

Beach Mat

The Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting is tomorrow night. I am so excited to go! They asked everyone to bring a "mug rug" to the meeting. A smallish placemat is what it is. To put your mug of coffee or hot cocoa and a treat on. There are some adorable ones floating around on Flickr.

My first thought was a "mini" picture. Then of course my thoughts drifted to the beach. That is where my mind is a lot, at the beach. We love it there. So naturally I thought of surfing, my husband the addict. He loves surfing. Anyways, surfing made me think of Heather Ross, and the AWESOME surfboard she put her artwork on. I want one so bad to hang in my bedroom. As if I'd use it for surfing!

The beach hut has it's very own Mermaid surfboard! Ha, see I got my surfboard after all. Awesome right?? There you have it, my very first beach mat. Sorry, can't call it a mug rug, it's made for the beach.

You all want this board don't you?? I know I do.

Single Girl Quilt

I've had the pattern to make the Single Girl quilt for over a year now. I've seen several made, and they are all just beautiful. Jenn showed me the one she started, and I loved it.

There is a group starting up to do a quilt along, and they'll have pictures and help for all of us who don't know how to sew a curved seam *raises hand* This should be perfect for me.

I pulled the fabrics I want to use, all from my stash. And of course they'll be blue and green. My favorite combination. It should be lots of fun.

My husband insisted we go on a drive this morning to get out of the house. We all kind of drug our feet, but once we got to Sauvie Island, we were all wide eyed and loving it. There were birds everywhere. My new camera with the zoom lens caught this big bald eagle in a tall tree, look at how pretty he is! I love it here.

These horses were pretty too, they scared that huge flock of geese up into the air. It was a perfect morning to go for a drive. Thanks Mark :)

Nine Patch Lattice Quilt Top

First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who has left such nice comments about the Hexagon Quilt on my last post. You are all so nice! I love that you can appreciate the work that goes into a quilt and how beautiful they are. Your comments make me want to go out and try more things, you all inspire me, so thank you. Blogging is sure fun isn’t it?

So, I am a month into - Stashpact11 - buying no fabric. *shock! gasp!* That’s pretty good I think. For one thing I’ve been pretty busy, so the quilting time has been cut back a bit, which makes me not want to buy anything anyway. When we get a few months into the year will be when it gets hard! Usually after I finish things I tell myself I deserve more fabric… pshaw! I do not!

I had pulled several greens, tans and orange fabrics from my stash last month. I wanted to make a smaller quilt with them for a boy. So, I remembered the tutorial on Oh Fransson! I have loved this quilt, and the wonky blocks, they are so cute. I’ve never made a wonky block in my life, so this was pretty fun to do. Her tutorial makes it very easy. And you really don’t use much fabric. So, I still have a large pile of leftovers :)

I wanted a nice tan solid for the background blocks on this quilt, I was worried I wouldn't have any. I didn’t want to buy fabric… Why do I worry? Of course I had some, not like I remembered or anything :)

The backing will have to be pieced, I have 4 blocks leftover I can use, and a solid green I found. The binding will be orange :) This is a quick and fun quilt to make, go give it a shot.

Next up?? The New Wave quilt I started forever ago using those sweet mermaids…