When I saw this design for  this Shabby-style mini quilt I knew right away that I wanted to make it for a special friend.  This friend has has had some life changing events this last year and her HOPE in the Lord has brought her through thus far.   

This design is from Jenny of Elefantz

I thought I would show the inspiration and final project side by side.

It was fun to put this together with things I found in my creative space.

Thank you Jenny for the lovely design.

A Faithful Friend Stitch A-Long

I have completed the embroidered blocks for my A Faithful Friend quilt.  I love the way each one has turned out.  The directions for piecing the quilt together will be posted on the 7th of September.  Piecing the quilt will be more of a challenge for me because I do not have as much experience with this part of the project. 

I am sure it is not to late to start this and you will love working on this quilt if you like to embroider.  Visit Lenna Green at Little Green Cottage and learn more about this and her other great designs.

I also have a link to this stitch-a-long on my sidebar.

Here are the blocks laid out on our table with the fabrics I have chosen to complete it with.  I chose many of the same fabrics used in the original design.

I love the simplicity of each block and the use of color and detail in the stitches Lenna chose.

I am looking forward to the next step, cutting the blocks down and beginning to cut and sew the fabrics in to a quilt. 

I am linking to Bunny Hop Wednesday at Bunny Jean's

Birthdays and Family Time

We spent some time with some of our grandchildren last Saturday which made us miss those that live far away even more.   We watched four of the boys while their parents were at a youth group picnic.  It was a nice day so we took the little plastic pool out and filled it before the boys arrived.  They spent much of the afternoon getting in and out of the pool.

Joshua spent most of the time crawling in and out of the house.

Noah and Landon are testing out the water.

Landon tried hard to splash me with the water.

Noah is off to find my watering cans so that he can water the garden and maybe water his cousins a little too.

Caleb thought it would be fun to use Papa's garden gloves as shoes.  Shh, don't tell him.

Baby Matthew is not sure what the older boys are up to.

We celebrated two birthdays, Pat's and our youngest son David's. 

 David is actually 24 years old today, Happy Birthday David.

We enjoyed the pleasant sunny weekend and it looks like this one will be the same.  We expect to have a quiet weekend and hope to get our front deck stained.  Sounds like fun huh.

August Blocks of the Month

Here are my blocks of the month.  I have completed them before the month is quite over!  Yeah!

12 of Hearts

Birdie Stitches

Vicki's Out of the Box

Dawn's Out of the Box

I have links to each of the designers of these blocks on my sidebar.

Retro Nine Patch Quilt Completed

I finished my "Retro Nine Patch" blocks and put them together with 4 basket pieced blocks to make a small quilt.  Thanks so much to Lyn at Bluebird Quilts who shared this block of the month.

I had fun with the embroidery blocks, the pieced blocks were a challenge, I still have much to learn.  I quilted this little quilt by "stitching in the ditch" around each block and around the borders.  I look forward to being a little more adventurous when it comes to quilting.  I do think I stretched myself quite a bit when it comes to using colors and designs in fabrics.   The fabrics I used were "Boutique" by Chez Moi for Moda. 

My pictures  don't seem to show how bright and cheerful the embroidered blocks are.  Every time I try to take a picture the sun seems to be shining pretty bright.  That is not something to complain about around here though.  We are enjoying our very late arriving summer.

Thanks again to Lyn.

It is so great that many talented people are sharing their designs and tutorials to help others learn to sew, quilt, embroider, decorate and be creative in so many ways.  I had fun with this quilt and experienced a few new things like taking many, many, many stitches out.  I machine quilted the center block to a backing before I added the outer borders, can you believe that?  True story.  I took every stitch out, hunted down another piece of backing fabric, added my borders and quilted it again.  I hope I never do that again. 

All in all I had fun with this bright cheerful little quilt.

 

I'm A Wantobe Quilter

A short while ago Shell at The Raspberry Rabbits wrote a blog post about the fun things happening at Sew We Quilt.  I signed up with Shell as a Wantobe Quilter and have visited Sew We Quilt almost every weekday so far to join in the fun.  I have participated in a couple of sew alongs this year and have learned a lot but do not have many finishes when it comes to quilting 
 There are prizes to win and things to learn and quilters to meet.  I have already won a prize,  actually Shell and I both won.  My package arrived today so I thought I would show you the fabulous Creative Grids I won. 

They are so much nicer than what I have been using to cut measure and cut fabric.

Madame Sam of Sew We Quilt also sent me a nice card and a fun fat quarter of fabric.

I you are a Wantobe quilter like me, visit Shell and she will sign you up.  While you are there visit Shell's website and spend a little time reading her blog.

If you are a real quilter, not a wantobe, you can win prizes on Tuesday's and Thursdays.

Every day you will meet some great quilters and designers and learn something new. 

Don't miss the fun.

Blocks of the Month for July

I was a little behind with my blocks this month.  Many fun and exciting things happened in July.  A new granddaughter  and a wedding are the most important.  I have had great fun with these blocks and learn new things with each one. 

Dawn's Out of the Box  Block 7

Vicki's Out of the Box block 7

12 of Hearts block 7

Birdie Stitches Block 7

I have links to each of these block of the month series on my sidebar.  I will show you later the blocks I have completed for the "Faithful Friends" quilt.