It's Here - Pillow talk 2 Received

It felt like forever but my pillow is here. I sent off the pillow cover I made for flossyblossy in early March since it was going to the UK, I wanted to make sure she got it before the deadline, but then the waiting began.

Every day I checked the flckr pool to see what was being sent off and what pillows others were receiving. I stalked my mail lady. A few times I even beat her to the mailbox at the end of my street. I think she thought I was a little bit nuts. It got to the point where my mail lady was almost waiting as anxiously as me.

Last week it finally arrived and it was really worth the wait. Jen, the messy nest, made me a fantastic pillow cover in Kokka linen in some of my favorite colors of peacock blue, chartreuse, and red.

 

She even included some goodies, extra linen print and some hand-dyed fabric she used in the cover, as well as a felt pumpkin pouch she made.

Thanks so much Jen, we are using it lots already!

Pillowtalk 3 should be beginning soon. I am not sure if I will do it this time as my life has been crazy busy and the waiting nearly did me in but I will definitely be doing this swap again sometime in the near future!

p. s. i quilt - Pinwheel Sampler Quilt-Along

I have so much to do but at the last minute I decided to join in on Rachel of "p.s. i quilt" Pinwheel Sampler Quilt-Along. I was trying to resist but I had the perfect fabric for it in my stash and Rachel's instructions for the first block looked so great that I just gave in.

I was a little behind but caught up this week. We just finished week 6 but Rachel is taking a 1 week Easter break so now would be a good time to start and catchup if you didn't know about it before.

In 2007 I bought a FQ set along with some yardage of "Visions" by Sandy Gervais at the LQS. It was so beautiful I just didn't want to cut into and I couldn't find a project worthy of it. When I saw Week 1 instructions of Rachel's quilt-along I just knew it would be perfect for it. I am loving my blocks so far. There are a lot of amazing block photos in the flckr pool for you to check out here.

My Blocks

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

All the blocks together so far

March Bee's and Swaps

March has been super busy. I have been very busy longarming quilts for others but I thought I'd stop in and show you the blocks I made for bee this month and an embroidery I finished up the Hoop Up! Stitch & Send swap.

Here are the blocks:

Beatnik Bee: Katie asked us to make improv style blocks for a quilt she will be putting together for her daughter. I did add the green solid in each of the blocks as I thought it would compliment the fabrics nicely.

I wanted to make this one look like a window scene!

This one is just a basic log cabin done improv style.

The Maple Leaf Quilters Bee: Cate asked for a Crossed Canoes paperpieced block using fabrics she had sent. There wasn't enough of the print so I added the green print in 2 of the canoes.

TISQ Bee: Suzanna asked for a wonky shoofly block using fabric she had sent.

 

Hoop Up! Stitch & Send: I received a wonderful piece from Cathy Gaubert which you can view on her photostream here.  Cathy was inspired by my theme "Found in an Oriental Garden" and designed a beautiful piece for me. Thanks so much Cathy, it's beautiful. I plan on using the pieces I receive for this swap in a quilted wallhanging.

I am not quite the designer she is but I also designed a piece for her "Into the Woods" theme. The fabric it is stitched on is repurposed green linen sent to me by Cathy.

 Partial close-up View

Full view

That is four embroidery pieces done for this swap, only 2 to go!

Crazy 9 Lattice Quilt - February UFO Finished!

Crazy 9 Lattice Quilt
Originally uploaded by maripenquiltmom

I finished this last week and today is sunny so I managed to get a picture.

When I posted this to flckr originally I asked for advice on which fabric to use for binding and it was unanimous for the teal fabric.

So here it is! I love the colors in this; these were all stash fabrics that I've loved at some point. I chose to quilt it using Waterworld pantograph. It's all washed and pleasantly wrinkly.

February Bee Blocks

Beatnik Bee - here are the Amish Diamond and Pinwheel blocks I made for Tracy. She asked that we fussy cut the corners to get a nice flower in the center. The fabric was very nice and these were fun.

The ISQ Bee - Here is the new York Beauty block I made for Jen using the great fabrics she sent. The dark grey fabric was my own and the batik in the inner ring were my additions.

The Maple Leaf Bee - February was my own month so I made a few more blocks so I'll be ready to put it together when the rest of the blocks come in. I previously made some mainly green ones which I posted about here. 

For most of these blocks I used a tutorial by Elizbeth Hartman of Oh,Fransson.