Rope Bowl

A new bowl to hold all my little 3" stars until I put them into the Among Friends quilt.

I learned how to make rope bowls from the book It's a Wrap by Susan Breier.

I took a photo of the settings I used for further reference.

This is the rope I purchased at Walmart.

This gorgeous fabric has Christmas ornaments on it and may have been hard to use in a quilt but I loved the colors in it. So this will now become a bowl.

I sewed a label to the bottom once I had it this big.

The bird fabric was a coordinating one to the Christmas fabric. Both fabrics are from the UK.

The bottom of the bowl is 11" diameter.

Now for the sides....

See the ornaments?

The sides are sewn like this.

Finished! 

I started with 1 yard of fabric and used all of it. 

This is the leftover rope. I can make a coaster or small bowl with it.

This is my bonus bowl.

These are so much fun to make that I went back to Walmart and purchased more rope. 

And then went to Linderella's Quilt Works in Southern Pines to buy some lovely Kaffe Fasset fabrics.

I need to stay on task and sew more little stars instead of starting another project.....

Linking to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

"Among Friends" with Civil War Reproduction fabrics

This next project is called Among Friends. The shop Primitive Gatherings is doing this as a block of the week (they send fabric each week for $$$$) and you sew, sew, sew. I'm doing it with my quilt bee (Spool Girls) and we are not buying into the weekly fabric. We are getting together and swapping fabrics to get a large variety.

I'm not making my quilt this huge. I plan to make it 63 x 72 unless I get burned out during the process in which case it will be what it will be! They suggest you make 44 stars per week. (A lot!)

I ordered a jelly roll of these Civil War reproduction fabrics to get a little bit of a rainbow going for my quilt. I have a limited amount of these reproduction fabrics so I'm thankful for my quilt bee friends who are so generous to share with me.

I washed my dark green background fabric with Color Grabbers 3 times. 

The top sheet was the first wash! WOW!  The good news is that the color will only run onto these Color Grabbers and not anything else. Yay.

Thangles are a lifesaver for accurate piecing. 

(Remember I HATE triangles!)

This is a bunch of 1 1/2" squares for the star centers.

This is my first block of 9 stars.

Now I've done 4 blocks. This is 36 out of 348 stars.....

I've got quite a ways to go yet but I've FINISHED 4 blocks. :)

Stay tuned for more on this project.

For now linking to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Rainbow Fun with License Plates

Time to get out some 2015 license plates from the row-by-row and do a new quilt. But what?

I started with 7 of my favorite plates from the many that remained. These are all special to me or beach themed or just fun. 

I added a 1" wide strip to all sides of the plates then trimmed that unit to 4 1/2" x 8 1/2".

From my stash I cut about a 2" square chunk from the rainbow of colors plus some multi colored fabrics. Then I trimmed all of them to 1 1/2" square. I cut 4 rows of black 1 1/2" x WOF (width of fabric) and sub cut into loads of 1 1/2" squares.

This is my design wall where I auditioned the fabrics.

To make this quilt I made 5: 4 Patch units of each: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and 2 sets of multi for the horizontal rows. For the short end of each license plate I made 2: 4 Patch units with blending colors like red/orange and orange/yellow etc.

At this point the top measured 10 1/2" x 44 1/2".

Sue does indeed love to SEW!

I love the clown fish!

Pikachu!!!

More frogs!!

I love the beach. See the polite blue M & M tipping his hat to a gecko?

See my white dog Sasha chasing after the octopus?

And if it's 5:00 somewhere........then it's happy hour. 

I've got 2 parrot friends and an umbrella drink to get started.

Sasha is checking out the new quilt hanging in the kitchen.

There are cats on the back of the quilt and a label in the corner.

Finished!

12" x 46"

Linking to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Irish Double Wedding Ring

This is an unusual version of double wedding ring. It has squares folded into triangles and then top stitched to make the curves. The pattern is Forever Yours by Southwind Designs. I'm making the small throw size for a wedding gift. The bride has Irish blood and her mother was pregnant with her as she was one of my bridesmaids. So Shannon was at my wedding.....in a way!

The top photo is Shannon in her mother's arms when she was 1 year old.

The bottom photo is Shannon and Matt's Save the Date alert.

This is the pattern. I made a colored chart to keep track of the color rings.

I'm using 5 different green fabrics for the "rings".

To add interest I fussy cut the words SEW HAPPY and SEW IN LOVE for one of the arcs. 

Since they had a blue background I added a blue folded piece.

This is the finished top. I elected to skip the final white borders for various reasons.

This yellow Kaffe Fasset print was perfect to bring the yellow, orange and green together.

I really like this backing fabric on this quilt. It has the orange, yellow, green and some purple too.

I posted this photo on Facebook and asked other quilters if they thought the backing was ugly or OK. I have gotten over 900 likes and over 500 comments so far. I think about 95% of the responses were positive. I sure hope Shannon and Matt don't think it's ugly!!

Labeled!

Finished!

I'm posting this on June 4, 2016 which is the wedding day.

Shannon and Matt, I wish you a life full of fun, family and happiness.

Linking with Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.