House Hunting Quilt--In Progress

If you ask my quilting friends, they will tell you I'm the Queen of Fussy Cutting. 

For my House Hunting Quilt I designed a foundation pieced house block that can have a fussy cut center. Yay! I have been trying to make one house per day, slowly building a neighborhood. I was thinking about houses because my husband and I have been looking at houses in NC to find our next home. I think we've looked at 47 (over the past 3 years) and counting with our realtor....as we aren't ready to buy yet it's an ongoing process but soon....(thanks, Melinda! We WILL find one..... soon.)

Paper foundations, cute fussy cut centers, 3" finished houses, 9" finished block of houses.

This is the plan for a 25 block quilt. I think all the backgrounds will be blue and white. I might not stop at 25 blocks if we haven't found our dream home by then. When we do find it I plan to sew a house and put a big heart in the center of it! If I do one house per day I'll be done with the blocks by June.  I think these houses are so fun to make that I'll keep going!!

Loads of whites to choose from.

Loads of blues to choose from.

These are the sizes of background pieces that I cut. This piece of fabric is 8 1/4" x 3 3/4". This is how I cut for the center block square. To make the 8 outside house backgrounds I cut long strips of fabric and then chop it into my desired sizes.

These are ALL cat fabrics.

Lots of cats to make a cat block with some extras for later.

Background pieces cut for 1 white and 8 blue, center fusses, foundation papers and scissors to trim the seams.

This 3 1/2" ruler is a MUST for trimming the houses.

There is plenty of room around the house so it isn't going to be a crowded neighborhood.

I couldn't resist putting a mouse in the "cat block"!

This is the Snow block. I pieced most of these on one snowy Saturday.

The center house has a popcorn background. That block was made New Year's Eve.

The upper right house has Mary weeping for her lost lamb.

Christmas day I made the Santa in the peppermint house with the candy cane background.

The center house has the little bear from the "Beary Merry Christmas" advent calendars that I finished in December. This was printed on the instruction part of the fabric. I'm sure most people threw it away but I found a use for it.

There is Mary's little lamb in the yellow house! And one of my favorite geckos lower left.

I started this one-a-day house quilt on December 1st. Sometimes I make houses ahead to cover days that I can't sew (like when we were in New Orleans). Since I made the cat block in one day I'm now up to Feb 1st. I can slack off if I want to for a while but these are so much fun!

Finish It Friday link up.

Busy Hands Quilts-Finished or not Friday link up.

Indoor Snowball Fight

This project was conceived when my niece was 3 years old and we were going to see her at Christmas at Grandma's house. All her cousins were quite a bit older--12 to 21 years older! I wanted to have an activity that ALL the cousins could play and have FUN together. Since the Christmas was to be in North Carolina there was no chance of having a real snowball fight with cousins so I made an Indoor Snowball Fight for the occasion. (A real snowball fight with older cousins could have HURT!)

I used a pattern from a book to make a large quilted cloth bag, using snowman fabrics! I made 2 sizes of snowballs from white flannel, stuffed with poly-fiberfill. The faces were drawn on with permanent markers.

The inside of the bag was a cold snowy print.

This bag was stuffed with loads of snowballs that won't melt!

For the large snowballs I used a CD to trace around onto the flannel and cut out pairs of circles. Then sewed around the edges, turned them right side out to hide the seam, stuffed them, sewed the opening closed (on the machine) and added the nose, eyes, mouth with a Sharpie.

Happiness in a bag.

I fused 2 pieces of muslin together to make a stiff label, hole punched an opening for the thick tie cord to go in then tied a knot in the end of the cord to hold the label on. 

For my favorite kindergarten teacher/friend I made a bag that is snowballs/frogs. These are green on one side and white on the other so they are two faced!

Her bag has snowmen and a frog pond! She can have safe snowball fights in her classroom when the kids are really deserving of some FUN.

The snowballs are machine washable too!!

One unwashed and one washed. The marker faded just a little from the washing.

More snowball fun!

These little snowballs are really easy to make and don't hurt when thrown around indoors!

Link to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Mini Mini Mystery Quilt

This year while making units for Bonnie Hunter's 2016 Mystery Quilt En Provence I made some half size units. I also changed her colors--purple, pink, lavender and yellow to beach colors--brown, blue, light blue and tan. I kept green and neutrals though. On New Year's Day she posted the final clue and the reveal of how to assemble all the units into an awesome quilt. To see how my large quilt will look I put the mini together.

These units will finish at 1.5" in the mini quilt.

This is part of my full size mystery quilt on the design wall.

I think the bed quilt will be very nice!

I moved some of the units around to fit them in. This design is changed from the En Provence layout but it keeps the same feeling.

I love looking out my window while sewing. 

Today there was a herd of deer passing through.

My Mini Mini Mystery quilt is 15" x 15".

My favorite Gecko smiles from the center.

Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Back to Mystery Monday link up parts 6 & 7.

Clue 5 and "A Beary Merry Christmas" X 2

The Bonnie Hunter 2016 Quiltville En Provence Mystery Quilt is up to Clue 5 now. Bonnie gave us a very easy clue this week so we can finish Christmas projects and enjoy family.

This is how easy clue 5 was!! Half square triangle units.

So on to finishing Christmas projects.....

This is an advent calendar that my kids have been using for...20 years or so. Now that the kids have their own homes I asked them to choose which advent calendars they want. All 3 of my boys wanted the "Beary Merry Christmas". But you can't buy this fabric panel any longer.

Ebay had these choices...$89.00

And these...$100.00, $210.00

And these...$90.00,  $300! OMG.

But last year when searching in an off month like March I got lucky and found some for a REASONABLE price and bought 2.

The panel looks like this with instructions and the pieces for the little bear. The way this advent works is the calendar at the bottom tells where the little bear looks for Christmas each day. So I needed to sew about 27 pieces of velcro to the calendar in specified places and then one piece to the back of the bear.

The first bear I made...I FORGOT to sew the velcro on FIRST! Oops. (Permanent glue to the rescue.) The second bear got his velcro sewn on before sewing and stuffing.

All velcro squares were sewn to the panel.

Sewing, turning, sewing, turning..... And then AGAIN on the other panel....

Finally finished!

The new ones have a lighter green binding but they look pretty darn similar and will work beautifully. And I'm happy to report that my boys were happy and thankful that I went to the trouble so they can enjoy the "Beary Merry Christmas" for years to come.

Happy Holidays!!

Back to Monday Link-Up Part 5 at Quiltville.

Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

En Provence Clue #4--After New Orleans!

We had a big birthday at our house this week and flew to New Orleans for the weekend to celebrate. This was my fun gift.

I taped a paper flame to each bottle. Instead of snuffing the candles all at once the birthday boy is snuffing them one at a time...this may take some time! ( I wanted something extravagant for this special birthday. )

First stop in New Orleans was the WWII museum.

The soldier that I got to "follow" on the tour was Jimmy Stuart! Fun!

Adolf Hitler had his initials AH and the Nazi symbol engraved on his cutlery.

Lots of huge airplanes were on display.

Then I got to play. I enjoyed all the artists displays at Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

This dog was raking in the tips while his owner fed him small morsels to keep him happy.

(I actually felt sad about this use of the dog. But he seemed happy.)

Home again and time to sew!!! Cream neutrals and browns.

Clue #4 is finished.

And here are some of the pieces for my mini-mini mystery.

Back to the Linky party for Clue 4.

Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

En Provence Mystery Quilt Clue 3

Bonnie Hunter's 2016 Mystery Quilt called En Provence is well underway. She posts the clues each Friday starting the day after Thanksgiving. I really look forward to Fridays!!

I have changed the colors of the mystery to beach colors. I substituted brown for dark purple and light blue for lavender. This is my bucket of blocks ready to be ironed.

Top row is my mini mini mystery. 

When cutting for the larger size I used the leftover ends for the mini.

All I needed to do for the mini was then trim a bit off each side. 

All these are mini blocks that were leftover bits.

These are all my blocks for clue 3, finished.

Now I can work on other things until Friday.

Back to Bonnie's Linky party Clue 3.

Clue #2 En Provence Mystery Quilt

This the 2nd clue for Bonnie Hunter's En Provence 2016 Mystery Quilt. Remember I'm using beach colors so I changed the bright pink to palm tree green for this clue.

I have 4 different greens and several neutrals.

For this clue I used the Marti Michell Perfect Patchwork Templates.

Here are all my units for clue #2. Done!

And just for fun I made some of my extras from clue #1 into mini blocks.

These are all half size of the original mystery. This is my mini-mini mystery.

See the fun Linky Party for Clue 2.