My Quilting Adventures ~ The Waiting Room

My Sewing Room 

is ready and waiting ...

... to soon be

My Quilting Room!

My HQ Amara 20 Arrives Today!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Scrap Happy Saturday ~ Orange Month

Scrap Happy Orange Month.

I love orange! 

Planned, not scrappy ... and not orange,

but I already made this block this week.

I started a second quilt Here 

with these wonderful fabrics, 

 Kindred Spirits by Riley Blake Designs

for the

Canadian Quilter's 52 Blocks in 52 Weeks

I am still sewing the scrappy quilt, too,

as I love the scraps with the gray dot fabric.

On Saturdays I like to sew scrappy and see all the wonderful inspiration at the

Rainbow Scrap Challenge @ So Scrappy

 More scrappy orange blocks in the making.

Orange you scrappy happy, too? 

:-) 

My Un-Quilting Adventures ~ Part 1 ~ Ribbit ~ Ribbit ~ Ribbit

What do I do when I have a quilt more than half quilted on my regular sewing machine

... and I am not happy with the quilting ...

... so I put it aside in my closet for a few months ... 

... and now my new long arm quilting machine should arrive (hopefully) next week.

We are still waiting for the frame to arrive.

I know I am never going to finish it on my regular machine.

I would have done so by now.

The "strand" quilting is not all that "bad."
However, it was making this light and airy top look "heavy" though.
Also, I had difficulty wrestling this large quilt top
on my regular sewing machine.
I became achy and frustrated
and got a wrinkle in the backing.
I just put it aside and it has  been the ghost of summer past
haunting me from my closet.

I think this quilt top is one of the reasons that helped me to finally decide
I needed to commit to getting the long arm.

It seems only right it should be my first quilt on my new Amara 20.

I Love This Quilt Top

This was my " Last Quilt of Summer 2018" posted Here

I will be sew much happier with this quilt if I make this effort.

So I here I sit with my trusty seam ripper ...

ribbit

ribbit

ribbit

ribbit 

ribbit

You know where I will be this weekend.

ribbit

ribbit 

May you have a happy quilty weekend ... :)

I will be riveted to my seam ripper.

ribbit ... ribbit 

I Like Thursday # 10 ~ Play

I like playing with the scraps.

These are Half Square Triangles generated by cut-offs from

 This Large BOM Block

That is a perfectly useful 7.5" star block 

made from good fabric.

I decided to make a strip with the other nine HSTs.

I am not sure where they will end up,

maybe on a pieced quilt back, 

maybe in a pillow,

maybe in a little quilt with all the other scraps from this new 

Block of the Month quilt. 

Time will tell.  

These little HSTs were all a uniform size.

All I had to do was trim the dog ears.

I like to use a 1/4" corner ruler and cut off the corners

before I sew.

This makes more uniform size scraps and more accurate piecing for me

that the traditional draw a line, sew, sew again and cut in half method.

I do not like to draw lines on fabric.

I almost always opt to find another way. 

This was my "15 Minutes of Play" for the day.

I got the 15 minute idea from this book,

 15 Minutes of Play by Victoria Findlay Wolfe  

I like to play with the fabric.

Play is a good thing.

This backyard squirrel knows how to play.

Unlike the other squirrels on the ground, this one is very acrobatic.

Squirrel has spent so much time hanging on the bird feeder outside my kitchen window and 

watching me in the window that squirrel now has a name.
At first I was calling him Brownie because he has more brown in his fur than
most of my backyard squirrels,
 but his antics is what really made him stand out from the crowd. 

This is "Cirque du Squirrel."

"Cirq" for short.

Maestro and company spend so much time chattering at Cirq

out the window, that I bought them three little stuffed squirrels.

I think it was a dog toy, but my kitties do not care.

Maestro carries hers around and keeps it handy while she cat naps.

Maestro like to have a toy handy to play with as soon as she wakes up.

Maestro likes to play.

My favorite phone game at the moment is 

Lily's Garden

It is very colorful; the puzzles are addictive;  

there is a build your garden theme

 and it has a better than most story line.

It even has squirrels ... ;) 

Taking time to stop by and see that the 

I Like Thursday Bloggers @ Not Afraid of Color

are playing with today.

Happy Thursday!  

Goodness Grows ~ Block #1 ~ Sew Sampler

This is Block #1 of the 

FQS Sew Sampler Goodness Grows Mystery Quilt

Here are the pieces for my block.

I bought the kit fabrics because I love Corey Yoder's fabrics and patterns.

I did make a change.

Block pieces A - 2 are my own variation.

I wanted to accent the star formed by the diamond blocks around the center square

so I added a favorite yellow Corey Yoder fabric from my stash. 

Receiving this big beautiful kit box was like my birthday came early.

This is actually an early birthday present that I will enjoy all year.

The Aurifil thread pack was an add on.

Hints are that there are some applique blocks this year so

I opted to get the thread pack, too, as these colors are lighter 

than most of my Aurifil threads.

Opening the kit box was even better.

It is sew nice to open and untie the carefully wrapped bundles

of these beautiful fabrics.

This block is 15.5 unfinished and was easy to sew.

I opted to do my usual cutting corners method

rather than drawing lines as stated in the instructions.

Nutmeg was very helpful today in all aspects of the making of this block.

There are quite a few HSTs made from the cut aways.

Nutmeg and I need to figure out how best to use them.

This block has the Nutmeg "Paw of Approval."

Looking forward to next month's block already!