Quilt Doodle Doodles...

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Minnesota Winter Wonderland - November

I'm sure many of you that are quilting along with me have your strips all sewn together on your quilt, isn't it cute! Now it's time to put on the borders, and borders are totally optional. You can do them as I have suggested or do your own. It's up to you! In the listing of supplies I recommend 1 yard for border one and 1 1/2 yards for border two. I've got the borders added to mine... You can do two borders, one border. I've also seen this quilt done with a piano key border too. Have fun it's up to you! This quilt is pretty good sized and will be a wonderful addition to put out for the holidays. You can also add your special touches to your quilt at this time too. I waited until my quilt was quilted before I sewed on the yo-yo's and buttons for the little added touches I added to my quilt. But I did do the extra appliqueing etc on my cabin and cocoa mugs at this point.

The directions for adding the borders and some fun embellishments can be found in your directions. Now let me talk about embellishments. I am going to quilt my quilt before I do some of the special touches like sew on buttons and yo-yos. On the printed directions you will find a snowman you can add by your cabin, a wreath for the door, snow for the roof and chimney. There are also special touches for the cocoa mugs. It's time to have fun and make this quilt your own!

I thought my cabin needed snow and a wreath on the door.

I also had fun embellishing my mugs

On this mug I thought it needed a row of yo-yo snowmen.

These snowmen are so much fun to make! And super easy! I used my yo-yo maker and made three yo-yo's, then added orange button noses. I used black beads for the eyes. But the eyes can easily be made using some black pearl cotton to embroider French knots.

For the snowman's mouth, I made a smile with pearl cotton using a running stitch. They are sooooo cute!

For the holly, I played around with the idea of using a jingle bell...

but decided on some 'holly berry' buttons

For the wreath on my cabin door I added some red seed beads for holly berries. I also added a button on the bow.

I used seed beads for the snowman's face, but you could stitch French knots with some black pearl cotton.

One of Santa's reindeer is checking up to see if anyone's home at the cabin.

If you blog about it, please email me a link so that I can attach it to the Pinterest Board I have going for the Minnesota Winter Wonderland.

Let's have a blog hop in January. Let's have a virtual show and tell!

Happy Quilting,

Cindy and Belvedere

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Fallen Off the Wagon....

I fell off the wagon, or should I say space ship. At the beginning of the year, the UFO challenge sounded like a wonderful idea. I still think it is. I know far too well that life happens and other deadlines get in the way. What I'm saying is this whole idea is flexible. I am sure many of you have been making progress on projects and probably even completing items off your list. I haven't totally abandoned the UFO idea. Since the last time I posted about my UFO list, I have been on a few retreats. Fun sewing days with my bestie and weekend sewing retreats at my mom's. Instead of bringing shiny new projects to start, I have been forcing myself to bring my UFO's along. I'm happy to announce I got one of my UFO's done! Woot! Woot! Happy dance!!!! But it's not what I should have been working on. I'm supposed to have my garden quilt done. Whoopsies.... worked on the wrong project. But I'm thrilled to share with you that I have the top for my 'Just Takes Two' red and white quilt done. I have been working on this quilt since 2012... it's such an accomplishment to get this done to this point. This quilt challenged me. I learned how to do needle turn applique. I worked on my skills for sewing inset curves. I drafted quilt patterns for some of the blocks. I also challenged myself to only use fabric from my stash. So all of the red and white fabrics are bits and pieces left over from other quilts. I plan on quilting it myself. Would love to have it done for Christmas, but while looking at the calendar it seems that may be unrealistic with all of the other things I need to get done between now and then. If I get it quilted for Christmas you will hear me scream in delight! I'm hoping to transform my bedroom into a red and white winter wonderland for the holidays. I think this would also be a great quilt to display at my guilds annual quilt show in March.

I plan on putting a plain white border on the quilt and red binding to finish it off. One thing that really surprised me was I expected to be super excited when I got the last block pieced. I stayed up super late to get it done. But my feelings were mixed. I was thrilled to have completed the quilt top but sad it was done. This quilt has traveled with me to many retreats. It represents a lot of fond memories and time spent with family and friends. The boxes that this quilt filled are now empty and waiting for the next big adventure! Or maybe I will grab the Garden Party quilt box and it will travel next time with me to retreat. Whatever the project, I know it will also be stitched with stories and fond memories too!

Back to my UFO list.... I got to cross off the red and white quilt. I won't be rolling the dice like I would normally do. I will get back to my Garden Party quilt and work on that.... If you would like to start a UFO challenge just pop on over to the Quilt Doodle website and download the 'My List of UFO's'. Fill it out with six of your unfinished projects ad roll the dice....

Happy quilting,

Cindy and Belvedere

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Snow Much Fun! It's November

Did you get a bunch of trick or treaters? We got quite a few and Belvedere enjoyed greeting them all. The weather here was perfect for the kids, not too cold and clear. If Halloween would have fallen on a Friday or Saturday then it would have been perfect. But last night was pretty darn close! My favorite costume for the evening was a blow up tyrannosaurus rex. The costume stood about six feet tall and was pretty awesome for the little kid that flopped around the neighborhood in it! shhhh…. he got a little extra candy for the great costume.

With all the excitement over Halloween, I forgot today is November 1st and I'm late with posting. I wanted to check in with everyone and see how their quilts are coming along. As you know, I made two quilts. Both are made using flannel. One uses flannel for the applique, the other one uses wool. I love them both but I am really fond of the wool one. I haven't put them out on display in my home yet because Belvedere is fond of laying on my quilts and these quilts need to be available for when I go on my quilt talks and visit guilds so they are tucked safely away. I'll pull them out on for Christmas and display them in the guest bedroom.

Both of my quilts were professionally quilted by Mary Nordeng. Her work is phenomenal. Let me share with you some of the beautiful stitches she graced my quilts with. Her work is bound to inspire you with how you might want to quilt your quilt.

Isn't the back beautiful!

It's hard to see, but there's a snowman quilted in the center nine patch block.

As you can see, there are snowflake designs in each of the border blocks. Scroll work in the sashing and a swirly design around all of the snowmen.

Here is the same block. For the wool quilt, Mary used a meandering design around the snowmen. I love the look of this too!

In the sashing there are holly leaves quilted. Very festive for winter.

The picture isn't great but I want to show you how to sew the snowflakes onto your quilt. As you can see I use white thread and 'embroider' a snowflake over the snowflake button. Bring your needle up from the back at 1, insert needle to back at 2, then up at 3 and down at 4, up at 5 and down at 6. Repeat a few times to securely sew snowflake in place.

I think it would be fun to show off our finished quilts! So I'm going have a little blog hop so we can share them in December. If you don't have a blog I can share your posting on the Quilt Doodle Blog. I have some fun prizes to celebrate! I've got Olfa products, Batting, Fabric, thread... all sorts of fun stuff to celebrate!
To post your quilt, they don't have to be quilted, just the top pieced. If you don't have a blog, no worries, just send me you pictures and I will happily post them for you.

So email me,

Your name
Your email address
Your Blog Name
Your Blog URL

Next month, December, Let's share pictures of our beautiful quilt top!

~Quilt Layout~

To finish this cute quilt, I embellished my design with some special buttons from Just Another Button Company. I do have these buttons available in my Etsy Shop. The pattern for the nine patch can be found on the Quilt Doodle Designs Website. The nine patch and strip directions are still Free download this month also. I will not be sewing my buttons onto my quilt top until after I have it all done and quilted. I also have all past blocks along with the complete pattern set.

Happy Quilting!

Cindy

Announcing a NEW BOM coming January 1st!
This will be a 12 month BOM series. We will work on our piecing skills along with some applique. It will be an adorable scrappy sampler quilt. More details will be posted soon!

I'll be posting fabric requirements soon. Fabric kits will also be available in my Etsy shop. I'm busy gathering and cutting right now. We will be working with some 1930's reproduction fabric. I just love the freshness of the colors and the retro feel. They'll be perfect for this scrappy style quilt. Keep your eye out for the fabric bundles that will be available in the Etsy shop.

If you would like to post this image on your website or blog to spread the word. Please grab the image above and link it to my blog.

To make sure that you don't miss any of it, join my mailing list. Not only will you get all of the BOM 2018 postings and updates, but you will also hear about all sorts of other fun quilty goodness too!

Monday, October 29, 2018

Ohhh Hallows Eve

Growing up my mom had these spooky paper decorations that she would put in the windows. I knew Halloween was right around the corner when mom would tape them to the inside of the windows. I can sometimes find them now at vintage shops. Well, my owl design is inspired by my childhood memories of these black and orange decorations. If you were a kiddo that grew up in the 60's and 70's you know exactly what I'm talking about. I took some liberties and added some green and purple too. The project I worked on today is a spooky owl perched on the moon on Halloween night. I decided to use wool for the applique and Primo Plaid Heather in gray from Marcus Fabrics for the background. This project could easily be done with cotton fabrics too using heat n bond. This design would be lovely on a tea towel or made into a table runner. Today I'm going to use this design to make a seasonal pillow for Halloween. Let me show you how I did it.....

Since I am using wool, I traced all my pieces onto freezer paper. Iron the freezer paper onto my wool and then cut the shapes out using my applique scissors from OLFA.

I used a 12 1/2" x 12 1/2" background square for my design. Here I have placed my owl design sheet onto my fabric and ruler to get an idea of placement on my square.

I looked at my owl design and decided the best place to start will be the owls body.

I always test my stitching on some scrap fabrics to make sure that it's the length and width that I want for my project. For my pillow I am using Lana Wool from Aurifil.

This is the stitch setting on my machine. I will be machine stitching my blanket stitch on my design. I love doing handwork, but my stitches aren't as beautiful as my wool working friends. Alas, I will machine stitch mine...

I begin stitching on the Owl's body....

Then I stitch the moon, layering it over the body...

I move onto the Owl's feet and eyes....

Then the top of his head... see how I build my layers to make the design?

…. then the beak... or nose....

Lastly, I stitch the bats in place and add a few star buttons. I used micro mini buttons for his eyes.

To make the pillow back. I have sewn two 7 1/2" x 12 1/2" rectangles out of the same fabric I used for my design background. I left a 3" gap in my stitching so I can stuff my pillow later. You'll see, it's pretty awesome.

Next I trim my backing piece the same size as the applique front. (12 1/2" x 12 1/2") I then match them up together wrong sides together. Yes, I said , wrong sides together.

For my binding, I cut 2, 2 1/4" x WOF, then sewed them together end to end and ironed them in half lengthwise. The same way you would if you were making binding for a quilt.

Let's get back to our design front and backing. Remember I had you put them wrong sides together. Pin them together with the backside facing up.

Sew you binding on using a 1/4" seam. (Back side up)

Miter your corners.

Then fold your binding over to the front and stitch down using a decorative stitch. Remember to miter your corners. I find my wonder clips to be super handy to hold my corner and binding in place

I decided to use my Serpentine stitch.

Here's a closeup of my binding using a Serpentine stitch. I think it's a nice touch for my project.

If you didn't want to make a pillow, the 12 1/2" x 12 1/2" square makes a lovely mini quilt for a table runner. You could have used batting and quilted it then bound it for a table runner, mini quilt. My mini pumpkins from my garden sure look cute with this design.

To make a pillow, stuff the pillow through the opening you left in the back of the pillow. I used a blind whip stitch to close the opening.

~Oh Hallows Eve~

I hope you enjoyed todays project. My designs aren't just for tea towels! Just a few more days until Halloween, plenty of time to whip up this spooky pillow! I'm off to go buy some Halloween treats. We get tons of kiddos, even on a school night.

Happy quilting!

Cindy and Belvedere

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Peek A Who? Blog Hop

Fall is my favorite time of year. I just love the colors of the leaves and the cooler days. The smell of a bonfire and pumpkin spice just warms my soul. Fall is my time of year. The fact that I'm a Halloween junkie just fuels this love. I have no problem with coming up with new Halloween decorations and ideas. I even dress the dogs up to greet the trick or treaters that come to the door. This year Maddie is going to be a pack of French fries and Belvedere is going to be a devil dog. I plan on dressing up in my witchy poo costume. It's always so much fun!

When my kids were young I used to host a Halloween party for all my nieces and nephews. I just loved seeing them all dressed up in their costumes! They are all grown up now.

My oldest son is wearing the devil mask and my youngest is dressed like a Dalmatian. I love, love, love the court jester costume my nephew is wearing! The hat just cracks me up!

So let me show you what I have been working on. I've had lots of fun making up some new mug rugs and a banner to share with you. I started out by spending an afternoon doodling and I came up with some fun designs to applique.

As you can see, I sure ha d fun sewing for Halloween this year! I made a pillow using my 'Oh Hallows Eve' pattern. It's made using some Primo Plaid flannel from Marcus Fabrics. The owl design is done in wool.

I then made a banner using my 'Whoopsies Doodles Witchy Poo', 'Ekk! Black Cat' and 'Witchy Poo's Hat' mug rug patterns to make a fun Halloween banner for my kitchen. The Trick or Treat hanger is from Ackfeld Wire.

Here's another version of 'Whoopsie Doodles Witchy Poo' Instead of putting the 2 1/2" square border on each end. I fussy cut some striped Halloween fabric I had. I really love the purple witch border!

It's always fun to celebrate Halloween with my online quilting friends. Thank you Marian for organizing this wonderful Blog Hop! It's been so much fun seeing everyone's projects. I certainly have been having fun hopping from blog to blog Trick or Treating. There's also some giveaways for the blog hop....

The Timeless Treasures and The Fat Quartershop giveaways run all week long.

Enter The Giveaways by opening the post, and don’t forget to grab your free pattern of the day each day.

Timeless Treasures

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Fat Quartershop

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Calibre Art Mats

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here is the complete blog listing of all the talented quilters ! I hope that you have fun 'Trick or Treating'!

Monday, October 22, 2018