Garden Path

 Spring is right around the corner and I just can't wait for warmer days and watching things grow in my garden. I have been planning my garden over the last couple of weeks and have ordered seeds and also have started some seeds indoors. I've invested in some grow lights last year and I love them. Best investment ever. Gosh, Amazon has everything...

I have even wintered over a couple of container gardens that I put on display by my front door during the summer. They are full of Boston Ferns and Wandering Jew. I'm amazed the inpatients are still blooming too.  I'm feeling pretty accomplished at keeping these pots alive over the winter. Growing things indoors over the winter has been uplifting and I look forward to my flowers and vegetable plants this summer. I'm also looking forward to the arrival of the bees and hummingbirds again. While designing this quilt I thought about my love for growing things, so this nostalgic quilt features embroidered bees and various flowers and plants, there's even a garden glove. The quilt features Collectable Calicos by Laura Berringer from Marcus Fabrics. I just love the nostalgic feel of these fabrics. I even made the background scrappy using a range of cream muslins and tone on tone cream fabrics. I like how it added an extra depth to the design.

I embroidered sweet designs in the center of the double pointed Dresden plate block.

Did I tell you that I also enjoy tending to my many houseplants? One of my favorites are my Aloe plants. I have a couple of them. This block features a potted Aloe vera plant and a single garden glove. I planned a single glove since I'm always searching for the other in my gardening drawer.

Here a sweet bee is leaving a pot of flowers, on his way back to the hive.

Bees are my favorite thing to embroider... a cousin of ours is a bee keeper. 

~ Garden Path ~
70" x 82"

This beautiful quilt was quilted by Darci Read of Field Trip Quilting. Her work is amazing! I trust her with anything that I give her and am always in awe when I get a quilt back from being quilted by her. I haven't seen her in a year, only have talked thru messages and a friendly wave when I do porch drop offs and pick ups. I look forward to the day when we can actually visit in person! 

I hope that you have enjoyed seeing my new Garden Path quilt. Patterns are available in my Etsy Shop and also on the Quilt Doodle Designs website. I am offering both packaged and PDF patterns.

Happy quilting!

Cindy and Belvedere

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

Barn Quilt Love

I'm not real sure when my love of barn quilts began, but I know I usually scream out 'BARN QUILT!!!' every time  I spot one on a road trip. I even see them around the suburbs here in the cities, like when I drive out to my son's place in Chaska, I spot a few here and there and I love them! And now that I know where they are, I look out for them. On our way to St. Louis last spring, our drive to market went a little quicker with the spotting of some barn quilts. So when my friend Lynn asked if I wanted to take a barn quilt class, I jumped at the opportunity to make one! The instructor offered three size boards to work on, and 8' x 8', 4' x 4' and a 2' x 2' . We opted for the 2' x 2' board. A two foot board is pretty frickin big..... I must have had a one foot board in my head because when I arrived at the class, I thought the instructor made a mistake.  No... it's a big board.... a couple of brave classmates made the four foot boards... they were just huge.  Lynn tells me that the eight foot board is actually two sheets of plywood... I can't imagine doing one that big. Someday we hope to have a big ol' shop for the hubby. I imagine making four, two foot barn quilts and then put them 'together'. I think that would be adorable. The class was four hours long... and let me tell you, you need four hours to complete a smaller barn quilt. This includes speeding the paint drying process with hair dryers. There was no time to dink around... especially if your barn quilt used several different colors.

Our instructor took time to draft out our designs that we sent her for the class onto graph paper. This I'm sure saved tons of time and gave us more time to draft our block onto our board. She also painted all of our boards with a basecoat of white beforehand.

I took a few pictures to show you the process. Using frog tape, we tape off sections to paint the different colors. This gives nice crisp lines. 

Here you can see how I taped for each color... I have the cream, white and green sections painted. I'm taping off now my red areas. 

Lynn is working away on her design... can't wait to see it complete!

My Barn Quilt

Lynn's quilt

Mom's quilt

Ann's quilt...

I love how my barn quilt turned out. It was a lot of fun to do. I plan on making a couple more for gifts this Christmas. I've got the designs all picked out... just need to make the time to do them! My quilt will eventually be mounted on our garden shed this spring. But for right now I am enjoying it in the house. They're not just for barns!

My barn quilt fits nicely on my fireplace mantle... the colors are perfect.

To find out a little about the history of barn quilts Click HERE.

The next time you are out and about, be on the lookout for barn quilts! They are making a comeback!

Hope you have a great day!

Happy quilting,

Cindy