Feeling Excited!

I am so very excited to share with you that my pattern, Sewing Machine Mat, is now available to purchase at these shops.  tjsfabrics.com located in Troy, Alabama and at quiltingbythebay.com located in Panama City, Florida.

This photo is the shop sample at TJ's Fabrics in Troy, Alabama.

The sewing themed fabrics and bright colors just make this fun!

Jordan's T-Shirt Quilt

This quilt was not promised to be completed by Christmas, but I really pushed and stitched a lot, and I got it finished!  I was so happy to deliver this T-shirt quilt to Jordan's Mom Joyce last week.  I think the sashing is very happy!  And so was Jordan!

Quilt Starter

Here in the deep South, it is time to pick the cotton!  Back during the Summer the plants bloomed with beautiful pink and white blossoms, then the blossoms turned into the pods of cotton. Now the plants are ready to be defoliated.  After defoliation, the pods of cotton are picked, then baled in the field, and then transported to the cotton gin. 
I call this QUILT STARTER!

This photo shows the beautiful pods of puffy cotton before the defoliation process.

This photo shows the plants after the defoliation process and just before picking.

I call these plants Swamp Daisies.  During the Autumn season, these beauties are blooming in the damp road side areas near creeks. The beauty that God has planted for us to enjoy is amazing.  Today would be a good day to take a slow drive in the countryside to enjoy. 

Snuggle Under This

Look who is peeking from behind her quilt...Sarah's T-shirt quilt is now completed and she has taken it back to college with her.  Looks to me like she loves it!

S is for Stitching

Wow, do any of you feel like crawling back into your pajamas as soon as you get home from work?  Sometimes I do!  But not tonight, I am tracing designs and making templates for the hand piecing for the "Daisy Do" block.  Its been a long time since I made templates.  I plan to use Auriful #50 thread for the hand piecing.  

Selvage Storage

I found this gingham printed metal container on the clearance table at Michaels. I knew it would be perfect to keep my saved selvage strips in.  And it will look nice in my sewing room too!

New book, new fabrics, new project! Jen Kingwell QAL

New book - check!  New fabrics - check!  New project - check!
I chose to use some of Jen's new fabric line to start this project, "Daisy Do" from her new book,Quilt Lovely.  I have always wanted to do a hand pieced quilt, and when I saw this photo on the book cover, I knew it had to be hand pieced.  I think it will be fun to collect fabrics to add to this collection, maybe more yellows, oranges, blues and bright pinks! 

Those rascally rabbits!

Every morning when I return from my walk, I spend a few minutes in my garden.  Perhaps a snip here, a little watering there, a few minutes when time stands still and I relax and enjoy God's beauty. The sunflowers are in full bloom right now and I am really enjoying them. One of my favorite blooms! There is only one problem,  I live in the country, so I have several (and I do mean several) wild bunnies that live in my yard.  I love these bunnies, I enjoy watching them feed and play.  But apparently these bunnies love my sunflowers as much as I do.  I think they must have beaver teeth, cutting down the sunflower stalks.  Oh well, I have fresh cut blooms that I can enjoy, and I do love these rascally rabbits!

Farm Girl Vintage, Guild Challenge with a Slice of Watermelon

I have been having so much fun collecting fabrics for the quilt in Lori Holt's new book, Farm Girl Vintage. Lori has been sharing so many cute blocks and new quilts through her blog, beeinmybonnetco.blogspot.com, and on Instagram.  I will be making the 6 inch size blocks.  I just received seven yards of the aqua blue swiss dots on white background fabric by Riley Blake.  

I will use this as my background fabric. 
Ready, set, go!  Ready to start "plowing" through this fabric making the blocks. 
I think I will make the tractor block for the back of my quilt.

I will be attending our Quilt Guilds' Summer retreat next week.  I will share some photos of the projects I hope to get to stitch.  One of the projects I plan to work  on is the "Pantone" color challenge. Our Guild has a challenge to make a table runner, or small wall hanging using the "Pantone" fashion colors for Spring 2015.  I have chosen the pattern "Daisies" by Fig Tree & Co., using the colors toasted almond, tangerine (of course, because any shade of orange is my favorite color), strawberry ice and scuba blue.  

Watermelon is plentiful here in the deep south now.  What a delightful summer treat.  Did you know that watermelon is incredibly healthy?  Health professionals say the juicy fruit contains vitamins A and C, and vitamin B6.  And it really is mostly water, so it can help to replenish our body fluids and help with hydration.  

How Many Spools of Thread? And More Binding?

How many spools of thread have I gone through since my last posting?

Well, let me show you!  This fabulous log cabin quilt was started a few years ago for my friend Brenda.   Her bedroom was getting a redo and when she saw this stack of fat-quarters in the quilt shop, she said "those are my new colors, Let's make a quilt."  So the quilt top was started, and then life got in the way.  Autumn season 2014, her new bed was delivered, and Brenda calls me to say she is ready for the quilt to be finished, but there is just one problem, it needs to be bigger!  So thankfully the fabrics were made by Moda, Three Sisters, Holiday Collections, and the same designer's collections for this year worked well with what we had started.  Just to let you know, the quilt is now a large queen size that drapes from all sides of the bed.  I hand stitched all 432 inches of the binding.

This precious baby quilt was made for the granddaughter of my pastor, Anita.  Anita did all the work on this baby quilt, except for the binding.  Anita is a very talented seamstress, but she did not have much experience making quilts.  So I taught her a few tricks and she loved the experience of making this quilt for her first grandchild.  I think she did a very good job of choosing the fabrics (online) and then designing the layout design, her first experience at both.  The binding is not shown in this photo, but the fabric was a stripe of all the colors in the quilt, the fabrics were from Riley Blake.

  Great job Anita.

And what I am working on now is the T-shirt quilt for my niece Sarah.

It is all completed, except for the hand stitching on the binding.

MORE BINDING????  DID I SAY MORE BINDING????

Oh well, I have plenty of thread and those new binding clips, "Wonder Clips" made by Clover.  I used a notions coupon and purchased a box of 50 in assorted colors!

I love these.  This was a great notion purchase.  These clips will be used!

This photo was taken while I was putting the top together during our Quilt Guild retreat in April. Completely quilted now, used Amy Butler fabrics from my stash, a really cool modern print from her Daisy Chain collection is on the back.

 

Butter & Eggs

    The end of the month of March is soon approaching, and I see all the gardening work that needs to be done in my flower beds!  I usually prune my knock-out roses after Valentine's Day and before the Forsythia blooms.  Well, oh no, the Forsythia is in full bloom, along with the Wisteria!!  And guess what, I haven't pruned anything.   Southern gardens are not wasting any time this year! What I love about the Wisteria is that you will see areas in the countrysides where this beautiful plant has been left behind from gardeners of decades ago, in old home place sites, and the plant has twirled and twined into the mashes of bushes and even up trees.  The beautiful purple tags of blooms are hanging everywhere.  What a nice scent too!

  

   I promised to show blooms of my Butter & Eggs daffodils 

when they were blooming, 

as they bloom a bit later than my other daffodils.  

Thank goodness they did survive the last cold weather we had here in the last few weeks.

Pattern available here

The Sewing Machine Mat pattern is now available at 

Quilted Creations Quilt Shop 

on the square in historic Headland, Alabama. 

 quiltedcreations.net

Please visit Quilted Creations and shop with Sherry.

Countryside blooms

More countryside blooms. . .I just had to cut this bouquet of daffodil blooms.  They are so beautiful.  Colder freezing weather with wind and rain is predicted for our area this week.  Although this freezing weather will not kill the plants, it will wilt the blooms. 

Also at this old home place sight are some "Butter & Egg" daffodils just budding out to bloom.  I hope the freezing weather does not kill their buds.  I think I might need to make myself a mug rug with a daffie bloom on it to enjoy with my coffee during this cold spell.  With freezing weather like this, being tucked inside stitching will keep me and my soul warm!

Daffie blooms

These daffie blooms (Narcissus, Daffodil, Jonquil) are peeking out today at an old home place sight in the rural countryside near where I live.  The home is long gone. . . . .I wonder how old these plants are?  The gardening information that I read listed nine different varieties of heirloom daffodils that are often seen blooming this time of year along the roadsides and old homeplaces here in the south.

      
Happy Valentine's Day!  

Pattern Debut

Vintage Blooms Quilt Designs very first pattern, the Sewing Machine Mat, Spring Mat, pattern #01 made its debut at the Front Porch Quilt Shoppe, Ozark, Alabama.  I want to express a very special thank you to Melanie Simpson for the awesome display, to Cyndi Farley and my niece Jan Cooper for your encouragement, and to all my sweet quilty friends for the nice comments about the pattern.

Fabrics used to make the mat are from the "Somerset" collection from

 Joanna Figueroa, Fig Tree & Company for Moda fabrics.

Shown also in the display are the "Somerset" Aurifil thread collection kits.

figtreeandcompany.com

modafabrics.com

aurifil.com

Patterns are available for purchase at the shop.  Price $7.00

www.frontporchquiltshoppe.com

In the Beginning - The Very First Pattern

I can not tell you all how excited I am that my very first pattern design has been printed. The Sewing Machine Mat, Spring Mat, pattern #01 is now available.  The template to create the petals in this pattern design was created from the actual petals of the flowers blooming in my garden.  While attending the AQS Quilt Show last September in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I treated myself to a new Juki sewing machine.  I purchased a Juki TL2010Q, Juki Corporation, jukihome.com.  This machine is sew awesome!  I hope  to "play" a bit more with free motion quilting using this machine.  So I decided that I needed a new sewing machine mat to go under this machine and for taking to classes.  I made this sewing machine mat pattern just a bit wider so that the Juki machine fits nicely sitting on top!  This is my machine pictured in the pattern photo.  Fabrics shown in the design photo are from the collection "Somerset", by Joanna Figueroa, FigTree Fabrics, figtreeandcompany.com for Moda Fabrics, modafabrics.com.
Let me add that it is a lot of work to write pattern instructions.  I sure am thankful for my high school English teacher, Sara,  (she is now my sister-in-law.)  I hope everyone that gets this pattern enjoys making and using the mat.  Create something awesome!

                                                               

Vintage Blooms Quilt Designs has blossomed!

Blossomed

A quilting friend of mine, Karen Williamson,  nanagirlquilts.blogspot.com, has been encouraging me to start my blog.  So today is the day!   Vintage Blooms Quilt Designs has blossomed!  I am mostly a self taught beginner quilter.  I have taken classes from local quilt shops and at quilting shows and retreats that I have attended the past few years.  I still consider myself a beginner, even though I have made many quilts, because I am always open to try new techniques and new designs.  I have taught classes at Front Porch Quilt Shoppe in Ozark, AL frontporchquiltshoppe.com; Quilted Creations Quilt Shop in Headland, AL quiltedcreations.net; and Quilting by the Bay Quilt Shop in Panama City, FL quiltingbythebay.com. I have also taught classes and techniques at my local quilt Guilds.  

My loves are bunnies, stitching quilts and wool, sunflowers and vintage blooms!  I have designed and created my very first pattern, with the encouragement of my quilting friend, Cyndi Farley and my niece, Jan Cooper, (also a quilter and local designer.)  

I hope to have the pattern printed and available soon.