~ A Pattern Sale ~

Happy Labor Day weekend!  I'm kicking off the holiday weekend with a PDF pattern sale in my Etsy shop only.  25% off all PDF's.  Click here to go to my pattern shop.  

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Labor Day!

~ Lea Anne ~

~ On a Roll ~

 Hi-diddly-O Friends!  For the first time ever working out of my color comfort zone is actually fun.  Whoa...must have something to do with Mercury being in retrograde.  I've no idea what that means, all I know is right now the planet Mercury is doing some weirdo stuff and some say it makes strange things happen.  OOOOO....SPOOKY STUFF!  

Well.... out here in Podunk strange stuff happens everyday.  Spooky?  Sometimes...but that's a story for another day.  We'll stick to the strange stuff today.   Example....yesterday morning while letting the chickens out to roam I noticed this ugly little guy in our raccoon trap.  Opossums aren't real destructive so he was free to leave.   For some odd reason he decided to nap in the cage all day.  When hubby came home in the evening he quickly gave sleeping beauty his eviction notice and sent him on his way.  Never seen a critter that wanted to be caged....strange.   It wouldn't surprise one bit if he comes back tonight...I'll keep you posted.

For now I'm back in the Studio stitching my little nine patches....and craving a Pumpkin roll.  This strange craving has nothing to do with Mercury and everything to do with orange fabric.  Orange fabric = pumpkins  in my mind.  And pumpkins = PUMPKIN ROLLS!  YUM!  

Have you ever made a Pumpkin roll?  This is one of the desserts the family insists I make every Thanksgiving.    You could smear cream cheese on cardboard and it would be delicious!  I wanted to share the recipe with you but was too lazy to go digging for it.  Well, I found the same recipe online with a quick google search.  And the plus was this gal is also a crafter/quilter/chef.   The picture and recipe below is courtesy of Adrianne of HappyHourProjects.com

She has several awesome sewing projects that you can find here.  But the one I thought was super cute and on my list of must makes is this cute little bandanna pumpkin.  It's a no sew project, perfect for a quicky seasonal decor project.   I'm pretty sure Walmart and the Dollar General have orange bandannas.   My laziness paid off this time!  Hmm...maybe Mercury is working it's weirdness after all....SPOOKY!

~ Lea Anne ~

~ Fall is in the Air~

Hi Sweet Quilty Friends!  We had some unseasonably cool weather last week.  It only lasted a couple of days but it was long enough to get the love of Autumn kick started.  Well going shopping at Hobby Lobby was also a big help.  The fall decor this year is loaded with black gingham.  Yeah gingham!  You all know my love of gingham....ANY COLOR!  The starts of a new series of quilt patterns has begun.  Inspiration is a funny thing, you just never know when or where it will happen or where it will lead once it strikes. 

While prepping my fabrics for cutting I had to stop for a bit to read every word on this fat quarter from the Autumn Love collection by Riley Blake.  It brought a smile to my face and a calming in my heart.  Not every fabric has this overwhelming effect, especially fabrics in gray and black...colors I rarely use.  Of course fabric makes me happy but blacks and grays?...not so much.  

It really is the little things that make the difference.   Could this be the start of a new love affair with darker colors?  Or is it just a quick fling?  Only time will tell.  For now I'm loving where this inspiration is headed.

~ Lea Anne ~

~ Trunk Show ~

Hey happy quilters!  I'm super excited to announce my very first Trunk Show!  

Kathy from the Evening Star Quilt Guild would love to see some new faces at the quild meeting.  If you plan on attending please contact Kathy to let her know you will be visiting.  You can contact her on Facebook here.

The last couple of weeks has a been a treasure hunt.  Pulling quilt from everywhere around the house.  Oh my goodness!, I think I've an quilt obsession!  And this isn't all of them in my house.  And we won't even talk about how many have been gifted.    Now to go through them all and decide which ones will go to the trunk show.

Looking forward to meeting everyone!

~ Lea Anne ~

   

~ Block One ~ Save the Bees ~ GIVEAWAY

***GIVEAWAY CLOSED***

 Yeah!  It's finally here!  The first block of the Save the Bee's Free Block of the month.  If your just hearing of this block of the month and would like to join in the fun, you can find all the details by CLICKING HERE.  After joining in the fun and getting your first free block you can share your creations in the Sew Quilty Friends Facebook Group.

As soon as I heard the theme of this years BOM I knew it was for me.  My husband is a beekeeper and I've said for years a bee quilt was on my bucket list of quilts to make.

Instead of  making the blocks into a quilt I decided to use the blocks to make wall hangings for the studio.  

In true Lea Anne style these blocks will be made with Lakehouse Drygoods fabrics.  Over the years I've collected a fairly large stash of the discontinued fabrics.  In the block 1 pattern it called for adding stitches to each petal.  By fussy cutting the hearts on the outer petals and the stripes on the inner petals I gave the petals the whimsical look without doing any stitching.   

In order to get my hearts to fit inside each petal the patter had to be altered just a tiny bit.  The image below shows how I made two templates from the original pattern.  The templates were made from 3 layers of freezer paper.  For more information about how to make freezer paper templates CLICK HERE

Normally I would use the freezer paper templates for turned edge applique.  But these blocks will be made using raw edge applique so the templates made tracing onto Heat N Bond Lite a little bit easier.  They also were used to trace the shape around the hearts before cutting them out of the fabric.

In the original pattern all the petals are not uniform.  So my flower head ended up a little larger than the pattern.  It's not noticeable until I layer the pattern on top of my block.  Below shows the difference in size.

For the half square triangles in the border of the block I decided to use some scrap flippy corners left over from another quilt.  You can see the quilt here.  The blue basket sets beside my sewing machine.  When making a quilt with Flippy corners I sew an extra diagonal line to make a bonus HST.  No scraps!  See how to make the bonus HST's here. 

They needed a little trimming down. 

A true quarter inch binding was made for the the binding.  I like the look of a smaller binding on a small quilt.  However I did have a bit of trouble getting it to the right size.  You can read about it here and download an print a free double fold binding chart.

The backing fabric is a scrap from a previous project.  

I love how this little wall hanging turned out using nothing but scraps! OOPS...the background fabric was a new fat quarter.

Another alteration to the pattern was using a striped fabric for the Bee body instead of  the little bitty applique or stitching the stripes.

All machine stitching, no hand work at all except for sewing the binding to the back of the quilt.

I think the whimsical flower is my favorite part of this block.  

So let's get to the fun stuff...The GIVEAWAYS!  Each blogger in the blog hop will be giving away a copy of The Splendid Sampler book courtesy of Martingale.

  Make sure you visit each featured blog for more chances to win.  The list bloggers below.

The Crafty Quilter

Podunk Pretties you are here

The Quilting Nook

The Sewing Loft

Flamingo Toes

Kathy's Quilts

Freemotion by the River

A Quilting Life

To enter for the giveaway here at Podunk Pretties follow the directions below.  Giveaway will end 8/12/2018

~ Lea Anne ~

~ Love is in the Air ~

Yes it's true, my little ole heart is going pitter-pat.  Flying by the seat of my pants with this quilt design has let the creativity flow.  The design layout has changed several times, I think it might be finished evolving.   

It all started with this little 5.5" Dresden Block.   You would think by its tiny size that it was a pain to make, but really it wasn't. If you can make a normal 12" block you can make this.

Fussy cutting is fairly new to me.  In the past I would avoid it at all cost.  It just seemed so tedious.  Well what was I thinking?  The fussy cutting has taken the simple design from the cutesy little ...awe...   To a big WOW!  

As usual there's a few quilty rules being broken.  Fusible and turned edge applique techniques are used in this project.   I'm sure that makes some ruler maker cringe.   The Dresden's and all the circles are turned edge. Turning the edges of the circles is the only way to get them perfectly round...at least for ME to get them close to perfect.

There's a few more final touches to make before sharing the entire 24" block.  See you in a few days for the big reveal! 

Before leaving I want to give a big Hillbilly Hollar to Aunt Em's Soap.  This Mint soap has changed the look and feel of my skin.  It has the most amazing cent that you can't find at Walmart and it's gentle enough to use on my entire body.  Since I started using this a few months ago I no longer need to moisturize, the constant itchy skin is gone   It's priced higher than the yukky store bought stuff but it last so much longer, and I don't need to buy any products to repair the dry skin as with the other soaps. I think I'm actually saving money!  And to put the icing on the cake Em is a quilter and uses her tiny little scraps for packaging.  That's my kind of gal...use it up and re-purpose.  You can find Em's quilt an soap shop by clicking here.  Make sure you hop over to her quilt blog,  Em's Scrapbag, she always stitching up a scrappy beauty.

~  Lea Anne ~