Friday Finish ~ The Patriot

Happy Friday quilty friends!  I'm doing a little happy dance today because this one is finished.  A simple name for a simple quilt..."The Patriot".  

You know we often get caught up in the new more elaborate quilt designs but really the old simple patterns have a charm all their own.  

There's a reason they're called classics.  Classics last forever, while the new patterns have a long way to go before they can reach this much desired label of classic.  Sadly, many will never make get the classic label.

 You can take a classic pattern of nine patches, add the classic colors of red white and blue, and you have yourself a quilt that will be treasured for generations.

I had to share this picture below.  Mr. Podunk thought he was comic of the year when I said "Ok now the backside".  He such a goof.  So there it is girls, Mr. Podunk's backside.  What you don't see is him doing his little booty dance/wiggle.

Well back to the quilt, the backing is a LakeHouse Fabrics print.  White backings show off the quilting.  I love white background fabrics and backings.  So traditional.

The swag quilting on the border also felt sorta traditional.  I was trying to keep it simple but AWE worthy.  Did I manage it?  And the blue binding frames the quilt nicely.  It's from my vintage stash.

One more picture just because it's my favorite.  This was during the process of taking it off the quilt frame.  The lighting was excellent in the studio for picture taking.  It shows off every feather.

For those of you that have been following me for a long time know that I'm no fabric snob.  I'll use any fabric.  So here's my list of fabrics used.  Blue nine patches, outer red border and backing are LQS fabrics(all purchased on sale). The white background is Joann's Kona white, purchased with a 60% off coupon. The red triangles are Walmart fabric and the Navy blue is Vintage fabric from who knows where, purchased at an estate sale.  If I had to guess I would say it's not very old, maybe the 90's.  But still consider somewhat old.

Thanks for stopping by my little spot in Podunk, have a great weekend!

~ Lea Anne ~

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New Beginnings

Just popping in for a quicky share of one of my patterns reworked by a fellow blogger.  You can get all the details over at Vicki's Crafts and Quilting.  There's a giveaway!  The original pattern is called Back Porch Blooms and can be found in the Tutorials tab at the top of my blog.

Thanks Vicki for making my day, you have no idea how much that brightened my day!

Lea Anne

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Flimsy Friday

Yeehaw!  Another quilt top complete!  Sure it would look nicer with some applique but I'm on a roll.  All the white space can be filled with custom quilting. And you never know I may eventually go back and add some applique.  For now she's folded and in the needs to be quilted pile.  The quilt pattern is my own, designed for the specific task of using up the leftover nine patches from another quilt idea.  She finishes at 73.50 square, a nice size for the back of the couch.

With such a gorgeous spring day I had to take an outside picture.  Oh how I wanted to  throw a quilt on the ground  and soak in the sun while taking a nap.  

The last picture is what happens when you think your faster than your sewing machine.  I'm one of those quilters that doesn't like to run over pins.  Instead I pull them out at the last second, right before the needle comes down, never slowing down.  It seems my cat like reflexes are only in my mind.

~ Lea Anne ~

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Design Wall Daisies

Top of the morning quilty friends!  Hope you each had a wonderful weekend filled full of whatever makes you giggle.   I didn't get to stick to my weekend plan of quilting on the frame.  As soon as I touched my quilting machine ...she broke.  Oh well what can you do but whine to Mr. Podunk, ask him to fix it and move on.  This was the perfect opportunity to work on a UFO.  There's plenty to choose from in various stages of completion.  But the one below caught my eye.

A cute little stack of 50 or more mini dresdens.

If you've been hanging around my blog for awhile you probably remember my Daisy quilt.  Not sure why this one became a UFO because I LOVE IT.  It might have been the applique.  Due to the little dresdens being randomly placed on the quilt top over seams it's a little bit of a pain to machine stitch them to the quilt.   It was a even trickier to glue baste them in place as the quilt hung on the wall.

 All basted and ready to stitch.

 Awe now look at that, so springy and cute.  Why did I ever stop working on this?

~ Lea Anne ~

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"Sweet Sixteen" quilt top is complete

At last she's together.  I can't tell you how much I ABSOLUTELY love this quilt.  What a sweetie.  It din't take long to come up with the name "First Kiss".  My thought when designing this quilt was to make a heart quilt that could be  Valentine and still be used everyday.  This will fit into my studio perfectly and not look too Valentiney-ish. 

The heart shaped blooms combined with the small stars in the sashing remind me of that first kiss.  Love struck and seeing stars!

Most of the print fabrics are from various lines of Pam Kitty.  There's a few fabrics from other lines as well.

Quite often when designing quilts my borders are an after thought.  But not this one, I knew from the moment I designed the block that the border would also include hearts.  LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!

Now I just need to come up a quilting plan.  There's plenty of room for custom quilting in all that white space.  Oh maybe a feather or two!

This last picture is just because I like it.  

Thanks for stopping by my little spot in Podunk, ya'll come back anytime.  I love  comments and I try to respond to them all, but lately I've not been able respond to the many blessing sent for mamma and I.  Hopefully things will be back to "normal" soon.

I've linked up this post to the follow lovely blogs.  Hop on over and share your creations!

Fort Worth Fabric Studio

and 

Confessions of a fabric addict

and

My Quilt Infatuation

~ Lea Anne ~

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Sometimes you just gotta STRUT!

Come on in dear quilty friends, I'm so excited and recharged, ready for the day! So what's got me in such a good mood?  SEWING!!  You never really know how much you love something until it's not there.  Even though I'm not spending as much time sewing, there's plenty of time for ideas to run through my head.  So why not stitch up one of those ideas.  This one really has me excited.  It's going to be simple and a little out of my comfort zone.  Working with only two colors makes me feel like a modern quilter, so trendy.  Oh yes you cool cats I'm strutting my stuff, feeling a little groovy this morning, John Travolta ain't got nothing on this jive!

While we're in the groove let's strut on over to the quilter so you can dig my Podunk Posy quilt.  She's been hanging here for about 2 weeks waiting for some cool quilting ideas.  If you're digging this quilt, you can click on the tutorials tab at the top of the blog to find the far out free pattern.

It didn't take long to draw up some fab ideas, can you dig it?

Well I'm out here chicks, see you on the flip side!

Before you cats split, boogie on over to these groovy blogs where I'm strutting my stuff.  It's quilting to the max!  Be there or be square.

Later!

Judy@patchworktimes for Design Wall Monday

Beth@cookingupquilts for Main Crush Monday

~ Lea Anne ~

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Up to my elbows

Popping in on Mondays to share my weekend progress is my favorite post of the week.  It became a habit when I found Judy's blog a few years ago.  Every Monday she hosts a Linky Party called Design Wall Monday.  So what did I stitch up this weekend, not a thing.  Most of my time was spent in the kitchen.  But I did come up with another idea for my Lilies of Love quilt.  Yes I finally came up with a name!  You can see more design options here and find a so called tutorial for the quilt block here.  

While up to my elbows in fruits and veggies this weekend my mind was wandering around my Studio.  Tossing around more border options.  That's when I started thinking...this is a scrappy quilt, why can't the borders be scrappy.  The last time I used this inner scalloped border was on my Promenading tulips quilt. (below) Look at the super scrappyness!(is that a word?)  Cutting a piano key border doesn't appeal to me right now but I could do a different print on each side like in the picture above. HMMM...maybe.  We'll see what happens when I actually have time to be in the Studio.  

For now it's time to clean up the weekend canning mess and organize the pantry.  The canning season is almost over.  YIPPEE!  Just a few tomato's and squash left on the vines.   We still need to harvest the sweet potatoes but that won't be for a few more weeks.  It's been a good year for preserving, I actually ran out of jars and will need more before canning the potatoes.  This weekend was whole tomato's, acorn squash, apple pie filling, and apple butter.....YUM!  So here's my tip of the day for all my canning buddies.  A trick my momma taught me years ago.  Add a couple handfuls of red hots to your apple butter, when they melt it gives a little extra kick(not hot), everyone will want to know your secret for the most delicious apple butter ever.

~  Lea Anne ~

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Feather Ready!

Well after hours of fiddling with different applique idea for this quilt I've decided, it's a quilt top, ready for quilting.  No more applique just tons of feathers, maybe some cross hatching.

Just look at all the wide open spaces....oh yes... just right for feathers galore.

After all the fussing about the applique it came together in the middle perfectly, what a relief.

I'll start marking it for quilting this afternoon and hope to have it on the frame by tomorrow morning.  Dolly(my BHQ 15) has been sitting idle for over 6 months.  Waiting patiently for me to get over my keeping it simple stage.  The wait is over!   I'm dusting her off, giving her a lube job and taking her for a test drive to blow out the gunk....YeeHaw!  My Mojo is back!  Hold on tight old Dolly, I'm putting the pedal to the metal and we're making up for lost time!  See you gals in a few days with sneak peak at what me old Dolly can do when we team up!

I'm linking up today's post with these fun linky parties.

Design Wall Monday@Patchworktimes

MainCrushMonday@CookingUpQuilts

MondayMakers@HugABitQuilts

LinkyTuesday@FreeMotionByTheRiver

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Prepping for more scrappy goodness

In between quilting and the ho-hum chores of daily life I've been cutting scraps for the next easy scrap quilt.  The Podunk Posy I designed a few days ago will be the hardest part, and she's not hard at all!  Just to prove it to everyone, I'll be posting a tutorial for my Podunk Posy next week.  And there's more....I'll also post tutorials for the rest of the quilt as I make it, sorry no PDF pattern this time.  The quilt is so simple I think most of you could make it without instructions.  Keeping things simple has been the theme so far this year, so might as well just keep on rolling with it.  I came up with an idea but couldn't decide on the corners of the quilt.   So why not just share all three patterns!

PLAN 1 

with baskets in the corners.  The baskets are from a previous tutorial that can be found here.

PLAN 2

Butterfly corners, this block has a smaller version of the quilt block in my Flit and Flutter quilt.  I'll be sharing the pattern for this block as well.

PLAN 3 

checker board corners, this was my original idea for this quilt, but I can't have just one plan now can I?!

The finished size of the quilt is 72 x 72 and has over 300 2.5" squares.  

So which Plan is your favorite?

~ Lea Anne ~

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Fluttering about

I tried really hard to fight the urge not to make a quilt block while piecing a simple squares quilt.   The squares were lacking something and just didn't set right with me.  So I grabbed a cuppa and took a quick trip through the internet looking for a simple 8 inch butterfly pattern.  After coming up empty handed I decided to just draw up my own.

  The horizontal rows might become vertical columns or frames for the butterflies.   HMM...we'll just have to wait and see what the day brings.  You can see below that the rows were numbered ready to be pieced into a quilt when inspiration hit. 

 I mentioned earlier in the week..... sticking to a written pattern is pretty much impossible, it seems that the same is true with my own pattern.  

Linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social

 ~ Lea Anne ~

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Hand Applique finished FINALLY!

My fingertips are celebrating its finish.  Now to get the machine piecing done.  I'm liking this little gal so much, another one for me may be in order!  Its on the long list of "gonna do's". 

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Weekend project

I've been playing around in EQ and this is what I came up with.  The pink looking flower is actually a coral color that the camera washed out.   And that yellow really ties in also.    It really does all tie together.   Well maybe I should've used the larger print florals on the baskets instead of the center.  Oh well whats done is done and I'm still pleased with the outcome.

Of course I had to add another picture of whats going on here in Podunk.  Everything is blooming and it's so gorgeous!  Spring is here and I'm lovin it!  This is one of our apple trees.

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