Only one more to go!

Way back in 2011 this was a free BOM by Erin Russek at Onepieceatatime.  My quilt was started in January 2012.  Three years and I'm still plucking away a little by little.  This weekend the last of the 12 monthly blocks was finished!  Yeah!

 I know what you thinking, it could be those PURPLE birds that's been holding me back.  For those of you that are new to my blog, I've a fairly strong dislike of purple.  But my number rule in quilting is to work out of the comfort zone.   This quilt has been a challenge in more ways than just color.  I chose to stay with the colors in the pattern because the brights just say HELLO.   And the hand applique was enough of a challenge that I didn't want to throw in picking my own colors and fabrics.  

Even with my dislike of purple I love every expressive Distelfink.

I still need to decided what to do about eyes....do you think they NEED eyes or can they be blind birds?

I've also made a couple of changes to the original quilt pattern.  The first change was a in one block design.  The picture of the block came out blurry  so I'll just show the close up of this block, I love the orange in this one.  But if your really curious take a look at the first picture in this post.  Its the third block down from the top on the far left.  It had a huge heart at the bottom of the block that I felt look out of place with the rest of the blocks, so I change it to flowers.

And the second change would be to the block setting.  I'm tossing around a couple ideas that you can see here.

Once more I'll try to get the large center applique block at least glue basted before cleaning up this mess.  Wish me luck!  This is my third time working on this block.  

I'm linking up with a new linky party today.  I'd like to encourage you to hop over and check it out and link up!  

Beth@CookingUpQuilts is hosting Main Crush Monday Linky

And
Randi@Ihavetosay

I'll also be linking with Slow stitching Sunday, and

Design Wall Monday, you can find the links to both of these in the sidebar.
Let's add another Esther's Blog for WIP's Wednesday also found in my sidebar. 

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Mini Love Finish

 Have you ever started a project thinking it was going to be a quicky and then it takes much longer?  Well that's exactly what happened.  How could it take two days to finish a 12 x 17 wall hanging?!  Geeesh!  It all started by wanting to use up the scraps from the Amour de Cerise quilt and Simply Sweet table topper.

I surfed the internet for ideas and came up with a plan.  My little mini will include ideas from 3 different quilt designs.  I grabbed my favorite designing tools and with a little help from my printer for the letters ... TADA!

There's a quilt on the frame so I had to quilt this on my regular sewing machine.  And remember my walking foot broke last week.  Well what's a girl to do but take a free motion refresher course.  Oh boy...it's so much easier on the quilt frame.  Funny how quickly our muscles forget.   I had some tension issues and my soft flowing feathers were more like squiggles.  

Two days and two needle breaks later we have a finish!  I wanted to use every last piece of the L'Amour Charm pack so I made a nine patch from the scraps then cut it as if I were going to do a disappearing nine patch and used it for the bottom strip.  There's a few fabrics from my stash, but they all play pretty well together.   Now to give her a name, any suggestions?

I love white quilt backs.   Shows off everything, the good and the bad.   Even though the quilting is less than perfect I still love it.  Now that I've blown the dust of my FM on the DM I might try to do a few more minis this year.  

Linking up with BlossomHeartquilts for Sew Cute Tuesday

~ Lea Anne ~

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Enough for one more...

After making a lap quilt and a table topper, there's enough scraps left for one more small project from the Moda L'Amour charm pack.  Here's a sneak peak at the last little cutie.    Do you keep making projects until all the scraps are gone from the original project or do stash them away?  This is a first for me.  Maybe I should do this more often.   It's a great way to keep those scrap bins under control.

The Miss Kate quilt is coming along.  After two cups of coffee, an eye crossing quilt staring session and making a huge mess pulling fabrics for a border, I think this quilt will be fine without a border but with a colorful binding.  Now comes the hard part of stitching down all the applique. Sounds like an all day job and a lot of coffee!  

Guess what?  there's scraps...I see another Miss Kate project in the near future.

The designing wheels are already turning.  Maybe this applique can wait.

~ Lea Anne ~

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Thrifty Thursday

What quilter doesn't love stitching up a quilt from her favorite designer fabrics?  

I could start naming designers but today's post is all about thrifty quilting.  When I started quilting over 20 years ago all of my fabric came from big named stores.  Joann's and Walmart being at the top of the list.   I didn't know quilting shops even existed, let alone that there were designer fabrics.  My first two projects were made from old curtains and sheets.  Whatever I could cut up and stitch into a quilt was fair game.  I've even used Corduroy, because it was free.   Well not much has changed.   All the fabrics below came from Walmart, Joann's, and Hancock fabrics.  Pretty cute little bundle of sweetness!  The red stripe on the bottom is my favorite.  The great thing about Joann's is the coupons.  40 to 60% off everything.  Adding "cheap" fabrics along with designer fabrics can extend the stash without killing the budget.

I found these at a local thrift shop were just to cute to pass up.  I paid $2 for this adorable small bundle.  So are you a fabric snob?  Or do you see all fabric as quiltable?

~ Lea Anne ~

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