Look what I got early for tomorrow’s anniversary!
30 red roses-one for each year we’ve been married!
Happy Anniversary to the best husband ever and thanks for all the joy.
Lest you think Scott and I are building a barn in our backyard, let me disabuse you of that notion right away. Instead, my quilting friend and I are “building” fabric barns. Eight of them to be exact, plus four barns with silos to be put in a quilt that will hang somewhere in our respective homes. But that’s down the road. For now, we have built barn number one.
The idea is to create a barn with a quilt block “painted” on the side like many families have done throughout the Midwest and upper Midwest. We got the instructions from Lori Holt of A Bee in my Bonnet, who posted it as the “Quilty Barn Along”. She took down the instructions in December but we had decided to start the quilt this year, so I copied all the tutorials and instructions down from her blog before they disappeared. We began with a trip to our local quilt store for the white background fabric and a few red fat quarters for the barns, but the rest of the quilt is meant to be a “stash buster”, where we use fabric pieces we already own. This has also been a goal of ours-to make some stash quilts, although she has more of a stash than I do, so her stash is going to get busted more than mine.
Our first block is the “Chicken Foot” block. Every farm should have chickens and these are scattering in every direction. The quilt block is a 6″ square on the side of the barn and those triangles were small, especially since it was my first time making half-square triangles. The whole block is a 16″ block, so the quilt is going to be large.
Lessons learned: my seams are a scant 1/4″ so my block ended up too large and her seams are a generous 1/4″ so her block ended up too small. We need to adjust our 1/4″ measurement because a small variation makes a big difference, especially in the 6″ block. Some of my barn pieces ended up a little crooked as I tried to adjust the size. So…….the next one will be better, but overall, we are pretty darn pleased with ourselves.
Team Sue
Team ShaRee
Finally, another quilt finish! I hate to admit this, but I actually finished the hand-quilting in late fall and it was just waiting for me to sew on the label to call it a finish. So I did that this weekend and it’s officially done and hanging on my landing stairs to celebrate spring!
I used leftover fabric to piece the back. I see lots of online examples of free-piecing the backs and decided to try it. I like how it turned out. It gives some variety rather than just a full backing of one fabric.
I took a class at my local quilt store on quilting basics 2 years ago and this was the quilt we started for that class. I learned a lot of great tips and this was a fun pattern, plus my first time using pre-cuts, as this was done with Moda Charm Packs. And I really love this line of fabrics-they are so bright and pretty!
Wild Thing, by Camille Roskelley, copyright 2008 by Thimble Blossoms
Size: 60″ x 68″
Fabric: City Weekend, from the Oliver + S fabric collection, produced by Moda
Brian and Mark are BYU Young Ambassadors and this year the group made three music videos and had a Facebook vote on which one would be uploaded first. The video with Brian’s song, “We’ll Be There” was introduced first. Scott and I were in Springdale, Utah visiting Zion National Park on our annual getaway for his birthday and watching the votes come in. We came in off the trail and sat down in the restaurant just before 6:00 pm when results were to be announced. Scott had me whip out my phone and we saw that Brian’s video was first, so we sat there in the restaurant and watched it, then posted on fb. We got a call from Brian saying he saw I’d posted and I was told him I was ecstatic. He said, “Are you going all fangirl on me right now?” Yes, I am!
In case you didn’t see my fb posts and missed the video, here it is:
You can see other videos from the 2013-14 group on their YouTube channel.
This is my annual post whining about snow falling in late March on my blooming crocus and daffodils.
I should be used to it, but I’m not.