Road Trippin' Finds

This past week, my mom and I hit the road to travel to Texas for my grandsons' birthday party. Of course, any road trip includes a few quilt shops and antique stores, but the bonus this year was attending QuiltCon in Austin one day. Today, I'm sharing a few of my finds from our trip - from sewing notions to vintage Christmas decorations to china. 

My favorite finds are the Necchi toy sewing machine (#21 in my collection) and matching green handled iron. Of course, I just love the vintage green color and they fit perfectly in this display in my sewing studio.....

And then, I picked up a couple of new sewing notions at an estate sale - an Oliso steam iron and an 12" x 18" Olfa cutting mat. The mat is brand new and was only $2! The iron also looks unused and was a steal for $20.

I've been in this vintage tea cup kick lately and have been picking up cups and saucers when I find cheap ones. This trip I picked up a few mismatched plates and containers for a DIY project that's on my to-do list - 3 tiered serving trays. I plan to use dinner plates on the bottom, salad or saucer plates in the middle, and a container such as a sugar bowl or gravy boat at the top. I picked up all these pieces for less than $2 each (most were 75 cents!). I was looking for very inexpensive pieces because I'm sure I will have some breakage when I try to drill holes in the centers for the tiered hardware. Stay tuned for more on this later.

I also picked up a few vintage Christmas decorations to add to my collection. I just love that the label is still intact on the green handled Santa cookie cutter.

I also added a couple of vintage aprons to my growing collection. I'm working on a program for our quilt guild's spring tea in April on the history of aprons, so I'll wait to show photos until later. 

Of course, mom and I love to find unusual places to eat while road trippin', and this time we came across this cute tea room in Crowley, Texas. Lunch was wonderful and was full of beautiful pink flowered china and doilies. 

And no trip to Texas is complete without some BBQ - even if that BBQ was in Oklahoma on the way Texas. It was rustic and filled with native American relics - and this quirky salad bar made out of an old car, vintage window and longhorns.

I'll share more about QuiltCon in another post later.

~Sharla

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Moda Blockheads 3 - I'm In!

After watching on the sidelines for Moda Blockheads 1 & 2 because of time commitments, I decided this year was the year. I'm so excited for this challenge!

I chose to use a fat quarter bundle of Tasha Noel's 'A Little Sweetness' fabric for Riley Blake that I won last year in an Instagram giveaway (I know, how lucky can I be!). 

I'm making 6" blocks and hope the pieces won't get any smaller than they were in this first block!

I decided to use Mama's Linoleum layout by Lella Boutique here, although I'm going to make it larger to include all the blocks. The photo collage above shows what four 6" blocks sewn together will look like in this layout. I'm going to try to make two blocks with white backgrounds and two blocks with colored backgrounds in each set of four to give it that checkerboard effect.

Here are my week 2 and 3 blocks.

And for week 4, I elected to make one of the alternate blocks that was shared instead of the applique. I'm going to wait to do the applique blocks until I see them all and then may make a separate project with just the applique. 

This week's block was a letter 'Love' block. I didn't really think it fit with the other blocks so I elected to make a 12" block in reds and pinks and will make this into a Valentine's mini quilt to hang on my vintage door display for the holiday. I think I'll add some hearts on the sides and bottom. My project for this afternoon.

Several of the Moda designers that are hosting this sew along have suggested to starch the fabrics before cutting and it will help with making accurately pieced blocks. I've never starched before but decided to try. I used a pump bottle of Faultless Original spray starch (well more like 3 bottles) and literally soaked each fat quarter then hung them to dry on my vintage drying rack. After they dried, I steam pressed them.

I had a couple of fabrics that bled with the starching process.:( I probably should have stopped right there and washed all the fat quarters, but I didn't. When I wash the quilt, I'll just throw in lots of color catchers and hope that works. Hopefully, I won't be sorry for this decision later! What would you have done?

I'm loving seeing all the blocks in the Facebook group here. I am waiting a few days after the block pattern is posted on Wednesdays to see what clever ideas everyone else has for their blocks before making mine. Is that cheating?

Believe it or not, I'm all caught up for the moment for MBH3! Although I want to make a couple more of the alternate blocks I've seen. Are you a Moda Blockhead? What layout are you using? Can't wait to see your blocks!

~Sharla

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Jumping in on the Temperature Quilt Craze

I've watched many variations of the temperature quilt develop over the past few years on Instagram, and I've really liked a lot of them. But it wasn't until I saw Kelly's (of @itsjustsew) version that I fell in love and knew I had to make one. So I hope imitation is the sincerest form of flattery because I'm totally copying her idea!

Kelly used JeliQuilt's paper piecing pattern called Juicy Goosey to create circles of flying geese with each goose representing the high temperature for a day and the surrounding background representing the low temperature. When you sew four sections of geese together, it creates a circle for each month. 

I decided to use a fat quarter bundle of Spritz Tonals from Connecting Threads for my high temps and I arranged the rainbow of colors from dark purple at the lowest to a dark burgundy at the highest end of the range. Each color represents five degrees in a range from zero and below to 111 and above.

For the lows I selected nine Moda Bella Solids in a gradiant range of grays. Each hue of gray represents 10 degrees from zero and below to 80 degrees. 

My fabric finally arrived this weekend so today I decided to tackle the first quarter of January. Before starting to sew, I decided to enlarge the pattern as large as I could fit on an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper and then I measured each paper piecing section and made a cutting chart of what size each piece needs to be. I want my monthly circle blocks to be as large as possible, which will be 15" finished.

I also made high and low fabric charts and marked the selvedge of each fabric to help me keep track of what temperature range each color represents.

I also made notes of fabric lines and pattern used for future 'senior moments'. I put my charts in a plastic sleeve to keep the fabrics nice and neat.

So I have eight days or one quarter section of the month complete, which took me most of the afternoon to do. Hopefully the process will go a little faster as I become more proficient at paper piecing. I have done a little paper piecing in the past but it always takes me a little bit to remember how to do it and get into a rhythm. I'll share again when I have the month of January complete.

Have you made a temperature quilt? Want to join me in the fun and keep me accountable for getting each month completed? 

~Sharla

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