Summer Mini Swap time

Oh it's that time again!   Stitching Cubby Hole's mini swap!  This is a swap that I am so delighted to be a part of.

My partner this time was Terry in sunny California. What's the first thing I think of when I hear California...(other than Disneyland of course)   The Beach!

 

And it looks like, that is just what Terry was thinking too!

Is this just the cutest summer quiltie you have ever seen?

:-)

 

The detail is just spectacular. The ric-rac on the sun, the shells, and driftwood!

All topped of with gorgeous hand quilting. 

I can't begin to tell you just how special this is!

Terry, your the best.

 And it will be treasured forever.

Now it makes me wish, we had water in Colorado.

Well, we have a little water, but big beautiful beaches...

not so much!

Guess I will just sit and stare at my quiltie and dream!

;-)

Be sure to check out the new Saturday Swap Linky Party over at 

Drowning in Fabric

http://drowninginfabric.wordpress.com/ 

Flip Flop

 

You know it's summer when the flip flops come out...

and what better a way to show them off than this new Art To Heart design.

I couldn't help but run home and comb thru my scraps to put this fun summer table runner together.

 

 Don't these just make you want to kick your shoes off?

 

Remember the fabrics I dyed a couple of weeks ago?

I found the perfect place for the yellow piece, I think! 

It's gonna be one hot summer!

:-)

I've fallen in love...

   Have you seen Edyta Sitar's book Seasonal Silhouettes?
         There are 12 gorgeous blocks in this book.

 

All the little details are so pretty!

Looks like I have about 11 more projects on my pile!

LOL!

Thanks Edyta...

This book is fabulous!

 

More scrap bustin

 

Here it is...the naked truth. No cleaned up photos, just raw images!  LOL

Complete with strings and threads that haven't been trimmed yet!

And you thought you would never see naked here!

hahahahahaha

A couple posts back, I shared my strip sets

and the blocks I turned them into

Well, here is a peek what they look like stitched together.

This is the actual block.

It takes 16 stripy blocks for each big block.

An alternate pattern emerges as you put your big blocks together.

Kinda cool huh!

 

 Best yet, anything goes...

  

You will find a little Christmas, Halloween, Southwest, Brights, Oriental...

 

A scrap soup so to speak!   Some of these fabrics were so old, that I don't even remember buying them. Who knows where they showed up from. Some were hideously ugly.

 

But finished they played together nicely.

 

Break out the sunglasses for this thread. 

It did bring it all together.

A little bit of my hand dyes for the inner border 

and

a bright butterfly fabric outer border and backing all came from my stash. 

Something I bought years ago, for a project I have long forgot about.

I am delighted to tell you that I only have about an 8"x10" piece of the butterflies left.

Now is that luck or what.

Yes, this is what quilting all started out to be.  A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Whatever you could get your hands on.

I refer to these as my "freebie" quilts. I didn't purchase anything new to make it, so it's free to me!

:-)

Oh how I love this "Trashcan Treasure". If you get a chance, take a class from Pat Speth the Nickel Quilt lady. She shares the pattern for this in her classes!

It's a keeper!

:-)

You know it's summer when...

 

The fabric dyes come out and the fun begins!

I dyed a rainbow, so to speak!

Mixing dyes and seeing new colors bloom is such a joy.

 

This time I played with some tone on tones.

 

What great results they gave me.

 

Best yet, they were all from left over dyes. Once I dyed my main fabrics, I just poured off the extra liquid on these. That's why they are more pastel. They just soaked up the leftover dye. It's always a bit of a mystery as to what will happen.

Not bad results, but there are a couple I might re-dye next go round.

 

Here are some solid extras too. They just don't have the same punch as the tone on tone, do they?

 My main goal this time was solids, but when I was at the end and had some dyes leftover, I played with dumping them together and squishing them into a small container of fabric. I do love the design that happens.

It was a good dye day.  47 yards in all!

I found a bolt of Bamboo fabric hidden in the ole sewing room, that needs to be dyed. 

Hidden with it was 12 more yards of fabric ready to dye.

My quilting Sista bought me some white PFD batik... Ohh I can't wait to play with that.

and today I went and bought 12 more yards of polka dot tone on tone. 

I've got a plan....

It's gonna be a Happy Summer!