A little IKEA music

Had to make a run to IKEA today to pick up one more pack of candles for the wedding decorations.  As I cruised through the store I stopped at the fabric section to see what they had.  Here's what hopped into my cart...

100% cotton with a large music print.  Enough for borders and backing on a Queen quilt, and only 99 cents per yard!  Couldn't pass that up - especially with all the musicians in our family.

Packed and ready to quilt!

It's been a while since my last post, and the next few weeks promise to be so busy that another post is not likely for a while.  Countdown and housecleaning for the upcoming wedding are in full swing, and time to Quilt Awhile will be scarce.  In fact, most of my quilting and sewing will be stored away while we have guests and events at the house.

But, a few projects are packed up and ready to travel to the Lake for the weekends and Fourth of July holiday.

London Roads with embroidered teapots needs the borders taken off.  After sewing them on it just looked too big. A simple green border will make the quilt small enough to be a wall hanging in my kitchen.  And a kitchen is the perfect spot for teapots!  The corner blocks and border will become a pieced backing.  

In the back of the tub are a few more strips for Chinese Coins.  Next to that are pieces for the next step in Bonnie Hunter's current Mystery in Quiltmaker Magazine.  It's surprising, but I have been able to keep up with that! 

In the middle are some red/white/blue blocks from scraps that need to be put together into rows.  On the right is a pack of applique blocks in case I'm in the mood for that instead of piecework.  And a few more wonky stars could be made as well. 

It's certainly enough to keep me busy!  The question is will I get to any of it at all???  Hope so.

It's book sale time again

Yesterday I headed off to the huge book sale that the Bloomington, MN Crime Prevention group holds each year.  There are boxes and boxes of gently used Quilting books, magazines and patterns.  Here's what landed in my bag....

Garden themed Applique and Fons & Porter books for $2 each.

A whole bunch of old Quiltmaker Magazines I don't have yet for 50 cents each

Debbie Mum angel & snowman patterns and
a pair of Minnesota Themed patterns for $1 each

Patterns for quilts with Snowmen, Wreaths, Carrots and  Stars for $1 each

I also picked up some Taste of Home cookbooks which should give me some great recipes to try out.

The sale runs through June 22nd.  The link is here if you're in the Twin Cities and want to stop in to shop or to donate books if you're doing some house cleaning.  

Chinese Coins for luck

The first of June was exciting around here.  Two couples close to our family announced engagements.  Let the quilt planning begin!

Actually, you can often see these things coming, and I've been putting some thought into it already.  YY is of Chinese heritage and the traditional Chinese Coins block would bring good luck to their marriage.  So, I've been saving tiny 1.25 x 3.5 inch scraps for a Chinese Coin quilt.   Half a gallon bag saved so far.

Recent Quilt Cam from Bonnie Hunter had her piecing crumb blocks on foundation strips cut from old phone book paper.  Light Bulb Moment!!!  Chinese Coins can be pieced that way to keep the strips from twisting this way and that way due to small variations in how they were cut.  Excellent!  And it works even better than I expected.  The lines of addresses & phone numbers also help me keep my stitching lines parallel.  Bonus!

There are free instructions here at Quilter's Cache.

I'm quite sure the young brides don't follow their old Aunt or Neighbor's blog, so I'm not worried about sharing progress here with you.

Star leaders and enders

Here's what I've been using for leaders and enders as I'm piecing Lazy Sunday.

Aren't they adorable?  Little 2.5 inch blocks made into a 9-patch wonky star.  The idea came from Bonnie Hunter's free pattern:  Maverick Stars..   I had some leftover fussy-cut blocks to use for the centers of the stars.  The star points are the discarded triangles from piecing binding together. 

Lazy Sunday 2 & 3

It was a lazy Saturday, a cloudy and rainy day at the Lake, so I pulled out Bonnie Hunter's Lazy Sunday Mystery and got caught up.  Sure enough, when we got home there was the next Quiltmaker Magazine issue in the mail and the next step in the mystery.
Here's what my blocks are looking like so far...

Tonight I'm watching/listening to a re-broadcast of Bonnie's last Quilt-Cam on Youtube, and putting together the first few part 3 blocks (on the right.)  It's fun to have 'company' while I sew - and listen to her chatter away about quilting.  It's looking good! I'm liking the color combinations.  The black stars don't look bad after all, and the red centers were a surprise.  I thought that some of the four patch blocks we made in step one would be used there.  The pop of color is nice don't you think?