Twister receiving blanket quilt

The only time I've had to sew since we moved has been at retreats.  I made this Twister quilt at a weekend quilting retreat at the end of June.  It's made from my granddaughter Lylie's receiving blankets.  I used the original Twister tool that's made for 10" squares.  Off to my long arm quilter it goes!

If you have never tried a Twister ruler, you should.  It's addicting and is a great way to use scraps. As part of our retreat activities, we all brought 5" squares to exchange and made Lil' Twister quilts.  We all used the same fabric squares but we each used a different fabric for our outer border.

my Twister quilt

retreat Twister quilts

You can see an even larger Twister quilt that I made using 12 1/2" squares here and a smaller one here using the Itty Bitty Twister tool and 2 1/2" squares.

Since starting this post, I actually made a block in my new sewing room!  The room is far from being done but it's good enough to sew in.  I'll show you what I started next time.

Better late than never!

This is the last day to enter the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side.  With moving and all, I almost missed it. That's why I say, "Better late than never."  Click on the link to see all the wonderful quilts that have been posted and to find some new blogs to follow.

I am entering my Jumbled quilt in the festival.  I love all the Kaffe Fassett fabrics I used and it makes me happy to look at it with all the bright colors and patterns.  The pattern is a variation I came up with of the disappearing nine patch block and is made entirely from 5" squares. This quilt now belongs to our granddaughter Samantha.  I hope it makes her happy too.

Butterfly quilt #4

Kinsey Claire's color is aqua. Here's the center of her butterfly quilt top that I made on a quilt retreat that I went on the first weekend in May, less than 2 weeks after she was born.  This quilt is not quite so monochromatic as her sisters' quilts. I fell in love with the floral fabric in the wings of the butterfly in the first block of the second row and decided to use it as my color scheme. I think I will use it as one of my borders.

Kinsey's Butterfly quilt

Yes, in the middle of all of the craziness of moving and remodeling our new house, I went on a 3 day quilt retreat!  Really, really bad timing but I signed up for the retreat way before our house sold and before I knew my daughter was pregnant.  To top it all off, Kinsey's grandpa on her father's side passed away that same weekend. On the bright side, I was able to work on Kinsey's quilt without interruption.  I still need to find border, backing and binding fabrics but that won't happen real soon as I don't even have any idea about how to set up my new sewing room yet.  I just ordered the flooring yesterday.  I do know that I need to part with alot so be watching for more give-aways.

We are officially in our new house as of today and it is total chaos. Boxes and messes are everywhere.  We decided to redo the kitchen and master bath before moving in but as of now, I have no kitchen countertop so no sink or dishwasher either.  None of the drawers have pulls, 2 wall cabinets are not installed, the roll-out shelves for the pantry are not in and none of the trim is done.  The master bath remains gutted but at least we have 2 other working showers.  The whole house is overflowing because we are downsizing by about 1000 sq. ft.  We love the layout of the new house and know all the mess will be worth it soon.

Here are some pictures of the progress of our new kitchen-

I'm linking to:

Give-away winners

Thanks to everyone that participated in the Paper Pieced Pattern-A-Day Garden Party Blog Hop.  I hope you all downloaded a bunch of the fantastic free patterns.  Thanks for all the nice comments and for entering my give-away.

The winners of my give-away of the Butterflies and Blooms book and the  Fast, Fun & Easy Scrapbook Quilts book have been notified by e-mail.  


Kathy won Butterflies and Blooms and Janet won Fast, Fun & Easy Scrapbook Quilts.


Stay tuned for more give-aways as I start packing to move.  I need to part with a few things!

Garden Party Blog Hop and Give-Away

Today is my day on the Garden Party Blog Hop hosted by Jennifer at Sewhooked.  I have designed a paper pieced Butterfly block.  Maybe my subconscious knew that my daughter was having a girl and made me design a butterfly pattern!  This one is different than those I showed you in the last post however.  I had planned on making this block into a mini quilt to show but just ran out of time with moving and a new grandbaby and all.  It's on my to-do list though and I will show it when it's done.

Garden Party Butterfly

You can download your FREE pdf copy of the block pattern here.  If you have never paper pieced before, Jennifer has a great tutorial here.

If you would like to try paper piecing with freezer paper, check out these two different techniques -here and here.


In addition to the FREE pattern, I am giving away two books-Butterflies and Blooms and Fast, Fun & Easy Scrapbook Quilts.  To enter, leave a comment letting me know which book you would like.  If you leave a no reply comment, I can't contact you so please leave an e-mail address if necessary. Two winners will be chosen at random on May 6th at 8:00 p.m. CDT.  I will email the winners and announce it on my blog.