Giveaway Winners

It's Tax Day,but no tax worries here! Only news of those receiving the gifts from Jennifer Chiaverini's publisher of The Giving Quilt.
I used a random number generator and came up with these winning quilters.
Joanne and Judy will each receive a copy of the book and the pin designed to go with it. Barbara W, JoEllen, Sandie, and Quiltgrammy will each receive one of the pins. I will send emails to the winners requesting mailing info but will need to hear back from you within the week or I will need to choose another recipient.
Thank you all for joining in this giveaway! I hope these quilters will enjoy their treats!
 

Pressing matters

This is not a fascinating subject, but here it is :-)

Awhile back as I was sewing the church window blocks together, it dawned on me that I would need to start ironing them. Funny how my stitching slowed down...I enjoy hand stitching but with the odd shape block like this or diamonds, pressing the seam has been a bit daunting for me.

I learned to hand stitch watching a video by Linda Franz but despite her instructions, I have not felt like I "got it". Half way through this task though, a light bulb in my mind brightened a bit and I think I finally understood a bit of what she was saying. I don't think I would 'blame her' for how these seams look :-) but I think I'm improving.

The first pic shows some pressed and some wrinkly from being squashed in my hand while stitching.

The second pic shows my first way of doing it.

 Then this pic shows how I started swirling the intersections a bit. It's all about the construction of the seams and getting them to lie smooth, flat and with the least amount of fabric smashed in there. I never was able to do the spinning or swirling of the fabric very well but I think I'm doing better with it.

 

 

The process wasn't as tedious as I dreaded. It actually went pretty fast.

Of course...then I put on a thin inner border, put it on the intended table where it will be used, and realized it still needed another row of blocks!  Couldn't be happy without fixing it so a bit of unstitching occurred and a new row was added. I'm back to adding the borders again and will get it ready for quilting.

 

Thank you for the Happy Birthday wishes! We will be headed this week to celebrate with some sushi, a trip to my favorite quilt store, and to the DMV...they want to see me in person this year. I think tomorrow will be a good day to announce the giveaway winners. If you haven't commented yet for a chance to win The Giving Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini or one of the art pins, please check out the April 4th post and leave a comment there. It's a lovely book to read! 

sharing a favorite tutorial and another Giveaway reminder

It's not easy to pick just one. I loved watching Bonnie Hunter "debone" a shirt.
http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/04/deboning-shirt-movie.html
and I've been tempted to make a rug after watching Aunt Philly with her toothbrush tool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1JAuUWgYt4
But this week, I have been following Christa's Quilt Along and enjoying making these X blocks for my Hugs and Kisses quilt.

I am happily making progress and linking this post here for the Hands 2 Help quilt challenge. Click the button on the sidebar for more information about the quilts we are making or click here to check out others involved in the challenge.
If you are new to my blog, please stay awhile and sign up for the giveaway announced in this post. http://luckypupquilter.blogspot.com/2013/04/giveaway.html
 I have two copies of The Giving Quilt and 9 artfully designed pins to give away to readers. Jennifer Chiaverini's books are great reads. This one is a good place to start to meet up with some interesting quilters. Just leave a comment on that post for a chance to win. I'm hoping for lots of visitors!
Thank you so much for stopping by today. Hope you liked the "movies"!

Mailbox fun and Giveaway Reminder

A big box of plaids showed up on my doorstep yesterday flying in all the way from Texas! Julie of JuileKQuilts sent this huge variety of my favorite fabric, PLAID. This is quilter sharing at its best!

My mind started spinning of the possibilities but I knew my first spot for inspiration would have to be in one of Bonnie Hunter's books. These two are the top of the list of a quilt to start. I've been wanting to make the Plaid Bargello (the only bargello I've ever been tempted to make!) but The Fair and Square looks wonderful and perfect for these lovelies!

It will be great fun to plan. In the meantime, I finished the applique on my wool wall hanging and will set to quilting it this next week.  I'm also busy making more X blocks...I'm up to 14 and think I will make 10 more before running out of the fabric.  I also finished combining all the rows of my church windows quilt and will now need to iron and trim the edges before applying the borders. I think this picture shows when I was halfway done.

So a big Thank You to Julie :-)
and a reminder to the everyone else that the Giveaway for The Giving Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini is going on for another couple of weeks at my last post,
http://luckypupquilter.blogspot.com/2013/04/giveaway.html  Make sure to leave a comment there for a chance to win a really good read!

Giveaway!

 

This giveaway is now closed.

To celebrate The Giving Quilt coming out in paperback, I was sent two copies of the book to giveaway here to blog readers :-)  I also have artfully designed pins to go along with this book and two of Jennifer Chiaverini's earlier books, Sonoma Rose and The Wedding Quilt.

I have loved the Elm Creek series and The Giving Quilt was one of my favorites. I reviewed this book last fall when it first came out so you can read more about it here.

To win a copy there are no special tasks to complete, just leave a comment for me here of your interest and I will choose a name from the list.  There are a few other bloggers with giveaways in progress for this book so I'm going to leave this open a bit longer...like for 2 weeks when I'll be enjoying a birthday :-)  That way if you didn't win a copy from them, you might win here!

Please tell your blogging friends. I would love to see lots of names here of interested readers.

along the way to another quilt

I signed up for a quilt along (see sidebar button for Christa Quilts) and for Hands to Help (see sidebar for that button too)...and knew I wanted to use up some floral fabrics.  But upon checking my stash, I found that I also had leftover blocks. So I sewed these into a quick little quilt that I will use for a small gift.

 

Then I got started on X and O blocks for the quilt along and for fun listened in to Bonnie Hunter's Quilt Cam :-)

Marianne was the helper this time. It never gets lonely in the sewing room.

Next post is the giveaway! Please come visit!

church windows progress

 

I am using this template to cut out 2 pieces from a charm pack...Sandhill Plums by Kansas Troubles. DH helped me by tracing the seam line on each piece :-)
Then I machine stitched the pieces together...dot to dot. Then I hand pieced the rows together. 15 rows needed for my tablecloth. I'm stitching the last 4 rows on.

While waiting for DH to catch up with marking the pieces, I was inspired to make a wool wall hanging found in 2011 Primitive Quilts magazine.
Elinor really liked the idea!















The background quilt is a frame where smaller quilts can be displayed. Seasonal quilts that can be switched out during the year. The crow and pumpkin are a favorite place for me to start.















We have a good number of crows around here...but also some other beautiful birds like Edie here...we see lots of egrets.

 

And a few Heron. This one decided to fly into someone's fenced yard. Good thing the german shepherd who lives there wasn't home!

 

Thanks for visiting. I hope you'll come back next week for a 2 book giveaway!