Thangles Block of the Month

I am working on a block of the month project from my local quilt store. I finished the block for June today. It measures 8.5 inches. This is a pretty cool program. The first block was $6 but every month after that the block is only $1 if you bring in the previous month's finished block. I wasn't too sure about the fabric at first for this one, but I ended up liking it. It has these really bright teacups on a yellow background.

Lap Quilt Swap for 1boy1girl1kitty2

I finished another block for the quilt swap I am in. This one is for 1boy1girl1kitty2. I really like the bright Hawaiian prints.

5 tons of rocks...

Over the course of the past week, the major project in our household has been landscaping the front yard. It is so hard to keep grass alive here unless you have a sprinkler system built into the ground, which we don't. It involves going outside every couple of nights and rearranging the sprinkler system to try to keep the grass alive. We decided to get rid of some of the grass and plant xeriscape plants that are suitable to the high desert climate we live in. So along the sidewalk, my husband installed this wall, dug out the grass, and leveled the ground.

We then tilled the soil and put down weed blackout paper, and planted some plants like this Autumn Joy below.
Of course, we then couldn't decide between mulch and rocks. Last year we bought numerous and I do mean numerous bags of mulch for this center island and it already looked bad. So, we decided to go with rocks.
We called a local gravel and rock company and had 5 tons of rocks delivered Saturday morning. So this is what 5 tons of rocks looks like. I thought it would be more, but the pile on our driveway was pretty impressive. It was at least 5 feet tall and sloped down to nine feet from edge to edge. We still have a small pile left to put somewhere...
We pulled back some of the mulch in the middle and added rocks to the island. We also planted a crab apple tree on the right and a dwarf dogwood on the left, which I am praying stays alive-it didn't look to hot after sitting in a pot for a week on our back porch.
In the corner of the yard, we planted grasses and baby's breath. Here you see switch back grass, fountain grass, blue fescue, autumn joy and the really tall grass in the left corner-which I don't remember the official name of.

This final plant is Lena's Broom. It is supposed to get 5 feet tall by about 5 feet wide. It has these gorgeous yellow and orange blooms. I am excited about how much better the yard looks and even more excited that we are close to being done! Now if we can just keep everything alive for the summer. We did put a soaker hose under all those rocks, so we just have to turn the hose on and it waters all of our little baby plants. You can't even see it, which I find very cool.

Last night I finished another square for the Lap Quilt Swap I am in over at Craftster. I decided to continue with the wonky theme. I love the buttefly fabric. I am a little out of my comfort zone with making a block like this for someone else. I feel as if she is either going to love it or not like it.

We are waiting on 4 tons of rocks to show up to put into the front garden area we landscaped this week. They say that a ton of rocks will only cover 90 square feet, two inches tall-that doesn't seem right in my head. We spent about three hours yesterday putting the rest o f the plants in and laying the weed block fabric over it. Hopefully, we can get all of the rocks scattered over it today and plant our new crab apple tree.

Postage Stamp Quilt

I worked on my postage stamp quilt this weekend. I realized I have not posted any pictures of it yet, so you are in for a plethora of pictures. Be forewarned! I collected numerous squares from very kind people on craftster.org including a swap completely dedicated to swapping 1.5" squares. Imagine that! I am trying this fusible gridded interfacing type material, adhering the squares with an iron to that, and then sewing it together. If anyone is interested, I can post a tutorial. With that said, my corners line up nicely, but my blocks did not necessarily come out to be the exact same size. I think I need to work on my 1/4 inch seam allowance a little and sew a little slower! (The obviously smaller yellow square is due to my not snipping the seams before I sewed the other way-it may/will be repurposed into another project) Please excuse the annoying flash light at the bottom of the picture.Don't they look neat all lined up though? These are the unfinished/unsewn blocks that are just fused together.
I am still missing huge quanities of orange and purple. I would like 5 blocks of each color which means 500 squares of orange, red, yellow, purple, and green! I am pretty close on my green squares (within 50 or so squares) and I think I need about 100 red squares to finish up my red.


I need around 350 squares of both orange and purple and 200 blue! I find this amazing. I traded 60 squares with 10 different people on craftster during the original swap-which equals 600 squares and then I did a personal swap with athenamat for around 350? squares. That is pretty crazy, right? I sent 350 little squares of fabric through the mail to New York and she mailed that many back to Colorado. That takes pen pals to a whole new level. It is neat that this quilt will eventually have fabric from many locations across the United States.

Fresh Squeezed Disappearing Nine Patch WIP

This past weekend I worked a little on my Fresh Squeezed Disappearing Nine Patch. I managed to get the top pieced together. It is approximately 48x48" right now. I am debating adding a 6 inch border. I need to go see if I can find fabric that will blend in with all these different fabrics! I may try orange or maybe a green. I haven't fully decided yet. It will probably have to wait until this weekend.
Work has been super busy this week since it is the last week of school. Just a few more days and it will be summer vacation! Yeah! We spent all weekend working on our front yard. Brandon is building a stone wall along the front sidewalk with those pavers that you can buy at Home Depot. We are planting xeriscape plants along side it to cut down on some of the grass we have to water and cut. I did manage to sneak a few flowers in but they are drought tolerant and super hardy.

This is one of the plants we bought ready to be planted! It is Autumn Stonecrop. It looks really neat up close.

Nickel Dog turned Wonky!

This block is intentionally wonky but not finished!

I had four dog patches left over after my nickel dog quilt was finished. They just didn't make the cut for on reason or other. I adore this fabric. I made a dog with the fabric below and I like it. I was worried it wouldn't really show up against a border of white though, so it was put aside.

I finally decided I wasn't going to let all of that work go to waste and so proceeded to start building some wonky log cabin blocks around these dogs using my left over fabric.
I realized I probably would not have enough of just that fabric to make pillows out of all four dogs so I pieced together some more squares of my charm pack. I love the strawberries on the blue!
I then added it to the borders! You can see this in the first picture as well. These are not finished but I am really enjoying making them! They will eventually become pillows to go along with the doggie quilt I made earlier. This is destined for someone-if I can bear giving it up! I learned how to do the wonky log cabin block from Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

I am loving the patched border! I absolutely love this fabric line. It is so summery and happy.

Quilt-A-Long Setting Blocks

I have been working on the setting blocks for crazymomquilts quiltalong. I have finished six blocks with some errors along the way. I have finished six blocks that are above. I am using alternating dark brown centers with a green and orange floral design and a blue and yellow floral design which you can kind of see in the picture. If anyone wants, I will provide close up pictures. The block below shows how I messed up two of the blocks. Once this one is fixed I will have 7 of 12 finished! waahooo! (My best attempt at typing my dad's war hoop-which he gives when Auburn is winning or just when the mood strikes) Dad, please correct me with the correct spelling of the infamous war whoop because I know I am wrong in that spelling but I am not sure how to spell it purely based on sound.

This is an example of how I messed up! The top right corner has been removed due to errors and the bottom right corner should show you what the error(s) might be. hmmm.... So anyway, I am working on some wonky log cabin dogs based on the nickel dog quilt I posted previously. Those might appear in some fashion tomorrow-maybe not finished but partially finished. I can't decide if I should make them into separate throw pillows or two pillow shams. Contemplate it, all 12 people (I might be exaggerating, but I am including family (yes, Dad but I am not really sure?) and close friends) that read this and give me your opinions. Please feel free to comment if I have never met you and may not due to the fact you live 2,000+ miles away. It will make me happy to think other people than my mom, maybe dad, nat, and jacquie (because she has commented read this!) I have not met jacquie, but I already like her.

Lap Quilt Swap: Summer

Block for lukenlarry

I have been involved in a quilt block swap over on craftster.org. This is the second round of which I have posted pictures before. The basic premise of this swap is eleven people send fabric to each other, each person then makes a block for that person out of the received fabric and sends it back to the original owner. Each person also makes a block out of their own fabric. We have two months to complete all of the blocks and return them by July 1st. This is similar to other swaps that are out there on the internet I have seen including mamaurchin's virtual quilting bee and the common threads group. I enjoy seeing what everyone has done with all the different fabric.

For critterpants and lukenlarry's block I used the week four starblock tutorial over at crazymomquilts.

Block for critterpants

I made the block below for Grieney using the friendship star variation block at quilterscache.

I am excited about how all of these blocks will come together in the new quilts.

Quilt-A-Long Week 4

I finished the new block for the quilt-a-long over at crazymomquilts today! Whew, I finished it the day it was posted, which I can not believe. I am trying so hard not to get behind on this while I still have so many other works in progress. I love the way this turned out. I am working on setting blocks and should have pictures of those tomorrow.