Who's from Pennsylvania?!

No quilting today - I've been too busy supervising the completion of my daughter's State display board. (I did sew some elastic in a dress - I am still on track with my sewing every day goal!)

Every child in our school's 4th grade was assigned a state to do a report and display on. Sofia's assigned state was Pennsylvania. The only thing I knew about Pennsylvania was that the Amish live there - you know, the whole quilting connection, of course, and that the Liberty Bell is there. It has been a very enlightening month!

Most creative part of the display? See the tree?

The state tree of Pennsylvania is the Hemlock tree, and a local mulch company sent a bunch of samples to us, including some hemlock mulch. Yep we glued the hemlock mulch to the tree! Thank goodness for unsolicited free samples.

New Fabrics

When we came home from the beach on Saturday we stopped in at a quilt shop, Portsmouth Fabric Company. My hubby was a little reluctant as he knows how long I can take in quilt shops, but when I told him it closed in 15 minutes he was all for it! Sure enough, I was in and out in 15 minutes and he was most impressed. I told him I shopped like a man!

I picked up some Kaffe fabrics in his newly released colorways (the shop carries every single one of his fabrics!)...

some oldies but goodies that I will use in almost everything I make...

and a couple of pieces of Anna Maria Horner's new line, Loulouthi. These two pieces are the real reason I wanted to go to the shop.

When I saw them online my first though was, "Oh wow, they are GORGEOUS! I NEED to get one of them for the border of my zig zag quilt". The problem however with shopping online is you never really know how true to life the colors are. On some sites they both looked brown, on others purple, on others red. I wanted to order 3 yards of whichever one I chose, but that's a big monetary investment in something that might not work for your project.

I was thrilled that the shop had them in stock! I bought 1/4 yard of each, bought them home, and auditioned them with my zig zag blocks...

The verdict? I don't like either of them with the blocks! The lighter brown is too light, and the darker one is too maroon. I am SO glad I didn't order 3 yards of one of them! I love shopping online - the fabric prices are better than brick and mortar stores, but sometimes nothing replaces the real thing, and this was one of those cases. I am still in love with the pieces I bought, just not for my zig zag quilt. I'm sure I will find something to make with them though!

Seen-It-Sunday

Welcome to my second edition of Seen-It-Sunday!

The first thing I'd like to share with you today is one of my favorite quilts I've seen in blogland lately.

It is a very modern style pieced quilt by Heidi over at Gone Aussie Quilting. Heidi is an American married to an Aussie sheep farmer, and she makes the most beautiful pieced quilts. She is one of the most prolific quilters out there and she has 2 young toddlers. I don't know how she does it! You can see the quilt I'm talking about HERE but make sure you check out the rest of her blog too - you will be inspired!

The second thing I want to tell you about is something that might just revolutionize my life - it's a website called "My Fridge Food". You just put a check mark next to the items you have in your fridge/cupboard and it generates recipes using what you have! It will tell you if you have 100% of the ingredients, or if you don't, it tells you exactly what you need. It also tells you how much time it takes to make it, how many calories, carbs, protein, fat, how many ingredients, and how many servings.

How cool is that?! I am so excited! I'm sure you all, like me, open the cupboards and think, "What on earth am I going to make tonight?" After checking the boxes of what I have, I think it's funny that it's suggesting to me that I need to buy bacon, ground beef, and mayo! I agree! But have you seen the price of bacon lately? Ouch, it's so expensive now.

Lastly, I want you to go see the funniest thing I saw all week. It's a blog called, "Wave At The Bus". A father decided to wave at his high school son as he went to school on the bus every morning for the last year. (It happens to be the same high school my hubby went to!) For most teenagers that would be embarrassing enough. But this Dad did it in costumes! A different one every single day, and he didn't spend more than $50 for the entire year!

Last week was the end of the school year, so you can go and look through the archives and see what he wore each day. Isn't that hilarious?! If we live somewhere that the school bus goes past when my kids are in high school, I am SO doing this!

Quilting at the beach

My hubby usually works on Saturdays but he's taking every Saturday in June off and we plan on making the most of it! Today we went to the beach. We went to Ogunquit Beach in Maine, about 1.5 hours north of us. We had never been there before, but we will definitely go back - it was beautiful! There were two sides, a regular beach side with waves, and a calm quiet side (actually a tidal river) that was sheltered and perfect for kids.

Of course I had to take some quilting to do...

And the latest issue of Quilt Sampler to read...

I'm including this photo so you can see what my hubby brought along to read.

Look closely to the side of me - yes that would be a Sociology text book for school. I just know his sister reading this right now is laughing!

We took quilts to sit on...

We swam, dug holes in the sand, collected shells, and sunbathed...

It was such a fun day, and I even got to go to one of my favorite quilt stores ever on the way home...but I'll save that story for another day!

Best use of quilts

I walked into the living room late tonight and saw my boys asleep on the floor. The hard wooden floor that is. Kids can sleep anywhere! My hubby had let them sleep in there as a Friday night treat. They were so excited and my hubby said they had gathered up pillows and blankets for the occasion. It warmed my heart to see that they had each chosen to use Christmas quilts their Grandma in Utah had made them, and pillows I had made.

Now this is the best use ever of my and their Grandma's quilting skills!

Tutorial - No-Glue Wreath

All of you who guessed what I was making on Tuesday were right - it was a fabric wrapped wreath with yo-yos!

Best of all it involved no gluing. Everything is attached with pins. It really doesn't get much simpler, and you can have this wreath done in less than half an hour, from the time you rip your fabrics to the time it's hanging on your door.

First you need a wreath. Mine is a 14 inch one I got from Joann's Fabrics using a 40% off coupon. It cost me $3.60.

Next you rip fabric strips to wrap around the wreath, one of which you can see in the photo above. I used some Moda Essential Dots and ripped (3) 3 inch strips the width of the fabric which was exactly enough for my wreath. You will need more if your wreath is bigger.

Now you cut two circles for the yo-yos. Cut the large one 8 inches and the smaller one 6 inches. (In the picture it is cut at 7 inches but that turned out too big so I cut it down to 6 which was much better.

Fold over the raw edge and take large running stitches around the perimeter. Pull the thread so the yo-yo forms and do a few securing stitches to hold it all together.

Next you wrap the fabric strips around the wreath. You can glue it if you want, but I wanted the option of being able to change the fabrics down the road so I just pinned it instead. Start your strip on the back of the wreath and pin. Then just wrap it around and around.

When you need to start a new strip, pin it on top of where the last one ended (try to make it on the back!) and continue.

After no more than 5 minutes, your wreath will be wrapped!

The very last bit where I wrapped it didn't look too pretty so that's where I decided I would put my yo-yos.

Once again, I used pins to attach them. However, my pin heads were yellow and didn't want yellow pin heads on my wreath! So what was I to do? The answer was so simple, you will laugh! I raided my daughter's nail polish collection and found a blue that matched my blue yo-yo. Then it was just a matter of dipping the head of the pin into the nail polish,and putting it in a pincushion to dry for a few minutes!

I wanted to top off the yo-yos with a button so I used an old button that has sentimental meaning to me. This button came from the knitting factory that my great grandparents started when they immigrated to New Zealand almost 100 years ago! To anyone looking at it, it's just a button, but to me it is rather special :)

I then just took my now blue-headed pins and pushed them through the button and the yo-yos, which secured the whole lot all at once to the wreath.

Really, it was that simple! I think the wreath is actually a little plain and not quite fancy enough, but I have plenty of fabric, and plenty of pins, so perhaps some more decorating will come, but for now I'm enjoying it hanging on the front door in its simplicity.

Wordless Wednesday