Tomorrow is November 1st.  Wow.  I never seem to think about making Christmas quilts until Christmas is upon us.  Here is a freebie from Pam Bono I hope you enjoy. 

I have a Christmas quilt from last year that I need to finish.  I think it will be next on my list as my patient brother has been waiting...

Do you have any Christmas quilts in the works?

Cheers!
Deb

I love it when companies make great patterns available for free. This duffle bag caught my attention on a quilting friend's Facebook page and I just have to share.  I downloaded the pattern and when things slow down a bit hope to go through my fabric stash and see what I can do with it.  

Get your free duffle bag pattern from Robert Kaufman here.  If you make it I hope you will share a photo with us. (Use the Contact Me form if you need help with this...sharing a photo not making the bag.  Though you might be able to bribe me with chocolate for advice.)

Taking it a stitch at a time,
Deb

It was my day off so I was looking forward to finishing the piecing on the quilt that  I am working on.  Best laid plans and all that...The quilt was a struggle.  I just could not get the pieces to iron well.  Sometimes the obvious is so, well, obvious, that we miss it.  My iron just was not heating it like it should so I was not getting those nice crisps presses that I need.   

Yep, that is the new iron I got to replace my old Rowenta.  I loved my old Rowenta, it was one of the "Made in Germany" ones that has lasted me about 20 years.  I will still use it for applique as I think the low heat settings will still be good for that purpose and keep the sticky stuff off the new iron.  

Black and Decker's classic model reminds me of my mom's iron.  How often I came home from school in the afternoon and there she would be; set up in the living room doing the ironing.  I have never been one to iron much except when it comes to quilting.  I believe that if I get those clothes out of the dryer as soon as the dryer beeps and hang them they are good to go for most purposes.  A little spritz of wrinkle relaxer is great too.  Every once-in-a-while I get the urge to press those shirts and make them crisp, but those moments are short-lived and happen about once every three years.  Still the image of my mother, in a dress, at the ironing board is a very happy memory, perhaps because it was also a time when we would sit down and keep her company as she ironed.  There was no internet to draw our attention.  And in Oregon it was just as likely to be a rainy indoor kind of day.

It would be hard to show in a photo just how much difference this new workhorse made in the finished product of my quilt.  Smooth as can be.  It is heavier than my old iron, still has that blasted auto shut-off, the bane of quilters, but really a good safety feature that I have learned to live with.  I keep my iron plugged into a power strip that also has my floor lamp over the work area plugged into it.  If the light is on I know I have not turned off the iron. 

When the quilting day does not go as planned it is always nice to have friends around to inspire you.  This is a block that Pat Sloan designed.  She is doing a sew-along based on her newest book.  I love her candy corn bouquet. 
If you have not met Pat yet you are in for a real treat.  She offers lots of fun and inspiration at her blog and in her forums.
Click on the image to visit her website.

 Despite the setbacks today I am in love with the new quilt already.  Soon it will be time for the big reveal. Though for this week today was the only day I had free to work on it for any length of time.  Things do not always go as planned, but that's okay- I am still smiling and taking it a stitch at a time.
Deb

Recently I showed you the fabrics that I had pulled out of my stash for a new project.  I am pretty pleased with myself that the only thing I will have to purchase to complete this quilt is the backing.  Woohoo stash busting!

With the stars appliqued in place the layout came together.  Just giving you a little peak here as the "star" of the quilt is yet to be revealed.

I have had this sweet little boy print for quite a while and am so happy to be working with it.  Just makes me smile every time I pick it up.  I used it as the basis for choosing the other fabrics that appear in the quilt.   The blues and greens (and whites of course) can all be found in this main fabric.  That is a great way to find the fabrics for a quilt-if they work well in your main fabric they will they will come together well in the whole quilt as well.  And if you know your color wheel then you can also add a great accent.  In this case my beginning inspiration came from the the pattern I am using-which I will be revealing soon, but I just cannot give away the whole thing yet.  

I have been learning to use my color wheel in planning my quilts.  As I said, I based my choices this time on the main fabric I had.  But you can also see  how these things come together on my color wheel.  Love this little one that was a freebie with some magazine subscription several years ago.  It sat unused until just last year when I decided it was time to learn more about color.  I had the funny notion that as a life-long artist there was nothing for me to learn about color - I learned how wrong I was and my quilts are improving because of it.  

For this quilt I turn the "key color" to my blue.  Notice then that I have some "colors that blend" to choose from.  Easy in this case,  go with the aqua greens.  The for a bit of POP- decided to throw in just a bit of yellow from the "triad colors" choices.  I could have picked a different triad color, but with a certain block that I have not revealed yet, yellow was the go to for this one.   Granted I was following a pattern here that did a good job of achieving that already- but I had a stash to work with and was limiting myself to that.  I can also use the wheel to branch out and design a quilt with a different color scheme.  And I did a good bit of playing with a variety of choices before settling on the fabrics I am using for this quilt.

Blasted stomach bug hit me this week (no pun intended, but once I wrote it...) so I have not made any progress since I snapped these photos last week.  But the weekend is here so between homecoming events I know where I want to be.

Taking a stitch at a time,
Deb

We had a cold front move through Texas this weekend.  It actually started to feel like fall.   As my studio is usable again my thoughts soon turned to quilt patterns.  I think I gather even more patterns than I do fabric!   I came across these and thought  you might enjoy them as well.  

Acorn Autumn is a pattern available from McCalls Quilting

Autumn Blessings- a freebie from The Painted Quilt.

Fall Scarecrow-This is another one from the Painted Quilt.                   













I checked the links and they worked for me, but let me know if you run into problems.
If you come across any fall quilts you would like to share add a link to the comments section.  It would be great to start building a resource we can all share.

Happy Quilting!
Deb