Speaking of Head Start...

I have a couple of wonderful things to share regarding the bus quilts that I've been making and that so many people have left kind and supportive comments about. My daughter, Jennifer is the executive director of Explorer's Academy/Head Start of Yellowstone County in Montana.

She has received a couple of honors recently - she was chosen as one of Billings' Forty Under 40 , and also selected to be the cover story of Yellowstone Valley Woman magazine! Here's a link to that article if anyone would like to read a little more about what she's been doing locally:

 https://yellowstonevalleywoman.com/cover-story-jennifer-owen/

I'm also quite excited to share these pictures that the Head Start bus drivers took and asked Jen to send to me. My heart just melted! These little faces - ohmygoodness! There's something about a kid who's about 3 or 4 years old that gets me every time. So sweet and ADORABLE! And then to see them wrapped up in these little quilts - I just love it!

Again, thank you for all the wonderful comments and all the interest in this project. I truly appreciate it and it sure keeps me going!

Stacked Coins

A few days ago, I was reading Confessions of a Fabric Addict's blog. Sarah had a guest blogger sharing a tutorial for a stacked coin quilt that was so cute, I had to drop everything and make one. I had a small stack of scraps leftover from a project several years ago and some periwinkle Kona that I thought went well with the scraps. AND, it's purple month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Since I hadn't even started my purple dresden block, it almost felt like destiny.

I planned out the size I would need to make a little bus quilt and jumped right into getting all the pieces cut at once. I wanted a nice distribution of the fabrics so I scattered them all over the design wall and then stepped back to find myself staring at this panel of horrors:

Whoa - what a mess. I really thought the whole thing was going to hit the trash. You couldn't even begin to see the blocks in there. It looked nothing like a stacked coin quilt. Honestly, it looked nothing like a quilt!

Eventually, I blinked and decided to carry on. After all, what else was I going to do with all those little pieces? I kept telling myself maybe quilting would help.

Actually, sewing the blocks together, and adding some sashing, and quilting it, and washing it DID help. By the time it was finished, I was really starting to love it!  So thank you, Sarah for the blog post and thank you, Kristi for this really great tutorial.  :)

While we're on the topic of bus quilts, I have two fantastic things to share. I just need to get the post written up. So, please check back in a few days - I promise you'll love it!


Linking up with Scrap Happy Saturday.

Long Time Gone

Last summer (?fall? I can't remember for sure), I joined a group at a local quilt shop here in Vegas, Quiltique. The group is called The Breakfast Club and it meets once a month on a Saturday morning. We'll spend the next year working on the Jen Kingwell quilt called Long Time Gone. It was recently all over Instagram as a quilt along and it's a fantastic quilt. I'm super excited about it.

We've already had our first meeting and received our fabrics to make the first two blocks. Here are mine:

I cannot wait until next month to do more. Each month as we sign in, we receive a packet of fabric to make that month's blocks. We stash away the scraps to sprinkle throughout the quilt in future blocks. It's just such a fun project. I'm spending too much time on Instagram searching out old posts from the quilt along and studying the blocks.

I'll keep posting as we go. Any advice or hints on this quilt would be greatly appreciated! :)

Put a Little Love in Your Quilt

Welcome to my stop on the Put a Little Love in Your Quilt blog hop! This hop is the brain child of Carol who blogs at Just Let Me Quilt. There are so many great quilters participating, I'm sure you'll find a number of fantastic Valentine projects to add to your To-Do list.


My scrappy heart quilt was inspired by a free tutorial from Temecula Quilt Co that you can find here.

Obviously, I changed the layout a bit, but my heart blocks were made following the tutorial.

I used batik scraps for the hearts and white Kona cotton for the background. The binding is a purple batik. The finished quilt measures about 30" X 40" (which makes a perfect size for a little bus quilt!)

Here is a schedule of all the blogs participating, including yesterday's in case you missed any of those:

 February 5

Life in the Scrapatch

Freemotion by the River

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Vroomans Quilts

That Fabric Feeling

It’s A T-Sweet Day!

Elm Street Quilts

TODAY - February 6

Creatin' in the Sticks

Quiltscapes

Bejeweled Quilts

Creative Latitude

Fabric Scraps

Just Sew Quilter

Ms P Designs USA

Made By Marney

Beaquilter

Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, and Eats

February 7

Kris Loves Fabric

What About Rheema?

Bumbleberry Stitches

Selina Quilts

Quilt Quest

Hazel’s Daughter

Quilt in a not-Shell

Words & Stitches

Sunshine Reflections

Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting

February 8

Sew Incredibly Crazy

KaHolly

Moosestash Quilting

Kwilt Krazy

Kwilty Pleasures

Patchwork Breeze

Home Sewn By Us

Sew Many Yarns

Seams To Be Sew

Just Let Me Quilt

Thanks so much for stopping by! Happy Valentine's Day! 

Very Simple Quilts

Last weekend I felt the need to get a few bus quilts made in a short amount of time. I had these orange and green frog fabrics and I was trying to think of a quick-to-piece idea, when the thought of just sandwiching the fabrics with batting occurred to me. So I tried one and liked it. I then measured out the fabric I had left and discovered I had enough to make 4 more.

In no time at all, I had 5 little quilts that needed binding.

A cute little green "bubble" fabric would be perfect. Here are yards and yards of it wrapped around a little binding baby:

And here are the 5 finished quilts all ready to get boxed up and sent off to a chillier climate!

This brings my total to 25 little quilts.

RSC18 and Dresden Neighborhood

This year, I'm going to try to combine 2 quilt-alongs into one. I've done a Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt for the past two years and intend on participating again this year. Persimon Dreams has a quilt along that I saw on Instagram called Dresden Neighborhood, that makes funky houses from a dresden plate quilt block.

The RSC18 color for the month of January is icy blue. I pulled as many icy blues from my stash as I could find and then added a few blues that weren't quite as pale as I would've liked, but I needed more variety.

This week, I got the "foundation" ;) of my Dresden Neighborhood in Ice Blue pretty much done.

I still need to add the center circle (I think I have some snowflakes on pale blue somewhere - just gotta find it!) and then I'll sandwich and quilt this block. I'm going to make a large quilt, but I'll be doing each block separately in a quilt-as-you-go style. There's a lot of quilting which will involve spinning these blocks around so much that it would be too unwieldy if it were full-sized.

In other news, I'll be participating in the Put a Little Love in Your Quilt blog hop Feb 5-8 at Just Let Me Quilt, with a great giveaway!



I'm linking up at ScrapHappy Saturday and posting on Instagram with #DresdenNeighborhood.

And 6 Makes Twenty

During a recent conversation with my daughter, I found out that she has 5 buses running at Head Start (I can't figure out why I didn't ask that question sooner). I had sent 12 little bus quilts to her before that. So now my goal is to send them in increments of 5, so there'll be at least one for each bus every time I send a box. I shipped 8 a couple of days ago to get my total to a nice, even 20.

She was here for Christmas and we were talking about the quilts. She told me that she opens the boxes with the bus drivers. I mentioned that the little garden applique quilt had turned out so much cuter than I expected and she paused and said "um.....was there a frog on it? I pulled one out of the box and just caught a glimpse of a frog's eye as it was snatched out of my hands with someone squealing 'I get that for my bus'!" She has no idea how good that made me feel. :)

I had finished two just before Christmas. Here are photos of the other 6 that were sent with them on Thursday:

One of the things I'm starting to struggle with is how to make non-kid fabrics look cute and/or whimsical. I have some kid prints, but not a ton. And my goal is to use up some of my stash, so I don't want to buy a lot of fabric. So now I'm perusing old magazines and Pinterest!

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap! and Show Off Saturday