31 Day Blog Writing Challenge

Today, I'm starting a new blogging habit. I'm joining the 3rd Annual 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge. In the past, I've blogged for awhile, then I stop. And then I join a quilt along or something and start back up again.

I like having a blog and I'd like to get better at it.

So today is Day 1 and the day I make the commitment to shower my blog with 31 days of attention!

You can join the challenge too - just go to Cheryl Sleboda's blog here!  (And please don't forget to follow my blog! ;)

Lady of the Lake Block

Lady of the Lake has long been a favorite block of mine. I saw one in Oregon many years ago that made me gasp out loud! I wish I had taken a picture of it for inspiration, but I was fairly new to quilting and thought I would never be able to make something so complicated.

So when The Fat Quarter Shop put out a call for bloggers to make a Lady of the Lake block, I jumped on it. I agonized over fabrics and whether or not to make a single block or an entire quilt. I finally settled on fabrics from my Fig Tree Co stash and decided to make a single block. My plan is to make other blocks using primarily Fig Tree fabrics that will eventually become a nice sampler.

Initially, I picked the fabrics shown above. Then I started seeing people post LOTL blocks using more than 2 fabrics, so I tried a few multi-fabric combinations (below).

While I loved the multi-fabric blocks I was seeing on Instagram, I preferred the 2 color version in my fabrics. So this is my finished block:

Of course, I always have the prerogative to change my mind and make more of these blocks so I will have my very own Lady of the Lake quilt!

A Favorite Tip!!

 Here's another tip that from my old blog that I'd like to share here:

 Diagonal Seams

Lining Up Sashing Strips

This is an excerpt from an old blog of mine. That blog is no longer active, so I thought I'd bring a couple of its posts to this blog:

RSC 2017 Yellow

Even though I haven't been posting my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for the past couple of months, I have been keeping up with them. The color for June was yellow and so here are my yellow flying geese blocks:

My scrappy friend has also kept up - here are her yellows:

Here are all of mine together:

When my friend, Dianne and I first started this QAL, we were only going to do one quilt. By the second month we had added a Half Square Triangle quilt to our monthly "FaceTime QuiltTime". I just have a little squaring up and pressing to do before posting pictures of those. Plus I'm waiting on Dianne to send me her HST pics.

I'm linking up with with Scrap Happy Saturday and Oh Scrap! 








 

Scrappy QAL

I recently bought Amanda Jean Nyberg's new book, No Scrap Left Behind. It's a fabulous book with fantastic scrap quilts. A couple of weeks ago, she started a quilt along featuring one of the quilts from her book called "June". I joined in planning to use up some dark scraps. I typically make quilts with bright fabrics and scraps, so this would be a nice change.

A few blocks in I just didn't like it. It was too brown and sort of reminded me of chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate syrup poured over it - kind of sickly sweet!

So I sent a photo to a friend and asked her opinion. Her son happened to be sitting right there and suggested that I replace the small brown squares with olive green squares. I found the closest solid fabric I have to olive green, tried it and loved it!

The next roadblock I had was spending too much time trying to pick the next string for the block I'm working on. It was taking so long to make the blocks that I figured I'd still be working on this quilt next June! I commented on a blog post (quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com) how fast the author whipped out her blocks. She said she chain pieces the strings in pairs, then chains the pairs together and then the "fours", until she has the right size. With this advice, I blazed through my blocks and had half done that same day.

The rest went equally as fast and now I'm all caught up (thank you Cynthia!) and my blocks are ready to be sewn together.

If you want more info on this quilt along, visit Amanda Jean's blog, crazymomquilts.blogspot.com or Instagram #junequiltqal.

Mug Rug

Marcus Fabrics is hosting a Mug Rug contest and the Fat Quarter Shop is giving away a gift certificate for someone's mug rug this week.

You have to use at least one recognizable Marcus or Studio 37 fabric. I have hoarded this fabulous Marcus dot fabric from an older line called Metro Mirage for years (actually all the fabrics on my mug rug are from that line).

Aside to Marcus Fabrics: I could use a couple bolts of that fabulous dot, if you ever reprint it! :)

So I decided to use a bit of it for a winter/Christmas mug rug:

You can find more information about this challenge here.

**and let's not concern ourselves with how I happened upon a Christmas-y decoration on Valentine's Day!