Hairbrained

I took Thursday and half day Friday off work so I could clean my poor neglected house. Thursday, I did really well, worked all day and got a lot accomplished. Friday…. Well, after making snow ice cream with cherries on top with my residents and walking home through a winter wonderland, I made the mistake of cleaning off my nightstand. "Why is cleaning off your nightstand a mistake?” you ask. It was a mistake because my charm pack of Nancy Drew fabric was there. It was such a lovely snowy day I ended up sewing instead of cleaning. (I know that none of you have *ever* done such a thing.) <wink>

I had some issues with my math ( you can't get 2.5 inch HSTs out of 2.5 inch squares unless you have super powers or magic and my wand is broken and I am out of fairy dust!) so I needed something brainless to work on to rest after fixing all my calculations.

In retrospect, I should have started cleaning house then  but instead I thought I would start a scrappy trip around the world- I have this wonderful bag of strips already cut. ( Thank you Fairy CaMom)  I sorted some of the strips and then realized they were NOT all the same size and some were  a wee bit diagonal. “Ok, no prob- I will make a wonky trip around the world” so I started stitching strips together. I cut the first set of strips and realized it wasn’t going to work as I had pictured but I could still do something with the strip sets.

I love the tropical colors in these strips

I must have dreamed about the strip sets because as soon as I woke up on Saturday I had an AHA! Moment. I could make some herringbone blocks. I sorta used the tutorial here at bijou lovely –except the pictures didn't come through at all on my phone AND I already had these lovely strips sewn together so I just started cutting my wonky strip sets into diagonals. 

  I was late for work at the store because I was having way too much fun. I had some yellow marble from Moda in my stash (again thanks Fairy CaMom) added some sashing.

I told my moms it was a wild hair –ing bone and then decided it was because I am hairbrained, so I have dubbed this my Hairbrained Herringbone Quilt.

Since I can’t show you Nancy Drew yet ( my day is the 14^th) I shall share this with you!

I still have quite a ways to go before it is done- I want it Cuddle size for a snowy day.



On another note- I also wanted to share my Dr Seuss What's Happening Board that I did for the nursing home each of the trufula trees, stripes and hands has the date and time for an activity happening in march. I love celebrating Dr Seuss with my residents. We have a group of kids coming to celebrate with us - we  will be making oobleck!

Thursday we are having a Quilt Show at the Nursing Home- I will share pictures next week!

Bowls with or without Borders Hop

This has been such a fun hop! It is amazing how all of the stacks are so different even tho’ we are all using the same pattern- I bet Regina didn’t know there were so many ways her bowls could be stacked. I have been calling this hop Bowls WITHOUT borders- probably because they were talking about Doctors Without Borders on a TV show and we have so many countries represented that we are without borders. J 

my 3rd stack o' bowls

     As soon as I saw Madame Samm’s Bowls I knew I wanted to make some. I have never paper pieced before and tried a tree for the Think Christmas Hop just to get some practice. Not so good- I was ready to throw in the towel (you can read more on that in my previous post) But now I am addicted. If you know me- you know I can not just follow a pattern- I have to make things more difficult and change things up a bit. My first set of bowls- went into the garbage, my second set looks much better. Then I decided to make a Christmas plaid set- was stitching up just fine, but it was midnight and what happens when you sew tired? I make really dumb mistakes. I was getting ready to stitch the next stack and realized I didn’t have that stack traced onto my freezer paper. So I grabbed the paper- it was too small but in my befuddled brain, I thought I would just piece it. So away I drew. It wasn’t tracing quite right but I went on. Next step – cut it out, ooohkay not cutting right, but I went on and pressed the fabric to the paper and this is definitely NOT right- very gluey looking and sticky too! Then I realized I wasn’t using freezer paper--  it was my appliqué fusible stuff …(I am sure it has a technical name) DUH!!!   I then decided to go to bed. So, my plaid stack isn’t as high as I wanted it. I was planning to use a red plaid and a gingerbread as well, but I will have to do that later. I also have plans for a snowman stack.

The other night as I was hopping and trying to catch up with commenting, I noticed a Winnie the Pooh card I have sitting by my monitor and the wheels started turning- What if I turned my bowls into ….. Honey Pots?  I just can’t leave well enough alone! Another late night sewing! So I made my first bowl a little taller and used the first bowl, upside down to make the lid. It didn’t turn out exactly like I pictured but it is close. I had Pooh squares in my stash but they are only 4.5  inch so I had to do a little piecing. The fabrics with a larger Pooh were also 4.5 inches but were not fussy cut so I only had half Poohs. I used the fusible appliqué stuff the right way and fused him back together as well as using it for the top of the pot and the band around the lid.  I plan to quilt little buzzy bees around the pots and make some honey drips with appliqué.





 

Pooh is dreaming of LARGE honey pots!



I FMQed cherries in the background

My last stack of bowls is the one I thought of as soon as I joined this hop and the Mary Englebreit phrase “Life is just of Chair of Bowlies” popped into my head. (I was thought  that Norma may have had the same idea when I read her post here.)  I decided my bowls needed to be stacked in a chair.  I didn’t have a chair pattern so I made one up- using Lesley, the Cuddle Quilter’s blog banner as my guide. (This morning after I finished all the quilting, I got the brilliant idea to look up the ME picture, don’t know why I didn’t do that earlier but…) I only had one of ME’s fabrics and some other cherry fabric so that’s what I used, along with all the red bits I could find- more 4.5 inch squares and scraps. Now that I have seen the ME picture again, I would love to go back and add bowls to the top of the chair, but oh well!

"Life is a Chair of Bowlies" in a chair with my ME pincushion



I fussy cut the fabric so the word "friend" would be on each Bowl



Thank You to  Madamme Samm, Carol, and Regina- you all have worked hard and provided help when needed ( and I needed A LOT of help.)  I love hopping with you! Thanks to all the other cheerleaders too!

Be sure to check out these other Blog Cupboards for more bowls!

August 23rd

Maureen

Silvia L.
Pam M.

Abitato

InGa

Traveling Stitcher

Taschen, Quilts und mehr

Never Enough Stash
From This To That- You are HERE!
De Zondagssteek
Guilitta 2000

August 24th

Gudrun Z. (no show)
Linda B.

Heidrun P.
Linda M.
Claudia
Elizabeth
Margret's Heritage
Lucky Duck Dreams

Francisca
jatajomi´s stoff-nadel-fadenwelt

Cool Crafty Mom

August 25th

Rosemary B.

Susan H.

Christel G.

Alice
Peggy S.
Suzanne K.
Books, Hooks, Sticks, etc.
Marla's Crafts
Kathy's Quilts
Sunshine Quilting
The Learning Curve Quilts and Such
Glitzy Me

August 26th

Julie S.

Angela D.

Kim O.
Martine

Quilts and Pieces
Spoilt Dog Quilts

Quiltenvilt

Traveling Quilter
Gabi Koeln
Sew Sew Little Time

August 27th

Sonja S.

Barbara G.
Petra B.
Marcy
Elfriede

Pippa's Patch

Patchkatze Blog

Verquilt

Billie Bee's

Mice In The Mix

August 28th
Pam R.

Kathy G.
Marina R.
Hildegard C.
Freemotion By The River
Eliswerkstattbericht
Good Earth Quilting
Heikes Quilt
Sparrow In Flight

Madame Samm

It's still Friday!

Most Fridays, I stop at Stitches In Time on my way to MySweetMommie's and I usually buy at least a fat quarter. Because y'know I always NEED more fabric.Tonight I stopped in and lo and behold they had a basket of scraps that you could fill a bag with for 5 bucks! I started digging and these weren't  justany  small scraps. There were four inch squares, jelly roll strips and layer cake squares, fat quarters and some pieces were even larger! I ended up with 4 bags of amazing scraps! The only rule was the bag had to close. My bags were closed just long enough to count. I was so excited to show Mom what I got that I forgot to take pictures of the other two bags. They were stuffed to the gills!

    







Here's all that was in there!

almost a full layer cake!

I see more RWB for my block hop blocks!

a nice stack of 4inch squares and even some pinwheels
already put together!

This was just way too much fun! Thanks Rebecca for all your help!

MySweetMommie and I are Left handed and I guess I just got used to using right handed tools in my left hand. Tonight I realized that my rotary cutter could be switched over for left handed use! It works even better now! All I had to do was unscrew the blade  and move it to the other side!

Mom hasn't figured out what she is making yet but it's starting to look purty!