From This to That

I am sew excited about the upcoming Dots on Dots Blog Hop! Earlier in the Summer, I won a FQB from the FQS and it had dots in it! Sew, after MUCH deliberation, I finally cut into it and I am having a blast with these blocks! I think it took me at least 3 hours of staring at, petting and blog hopping to decide what to do with this fabric! It only took an hour or so to actually make the blocks!

As you can see, Stanley is helping to hold my ruler down; you never know when one of these dots might bounce and get away!

I also realized that my quilt, that I just began for a kitty-loving friend…. has dots in it! I also keep finding more dots in my stash! Who knew I was so Dotty? (My BIL would say he has known for years!)

( i am not sure why the graphic says the hop ends the 20th- it really does go til the 21st- we must have added a day)

You can click here for the entire hop schedule- my day is the 21^st and the day before a special holiday that I will be telling you about on my hop day! (PS. I am an Activity Director at a Nursing Home and we A.D.’s have a holiday for just about EVERY day of the year)

Here is a sneak peek of my dots:

Have a great Labor Day! Oh Wow! I just looked back to see when i started this little blog and I have been blogging a year yesterday! :)

PS does anyone know how to make a gadget/button smaller? I added the Dots on Dots button to the side bar and it overlapped my post, so i had to take it off. Anny tips would be appreciated!

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!