Off to HMQG

If you are looking to enter my HUGE giveaway, you can find out how to enter and win one of 6 great prizes here.

Today is our monthly Houston Modern Quilt Guild meeting.  I feel really lucky that there is a place I can go to meet up with other quilters who quilt like I do.  I am always inspired by what the other members of the guild accomplish.  Here are some work from the other members' of the guild:

1. habitat challenge mosaic, 2. sunflower quilt, 3. rainbow bamboo quilting, 4. navy QOV #11 - finished, 5. Whirl and twirl, 6. HMQG July Meeting, 7. Hope Valley Plus Quilt, 8. Heather's baby quilt, 9. Amy's whole quilt, 10. "dorothy's garden" quilt, 11. Innocent Crush Brick Path, 12. "corner crosses", 13. january "bee pieceful" quilt - butterfly kaleidescope, 14. Lily and Will Front, 15. hmqg wonky star QOV - completed!, 16. Cacophony of Color - Bella Solids Parade, 17. HMQG Park Challenge, 18. Alzheimer's Quilt #5, 19. Tumbler Quilt, 20. Rainbow progression, 21. DQS, 22. Triangle Whimsy Front, 23. I Dream of Triangles, 24. 2 Squared Front, 25. Cate's Quilt

My absolute favorite part of our meetings is show and tell!  It is so fun to hear about other peoples' quilts.  There is always a story to a quilt.  Even if it doesn't start with a story, a story is created as you make it.  I think that is why I feel so attached to the quilts I make.  Sure I can't keep them all, but each one of them is important to me!

Fabric Sniffing

If you are looking to enter my HUGE giveaway, you can find out how to enter and win one of 6 great prizes here.

I'm not sure if I have mentioned my kids at all or not, but I have four children.  Ages 6, 4, 3 & 3 months.  Only one of them goes to school so far, so things at our house are pretty crazy all the time... just the way I like it. :)  So my oldest, Elise, is an awesome big sister... the best.  She is also my craftiest child (has already constructed some pajama pants and part of a quilt all by herself!) and loves to join me in my sewing room and be with me.  Ellie loves to look at the fabric, pick out coordinating fabrics and ask me about any projects I am working on.  When it is just her and I in my sewing room (typically I have a whole crew "helping" me), she will just talk on and on about her day and what things are going on with her.  I LOVE IT!  I hope she will always want to just sit and talk with me.

While all this is extremely sweet, Ellie has a really weird thing she does.  She smells fabric.  Obsessively.  Elise and her younger sister, Maggie, always run to get the mail together.  I am in a lot of bees so there is a package of fabric in the mail pretty much every day.  They always hurry back in the house, open the packages and sniff the fabric...not just a little sniff sniff, but a huge inhaling of fabric goodness!

I mean, I admit, I do love the smell of fabric, but I am also thinking this might be a little strange!

DS Heaven!

If you are looking to enter my HUGE giveaway, you can find out how to enter and win one of 6 great prizes here.

My birthday was a few weeks ago and I decided that I had looked at this fabric too many times without buying that I finally needed to take the plunge.  JoAnns' DS fabric line is priced about the same as the quilt store fabric, but I did get to use a 50% off coupon to buy the 5 yards of backing fabric I bought.  Score.

I know the DS fabric is very popular, but I just love how this fabric literally reminds me of going on a picnic.  So, I am going to make, what else?  A picnic quilt out of it!  Not sure exactly what design I am going to do yet... for now it is sitting on my shelf while I keep staring at it trying to decide what to do... but it is calling to me, so I am sure it won't be too long until I dive in!

Dresden Dilemma

If you are looking to enter my HUGE giveaway, you can find out how to enter and win one of 6 great prizes here.

 What seems like forever ago, I sent my Aqua and Red beemates some Riley Blake- Quilted Fish Sugar and Spice fabric.  Usually, when it is my month in a bee, I hand over chunks of fabric and let them have their way with it, but this time I gave specific instructions.

You see, I got myself a handy little dresden template and was dreaming in dresdens that month.  I wanted each person to make two dresden blocks for me.  It seemed like a lot of work and since I did just get the template, I made all the cuts myself and just had them put them together.  To make it even easier, I opted for a smooth edged dresden as well.

Side note:  I think for quilting bee blocks, it really is best to let the other bee members be creative and make something original. Better to give general guidelines and let them do their thing. That is really the bonus of these bees is that you have others design for you, not just do your work.  I realized that after I did this bee that, yes, I got the blocks that I wanted, and they were all beautifully sewn, but there weren't any surprises or originality either.  I don't know, what sorts of blocks do you think are best for bees?

1. Aqua and Red Bee - Erin's July Block 01, 2. Aqua and Red Bee - Erin's July Block 01, 3. July - Aqua and Red Bee, 4. July - Aqua and Red Bee, 5. Dresden, 6. Dresden 2, 7. aqua and red bee blocks for erin (toerintx) for july, 8. Aqua Red Swap July 2011, 9. Aqua Red Swap July 2011, 10. aqua and red block for (toerintx) erin..., 11. erin sq2, 12. erin sq 1, 13. Aqua and Red Bee- July Sample Block, 14. Erin's Block #2 for the aqua and red bee , 15. Erin's block #1 for the aqua and red bee , 16. Aqua and Red Bee- July Sample Block

Now I have all these beautiful blocks back in my possession but haven't been able to bring myself to work on it.  I just can't come up with a great idea for this quilt!

I thought about something like this:  (This is the quilt from the book "Block Party")

 What I like most about this is the random red squares and the skewed white squares.  That being said, I don't want to copy the quilt.  I mean, I do get lots of inspiration from others and honestly, sometimes I do try do make the exact same quilt, but generally, I do like to change a few things to make it mine.  I am really stuck on these dresdens though!  I think because they are a little plain in that they all look the same.

Any ideas?  I will continue thinking about it and let you know what I come up with.


My aqua and red bee is coming to a close.  They are continuing on a second round, but I won't be joining them :(.  I love my bees, but I am also looking for more opportunities to do my own quilts!

** HUGE GIVEAWAY **- Blog and Shop LAUNCH!

It's time that I OFFICIALLY launch both my new blog and also my recently created ETSY SHOP!  So, I figured that we ought to celebrate!!!  In honor both the blog and the shop opening, I am hosting a HUGE GIVEAWAY!!!  I have a total of 6 prizes to giveaway!!!


I am really excited about opening my Etsy shop. True, there isn't much in there yet, but I hope to add much more!  Please feel free to check out my shop!  http://www.etsy.com/shop/toerintx.  The shop has a couple of the quilts that I have made but also offers long arm quilting services.

Now, here are the giveaways!

 Robert Kaufman's Vera's Garden- 3 half yard cuts (1.5 yards total)

 A fabulous set of half yard cuts (3.5 yards) of purple and greys from the Lilac Moments line.

 A design roll of Tula Pink's Parisville.

 A cute Amy Butler fabric zippered pouch.

A Fat quarter set of Reindeer games (12 different prints!---3 yards of fabric!).

AND...

 Three 1 yard cuts of these three fabrics!  From left to right we have Journey by Kathy Davis for Free Spirit, Carinna Gardner for Northcott Fabrics and Monaluna for Birch Fabrics - Circa 60 Beach Mod.


Pretty great, right?!?  You will have to pardon the poor pictures as my camera cord is giving me issues and so I had to use my phone....

Anyway, HERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS TO ENTER and WIN!:

• leave me a comment-- any one comment.  You can tell me about where you are from, something you see on my blog or in my shop that you like, what the weather is like, a favorite book... whatever.
• If you announce/share this giveaway on your blog or on flickr by referring your readers to my blog-- you can leave two more comments telling me what you did to share about the giveaway.
• If you become a follower on my blog you also get to leave one more comment telling me that you are now a follower or are currently a follower.

I will start announcing the winners on September 1st and will announce one winner each day until all the prizes have been given away!  IF you include your own blog in your comments, I will feature your blog if your announced as a winner.

I look forward to all of your comments!!!

--Erin

For the Love of Solids Preview

 I joined a group called "For the Love of Solids" which is a swap.  You are given a secret partner and their information about what they would like in a swap.  The person I got is completely lovely, makes wonderful things and has great taste.  However, she requested a bag, purse or a tote and wants whatever she gets to have lots of pockets and zippers and pockets with zippers.  I have only been sewing since February and leaped into piecing quilts right away.  So, my skills for sewing items besides quilts are rather limited.  I can make a very small bag and maybe could put one zipper together on several tries and could probably figure out how to make a multi-pocket pocket, but it just wouldn't look very good.

SO- I had a huge dilemna on what to make.  So, I told myself to go ahead and make something that is generic enough that anyone could find something to like and make it the best you can.  Hopefully she will love it as much as I do.  I can't show it all since I haven't mailed off the package and this supposed to be SECRET, but these are the previews that I put up on flickr.

So, I plan on sending this item, along with a pile of fabric and hope the extra yardage will make up for me not making exactly what she wanted.  I am very nervous about the reaction, but I think she will like it.

Improv Quilt DONE!!

 Yippee!  I finished the improv quilt.  This is a quilt that I put together using blocks made by myself and my quilting bee mates from "Bee Connected".  I LOVE LOVE LOVE how thxis came out.

 Please pardon the shots of the full quilt.  First off, this is a larger sized quilt 92x86 and so I had to go outside and lay it on the driveway.  Also, I couldn't get high enough to take a full picture of it without this huge angle.  Finally I realized that I could hang it from my banister and take a pretty good picture of it but then my camera started acting up, so I told myself, "Erin, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit!"-- my kids always say that.

 Anyway, about this quilt.  Like I said, these are blocks from a bee.  I asked for improv blocks and I think this was a smart request because I knew I would be able to use every block and they would all be unique and awesome!

 I thought about just sewing the blocks together without sashing but it sorta looked like a mess, so I think the sashing ended up making it looks so great.  I used an 'almost solid' teal color.  These colors (from the modern affair and theory lines) might blind a traditional fabric quilter, but I think they are gorgeous... I LOVE these fabrics....perhaps that's why I like the quilt so much.

 I quilted this all on my own!  Yes, I have ended my apprenticeship (my mom was teaching me how to use her longarm) and have gone on my own and can quilt an entire quilt all by myself.  I still have just done pantagraph quilting, but hope to learn more custom quilting skills as I master the pantagraphs.

Here is a closeup of the back.  It really turned out beautiful and am very please with the final result!

Christmas Quilt FINISHED

 I FINALLY finished my Christmas quilt!!  This one has certainly been a labor of love and so fun to work on.  This was a bee quilt made from blocks from my fellow beemates in the Christmas Fabric Bee.  I asked them each to make me two blocks that picture Christmas.  These gals DID NOT disapoint!!

 You will remember my last post where I showed off the blocks and my fabric choices.  I really wanted something that had lots of fun colors and wasn't just the traditional forest green and red.  I think that making holiday quilts with nontraditional colors makes them all the more fun.

 When putting the blocks together it was easy to see that I needed to do a little framing around random blocks or else it was just too much white and it all just looked BLAH.

 This quilt was mostly stippled but there are also some custom design quilting within many of the blocks.

 I just love this dresden... this block has some custom quilting in it.

 Cute little trees that have some jewels.  I added some other bling onto a few other blocks as well.

 I used a striped fabric (the same that was given out to my beemates) for the binding.  I cut it on the bias which was a learning experience because I have never done bias cut bindings before.  I like the effect of the swirling stripe as it looks like a candy cane to me!

 For the back I used a fun tree print from Michael Miller.  It really adds to the "fun" of this quilt.

I plan to hang this quilt in my entryway over the Christmas holidays.  It is beautiful and it looks like a work of art to me!!  Thank you to all the wonderful ladies in my bee who helped me make this quilt!

Can Hardly Wait!!

 The quilting process is a fairly long one.  Selecting a pattern, then fabric, sewing the blocks, then putting the blocks together, then perhaps borders, then you have to quilt it and then bind it.  It often takes months and some even years to complete a quilt.  I have two quilts that are almost finished.  One just needs the binding and the other is getting quilted as we speak!!!  I am very anxious to post them because they are two of my most FAVORITE quilts yet!!  I think this is what happens when you pick fabric you are in love with!  Well, I am just itchin' to show you the completed products!

Both of these quilts are Bee quilts and both groups returned awesome blocks.... sometimes you really just stumble into good fortune with these bees I tell ya!

This first one was made with fabrics that I just LOVE.  The texture of the fabric and the colors are just gorgeous.

 The blocks are so fun and interesting and all different!!  AND I just finished quilting this baby!  Once I finish the binding, be sure I will be posting a picture ASAP!

About six months ago I started a Christmas Fabric Bee.  Almost as long ago, I sent out this vast array of fabric consisting mostly of nontraditional Christmas fabric that just "works".

 Look at these amazing blocks I got back from my group!!  I know, right!?!  They are amazing.  Not wanting to take away from the awesomeness that these blocks are, I still adding a little something to make this quilt rock a little more. 

Can hardly wait to show you!!

WIP- Wednesday

 My Knotted Squares are coming together...

 slowly...

 ever so slowly...

Done with the blocks, but now I have to sew them together.  Not looking forward to matching up all those seams!