Autumn With a Twist

A few months ago 6 people (plus me) with the Mailblocks Yahoo group participated in an Autumn with a Twist swap. We were to make 1- twelve inch block, 2 - six inch blocks and 4 - 3 inch blocks for each particpant in fall colors with a cream background.  My blocks are as above - 12 inch Sister's Choice, 6 inch posy and 3 inch bow ties. I used a couple of my own sets to assemble the top.

And, now I have an assembled top but I think I will add 6 inch maple leaf blocks down each side and then call it a lap quilt.  So far, I love it.




Linking up at Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.  and Linky Party Tuesday at Freemotion by the River. 

Winter Scenes

This is my work on Wendy's "Winter Scenes" RR block. I framed the snow shoveler in lots of "snowflakes" and a few button snowballs. And there's some hairy yarn "snow" over by the bird button. The block sparkles quite a bit more than it shows. 

Hope I don't have to look at any real winter scenes for several months yet. I'm not a fan of winter except for looking at it out a window.

I'm on vacation this week in order to clean up the garden since I got behind when I had my bout with Guillaine Barre and couldn't use my hand and feet very well. Retired DH doesn't think it's his job to take care of my flower gardens or the strawberry/blackberry/asparagus patch so things are embarrassingly overgrown with weeds. I'm heading out in a few minutes to help DH cut up some downed trees that have fallen over part of one of my flower gardens. Also downing more trees on the acreage for firewood for next year. This year's is split.

Prairie Point Leaves for Spring

Pics from Colleen's Spring block. She really didn't have many seams around a big flower center so I decided to do some stitching to make the flower stand out by stitching over the lines in the fabric and adding some bullions, buttonhole and pistil stitches to the center. Then I wanted to make the surrounding area sort of 3D - foliage around the flower. I started by making some prairie point leaves out of various green cotton fabrics in varying sizes. Then I also made some prairie point leaves out of a couple of types of green ribbon. I bunched those together around the flower center then added a some other flowers, butterfly, bee and lady bug. I really like how 3D it turned out and I hope Colleen does too. Oh, and I added some green doily foliage too.

Four Finishes

I have been taking a creative writing workshop for the last 6 weeks so, in addition to a 10 hr per day job and the grandkids, I've been busy. But it seems there is always time for stitching. I've fallen behind on my Civil War Quilt blocks, my Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt blocks, my Fairy Crazy Quilt and all other sorts of things for myself; however, I've kept up on my CQ RRs. And that is mainly because I can sit and veg out but still be busy and stress free while I stitch.

Unfortunately, the TV shows many people in many countries in distress; the news tells of children missing and abused; a cousin has been diagnosed with cancer. Sit, stitch, watch, listen, learn, give, love, pray...the mantra of the day.

This is for an English Garden RR. This is Rita's block and I have included foxglove, deliphiniums, lavender, roses, pansies, poppies, clematis - some of my favorite flowers.

Next up is Peggy Sue's Tea Time block for another CQI RR. I wish the sugar bowl showed up a little better. It was difficult for me to know what colors to use on this block so I used mostly purples to go with that little patch on the upper left.

This is Helina's Summer block. All of her blocks have now been mailed home. This was the last one for me to work on for this RR. Summer to me means tomatoes, lemonade, watermelon, ice cream, pinwheels and flowers. I hope it means the same to her.

And, finally, I have Lorries Winter/Christmas block. Her theme was "Jesus is the Reason for the Season."

To Everything There is a Season

An Autumn wreath for Margreet. Margreet included a button and some trim that she wanted each person in the RR to add to her block which was a fun exercise.  This was a RR over on CQI Yahoo Group.

Summer DYB RR for Ritva - another RR at CQI.

And this is my Season to Season wallhanging. I am trying to decide whether to keep it for myself or to put it into the Family "Dirty Santa" drawing. Each of these blocks were from a swap on CQ for Newbies Yahoo Group. In this RR we made a block and embellished half of it and swapped with a partner who embellished the other half and then it was returned to owner. Gina embellished Spring, Violet did Summer, Gerry did Fall and Lauri embellished half of Winter. I added binding like a quilt and added a rod pocket on back for hanging. For purposes of this picture I added a yardstick to the rod pocket just to see how it would hang.