Life, it's not slowing down.

I think that I'm coming to grips with the fact that my life is not going to be slowing down anytime soon. I just need to manage my time better so that I can fit in all that I need & want to do. I also need to be flexible & realize that my plans for the day can get totally changed on a moments notice. For instance last Wednesday I was running some errands in town & I needed to stop by the quilt store. While dropping off a few things my friend SL said " Hey Vicky I've got a few bags of scraps in my car for you". OH MY WORD!! Her bags were large trash bags full with glorious scraps!

When I got home I purposely did not get into them until I got all of my other responsibilities done. That way I would not be interrupted in my joy.

I was having a ball & had all of the fabric out on the floor & my husband walked in & said " You must be in heaven" & I was! Oh my goodness the possibilities! I'm looking forward to seeing what can be out of this wonderful pile of scrappiness.

I'm still trying to work on my list of UFO's. My current UFO project is "Exploding Nine Patch". Last year my guild hosted Jennifer Dick of 42 Quilts as our speaker for our July program. We also had her do a workshop on her pattern "Exploding Nine Patch". Well my first idea went clearly out the window. Since we were having the workshop at the local quilt store I decided to go shopping, for yardage. Talk about awkward. I felt so awkward shopping for yardage. Anyway I decided on my focus fabric, I had my background (black) & 2 cordinating solids. I was ready or so I thought. I made a few blocks & I didn't like it at all, put all of the fabric in a bag & didn't look at it for a year. Here is what the first block looked like

Not really what I was looking for.

Well last week while in the quilt shop I saw the focus fabric & noticed that I could use 2 additional solids fabrics, one in the pink & one in the green/blue family. So here are my new blocks.

The blue blocks

The Pink block

I really like these! I've got 32 blocks cut out & ready to sew up & I figure that I should do that & figure out how I'm going to set them before I make any more.

I'm still working on my friend Liz's quilt as my L/E project. It's slow but any forward progress is good.

Starting in September I will be teaching/hosting a hand embroidery class the second Thursday of the month. Each class will be a different hand embroidery stitch. The first class is on the Stem stitch & how to transfer your pattern to the fabric & on black fabric its kind of interesting.

Octobers class will be on the Blanket Stitch & we'll be doing wool appliqué.

I have completely fallen in love with this block & am currently working on cutting out more so that I can make a much larger quilt.

It has slowed down some on the farm now that all of the hay is done! So excited about that!

 I hope that y'all are doing well & are finding some time each day to do some stitching weather by hand or machine. More later on,

Vicky

Free Pattern "Sprinkles"

This fun block was inspired by a tile floor & the quilt was named by my dad. My mom & I both bought the same batik layer cakes sometime last year. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with 1 layer cake so I put it to the side & worked on other projects. Well my mom decided that what she wanted to use the layer cake for was not going to work with her idea. So she gave it to me along with a charm pack for Christmas last year. The 2 layer cakes & charm packs sat in my sewing room for months until inspiration hit in April when saw another quilt block pattern in a tile floor. I started making the quilt on my kiddos birthday in May. He demolished me in Monopoly so while I was waiting for him to do the same to his Dad & Grandma I started cutting fabric!! Here is Sprinkles!! I made mine with a 10x10 layout so it finishes out at 100' square.

This is a great quilt for precuts & scraps. I used my layer cakes, charm pack & I did have to get a jelly roll so that I would have enough to finish my blocks. I've got plans to make this again & use my Civil War Repro scraps. Here are the directions to make 1 block. The block is 10.5" unfinished so it is easy to calculate how much you'll need to make your quilt.

(2) 4.5" squares

(6) 2.5"X4.5" rectangles

(4) 2.5" squares

This is the block lay out

Step #1 Sew (2) 2.5" squares together. This will be Unit A

Step #2 Sew (1) Unit A to the top of (1) 2.5"x4.5" rectangle

Step #3 Sew 1 Unit A to the right side of (1) 4.5" square

Step #4 Sew (1) 2.5"x4.5" rectangle to the left side of (1) 4.5" square. This will be Unit B

Step 5 Sew (1) 2.5" square to the of (1) 2.5"x4.5" rectangle. This is Unit C. Do this (3) times

Step 6 Sew (1) Unit C to (1) Unit B with the 2.5" square in the top right hand corner

Step #7 Sew (1) Unit C to the Unit B with the 2.5" square in the bottom left hand corner

Step #8 Sew Unit B to the top of Unit A

 Step #9 Sew the remaining Unit C to (1) 2.5"x4.5" rectangle. Make sure that 2.5" square is on the bottom when you sew it to Unit A

I hope that y'all like the block & the quilt. I had a ball sewing this quilt together & I'm looking forward to making another one. If you get inspired to make "Sprinkles" please send me a picture, I would love to see it!

More later on,

Vicky

P.S. My email address is thescrappyfarmer@gmail.com or you can find me on Facebook under The Scrappy Farmer.