Celebrate International Craft Month & Giveaway

March is International Craft Month!  What a great excuse to craft and be creative everyday!

I've been being crafty on this project for a while now (I was slow on working on it).  My large quilt guild is having it's bi-annual quilt show March 12-13, 2016.  If you are near the Chicago area, please come check us out.  Pride of the Prairie Quilt Guild.  I'll be showing off several of my vintage sewing machines in the vendors area, so, come say 'Hi'.

Well, the guild has a challenge for each quilt show.  I decided to participate in the challenge this year.  We had to draw a quilt block out of a bag, then, figure out how to use that quilt block (tiny, to full sized) somewhere in our challenge quilt.  The maximum size for the challenge quilt is 20" square.

The block I drew was named 'Free Trade'.  All the blocks came from Patchwork Square.

Free Trade from Patchwork Square

I liked the name 'Free Trade', since quilters and crafters so often 'freely trade' their ideas to other quilters and crafters.  I decided to just make the block larger, and use my sewing themed fabrics to make the quilt.  This is the finished mini quilt.  It measures 19" square.

Free Trade mini quilt

up close of the hand quilting

showing backing

Since the faux selvage fabric is directional, I had to make extra Half Square Triangles, and fussy cut the squares.  That meant that I had extra HST's left over.  I decided to play around with them, and came up with a coaster and a mug rug.

coaster and mug rug

I have coasters all over my sewing room, and I love to have little mug rugs sitting next to my machine, so that notions don't slide around.  I made these this weekend, and I'm already using them.

For those of you who don't know me, I do most of my sewing on vintage, straight stitch sewing machines.  My favorite machine is my 1959 Singer Spartan (192K) that I converted to a hand crank.  These projects were stitched on this machine.

1959 Singer Spartan (192K) hand crank

Now, for the giveaway part.  Darlene, over at Quilt Shop Gal, has arraigned this little blog hop.  There are at least 19 different prizes, including Aurifil, books, patterns, scarves, doodling books, etc.  The complete list of prizes is on the Quilt Shop Gal blog.

Meanwhile, please check out all the other bloggers.  Everyone is posting today, so, just click thru the links, and see what everyone has been up to.

Marian - Seams to be Sew
Patty - Elm Street Quilts
Cheryl - You are already here ;)
Barb - Bejeweled Quilts by Barb
Vanda - Quilt in Peace
Julie - Pink Doxies
Carol - Fun Threads Designs
Carole - From My Carolina Home
Darlene - Quilt Shop Gal

a Rafflecopter giveaway



Don't forget to leave a comment and enter as many times as you can on Rafflecopter.

Working on Ashley's Quilt

Another one of our nieces will be graduating this Spring.  I've been working on her quilt.  When I last posted about it, I guess I didn't make myself clear, and some people thought that I drew up this pattern.  Nope, I purchased a pattern, then re-drew it to fit my needs, as I frequently do.

This is the pattern I chose to make the quilt with.  I saw a sample at a local quilt shop back in early November.   I loved the sample, and figured that I could use the pattern.

Cosmic Jewels Revisited pattern

This pattern tells you how to make 4 different size quilts (wall, lap, queen, king), but, none of the sizes are what I need, since I need a twin size quilt, for a dorm bed.  I figured if I made the wall size and made it twice, I could turn it into a twin size quilt.  I re-drafted it (making the blocks slightly larger than the wall size blocks in the pattern).  Since it takes 8 different colors, besides the background, I needed to see what colors would look nice next to each other.  This is what I came up with.

my re-drafted version of the pattern

There is a great guide in the pattern, to help with the placement of each color.  They give you a grey guide, with numbers for the colors (1 thru 8).

great placement guide

I made a photocopy of this page, and used markers, so that I could put my colors in the correct places.

colored in placement guide

I finished the center of this quilt last night.

center of the twin size quilt top

When I purchased the pattern, I found a great border fabric.  I purchased the border fabric, then found the solids for the center of the quilt. 

I need to figure out which way I want to turn the border fabric now, so that I can add the borders.

top to bottom

side to side

Isn't that a great border fabric?  My sister-in-law told me bold and bright.  This is surely bold and bright! 

I've already made 2 pillowcases to go with this quilt.  My niece got one pillowcase for Christmas (not knowing anything about the quilt), and will get the other pillowcase when she gets the quilt.

can you guess which pillowcases go with this quilt?

I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to get this one quilted, or, if I'm going to quilt it myself, with straight lines. 

Check back with me on Tuesday for a 'Celebrate International Craft Month' blog hop, hosted by Darlene at Quilt Shop Gal.