Made It: A Quilt for Mom

Well, blogging everyday hasn't been a thing, but I have a good reason for it... Last week I traveled to sunny St. George, UT to visit my sisters and my mom! It was such a wonderful trip!!! I missed out on the crazy blizzard here in North Dakota - don't worry, I didn't cry about it. lol. And my husband was absolutely amazing with the kids while I was away! I told him that they all seemed to do better without me. But he adamantly reassured me that they prefer having me home. ;) haha. 

We stayed at my sisters house, and I just love her family! Her kids are getting so big! (as is always the case when you don't see them often enough). I was also able to visit with some of our very good friends from when we lived in Iowa, as well as some of our best friends (that I served with while on my mission) and Neil got to know after we got married. My heart was so full!! I don't think anything beats being with the people you love! Although eating at my favorite restaurants and getting out and being able to hike around was also very refreshing and refueling for my soul!

I bought my tickets to fly out to Utah a few months ago, and in the meantime my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and moved in with my sister. When I realized that I would get to see her while I was there I knew I needed to make her a quilt!!! This was 2 weeks before I left... so from planning and designing what I would make, paper piecing 12 blocks, completing the quilt top, basting, quilting, and sewing on the binding, it was definitely a miracle that I was able to do all of that in such a short amount of time! (I attached the binding before I left and was going to sew it on the rest of the way while I was there. I got it half way finished on the flight out there, and then I didn't pick it up at all while I was there - so I brought it back home with me. duh! I did show her, but I didn't want to leave it unfinished.... now it is completely finished, so now I need to mail it out to her. good grief. lol. my husband just rolled his eyes at me when he saw it still in my bag.) 

Anyway, here it is...

I used my Taurus pattern. For the outside edges I pieced all the outer sections as single white pieces. It's hard to tell in the photo, but I have a darker and lighter grey that twists between the blocks going down the quilt.

When I think of my mom I instantly think of red, orange and yellow. Not my usual color palette, but I'm happy with how it turned out!

This was my first idea, but the more I looked at it, the less I liked it... though I do still actually like it a lot. I don't know if the border of the image shows up, but this design would have simply gone down the left third of the quilt (not right on the edge, but not centered).

Maybe I'll make it with this layout another day.

My mom started her chemo on Monday, so please keep her in your prayers if you will!

#nonstopChristmassewing at the Beach!

I LOVE Christmas time! I love the spirit of love and giving that fills the air through out the world! Whether one believes in Christ, or in something else, there is a stronger sense of kindness, friendship, love and giving. It warms my soul. :)

It's a little different living in Florida though. Usually that "warmth" is in strong contrast to the cold winter air that blows around outside. Not so much this year. Yeah, it was 85 degrees outside yesterday. Being the non-local locals that we are, we took full advantage of that and went to the beach! again. (we also went the weekend before Thanksgiving. It was heaven! I think the ocean is warmer than Bear Lake is in August! (that's where we'd go every summer in Utah.)) I would be lieing if I said I didn't enjoy it.

 I even blogged about it!! If you are interested you can see loads of pictures over on my family blog here. Maybe the photos will help warm you up! heehee. ;)

Anyway, besides adjusting to this new type of Christmas, and going to the beach, the beginning of December always hits with a mad dash to get everything sewn up! I LOVE making handmade gifts, and always want to make more than I could ever possibly accomplish in a month. But I try nonetheless. Over on Instagram and started a hashtag for people to share all their Christmas sewing too. It's fun to be involved and see what everyone is working on! If you are doing Christmas sewing, tag your pictures with #nonstopChristmassewing and play along! :)

I've been trying to finish up my advent calendar that I cut out about 3 years ago! It's been on my to-do list forever, and I'm sure you've been sick of seeing pictures of it in the ziplock bag, if you have been following my blog for a while. lol. :D Anyway, I finally completed the top (the applique numbers took forever!) and since we were going to the beach... I brought it with me to take a picture. My hubby is the BEST EVER for helping me out!!What a stud!

The sashing is white, I had the camera setting on a weird setting and it didn't turn out how I'd hoped. But anyway, here it is all together! I kind of really messed up making it, but oh well. I'll share more when it's totally finished. :)

And because I never did share a finished photo of Mabel's quilt, I brought that along too. I so love this quilt! Mabel loves it too. I'll get some more pictures another time too... but I have been wanted to share it for a month or so now, so here it is! :)

Quilt is made of Heather Bailey's Nicey Jane collection. The white shashing is Kona white. It measures about 60" x 65"? (I don't remember. oops.) The back is a pink minky dot. I quilted flowers all over it, which means I do need to take more pictures of it. :)

To add a little Christmas cheer, Neil and I watched this short Christmas video last night. I thought it was really cute.

Tonight is also the yearly Christmas devotional, at 6 pm MST. You can watch it online here, or on Facebook. Or on The Mormon Channel. It's a few Christmas messages with loads of beautiful music by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir! They are amazing!

Wishing you all a beautiful Christmas season!!

and as always, happy sewing!! I hope to see you on IG. ;)

do.Good Stitches - Candy Land Quilt FINISHED!!

This is my ONE finished item from the Fourth Quarter FAL (that's my original post with all my projects) with Rhonda over at Quilter in the Gap. I am linking it up here in the final link up.

It is finally here! This has been a long time in the making, and well worth it. I am so grateful for all the Harmony girls to helped with this quilt. :) It's taken me WAY to long to finish, and I apologize for that, and I am glad no one got mad at me for being so slow. ;)

If you want to make this quilt, you can find the tutorial for 1-2 blocks here. I definitely want to make this again, and it's been on my list for a long time to make a full pattern of it. Now that it's finished, I REALLY want to make another. I love how it turned out! These are prewash pictures. I get nervous about what quilts will look like after the wash, so I always take before and after pictures in case it looks horrible, which they never do. Anyway, here are some more photos of it:

I did a 1/4" echo quilting around all the strips and really loved how crisp and simple it looked, but the wider spaces definitely needed something. I decided to go with the clamshell design from Angela Walter's book, Free Motion Quilting. I REALLY love how it looks with the quilt. This is the very center.

Some more quilting around the top.

I think this shows the quilting really well. It was hard to get a good shot of this quilt.

I also love the binding on this! I think the light green gives it just the right accent without taking away from all the colors in the quilt. I did one little corner of a darker green to add some contrast (and I was like 5 inches shy of enough of the main binding fabric (it's by Henry Glass, not sure what. The dark green is from the Dear Stella line, a little something I got from Sewing Summit!) :)



It's such a cozy quilt. I can't wait to wash it and send it off. Crossing my fingers that the recipient will really love it!

Make sure to head over to Stitched in Color and check out all the Celebrate Good Stitches! stuff going on! I LOVE looking at all the quilts that everyone has made!

The linky party will be up shortly. Sorry in advance for the blogging overload today.

It happens when it happens, and sometimes that's all at once. ;)

do.Good at Quiltstory

Do you remember my do.Good Stitches Quilt that I finished up and shared with you in early July? Well the wonderful ladies girls women divas ;) over at Quiltstory really liked my story and are sharing it on their blog today! Head on over to check it out! :)

Thanks Heather and Megan!

You made my day. :)

Rainbow Me Happy Quilt

This was one of my Finish-A-Long projects for the third quarter over at Quilter in the Gap! I'm so glad I finished something! My original post for the third quarter is here.

I'm going to share this over at Quilt Story on Tuesday... and possibly more linkies (just check my sidebar).

I'm so happy this quilt is finished! I really enjoyed making it, and at the same time, I had a really hard time making it.

Before I go into the story of it, here are the stats:

Quilt finishes at: 40.5" x 54"

All charms are from the different charm swaps I've participated in

the binding is an old insect binding, I think my mom gave it to me a long time ago.

the back is minky dimple dot - yellow and turquoise.

pieced, quilted and bound by me.

I decided to make this quilt when I found out that a little boy from our old ward was diagnosed with leukemia. What horrible news, I didn't even know how to respond when my friends told me about it. It makes my heart ache to think about it still. Especially now that we are so far away, the only thing I could think of to do was make a quilt. I think partially for me because I had this feeling of helplessness but wanted to do something. The boy is just younger than Jackson's and they were in nursery together. He is the sweetest little boy. 

For some reason I had such an emotional struggle with this quilt from the very beginning. (I know friends and people from that old neighborhood read my blog sometimes, so I hope I don't offend anyone in what I'm going to write, but I feel like I should be honest with my feelings.) The family is very kind and generous and we really enjoy them, they also helped us a lot, and are grateful for that. As can happen sometimes in a ward or church group, you are thrown together with people that  you probably wouldn't be friends with otherwise. There were wonderful people in the ward, and we love and hope to stay friends with all of them, but I just want to be honest and say that there were some people in the ward that we personally felt very awkward around. There was always that "fake frienship" feeling with our interactions (and I'm not saying that this family was one of those). For some reason while making this quilt, I was flooded with the mix of emotions that I have from everyone in that old ward, good and bad, happy and sad. I kept thinking about how when we left we felt some people were glad we were going (though it wasn't as bad as Springville where when someone called me to schedule an appointment with the bishop and I told him we weren't in the ward anymore his reaction was, "GREAT! I'll let him know!". Ok. goodbye to you too.) We did get offers for help and are so grateful for them, but one person called, "someone said you needed help with this... do you really need help? ..." I guess they sounded put out by it. Neil said, "no, don't worry about it" their chipper response, "Awesome! Well, just let us know!" I don't know if that says something about us or them. ?. ;) I don't say this to put anyone down. It's just the fact that we had interactions like that when we left (and I'm not saying that everyone should have been in tears either. We miss our friends, and we're still friends and we all love each other, but it also stinks to know that some people seemed over joyed to be rid of us.) Ok, enough with that.

So making this quilt was a mix of all those emotions. I kept wondering if I should even make the quilt. "Are they going to enjoy it? Will they be grateful for the time and effort I put into it? Will they end up donating it and getting rid of it? Am I stupid for even trying this?" I really struggled with my confidence in making this, and that's never happened like this before. I've never made anything like this before either though, so maybe I'd have these feelings anyway. I don't know. Thinking about the boy is what kept me going with it. It's for him, so who cares what any one else will think right?!

As the quilt came together, I could tell on the days that I was having these struggles, that it really affected the quality of workmanship that went into it. For instance, I basted the minky wrong, which then led to puckers in my quilting. blah. Nothing too serious, but it's frustrating. My quilting isn't amazing either. But I still like it and think it's ok for not having FMQed in a long time. It always amazes me how your feelings or what kind of a day you're having really effects how you sew. Lesson learned: DON'T Quilt if your having an off day! I've met a lot of people that have noticed the same thing. ;)

Onto a happy note, I did enjoy making this. Everything with this quilt had one end goal in mind: that it will be something cheerful and fun for a little boy to look at and enjoy. I picked bright colors, with lots of shapes, textures or pictures. I did a swirly star quilting. I love Hunter's quilt and looking for the stars in it, and thought those would be fun here. I wanted to put a solid, darker/bolder binding on the quilt, but decided on the insect fabric. What boy doesn't enjoy grasshoppers, bees, dragonflies, etc?! Ok, there are butterflies and lady bugs on it too, but those are insects as well, so they can still be boyish. ;)

I hope that sending this off will be a release for me and I will be able to let go of all those negative emotions. And more than that, I hope that it really will be a happy rainbow-y quilt that will brighten this little boys day and help carry him through his months of therapy and treatment.

We love you "T"!
Love, the Bohns.

doing good for do.Good

Basically that means I finally finished the quilt for the do.Good Stitches Harmony Circle from last September! Oops! Anyway, I'm so happy with it! All the wonderful girls in the group did such a good job and finishing this makes me realize that I miss them a lot. It was a fun group! But the break has definitely been a needed one.

I made up a quick tutorial for it here. And asked that everyone make blocks using 4 off center squares-in-square. And that they each include at least one orange square and one white square. Square-in-square is basically a log cabin, except that each round uses the same fabric rather than giving it the scrappy feel of the log cabin design.

It's always interesting to see the variety of blocks that you get back from a bee group, never what I expect, but it's still so much fun!! I had a great time putting these together.

I did some basic wavy lines across the quilt for the quilting. I still need to wash it, but I wanted it to keep a soft fluffy feel, so hopefully it works. :)

I still have mixed emotions about the back, but somehow I really like it. :)

p.s. Check out my new huge backyard!! I love that it has a clothes line!! I'm not so sure about hanging our clothes out there for the world to see, but hanging quilts for pictures! Yes please! :)

I used the binding method that Red Pepper Quilts uses, of sewing it on the front and then pinning it on the back and sewing in the ditch on the front so it catches the back. I only missed one small section on the back, and for the most part I stayed right in the ditch! I'm so proud of myself! lol. :) As my husband said last night, a humble brag. ;) hey, everyone deserves to give themselves a pat on the back for a job well done!

For some reason I went against the norm and put the label in the top corner. It just looks better on that fabric I think. Anyway, I still need to write in "Harmony Circle - Sept. 2011" on it. THEN it will be complete. :) I'm not sure where the nearest Project Linus is in these parts, so I might see if there is a family/someone in the area who could give this beauty some good love! :) I hope the Harmony girls don't mind!


So, basically, I should be unpacking, cleaning, filling out claims forms, teaching my children about the weather system and oceanic sea life (ok, not really), and everything else that is on my to-do list, but with so much drama going on (more about that later) I drastically needed a break! Yesterday I put together my make shift sewing area, finding supplies as I went, and I am SO glad I did! :) I think that was the most rewarding sewing I've done in a long time!

I'm just a little embarrassed to show a messy picture online. lol. ;)

Amazing Contributors to this quilt:

Melissa of A Child of the Wild Blue Yonder

Jessica of A Little Gray

Leigh of Leedle Deedle Quilts

Angelina79

Denise of My Family Thinks I am Working

Sandi, aka Missplanner

3 Beans Studio of 3 Beans Studio

Jeri of Durable Goods

Erica (aka  three_little_pumpkins') of fabric glue and thread 

Now onto finishing the candy land quilt.... though I think that will have to wait for another day.

How are all your sewing projects coming along???

I'm so glad I read Lori's blog the other day 

and for her reminder about how it's almost time to link up any finishes for the the Finish-a-Long!

I am so happy I'll be able to link up this quilt!! :)
(you can see this in my original post here.) 

A Christmas Quilt!

My sister-in-law was in town this last weekend so I was able to give her her quilt! :) Yippy! I sure hope she really likes it. ;) Anyway, that means I can now share some pictures with you! :)

Now the hard part is figuring out which ones! ;)

This was my first time doing zigzag quilting and it was a lot of fun! I love how it looks with the pieced zigzags! :)

We've been having the most amazing, and unusual, weather around here! Most days have been absolutely gorgeous, and warm! :)

I had my little buddy come help me with the pictures! He had so much fun!! ;)

Say cheese! :)

I used some red flannel for the back. Finding that fabric was the hardest part! It must have been the lighting in the store, because everything just made me feel like my quilt was ugly. ;( but it actually goes together perfectly I think! :)

And of course the "Linding" = Label + Binding. heehee.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a great week!

And don't miss the Cash Envelope Sew-Along that will be starting up soon! The first giveaway for supplies will be later this week! :)

I am also linking up at Canoe Ridge Creations, and Fabric Tuesday at Quiltstory. So go see what everyone else is up to as well! :)