Still here...

Just a lot going on!

I have participated in 2 more swaps and received awesome gorgeous items:

A (much needed) sewing machine cover from the Modern She Made Swap:

why yes, it is a bit blurry/grainy.

Thank you roserblu! I love it! It made it to me from Australia!

A mini-quilt from our Triad Modern Quilt Guild Swap:

from my dear quilty-friend and super-mom rainbow robot

I adore this Swoon! I love the dark gray, and I LOVE orange (along with blue).

My friend Colleen coached me on joining Flickr swaps, so a thank you shout out to her for this new fun activity I am loving! She is our "swap-mama" in the Triad Modern Quilt Guild and does a phenomenal job.

I have been quilting (when I can) and have 3 in process. I am just a bit weird about showing them unfinished, so dear readers will just have to wait til they are complete.

I am also helping my husband and his siblings with the cleaning and sorting at my dear late MIL's house. This is a difficult, laborious, emotion-charged job. She had more clothes and shoes than you can imagine. We need to sell as much as possible to settle the estate, so if you know of an outlet for gently used ladies clothing (sizes run in the XL, 1X, 16-18 for clothing, shoes are size 8) shoot me an email. We would love to sell the lot of it, 'cause I do not look forward to the work involved in a yard sale.

And if you have read read this far, thank you! This is my 700th post.

DS Doll Quilt 2 Swap

I received my DSDQ2 doll quilt today!

 

Front

Back - as beautiful as the front!

My swap partner sent me a wonderful package that in addition to the absolutely awesome doll quilt, included post ards from Italy (her home), a pincushion and a beautiful Murano Glass dish!

Thank you so much Gabriella! I love it!

Modern She Made Swap Finish

In my mini-making-quilts-frenzy I joined 2 Flickr swaps. This is for the Modern She Made Swap.

The criteria for this swap stipulated we had to use a circle, or an interpretation of a circle.
Since I have been on a Drunkard's Path kick, I just pulled fabrics together and started making blocks. These finish at 3 1/2" square. I made a small table topper and used osnaburg cotton on the back. I love the rough, homespun look, as well as the added stiffness. I free-motion-quilted a wavy grid in the center, and swirled the border. I hope my partner likes it!

4 mini tops ready to quilt

These 4 minis are ready to layer-baste-quilt. It has been fun to work out a concise design in a short time frame. I am thinking through how to approach trapunto. Should be fun! Not ALL of these will be swapped, 1 of these will, for sure, the other 3 may mine for a while longer. I am in 2 swaps, know one of my partners and haven't received the other partner assignment yet, so he/she may want something different. So, "partner" (wink) which do you think you will get?

Fabric highlights: Lark, by Amy Butler, Flea Market Fancy by Denyse Schmidt, Random FQs from a friend, Kona gray, coal and snow, Westminster Manatee. 
The top 2 are my faves so far. I just love the scrappy!
 

 

I took these 4 shots with my iphone, put them in a frame with "Pic Stitch" will allowed a light edit, then pulled into Instagram to share and blogged with my mobile blogger ap. All while chain piecing and pressing!

Mini /doll quilts

Mini /doll quilts, originally uploaded by kheli.

I have been working in a smaller scale since joining in on some swaps.  With some extended travel for work in the near future, I wanted to play with instant quilting gratification. I have 2 of these ready to layer, and need to work out my border on the 3rd. The square in a square is made from my Lark by Amy Butler scraps. One of the modern flowers is Flea Market Fancy by Denyse Schmidt, the other is from a stack of FQs gifted to me. Don't know which line, these coordinated well enough for me, they may not have been from the same collection. I am pondering the quilting, and may play with some trapunto. I do have some small pieces of nice wool batting. I hope my partners will like their quilts, I know I do!

MY Pillow from TMQG Swap

Made by the lovely and talented Colleen of luckyduckdreams! She made a modern Dresden, on Kona Ash, using bright beauties from her stash.

I love the orange, the Amy Butler prints, the dots. And I really love the hand quilting! Thank you, Colleen!

TMQG Pillow for Swap (updated)

Our February swap for the Triad Modern Quilt Guild was a travel pillow (approximately 12" x 16"). Our swap Mama gave me an easy, and tough swap mate: Angie! Easy, because she loves Kate Spain, tough because she is an awesome sewist, so I needed to be on my game. Our guild has a Flickr group, links to blogs and we follow each other on pinterest, so stalking Angie for ideas was fun. I found one of the last charm packs of Terrain, known to exist (LOL) and some Kona Charcoal and Free Spirit Manatee solids.

I pieced selected charms with the gray solids for the front, the edge and added an accent strip on the envelope flap on the back.

I did minimal straight line quilting, just to accent the shape. I really like the contrast that the gray lends to the bright colors of the charms.

I am also enclosing the remainder of the charms, I know Angie will find a use for them. I hope she likes the pillow!

She DID like it!!! And I love my pillow!