This one's not quite as far along, unfortunately. I have a brown and blue block that are almost finished but will need to cut more green, purple and pink for sure.
I also have some black I Spy blocks that didn't work the way I'd hoped in my color scheme. Might make pillows out of them. :)
Months ago, I signed up for a couple different swaps online for 4 inch charm squares. One swap was for I spy fabric and the other was a color wheel swap.
All along, I've been planning on doing something with them that let me play with color.
I think these quilts are going to be quickly tied with vintage sheets as backings and I will likely skip the batting. I'd like nice and lightweight blankets for each of my boys to use in the living room.
My hubby likes to keep things chilly around here, especially at night & it's always colder downstairs than it is in our bedrooms.
I ran out of orange squares. Guess that's not a popular I Spy color. I'll raid my stash tomorrow.
I'm making one for Owen, too. Will have to post another post because I'm using Flickr to post & it only allows one photo per blog post.
My mom recently retired and moved to another state. After living in the same place for over 20 years, she had a LOT of stuff to go through & couldn't move everything... So...
One thing she collects is antique buttons. Mom goes to garage sales all the time. Estate sales too, and she's always on the lookout for buttons.
I "borrowed" a gallon of her buttons when I was making stick horses. I needed horse eyeballs, you see...
And she has 4 more gallons at her house in Texas.
This morning, I convinced her that she should let me sell them on Etsy. I think they're treasures and I'll likely keep my favorites, but I think they'll sell well. I think people will want to buy pretty buttons to keep in a box and pet... or in a jar on a shelf to admire... or they might even want to use them on their sewing projects...
Here's a small sampling of what I've got to sell. I'm thinking of grouping them by color. They're so pretty & all unique.
We also have some on their original cards. I think these will be great sellers, too.
I'm doing some research today on how much I should charge. Do you think there will be much interest in these & more like them?
So I am in 3 bees. Two are virtual bees and the third bee is with my friends here locally in the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild.
I gotta be frank with you about my experiences with bees and swaps...
I'm pretty shocked at the number of people who flake out on things they commit to. Seriously. My friend, Linda and I had the month of November. In her group, she only received six blocks back instead of 11. Several of us have stepped in and been angels to make blocks for her, since it's SEVEN months later and the bee is wrapping up.
It took until last month for me to get enough blocks back to make my quilt and several people made angel blocks for me, as well.
In my other online bee, (I'm sure I've blogged about this before) two people committed to the bee and then kept the fabric that I sent & didn't make my blocks. After much pestering, one of the people who flaked out made some excuses and promised she would send back my fabric, but she didn't. I never heard a peep from the other person.
In more than one of these instances, the "offenders" were actively blogging and posting photos on Flickr the whole time. They were still signing up for other swaps I was in. Still over-committing.
I realize that life is more important than sewing. I totally get that. However, when you say you're going to do something, I think you need to either do it (and do it well) or communicate with the people involved about the situation.
My bee with my local KCMQG friends has been great. We see each other monthly and exchange blocks/kits. Because there's a regular face-to-face meeting each month, it makes us all more accountable. I'm not saying that we're always on time, but we do pretty well.
All in all, I'm soured on online swaps and bees. I'm involved in a bento block swap and a mini bow tie swap right now, but I'll likely stop swapping for a while after these.
I'd like to focus more on sewing for myself (finishing some UFOs!) and for my Etsy shop (so I can get my featherweight!)...
What are your experiences with bees and swaps? Mostly good? Some bad? Do tell...
I spent some time tonight adding to my Etsy shop... I'm SERIOUS about de-stashing my vintage sheet and feed sack collections, along with other treasures.
I'm itching to buy myself a featherweight sewing machine, but need some more cash to manage it. My birthday is July 13... Think I can raise enough $ by then?
Let's hope so...
Visit my Etsy Shop here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/nkiblueeyes?ref=si_shop
And check back often. I'm adding more and more each day.
It's time to start assembling Wyatt's spider web quilt. I'm going to order a bit more aqua essex to make one more row. This was created by my Lovely Linen Bee and unfortunately, two of the members went AWOL with my fabric. So infuriating. But... Such is life. I have more scraps and I can order more linen. Trying to not dwell on the negative.
This quilt is one of my very favorites. I was inspired to make it by my great grandmother's spider web quilt. She used lots of scraps and hers is more colorful than this, but I looked closely to see how she constructed it & duplicated her methods.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to make another quilt like this for my other son, Owen. I might use a natural linen on his. Not sure yet. I do know that I will use the same color scheme on the scraps. I used cool colors (blue, purple and green) along with some black and gray to darken it up a bit. The lighting in this picture isn't great. There are more greens in this than it shows.
Anyways, I'm trying really hard to knock out some of my UFOs... Having some success, too!
Made great strides on my denim commission quilt for Amber today. Many thanks to my buddy, Toni for sharing her wealth of denim, as my client didn't have enough for the size quilt she requested.
What you see here are 24 blocks made from cut apart jeans, jumpers and overalls. About 1/3 of them were given to me by my client. These were jeans from each member in her family.
I tried to include pockets and brads and even managed to have a zipper or two incorporated into blocks.
I'm going to work on my block placement a bit tomorrow and start assembling the top.
Going to order some brown flannel for the backing and binding. No batting. It's already very warm and heavy.
I'm going to stash away profits from this to go towards the featherweight sewing machine I've been pining over...
I've been saving 5 inch polka dotted charm squares for some time now without a real plan for them.
About a month ago, I started making 4 patches with some Kona Snow. This quilt is a twin size and I'm planning on quilting it myself.
This will go in my Etsy shop when it is completed.
This is for Tracy in the Lovely Linen Bee.
I got a package from her today from England with the materials to make this block inside. I love getting Royal Mail. Don't you?
I'm sending back some scraps to go in her bottled rainbows quilt. I've been toying with the notion of making one of these myself, but I think I have enough UFOs right now. Going to try to resist the temptation...
This is for Meg in Bee Vintage. Just a simple 9 patch made from vintage sheet scraps. Will be a fun and cheerful quilt!
