More Farm Girl Vintage!

Hello quilters! I returned from an east coast trip and brought lots of great quilting finds home with me. Couldn't wait to get started on . . . something. . . but what? Why, Farm Girl Vintage blocks, of course! I'd seen on Facebook a FGV sew-along and would love to have been a part of it but couldn't do it while on the road so I started my own! In 3 days, I made all these --and they're 6"! I don't know what it is about the tiny little pieces but I just LOVE making them! I don't plan to make ALL
the blocks in the book. . . but who knows?

Which is your favorite?

Mug Rug and License Plates

You know I'm obsessed with Row By Row, right? I've been trading kits and license plates with a group on Facebook and have accumulated 22 states' and a Canadian providences' plates! I have two patterns picked out for making a fun quilt (or maybe the back of a Row By Row quilt) with them.

There's another fun Facebook group that's making Mug Rugs and trading them from the FABulous "Farm Girl Vintage" book. I received this great mug rug from the quilter in Alabama (!) I was paired up with. Thanks, Susan!

I'm obsessed with making the teeny, tiny 6" Farm Girl Vintage blocks and plan to make at least 20 of them for my next quilt. Stay tuned!

Row, Row, Rowing!

How many of you are participating in this great, national quilting event? My buddies and I cannot get enough of it and it will be over in just over a week--September 8th! I've collected kits and license plates from 7 states myself and have swapped license plates with almost a dozen others so I'll have plates from about 20 states.

I purchased and made this adorable kit at a shop in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho and just love it! The border fabric has the word Yellowstone in it--purchased in Montana, of course.

I'd love to see what rows you all have put together!

A Great Line

Did you ever fall in for with a fabric line and you just HAD to buy it and make something out of it? Yes, I've bought fat quarter towers which are pretty pricy but I find that once I use part of it to make a project, it ends up languishing as a "been-there, done-that" line. I've been buying Jelly Rolls and Layer Cakes from Missouri Star Quilt Company through their "daily deal" and using their Friday You-Tube tutorials to make quilt tops. I'm loving them!

My latest is this one made with an older line I found recently at HollyHill Quilt Shoppe: Minik and Simpson's "Prairie Paisley II". Red, white and blue is classic but their addition of beige, tan and light blue really makes this line shine!

Missouri Star's pattern here is "Flutterby" and it's a snap to put together. The Jelly Roll makes a cute little quilt but I wanted something bigger so I found  a couple of yards online to use for the border and every last scrap of the jelly roll to make the interim border of little squares with white to make a queen-sized quilt.

I think I'll have this one custom quilted--it's a keeper for sure!!

Trade License Plates With Me?

You can see by the last couple of posts I'm rather obsessed with the Row By Row Experience. There's just something about getting a free pattern at a shop I didn't even know existed! My hubby and I just returned from a 3,246-mile road trip though 7 states and while I didn't stop at EVERY quilt shop, I did hit the ones that had great rows (you can see most of them on Facebook by searching for "(your state) Row By Row Experience").


I always buy something in each shop, it's only fair when they've gone through the trouble of designing a row and printing the pattern out for you just for the asking! One thing I love is the "license plates" almost every shop has. Such clever sayings on them!

I really want to trade license plates with people from other states--(they're made of fabric, not metal!) If you would like to trade one from a state other than CA, NV, UT, MT, WY, WA or OR, leave a comment at the end of this blog post or send me an email.





I found a wonderful pattern at a shop in Philomath Oregon (JanniLou Creations near Corvallis) and plan to make a quilt for my car with it. Is that cute or WHAT??!!!

Happy Quilting Everyone!!

Rewards For My Row By Row

For those of you who have an inkling to join the Row By Row experience, (rowbyrowexperience.com) there IS a reward: If you put a quilt together with at least 8 rows, bound and labeled, and are the first to turn it in to one of the 2,500 quilt shops in the U.S participating in this fun event through September 8th, you will win what I won last week: 25 fat quarters!!!

Here's my quilt, from rain-strapped California, with a poem I made to go with its rainbow theme: Rain, rain, Come and Stay, Send a Rainbow, Make My Day!

These rows are from quilt shops in order:

Meissner's, Sacramento CA

Thistle Dew, Fair Oaks, CA

New Moon Textiles, Pasadena CA

Fabric Garden, Sacramento CA

Thimble Town, Visalia CA

Totally Tina's Quilt Shop, Porterville CA

Quilter's Paradise, Clovis CA (left)

Calico Mermaid, Porterville CA (right)

Row By Row By Row!

Boy do I LOVE the Row By Row Experience!! You've heard of it, haven't you? 2,500 quilt shops across the U.S. and Canada are participating from June 21st through September 8th. Go to any participating shop and receive a FREE pattern for the row they've designed. They will all measure about 9" x 36" and the theme this year is "H20". Many of the shops have kits to make their row and these wonderful fabric 'license plates' you can incorporate into quilts. Some have the theme fabrics designed just for this event.

If you make a quilt with at least 8 rows, quilt it, bind it and put a label on it and are the first person to turn it in to the shop of your choice, you win 25 fat quarters!

I happened to be on a road trip from southern California to Sacramento the weekend it started and collected 8 rows along the way. I've made 5 of the rows already!!!

Go to Facebook and search "Row By Row Experience" and you'll see a lot of the shops and their rows. There's an interactive map of EVERY quilt shop participating so you can search near where you live or where you'll be traveling this summer. I guarantee you'll find shops you never knew were there!

Happy Quilting!!

Never Tried This Before!

When was the last time you tried something with fabric that you'd never tried before? I mean really challenged yourself? I did just that recently and while it was a struggle that I nearly gave up on several times, I kept coming back to it and finally succeeded, at least to my own satisfaction. It all started with this photo of my adorable daughter and her wife taken on New Year's Eve. . .

 My first thought was to make an 8x10 'glossy' and frame it. But I decided I wanted to do something better than that. I made copies, colored them with colored pencils, played around with them, used fusible web for each of the dozens of little pieces that make up the shadows and highlights of their faces and came up with this:

 When I gave it to them, they positively lit up!! They LOVED it! They wanted to see just what the process had been and set up this photo, which I love. I encourage you to try something new. You might just make someone very happy and that someone might be YOU!!