August One Monthly Goal

Ready to link up your finishes?

Don't panic - this link-up is open until August 31 at 11:55 pm ET.

I'm pleased to be sharing hosting duties with Anne-Marie from Stories From the Sewing Room.  You can link up at either of our blogs and your OMG project will show up in the same link party!  Anne-Marie will be taking over as the sole host of OMG in October.

My goal for August was to finish all the quilting on my QuiltCon fabric challenge quilt. I am happy to say that the quilting is done - only sharing sneak peaks right now.

Now it's your turn to link up!  Please add a link to this OMG post so others can follow where you are linking.   Let's make that easy -  just paste this into your post:  

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - August Finish Link-up

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Covered Notebook Tutorial

One of my favorite thank you or birthday gift is to make a covered notebook. (Photo from November 2020.) They go together quickly and it is a nice way to use some fun fabric from your stash.

I use these moleskin notebooks - (affiliate link) you can get them with lines, blank pages or dots - and are available in several sizes. The 5" x 8 1/4" size was used for this project. In addition to the notebook, you'll need:

• outer cover : fabric and fusible fleece ~ 9 1/2" x 12" (larger for dense quilting)
• flaps: (2) fabrics 9 1/4" x 4"
• lining: 9 1/4" x ~8"

Fuse fusible fleece to wrong side of outer fabric and quilt. (I did some simple straight line quilting). Trim quilted piece to be  9 1/4" tall x 11 3/4" wide.

Fold one edge of a flap ~ 1/4" and fold over again and top stitch. Repeat for second flap.

Place the notebook cover, right side up, on your cutting mat. Layer the flaps, right sides down, aligning the outer edges and making sure the top stitch edge is toward the center. Layer the lining on top, right side down. Sew 1/4" around the entire unit. (photo below, top row)

Clip corners and turn the cover inside out. (photo above, bottom row). 

Press. Top stitch around the entire edge of notebook .

Enjoy!

I sent this notebook off to Amanda who responded to my ask for scraps from Alison Glass fabric for my Summer Lovin' Seaglass SAL quilt. Thanks Amanda!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Playing with Scraps and HRTs

New project!

I wanted to play with all of my low volume scraps and decided to pair them with scraps of black(there are several shades of black here!) with the occasional burst of a color print. The blocks are foundation paper pieced and really fun to make.

I have fabric put aside for a few more blocks and then I will attempt to execute my quilt top layout!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Summer of Joy Check-in July

At the beginning of June, I joined the 

Summer Lovin Seaglass SAL hosted by Kitty @nightquilter and Allie @exhaustedoctupus. 

The idea is to purposely spend time on things that bring you joy this summer and reward yourself with a piece of fabric seaglass. (You can read the details behind what I am tracking on my kick-off post.)

At the end of June, there were 42 pieces. In my last blog check-in (read it here), I wanted to focus more on small projects and creativity - red - and really increase the seaglass volume around adventure - Navy - and friend time - Purple.

The photo right shows how the 42 pieces of seaglass earned by the end of June.

To celebrate the end of July and the earning of 59 pieces, all the seaglass was laid out.

You can see there is much more navy and purple and our adventures have included hanging out at the pool and a picnic in a park not visited since the kids (now in their 20s) were kids! Such fun!

A new category was added to celebrate 'spontaneous' joy. There is unexpected joy to be found and I want to help myself focus to try and find it.

August, let's go!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Echo

My quilt Echo is done!

Echo is inspired by a flowsnake fractal design and was created initially for the Pantone challenge using the color magenta. A ruler foot was used for the quilting and if you look carefully, the angle of the straight lines is different in the magenta colorway versus the light pink. See a close up of the quilting.

The quilt is faced and I used the tutorial from @cottonandburbon and was very pleased with the results.

A sunflower field in Raleigh is an annual event. There were a lot of people taking photos in this field of sunflowers but I was the only one there taking a quilt photo!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Improv Update - Combining

Spent more sew time recently on my improv quilt, shifting my focus from creating new units to rearranging and adding space to the units I've already sewn. (See May and July update.)

I work on this quilt once every week or so and it lives on my design wall in between sessions.  Here were the first set of evolutions of the piece as units were created and added. When I posted about the quilt in mid-July, several people commented that they saw a cat in the collection of blocks (last photo). 

My favorite part about that last arrangement was the upper left corner and the plan was to leave that in place and rearrange the rest. Here are a bunch of different layouts from the exact same set of blocks, all retaining that upper left corner that I really liked.

After letting the blocks sit on my design wall, I was back playing in late July. As I combined parts, the drastic rearranging was underway! My goal here was to add white space into the design and to play around with really different arrangements.

And now I'm here....

The top two-thirds is all attached together and the bottom third is in three pieces. There is a random block pinned in the upper right corner that isn't (yet) part of the piece.

I think the right side is essentially done but I'm thinking about adding some little bits to the left side.

Snapping and sharing pictures of progress has been great fun for me!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

August OMG Link-up

New to One Monthly Goal?  Welcome!  To join, share a photo of your project plus, some words about what you want to accomplish in a blog post or  and add that photo to the link-up.  Return at the end of the month and share your results.  (Results link-up opens for the last 7 days of the month.)

I'm pleased to be sharing hosting duties with Anne-Marie from Stories From the Sewing Room.  You can link up at either of our blogs and your OMG project will show up in the same link party!  

My goal for August is to finish the hand quilting on my QuiltCon fabric challenge entry - read more.

Now it is your turn to link up - what is your goal for this month?   The One Monthly Goal accomplishment linkup will be available on August 25.  Make sure you add a link to this OMG post so others can find the OMG link-up from your blog.  Let's make that easy -  just paste this into your post:  

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal August Link-up

Take a few minutes to visit others and make new friends!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a wonderful day! Patty