First for 2017

So here's my first finish for 2017, but the vast majority of the work for this quilt took place in 2016, the entire year.

These are my 2016 project scrap houses, with some holiday houses and just because I like the fabric houses.

I sort of arranged my Village into districts, and like a calendar.  Valentine's Day houses in row 2,  St Patrick's Day house in row 3, April Showers and Easter houses in row 4, May floral houses in row 5, day sail houses in row 6, 4th of July houses in row 7, summer houses in row 8, Halloween houses in row 9, fall houses in row 10, and an entire row of Christmas houses for row 11.

This is Lifetime Quilt Number 193

The pattern is Village by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co

It finished at 70" X 77".

I has approximately 1.034 pieces.

I've named it Village - A Year in the Life 2016

This was so fun I'm thinking of doing it again this year, except maybe going with spools or basket blocks instead of house blocks.

I am so behind on piecing the backs of my quilts that I've instituted a new rule, no new projects started until the backing and the binding for the last project is done.  Plus it wouldn't hurt me to have a backing Monday, for the next 3 months, I'm 13 behind!  So nothing new until I sew the backing for Village, which I haven't even given any thought to, hopefully I have something on hand to use so I'm not waiting around for a delivery from the mailman.

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Construction Zone . . . .

Here are my latest additions to my year long Village project.

For April I made these four April Showers Houses.

And these houses are from the scraps of my Picking Petals Medallion quilt.

This is my latest favorite. 

I'm up to 48 houses.  

I bought two Charm Packs of Spooky Delight by Bunny Hill Designs for Moda for my October Halloween houses.  It will be hard to wait until October to piece them.  Wouldn't an entire Village of Halloween houses be fun?  Maybe next year.

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Just a little sewing going on . . .

I've been doing some spring cleaning, office organizing, old document shredding and income tax preparing. It feels good to be organized but it left me with very little sewing time.

One thing I did work on every now and then were my Village houses.  This is Carrie's Village.

My original goal was to make houses from scraps from my finished projects for 2016, having a quilt at the end of the year that represented all my work from this year.  While that's a good idea, so far I've not had enough scraps to make more than 4 houses per project, not nearly enough,  the pattern calls for 132 houses.  If I finished 15 projects I would need 8 or 9 scrap houses.  So I got to thinking how to supplement my Village.

One idea is to add holiday houses.

Here are my Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and Easter additions.

This Easter house is my latest favorite.

In addition to holiday houses, and project scrap houses, I figure I'll also add some houses from fabric that meant something from 2016, fabric I like but will never use for a project, and also using some of my all time favorite fabric.

Lil' Red is an example of a family of fabric I like but probably wouldn't use in large project, perfect for my Village project.

I won some Sewing Box by Gina Martin for Moda as a door prize and added some of that to the mix.

As I'm piecing these assorted houses it occurred to me that maybe I was creating a hot mess, so I put all my pieced houses on my design wall.

And I think I'm on track.  I'm also feeling good about that light yellow background fabric, because it's always a sunny day in this village.


Michele/Island Life Quilts and Sherri/A Quilting Life host a monthly sew along.  Every month they pick a great project and every month I don't seem to make their parade.  Their latest project is Village, and they're giving us two months to finish.  I'm sticking with my 2016 theme, so I won't be done by in time, but you could join in!

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Latest Finish . . . .

I finished my Bonfire Samper quilt top.  I enjoyed piecing every block.  I forget show much I love a good sampler quilt until I start working on one.  I fret over every fabric choice for every piece of every block, and enjoy every minute.  It's like a little color experiment with each block.

The Sister Sampler  Quilts book has three different settings for the sampler blocks.  This setting was my favorite, what a simple idea, but it packs a lot of punch.  I made one small change, I added cornerstones between the sampler blocks using the same tan fabric from the outer border, to pull that color through the quilt.

This is Lifetime Quilt Number 173

It finished at 82" x 82"

The pattern is Bonfire Sampler from the Sister Sampler Quilts book by AnneMarie Chany

The fabric is Valley by A Quilting Life and Basic Mixology by Studio M for Moda

It has approximately 668 pieces.

I recommend this book, it has three great settings for the sampler blocks, a nice variety of sampler blocks, and very nice illustrations and directions.

Maybe it would make a nice Valentines Day present!

And I continued with my goal of piecing houses for my Village project from my Bonfire Sampler project.

Here are the latest 4, I'm now up to 8! LOL

Next up, the APQ Quilt Along,  It All Adds Up.  Have you started  your project yet?  I've seen some great finishes on Instagram, #apqquiltalong.

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Moving On

I'm finally up to date on piecing my quilt top backings, all eleven of them!!

Yes Eleven.  I have no idea how I got so far behind, but that's never going to happen again. 

If I have my backing fabric when I finish a top, I'll usually piece the back then, I need to do a better job of thinking about the backing as I'm piecing my top, get it ordered and get it done.  Several of you mentioned 108" wide backings.  The last time I used wide backing fabric I didn't like the feel of the fabric, but that was ages ago, maybe they've improved, I"ll give it another go.

While piecing all those backs I was thinking about my Village project.  I've decided to use scraps to build my Village.

I studied the pattern and have placed a post-it note with the cutting requirements on my cutting table. When I'm working on a project I'll try to cut a few pieces as I go, and maybe piece a few houses too.

Here's my start!

Now that I don't have those backings hanging over my head I'm ready to start a new project, guilt free!

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