It's July . . .

Time to swap out the living room quilt!  I don't like to leave my quilts up for more than a month during the summer months so "Bounce" is down and "One Star Two Star Red Star Blue Star" is up!

This quilt was made from the Miss Rosie's Quilt Co pattern "Cindy Lou Who", I made mine a little larger.  I made the blocks larger and I even added a few blocks .  When I made this quilt my intention was to put it in the middle of my bed for the month of July.  But my A La Mode quilt (Lifetime Quilt # 65) is on my bed for the three months of summer so I decided to hang this quilt in the living room this year instead.

The Sherri and Sinta's July Schnibbles project is quilter's choice.  If you've not made "Cindy Lou Who" I don't think you could find a better project for this month's sew-along.  It was the October 2009 Year of Schnibbles project.  Go check out that parade, there were some amazing finishes.

(For more information on "One Star Two Star Blue Star Red Star", Lifetime Quilt Number 51, click here)

So now that I'm done with "Leap Year" I plan to start working with my Minick and Simpson fabric.

And I've narrowed my project down to two patterns, both Judy Martin patterns and both from this book.

This is an old book, published in 2004 I think, but if you love star quilts you won't find more interesting patterns, stars or projects in any other book.  

This is "Free Spirit Medley"

And this is "Stars and Stripes Forever"

I don't think I can make a bad decision.

Housekeeping: 

Diane won the Bounce giveaway of a layer cake and pattern.  Diane, I sent you an email, let me know your address and layer cake choice and I'll get everything in the mail to you.  I let my husband pick the winning number and he chose 33, Larry Bird's number when he played for the Celtics.


The majority of you said you get a bounce in your step from your family and from sewing, I'm with you there!  Thanks so much for stopping by, sending emails,  and entering the giveaway.  Don't forget, if you make a Bounce send me a picture!

Tomorrow is tools day, my first tool review, stop back by.

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Done Leaping . . .

I've finished Leap Year!  

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I wanted my Leap Year to be just a little bigger.

So step one, I added more blocks and a little black trim to all the blocks.

To make this project even bigger I decided I would add a couple of black borders and 3 background borders.  

So to start, I made my inner border the same width as the sashing .  

Then I added this thinnish black border, 

 with the intention of adding an even thinner background border, another thinnish black border, and wrap the whole project up by adding a wide outer border using the background fabric.  So it was at about this stage when I figured out I was taking away from the center of my quilt by adding all those borders.  Borders whose only purpose was to make the quilt bigger.

I also decided I really liked how the pattern had a wider border around those outer blocks, it set them off more.

So off came the first two borders and on came the wider border.

Isn't it amazing what a difference less than an inch makes!

Then to finish things off I added one last black border, not thin, not thinnish, but just right.

Sometimes a quilt needs to be its size, not the size you want it to be.

I've name my project Date Night, because once I jazzed up that little black dress fabric that's what popped into mind, like the fabric was all dressed up to go out.

This is Lifetime Quilt Number 90!
It finished at 43" x 53"
It has approximately 427 pieces.
The pattern is Leap Year by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co
The print fabric is little Black Dress by basicgrey for Moda
The background fabric is American Jane Patterns by Sandy Klop for Moda.

The black flange was cut 1 1/4" wide then folded in half and pressed before adding it to each block.

I've not seen the usual number of finished projects out in blogland for this project as I've seen in past months.  I sure hope we have a good parade.  If you've not started yours, and you stick with the pattern, and don't change your mind 5 times about the border, you can have this done in a day, I swear!

See ya at the parade!  (Sinta's & Sherri's blogs)

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Updates . . . . .

My Twister project is home from the quilter.  I contemplated quilting this myself, doing some straight lines or maybe some big stitch hand quilting,  I'm so glad I got over those ideas because I would not have done near the job that my quilter, Connie Lancaster at Quilts Plus in Indianapolis, IN did.

I didn't notice how plain that white space was until Connie filled it with pinwheels.

Pinwheels in the pinwheels and pinwheels in-between the pinwheels.

Here's the corner.  Thank  you Cosmo Cricket for designing the perfect fabric for the binding!

And thank you Connie for quilting such a clever pattern on my project!

For more information on my SaltAir Twister go to my Lifetime Quilt List tab, this is Lifetime Quilt Number 88.

When I was working on my Twister, I linked to Dawn's blog where she showed some pictures of some Twister projects she had pieced.   Due to popular demand Dawn has created a very detailed tutorial on how to make her heart twister, stop on by if you would like to give that project a try. (Click Here)

Yo Yo update, last week I had 8 yo-yos . . . . 

This week I have  . . . 9!  LOL!!

Not as many as you or I expected, but I did buy a vase!

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Still Leaping . . .

So back to Leap Year, the June Schnibbles of the month.

This is where I left you on my last Leap Year post, wanting to make this bigger.

I got several great suggestions that I'm going to pass along just in case sometime you're wanting to make a project bigger; add sashing to the blocks, set the blocks on point, and add some outer borders.  Someone was even nice enough to track down a few more little Black Dress charm packs for me.  All great ideas and very helpful, thanks!  

But I didn't go with any of those ideas.  Instead I thought maybe I would like the looks of some blocks that had background fabric in half of the squares, so it would look like some of the fabric was free, and not part of a square.

It's hard to tell what a horrible idea that was from this picture.

The "free" blocks are the first block in row one, the third block in row two, the second block in row 4 and the last block in row five.  

Here's a better picture.

 It was at this point that I realized that my favorite thing about this pattern was the 16 patch blocks, and how I liked the blocks to look like blocks, not some squares floating off into space while the majority of the other blocks didn't.  I found those floater blocks distracting.

Then I came up with another idea.  What if I used the light fabric from the family that I hadn't used yet, because it blended in with the sashing fabric, and set it apart by adding a thin black border to each block?

And that's what I did!

And I like it. Not only does it help the blocks with the lighter colored fabric stand out, I think it adds a nice little something something to all the blocks, kind of like they're more dressed up!

So this is where I am now, not done, but definitely back on track.  Good thing too, the parade is just days away!

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Tools Tuesday . . . .

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of my summer goals is to inventory and clean out my ruler, template and tools drawer.  

Well the first step is complete.  Here's everything that was in my drawer.  Tools I've been collecting ever since I started quilting seven years ago.  

I sorted the contents of the drawer into three groups, things I know I like and know how to use, things I may like but have never used, and things I don't like, use or will ever use!

My "Fit to be  . . " whatever rulers are rulers I use on almost every project.  I've tried several different ways to make flying geese, Monique's rulers are my preferred method.  These I'll keep.

Here are my Marti Michell templates and rulers.  The templates I bought for different projects or patterns, I like them, use them and loan them out.  They're staying.

The log cabin rulers have never been used.  After doing some research on their use I decided that I would not use that method to piece log cabin blocks, not keeping those.

I used these perfect circle templates for my Summer Fun dots.

If you need to make circles for a project, I recommend using these templates by  Karen Kay Buckley.

So this is where I stand right now.  The tools I know I'll use and like are back in the drawer, on the left. The tools I may like if I knew what the heck they were used for, I put in that project box on the right.

I've created a list of what is in the cleaned out tools drawer and put it on my phone so that I'll always know what I have at home when I'm out shopping.  This is because I have a couple rulers or tools that I've bought two of.  I have two easy angles, I have four 4 1/2 inch rulers!  No more of that!

The things I know I don't want are that stack on the floor.  Most of these I bought to use in a class and didn't use them or have found a method that works better for me and won't use them. I'm passing them along to a sewing group, for someone else to put in there tools drawer!

My next step is to take something out of the project box and figure out how to use it, by next Tuesday.   If I think I'll use it at some point I'll keep it, if not, out the door it goes.  So be sure to stop back by next Tuesday for another edition of  Tools Tuesday!

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