Bramble Blooms Progress

 We have a cold couple weeks ahead of us. -25* during the daytime and down to -30* to -40* at night. Nothing to complain about though, normal winter weather for us.  Nothing like what other people are suffering through around the country. We had friends that flew out to Oregon, they were stuck in a hotel with no power for 4 days waiting for a flight home.  On the other hand, my daughter and her family were in Maui! Lucky them! They made it home okay, no doors flew off or anything, lots of delays though. I am making a big pot of potato soup today!

I am making progress on my Bramble Blooms quilt. It is slow going and I feel as though I am tangled up in the thorny brambles sometimes! Right off you will see that I changed the yellow/gold flower shape. I was trying to hard to make them realistic, the mustard flower has only 4 petals, but it just wasn't working.

I tried fabric after fabric for the border. Below are a few  photos of different ideas I tried. My husband said the greens were too dark, so I went with the creams, that was just to plain.

How about a split border? A little better, not sure.

For some reason I am liking the brown, don't tell my hubby!

This is where I am right now. Lots of things I am still not sure on. One, the red shapes, maybe just half circles and not the half flower shape. Second, the cornerstones? This is best I have come up with so far.

I would like to add another bird and the word Faith, but since I don't know what the next prompt will be I am unsure.

I continue to work on Barbara Brackman's BOM, Herbarium. I am currently appliqueing Block #10, Strawberry Wreath. I need to write a post showing all my finished blocks for this. I will be linking up with Kathy HERE  for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Thank you for reading my blog. Happy Quilting! Rebecca

Bramble Blooms 2.0?

 This isn't exactly Bramble Blooms 2.0, because when I first started thinking about my center panel I wanted red flowers and that was the fabric I had picked out. Partially because Audrey had red flowers but mostly because red is one of my favorite colors.  Then my idea of naming the quilts Faith, Hope and Love changed my direction. I went looking for flowers to represent Faith for the first quilt. I choose the mustard plant for the parable of the mustard seed, and Lily of the Valley for the lilies of the field parable, and of course my bird for the parable of the sparrow. Well, after more research I find that they believe Christ was talking about a different flower than I thought. It is called called Crown Anemone (Lily of the Field). Here are some links where I found this information  HERE and HERE and HERE.  (I hope these links work.) 

Crown Anemone the Lily of the Field

I know I mentioned in many of my replies to comments on my last post that I was not entirely happy with my first center panel for Bramble Blooms. I really felt I had not captured the improv style at all. Hopefully I have done a little better this time. The color for the bird my change, though sparrows do tend to be brown. I will be linking up with Judy at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts HERE 

Everything is glued in place and ready for stitching.

I have been really busy with my Christmas baking, every year I make dozens of cinnamon rolls to give out to family and friends. I also make cookies, white fruitcakes, and two kinds of fudge.

Old photo, but they look the same every year. lol

Happy Quilting, Rebecca

Bramble Blooms and Christmas Stockings

 I have a tentative lay out for my Bramble Blooms center panel. I am so unsure! This is so out of my comfort zone of following a pattern. I am looking for some feedback What do you think? I added the bird ( a sparrow) for the scriptures Matthew 10:29-31 and Luke 12:6-7. 

Everything just pinned in place for now.

Now that I finished the Christmas stockings for my grandson and his family I can spend some time catching up on my applique projects.

Happy Quilting! Rebecca

Bramble Blooms and Other News

Big news around here! My husband got hearing aids! What a difference! He is "profoundly" deaf in his right ear according to the audiologist and almost as bad in his left. It is so much easier to communicate with each other now and the TV isn't up to 50 on the sound. Life is so much better!

Other news, my husband purchased me an electric chainsaw. Now I can trim up firewood myself, if it will not fit into the wood stove. I have wanted one for quite awhile. 

Another type of rotary cutter!

My first wood I cut all on my own! Three pieces that were too large for the stove so I sawed them in half. Hubby was there to help me for my first time running it.

I am trying to keep up with everyone that has joined with Audrey's QAL Bramble Blooms. I think there are 25 of us so far. It is going to be so fun to see everyone's creations. You can read more about it on Audrey's blog HERE

I am working on my floral centerpiece, I looked through a lot of my applique books for ideas, on line, Pinterest., so many ideas out there. I also looked through Audrey's blog posts, at many of her quilts for inspiration. Her creativity astounds me! Her quilts are just so wonderful. 

 Then I read Jeanne's blog Schottosche-A Creative Journal and she is naming her three quilts in the series Morning, Noon, and Night. Here is a  LINK to her blog. That got me thinking! My quilts will be Faith, Hope, and Love. That helped narrow down the choices for the flowers. I looked up flowers and their meanings, there are a lot of different opinions on this subject, but chose what I liked.  For my first quilt "Faith" I have chosen the Lily of the Field and the mustard plant. The Lily referencing Matthew 6: 25-34 and the mustard plant referencing Matthew 17:20. 

I  have no idea of Audrey's plan, but I will be adding words to this quilt, I know she does that quite often on her quilts. There will be a birds too. I am going to free cut the applique shapes as Audrey explained  in her post. I think it will be fun to try this new technique.

My sketch, my applique may not be exactly like this, I plan to free cut the applique pieces. That is something new for me. I may change the bird and its position.

Center panel sewn. It is 25" x 25" which gives me room to play with the applique pieces, I can trim it down later.

Fabrics for the applique

And there was some of this going on too. No grass to mow this time of year but plenty of snow to blow!

Happy Quilting, Rebecca

Pineapple Crazy and Bramble Blooms QAL

 I am still doing catch up posts. I finally finished a very long term project, Bonnie Hunter's Pineapple Crazy quilt. Another top that needs quilting! (Sorry for the poor quality of the photos) The quilt finishes about 80" X 90". Linking up with Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework.

A couple of close up photos of the individual blocks. Each block finishes at 5" and there are 45 pieces in each block. I had several quilting friends donate scraps for this project which helped with the variety.

Now to the exciting news! Audrey of the famous Quilty Folk blog is having a QAL! You can read the first post about Bramble Blooms HERE. Audrey makes the most amazing quilts and they are all her own designs. I am hoping to learn a lot through this process, especially about improv and design.

My initial fabric pull.

Possible center panel fabrics.

Happy Quilting! Rebecca

Catching Up Part 1

Since I haven’t posted in a while I have some catching up to do. I finished both of my versions of Barbara Brackman’s Freedom’s Friends BOM. Here is a  LINK to the BOM patterns on her blog. 

They are just tops and still need to be quilted. In fact I am getting quite a pile of tops that need to be quilted.

My Blue version.

 

My Colorful version

This top turned out completely different than I initially planned. I was going to use all the colors of the rainbow in it, but after the first block was completed it went in a completely different direction.

More snow today, we got another 4 1/2". We purchased a snowblower and we will be trying it out soon! It is suppose to continue to snow Monday and Tuesday, so will wait until it has finished to put the snow blower to work.

Happy Quilting! Rebecca

Mom's Quilt Top

We had our first real snowfall on Monday, October 2, we got about 4". I would say winter is here for us!

I am going to try to blog again, I keep hoping that they will improve our internet speed. A few years ago they laid a bunch of cables along the roadway right in front of our house, but there has been no improvement. It takes me all day to do a post on our desktop, because it takes so long for things to load. If I post a photo I just get up and go do something else for at least 15 minutes, then it might be up. So today I am trying a Blog app and will see how it goes. One reason I want to start again, is that Audrey at Quilty Folk is going to do a QAL, it sounds so fun and so very generous of her to host it. It would be nice to join others in posting my progress. (Sorry I don’t know how to do a link yet)

When my mother passed away in February of 2012, I inherited some of her sewing items. One item was an applique project she had started for my sister back in the 1960's. My sister had taken it home with her when my mother went into a nursing home and a few years ago she mailed the quilt top to  me. The original project was for my sister's twin beds, when she was going to high school. My Mom hadn't finished it when my sister  had graduated from college and moved on to a job in California. Then my Mom sewed the two halves of the top together to make a quilt big enough for my sister's new bed.

Now what do I do with it? I am thinking of separating the two halves and make them into two twin  size quilts for my youngest son's two daughters. They are now ages 2 and 6. The problem there is I don’t know how washable they will be, might not be suited for young children.

 Pattern, templates and etc my Mom used.

Extra fabric, I could make more blocks and enlarge the top.

Batting included!

 Well, we will see how this post turns out!

Happy Quilting, Rebecca