My girly retreat and Quilty Fun Christmas top

So, I have shared my new quilting space with you and figured I should finish the tour. Originally, when we were house hunting, we looked for a house that had a basement that could accommodate my quilting. The plan was that we would just finish the basement for quilting only and would have tons of room. When we found this house and saw the basement we realized that it had lots of potential to be much more than that so we planned to finish it as more living space as well as quilt studio. So far only two rooms have been done as DH is doing the work himself and he needed to pace himself and our budget. This sitting room is my girly space which I use to host my appliqué group, house my quilting library, do handwork and display some of my quilts. I had all the furniture left over from previous homes and it is my special girly space decorated to remind me of a beach cottage. Here is my view from the sewing room. I am so excited to be able to use my antique wicker sofa again. I think this quilt needs to be the next one quilted. The center is Auntie Geeen's quilt pattern from an old QuiltMania magazine. I added my own borders using some left over bonus HSTs from another project.

Here is my sewing library, though all the boxes of books are not yet unpacked and the shelves are not fully arranged yet. That floral chair is so comfortable that I refused to give it up in this move and it became the jumping off point for the decor of the space. I love to sit in it and do embroidery or read. I love having a handy hubby. All those built in bookshelves were made from IKEA Billy Bookcases to which he added moldings to make them built in. So cost effective and perfect for this weird little space.

Here is a view behind the white chairs in the first photo. I love my thatched roof dollhouse and hope to share it with my granddaughter when she is older. The quilt is hanging to cover the opening into what will be the bathroom and linen closet area. An unexpected air conditioning replacement has put a pause to the remodel but at least hanging the quilt means I have something nice to look at. I don't know the name of the pattern for the quilt, guess I better get those last quilt books unpacked as I am sure it came from a book.

Finally here is the view into my studio. We needed to add doors so that I would be able to close it off from little people and perhaps hide the mess. That little chest with the wicker drawers holds my embroidery supplies and my EPP papers.

I did get the main part of the Quilty Fun top done. I love the little embroidered details and the three dimensional bows on the wreaths. I am not doing the border until I decide on how I am using the fabric for a bed quilt. Then I will use those scraps for this border. Hope to get it all done for this Christmas season.

 

 

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A Quilty Fun finish and a Quilty Fun Christmas start

It has been a busy week but I have had a little time to play in my new space. I finished the borders on my Quilty Fun row quilt. I had to actually purchase fabric for the borders, hard to believe I had nothing in my stash!

I decided to also make the scrappy binding as suggested in the pattern while I still had all the fabrics out. I think it is going to be the perfect finish though it was very time consuming. I guess that is why I have never done a scrappy binding before!

I even made this Bee Block to use as the label. Lori Holt often designs a cute block to use as a label and I think that is such a fun idea. I still need to add the embroidery and borders to finish it off.

And while I was still feeling the Quilty Fun, I decided to start my version of Quilty Fun Christmas. This was a free pattern that Lori Holt did on Instagram last year during the Christmas season. It uses many of the blocks from Quilty Fun and a few new blocks in a Christmas theme. Unfortunately I did not join in last year so finding all the instructions on Instagram is a little tricky but if you go to her Instagram profile page and scroll down far enough they are still there. Lori's blog Bee in My Bonnet is full of fun ideas and she is currently working with her new book "Farm Girl Vintage" but I have not yet jumped on that bandwagon. Anyway here are a few of my Christmas blocks. I had several fat quarters from a Riley Blake Christmas line from a few years ago so that was my jumping off point. The "red" is actually a dark orange, a unique color for Christmas but I am liking it.

A log cabin, tree and cup of cocoa. It was such fun discovering I had the perfect fabric for the house "logs" and tile roof.

Some mittens and an adorable gingerbread man. Yay, I had the perfect buttons and ric rac in my stash and doesn't that pink mitten fabric just look like knitting.

Let's add a peppermint stick and some Christmas lights. I had to cut that stripe on the bias to make it work.

A star, tree ornament, a candle and some pinwheels (happily made from some bonus triangles from a previous project).

A gift and a cute snowman. The snowman was actually the label block but I had to put it on the front, just too cute.

Just a few more blocks and some embroidery to go. I plan on just finishing this as a small wall hanging and then will make a larger simple quilt to be used as the matching bed quilt. All of these quilts will be for my granddaughter, I am just having so much fun sewing for a little girl at last!

 

 

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