Black and Red and Case all over

If you are looking for the giveaway go here. For Link A Finish Friday Go Here.

My wife tells me Julia looks tinted red?  While I still think she looks cute.

This is a quilt for my brother in law another quilt made for Christmas.   I bought some material to make this Rag Quilt and then my wife decided to make it bigger then original plan so we did not have enough of one material to do what was originally planned.  So we added the lighter red (its actually squiggles a cute material)

The back we did half gray and half red.  I love the pattern that turned out.

Again tonight I tried the FMQ.  This time I took one of my summer fun hot pads (I have 3 more to practice with after this one) I did a lot of weird things not trying to do any design just trying to get the feel for how the thread sews.  It was funny about 2/3 done and I turned it over and had giant hoops all over the back of thread.  I am having troubles with this FMQ but did watch a few video's today and need to watch more.  I think I finally got kind of an idea of what I am doing.

Here is the back you can see more of my ugly squiggles.  Now to learn some of these patterns.  I have hear the word stippling and I don't know what it is so I guess I should go figure that out and give it a try.  Any way today was better then yesterdays disaster at FMQ.

linking to 2nd Quarter Finish Party As listed on  My 2nd Quarter todo list

Granny's Gone Wild

It's been a little bit since I have shown off my Granny Squares.  We are going soon to take and show Baby Julia her Great Grand Mothers she has 2 of them alive both in the mid to late 80's and we are making them each a quilt.  I am sure they will love seeing the baby more then the quilt but they get to keep the quilt I am taking the baby home with me.

I had debated many times how to quilt this quilt.  I have tried FMQ a few times and all I end up with is a mess.  I took one of the many fugly runners yet to be quilted and for about an hour tried to FMQ it and then just gave up.

I asked my daughter to bring me a plate and she kept asking what I wanted on it.  I did not want any thing finally in puzzlement she brought me a plate.

I had seen a tutorial for Baptist Fans and thought maybe that could be done.  So using the plate I traced a pattern on the back of my fugly runner and ran 5 rings around the center (just small to big circles)  I showed my wife and her response was can you do spirals?

So I gave a spiral a try I did not want to do any more of my fugly runners wanted to save them for other FMQ tires (I am going to figure out how its done, but it might kill me)  So I started.  I realized soon after that it was a 2 man job.  I did not have any more men around so I let Tanya help!

I think my spirals turned out pretty good just don't look to hard at the center picked it out after the try to the right was done and did it again (and it looked worse the 2nd time) So I kept it.  You know men don't tell them something is wrong they don't care.

Here are some close ups of the twirls you can see the center in the light blue pictures (you will have to look at them large though to see my terrible spiral start)

You might be able to see some of the detail better here on the backs.

linking to 2nd Quarter Finish Party As listed on  My 2nd Quarter todo list

Its Bingo Time

Richard's Bingo Card

B	I	N	G	O
Boat	Train	Flag	Cow	Dots
Apple	Egg	Bird	Bug	Fish
Pinwheel	Candle	Free	Frog	Squiggle
Strawberry	Lights	Whale	Lizard	Bird
Cat	Ornament	Paperclip	Badge	Flower

Linking too

http://vroomansquilts.blogspot.com/2012/04/its-bingo-link-up-time.html

Traveling Stash Must Travel

Or at least that's what my wife thinks.  She is not up for the drama of a Long Pause so to keep her from stressing out too much about this I will post about this.

This is the bulk of what I found in the box.  I was surprised how well it was packed in and how much material fit into the box. So if it must travel we need some rules.  Would you like the opportunity to sort the box, pick out some of the fabric and/or patterns?  Here are the rules.

1) You must have a active blog and will post receiving and when you are ready to pass it on.
2) You will swap out equal quality fabrics and products.
3) You must pass the Traveling Stash.

Does this sound like something you would like to do?  Then just leave me a comment telling me that you would like to have the Traveling Stash come to your home to visit.  Because of the weight of the box and the cost of shipping this giveaway is only open to those who live in the USA.

The giveaway will end a week from Sunday on the 22 of April.  I will notify the winner and then post as soon as it has been confirmed by them.

Remember you must leave a way to contact you if interested.  No-Reply blogger make sure you leave a way to contact you.  Thanks.

A Challenge and A Change of Hearts

Ten days ago I put a Challenge Forward Quilt Challenge #1 I hope to have this be the first of many quilting challenges that I share with others.  I threw down the Challenge and never my self gave what I thought was a resalable response to it.  Granted I was disappointed that few commented or took me up on the Challenge but I would like to put forth 2 blocks that I have made.  I will post them both here and on the flicker page http://www.flickr.com/groups/richardquiltschallenge/  To recap I want you to create a block or 2 that is inspired by these chairs.  You do not have to match the design or even the color exactly just needs to be inspired.  All those that enter will be put in a drawing to win all of the blocks to make a quilt out of them.

I am not sure what the proper name of the blocks are I will call them Quarter Square Triangles.  These are the 2 blocks I have made by rummaging though the stash.  My wife pointed out to me that the Brown I picked was her's for her Hearts quilt and I had to promise not to use a lot of it.  Which got me to thinking I have not work on that quilt for a while (see I am like a squirrel I see a nut and I run off chasing it, Or am i the nut? Hum who knows) wait where was I.  Oh yea the hearts.

In the post Blue Hearts Progress I showed some of the blocks we are making for a queen size quilt.  I am not rushing to finish this one mostly because I don't think I can quilt it (being too big) on my machine so have no clear path how to finish it.  But yet again it has received more progress.  When last I talked about the quilt we had appliqued the hearts down but had not done any thing past that.  While tonight not knowing how to do it better I tried out all the cool stitches my machine does (stitches 20-32 to be exact).  Any that want to put their 2 cents in I could use it on this how best do you sew down appliques that you do.  Here is what I did please give input (oh and don't get distracted like me top of the post the Challenge is calling you don't get side tracked and join in.)

Look at you your already distracted Think Challenge!!