Love is in the air or at least that's what every commercial tells me!

While looking though things on pintrest the other day I found a link to a mini quilt of a heart done in twister blocks.  I of course had to re-pin it.  The pin came from this blog, but the true source came from Connie at www.conniekreskin.com on a blog post from a week ago.  I am not claiming originality, but I just love the idea of making different designs with the twister.  I want to make this for my wife for Valentine's Day. My wife is the type that I could not figure out if our LOVE was hollow like on the left of full like on the right.  It figures that she wants the hollow heart.  If you know Tanya you will know she HATES red/orange or any thing to do with that.  She picked out some fabric and threw out my original idea.

Yep you guessed it this will be made out of turquoise/blues.  You can see that Tanya and I have some different tastes in colors.  When I first told my wife about this I told her that she could hang it on the wall in her room.  She was thinking I was making a little wall hanging.  Unlike Connie, where I got this idea from my twister is huge hers is like 2 inch squares where mine are more like 6 inch squares.  So any way this is going to be a bit bigger then she expected.  The baby twister I made for example is 2 squares less in each direction so it will be decent size.  After I took my design downstairs and started cutting it out I realize one big oops, my design was backwards from what the twist I was doing (my blocks are spinning the other direction).  I sent James my oldest son up and this is his interpretation of what my heart should look like.

You can see that Jame's taste is closer to mine (but a little darker), but at least they are spinning the right direction so that I can use it as my pattern.  You can see that I have almost the top 4 rows made.  I don't think I have enough white so I will be shopping some time this week.

Speaking of love, Tanya played with her Embroidery machine today trying to make a label for a quilt she finished.  Above is the first try.  You can see that she was still working out spacing issues on this first try as the year ended up in our heart.  The second try looks wonderful and is sewed onto our quilt (more on that in the next post).

Just in case you guys were feeling bad that I did not get to make a pink heart Tanya did give me this pile of pink material with a beige background material to make a quilt that we will add to the Etsy Store.

Oh Tanya has a new toy or is it Richards?

What a cute little kitten.  My wife has been in need of a sewing machine for a while (since we gave hers to our daughter for part of her Christmas) We have wanted to try some simple embroidery yet needed a machine that she could do normal sewing on also.  This was a lower end machine that gave us options for both without investing too much.

This is a picture of the machine I got off the web.  Tanya had to go to work before she even got to play with it and told me to go figure it out.  It has a few built in designs and since we are partial to cats, I made a cat.

Now for questions.  Is there any free or cheaper end software that can be used to make our own embroidery designs.  I found online a demo for the high end brother editing software and my son and I were able to make a design we liked using it.  But of course demo software, I can't export my design.   It seemed easy enough.  I look up the price tag and gagged on the 900+ price tag.   Such is life.  Any way if you have experience with Embroidery let me know your thoughts.

Link A Finish Friday #53

It is now time for Link A Finish Friday.  Today I would like to start with a big thank you to Fat Quarter Shop who has offered to Sponsor our Link A Finish Friday with Prizes.  This month's winner (February) will win a $15 gift certificate to spend at Fat Quarter Shop. 

Please remember to thank our sponsor by visiting their store at http://www.fatquartershop.com/ their blog http://www.fatquartershop.blogspot.com/ and Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FatQuarterShop

Dared to Dresden by Mountain Quiltworks

Block 7 from BillieBee's Blog

The Crazy Shortcut Quilt from Teresa's Quilt Journey 

(I hear there is a giveaway going on over there.  Stop by and see how she is doing.)

These are 3 of the wonderful quilts linked up last week.  Please share with us what you have done this week.

1) Who likes rules. Toss them out.

2) Add a link to your finish blog or where ever you show off your finishes (Not limited to quilts but I like them the most).
3) Visit a few of the finishes and comment or encourage them on.
4) Monthly random winner picked from all of the months linkups to $15 gift card from Fat Quarter Shop.

Not required but fun to do

1) Follow my blog.
2) Follow the blog of all those that link.
3) Link back to my blog.
4) No finish, go quilt and stop reading the web.

The marvelous color GREEN!

A while back when I was making my Orange plus quilt (yes its still not bound and finished) My son Jared walked in grabbed the quilt and said it was his and ran out of the room.  He loved the quilt but it just was not in his color.  If you have been around you will know he loves Green. One of the first few quilts I made was a rag quilt named "The Green Quilt of Awesomeness" He was so happy to have it.  But it seems that he is not happy with just that quilt.  He wants a green version of my plus quilt.

My quilt design consists of 33+ unique colors to make all of the pluses unique.  So this caused me to hunt for green.  Tanya and the kids had to help because our stash is a mess.  We opened every single box we had and pulled all things that were green or greenish an put it into a pile.  I then started cutting 2 1/2 inch strips off of each of the items.  Because I want to make a rainbow quilt later this year I got more then my 5 squares of each of them so I could build the green stash.  (while sorting I did find a few more orange and gray too so maybe I can work again on that one).  What I ended up with was a pile of  85 different green blocks (above you can see they are pinned into stacks of 5).

Needless to say I have a few too many.  So Jared (yes he is wearing a green shirt as he stuffs his head into my picture) at first grabbed the full stack of greens and screamed MINE!! yes he screams a lot.  We told him he had to sort the pile into ones he liked and ones he did not like.  So he did such we ended up with about 75 he liked and 10 he did not like.  So  I took those away and tried again.  This time I let him pick his favorite 10 out at a time.  Then mixed up the left over and had him pick 10 again.  We did this tell we had 35 in one pile.

Rebecca my oldest girl did not find it right that we rejected 40+ blocks.  SO she also grabbed a pile of 35 blocks (it seems I must make 2 quilts?)  Maybe she can make her own.  Above you can see the bag on the bottom is Jareds they are brighter.  And Rebecca's are on the top. And of course the left overs on the left (I guess it was a couple more then 75 to start with.  Any way expect to see some green over the next month or 2 on the blog.

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Link a Finish Friday winner for the month of January goes to  LAFF#48 entry 6 which is!!!

Valerie of re.engineered for her quilt she made for Ella for Christmas

Congrats I have already heard back from Fat Quarter Shop that Valerie was sent her gift certificate.  Remember to stop back on Friday and link up for your chance to win.

Late in the day work in progress #37

This post is by Tanya

On Saturday I got some sewing done.  I made a simple gender neutral baby top in yellows and greens that I cut up about two  or three weeks ago.

I have been busy with life and my 1/4 inch foot was MIA.  My problem is I currently share a desk and sewing machine with my Daughter Rebecca.  Two people that are not good at cleaning up is not a good thing.  I had tons of scraps from her projects, and at least 6 different colored bobbins and several spools of thread scattered along desk top.  For some reason my space whether it be  my computer area, my dresser, and my sewing desk seem to say to kids put all stuff you don't know what to do with on any one of the three.

Anyway I cleaned off my sewing desk this weekend, we went through several scrap boxes.  We threw away a ton of stuff that was too small for 2 1/2 in squares or string blocks or even stuff to use in appliques.  As new quilters we saved everything, including batting scraps too small to do anything with.  We use a lot of larger batting scraps in rag quilts.

Here are a couple of pictures of Julia with the bear Rebecca made her.

Richard has been busy cutting up 2 1/2 inch squares.  He has now quilted half of Rebecca's twin quilt.