Scrappiness Is Happiness QAL

 Hello, friends!

In my January 4^th post I told you I had a lot of fabric leftover from the kit for Lori Holt’s Flea Market quilt. I am nowhere near finished with making all of the blocks for that quilt, but I do have the fabric for them already cut and organized to sew.

 

Lori and the Fat Quarter Shop are now hosting a quilt along to promote Lori’s book Scrappiness Is Happiness. The book contains patterns to make 32 quilts. 

 

The Scrappiness Is Happiness quilt along is for a sampler quilt that will contain one or two blocks from each quilt pattern in the book. I thought this would be a great way to use the leftover Flea Market fabrics as well as a generous bundle of fat quarters that my Santa gifted me.  

The QAL began on October 31^st and we sew one block per week. 

 

Here are my blocks…

Buzzy Bee Block
Measures 14-1/2" x 14-1/2"

Large Calico Mushroom Block
Measures 12-1/2" x 12-1/2"

Small Calico Mushroom Block
Measures 6-1/2" x 6-1/2"

Chex Mix Block

Measures 7-1/2" x 7-1/2"

Criss-Cross Star Block
Measures 15-1/2" X 15-1/2"

Happy Trails Block
Measures 16-1/2" x 16-1/2"

Second Lincoln Logs Block
Measures 12-1/2" x 12-1/2:

Plaid Block

Measures 7-1/2" x 7-1/2"

Tall Pumpkin Patched Block
Measures 6-12" x 12-1/2"

Santa Hat Block

10-1/2" x 14-1/2"

Scrap-Apple Block

Measures 24-1/2" x 24-1/2"

Scrappy Crossroads Block

Measures 16-1/2" x 16-1/2"

Scrappy Strings Block

Measures 8-1/2" x 8-1/2"

The quilt is designed to finish at 74 1/2" x 77 1/2".

 

Scrappy is not usually my thing but this has been a lot of fun so far.

 

Do you like scrappy? I’d love to know what you do with your leftover fabrics.

I'm current on this quilt along so I'll be sewing two Sewcialites blocks on Friday. Speaking of Friday, I'm going to join Wendy at Sugarlane Designs for her first Friday Night Sew In of 2023. 

Check her linky party over the weekend and see what everyone got up to on Friday night...or consider joining us.

Fat Quarter Shop - Sewcialites 2

This is the second year Fat Quarter Shop is hosting a free block of the week called Sewcialites. Each Friday, for twenty-four weeks, they feature a different designer's block. This is my first time participating and I'm enjoying it. 

I selected a fat quarter bundle of Cinnamon & Cream by Fig Tree & Co. for my quilt and I'm making the 9" blocks.

Ten weeks have been released and here are my blocks…

Block 1 - Perennial Block by Bev McCullough of Flamingo Toes

Block 2 - Tussy Mussy by Susan Ache

Block 3 - Patchy Days by Jackie MacDonald

Block 4 - Flirty by Chelsi Stratton

Block 5 - Empower by Carrie Nelson

Block 6 - Always Star by Camille Roskelley

Block 7 - Butterfly Garden by Pat Sloan

Block 8 - Interwoven by Shereece Nicole of Sew Hooked on Treasures

Block 9 - New Plus Old by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic

Block 10 - Flourish by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet

I’ve been using traditional methods as well as paper piecing for some of the blocks.

 

The next block will be released on Friday, but I won't sew it until the weekend. We have yet another road trip this week so it will be early next week before I get around to this project. 

 

Enjoy your day!

 

This Week’s Cross Stitch Progress

Hi and Happy Friday!

 

Today I am sharing two cross stitch pieces I worked on this week.

 

The first one is A Christmas Morning in Santa’s Kitchen by Twin Peak Primitives.

I first shared this last year, and this was my start. 

Part of the border and the top of the Christmas tree.

 

Here is my progress now…

The next one is a companion piece to the one above.

A Patriotic Christmas Eve also by Twin Peak Primitives.  I decided to do the border first.  What a relief when it matched at the end.

I am stitching this one with a friend.  We’ve broken the chart into nine sections with the hope that it will be finished by the end of September, allowing us enough time to fully finish it in time for Christmas. January’s section was, you guessed it, the border. Now I’ll put this one away until next month.

 

In the meantime, I’ll work on the first chart and maybe have it finished close to the same time.

 

I’d like to make them into pillows and place them on our little bench during the holiday season.

 

I have two cross stitch retreats scheduled for this year (so far) and need a project for a smalls exchange for each.  This will be secret stitching until the retreats.  I also have another secret stitch planned for someone who reads my blog but doesn’t have Instagram, so that is where I will share it’s progress.

 

We have one more day in the warm sunshine of south Florida then we drive back to North Carolina on Saturday.  I have several quilt blocks that need to be made and plan to work on those Sunday.

 

Hope you have a wonderful Friday and even better weekend.

Flea Market Quilt Update

Flea Market Quilt by Lori Holt is still a work in progress for me. I had completed 8 of the 24 churn dash blocks when I last posted about this project here.

All 24 churn dash blocks are complete…

 
I’ve also finished 8 of the 12 basket blocks…

 

This was a quilt kit I purchased from Fat Quarter Shop.  They are so generous with the fabric in their quilt kits that I had enough left over for another quilt-along. I will share more about that one next week.

 

We drove Mom back to Florida on January 1^st and we’ve been here since.  We’ll return to North Carolina on Sunday. I brought along a couple of cross stitch projects to work on in the evenings. I’ll post about that progress this Friday.

In case you missed my last post about our move, you can read about it here.

 

Hope you are having a great first week of 2023.

 

Happy New Year and 2022’s Big Move

Happy New Year!

I hope you have fond memories from 2022 and may you create even better ones in 2023.

 

My year was full of travel, new experiences, lots of crafting and a move.  I have a lot to tell you about my 2022 but we are going to take this in bits.

 

Today I’d like to share about our move.

From...

To...

During one of our camping adventures in July 2021, we visited an adorable small town in the mountains of western North Carolina.  Waynesville quickly became a place we would consider moving to one day.  As it turns out, we have friends that have had a vacation home in nearby Maggie Valley for 20+ years…we didn’t know.

 

Fast forward to June 2022… we spent four days with a realtor looking at land as well as existing homes.  Unfortunately, we weren’t interested in anything at the time.  We decided to rent a place to make sure Waynesville is where we want to be and to make the property search a bit easier.  So, in July we moved into an adorable condo located right downtown. It came furnished so all our belongings are in two large storage units in Florida ☹

 

We still needed a small U-Haul for things we can’t live without…2/3 of the trailer consisted of sewing machines and other craft items.

 

We’ve learned a lot about mountain living…it is certainly different than anything I’ve ever experienced. It isn’t bad, just different. Waynesville has a small-town vibe but there are a lot of things to do.  We’ve enjoyed drives on the Blue Ridge Parkway, visited Great Smoke Mountain National Park, eaten at some amazing restaurants, became annual passholders to the Biltmore Estate and so much more.  Asheville is only a 30-minute drive away so we’ve taken advantage of some of what it has to offer as well.

Biltmore - Christmas 2022

We almost purchased a home in October but sadly, the due diligence process revealed some things we just weren’t willing to take on at this stage in our lives. The home search continues. Build? Buy existing? Wish us luck.

 

My mom and children still reside in Florida, and it isn’t likely they will ever move, so we’ve made several trips back for various reasons. They did join us in North Carolina for Christmas though. The temperatures were quite frigid, but we kept the fireplace going and everyone had a great time.

Christmas Eve - 6:00 am

Christmas Eve - 7:30 am

 

I’ll share more about our new little town in future posts. And I can’t wait to show you all the stitching and sewing I’ve been doing.

 

In the meantime, have a happy and blessed 2023!