Home Is Where the Heart Is

When the weather is cold and the wind has been nipping on your body, there's no better place than your own snug home, all toasty with a chair that fits your bottom  and a nice hot drink waiting for you.  Our houses are important and are the inspiration for many projects including the house quilt blocks.
I found a blog which I believe is Dutch, and she makes many, many little house blocks and she starts with a stamp to make the house components. Building House from Scratch has a lot of sweet scrappy house ideas.

Craftsy has a great tutorial on making houses and I like the nice clean lines of this pattern.

 Quiltmaker has the very sweetest 3" houses, I can see many small scraps going into this little cuties.

Bloomin Workshop has a wonderful manor house block for all your Downton Abbey fans. You too can be lady of the "manor".

Retro Mama has a little cottage home with rick-rack trim.

Here is a pin from Quilt Nut Creations that shows a beautiful finished house quilt with applique.

Natalie Ross In Stitches has some photos of good applique and embellishing ideas to add to applique houses.  They are very cute and inspiring, I really like the wonky wobbly house.  Hope you like the house ideas to put on your bucket list.   Diana

Craftsy Classes

The snow and sleet of today may have us in a depressed state so it's time try out something new.  Have you ever taken classes at Craftsy?  It's a site with all sorts of classes to take online.  You don't have to travel or get out in the cold to take a class and that's so convenient.  Here is a link to a free mini class on making bags.  Here is a link for a Machine Savy class.  There are many free classes available and a huge variety of classes to pay for.  If you're interested in quilting, sewing, knitting or crocheting, jewelry making, etc. they have classes for it.  I have tried out a few of the classes and been very happy with them.

Take a look around their site and enjoy.  Diana

Meeting and BOM Finish

Tonight is our meeting night at the Breed Town Hall.  Hope many are braving our winter temps and plan on being there tonight.
Regarding our BOM, the blocks for January are Cat's Cradle and Cedars of Lebanon, two very interesting blocks from Quilter's Cache.  These two blocks are the last for our BOM which ran from last year.  You will have 24 blocks!  Unless you're like me and accidentally made one extra.  Now to decide how to set these together.  With 24 blocks we have options of a large quilt or two smaller twin size quilts depending on the setting choices.  I am very pleased with almost all of my blocks and hope you are too but I have not picked out a sashing choice or border fabric yet.
Settings can determine whether your quilt turns out mediocre or smashing.  Martingale Press has a great article about settings.  A lot of ideas. Just adding an interesting sashing can elevate that quilt to another level and make a straight setting spectacular.  All People Quilt has yet more information about settings.  This site is just full of information.
Craftsy has setting ideas too.  This shows beautiful, real quilts in various settings.  Quilt Addicts Anonymous has perhaps my favorite ideas probably because of all the great sashing ideas.  I think I will draw from these for my quilt setting.
Okay, once you've set your blocks together, what about a border?  This pinterest board will amaze and delight and make you dream of borders. Of course, our favorite designer at Quilter's Cache has a link to wonderful border ideas.  This quilting for Dummies post has a good amount of information to chose borders and then figure out how much fabric and how to measure them.  All vital information. FavQuilts has many links to borders including piecing and making round corners, etc.
Well, I hope these links help you in planning the setting and borders for your BOM.  We spent a lot of time making the blocks and now it's well worth the time to think about these steps.  I hope everyone had a fun time sewing these blocks and I've even come to love half square triangles, haven't you???  In the future, we will see many beautiful BOM quilts showing up at our show and tells.  Take care.  Diana

Snowflakes

I loved looking at the pictures Laurie posted of our November show and tell.  Pine Needle Quilters are very busy quilters!  Now that the cold has really settled in, all those warm quilts are definitely needed.
Snowflakes were on my mind and recalling our beautiful snowflake quilt we made a couple of years ago, I decided to look at more quilts made with that lovely shape.
This quilt with it's lovely blues and purples was really attractive.  Imagine my surprise when I looked further on this site and saw the very same pattern that we made for our snowflake raffle quilt.
This is a stunning red and white quilt.  This was quilted by Angela Walters.  If you want to learn to quilt a snowflake, Susan Brubaker Knapp will show you some ideas.
This blue and white quilt  sparkles and shimmers. Here is a really cute snowman and snowflake quilt. In looking for the link to this quilt, I came across the maker's really Christmasy blog post.  I think you will enjoy looking at her decor.  The blog is called Have a Daily Cup of Mrs. Olson.  What a pretty home!
Can't get over this stunning quilt made by Meg Baier. A single block  can work too.  This block by Craftsy is really pretty. How about a snowflake tree, very nice idea.
The colorful snowflakes on this quilt pattern offered by Joann Fabrics is different and very pretty.  If you click print this project, it does show how to make the snowflakes.  It's really a simple quilt of fabric strips with snowflakes appliqued.
I found a lot more flakes but hope this gets you thinking about this beautiful style of pattern.  Stay warm.  Diana

Views of Old Quilt Collections

There are a couple organizations that I like to look to for information about antique and older quilts.  The Quilt Index is a wonderful place to spend hours.  They have pictures of collections of quilts with descriptions and dates and who owns or made them.  There is just a lot of information at the Quilt Index.

The Alliance for American Quilts is another great site.  They have a contest right now called Home is Where the Heart Is as a fundraiser.  There collections are linked with the Quilt Index.

Craftsy is a place for crafty people.  They have information and links about many crafts including quilting.  They are doing a BOM which is being called the largest BOM ever with over 40,000 people signed up!  Craftsy Bom is here.  I also found the embroidery and jewelry to be nice too.  Have a nice evening.  Diana