RRQA week 3, Little Houses and Scattered Thoughts. Oh My.

This week has been crazy busy! Yikes! Thank goodness for weekends. The scary part? I don't even work in the summer! Does anyone else find themselves day dreaming about fabrics and blocks through out the day? My brain always seems so scattered, scattered, scattered. I apologize if this post mirrors my brain!

Week three in the Rockin' Robin Quilt- Along is a continuation of the awesomeness that started 3 weeks ago. Houses! Cute, little houses. Just like the one I live in (I am referring to the little part). 

Melissa at Lilac Lane said " The whole time I was sewing this row, I could hear, "Love grows best in little houses . . ." in my head". I immediatley related because my house is little (very, very little). It was perfectly cute and adorable when I was a young newlywed. It was our first home together, situated on 3 acres of unruly cottonwood trees and alders. We cleared the lot by hand and it took an entire summer. Ten years and 3 children later, we are getting ready to transition into our work in progress, bigger home. I am naturally excited, as the kids will have more space and I will have a sewing room. But the move is also bittersweet. I always felt a little "house on the prairie" in our trailer. All of us, in one room, talking, laughing, sewing, reading... I hope we don't lose that in our bigger space. All these thoughts were triggered by a quilt block! See? Scattered, scattered, scattered.

Keeping with the "all over the darn place" theme, I had to stop sewing my little houses in order to replace my beloved ANM multi-tasker tote. After a year of daily use and abuse, it was showing signs of wear. That, and I HAD to have one in her new Lou Lou thi line. Someone stop me.

And I can't think about my new tote (love) without sharing my excitement about her new needlworks collection, now available! I really want to try hand quilting. Her colors match the turtle quilt perfectly. I'm sure that's another sign, right?

One more thing... A picture of my quilt row was featured on the Gen X quilters site! I am so darn excited! In case you were curious, it is the picture in the middle.


Also, a quick update on the Batcave saga:

The Batcave is still under siege! Lego minifigures have taken over and Batman is nowhere to be found. I have  lost my kitchen/sewing table in the war between Lego and Imaginex. 

Rockin Robin' Week 2

I've been sewing away on my blocks for this week's Rockin' Robbin tutorial, but I've also been goofing around with some fun fabric flowers. I love attaching flowers to all things that will let me. This includes my children. I've been using Clovers's flower frill template. It comes in 4 different sizes and is really easy to use.

My beloved Elna traveled 600 miles round trip to get serviced in Anchorage. It is now home and looks amazingly clean, but I can't use it! My power cord apparently only traveled 300 miles. It is now in the mail, so I dug out my old Brother XR-31. This is machine I sewed with ten years ago, and it is still going strong. Certainly not the same as my Elna, but at least I was able to continue working on the quilt along. I will certainly be checking the mail today!

I loved sewing all these stars! I was initially worried that my background was going to be too busy for the stars to really POP, so I grabbed a few extra pink, purple and blue scraps. I opted to keep my baby stars the same solid pink that I used for the 3D border in week one. I was afraid that keeping them scrappy would allow them to blend into my background. Obviously having some issues with overbearing backgrounds... 

I finished up just in time for the block tutorial to come out (whew), so I'm heading over there now! 

I think I would love to make a quilt with this row pattern! I love the combination of all the star sizes. My husband had issues with the 16 " star not fitting on the block. I tried to explain to him the concept of "scrappy" and that not every quilt has a distinct pattern. He wandered away confused.

Rockin' Robin Week One

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

A robin with an iPod. That's what started this whole project for me (admittedly, a cool image will pull me in any time). Then the concept of an online row robin sealed the deal. I'd heard about them. Read about them. But had never attempted one. I am a bit of a control freak. I have just recently come to this conclusion. Sewing, I am learning, is the one place I am able to let go.  I love fun, bright, bold prints that would never seem to go together. I love that no matter what face people make when I show them fabrics, it will turn out pretty damn cool. 

With that in mind, I dug into my "too large for our home" scrap pile. I found a ton of beautiful prints, all purchased from the Calico Whale, our local quilt shop. When it came to the background, I was stumped. I wanted to start sewing, and not wait to drive into town to purchase a few yards of background fabric. So...I dug into my mom's stash. She loved a good floral. She used a lot of small, floral prints in most of her quilts. Quite the opposite of my style, but I thought "why not?" 

I love how it turned out! Here's the problem, though. I won't have enough of my background to use in the next three rows. In a true row robin, can each background fabric be different? Unless I can find some old floral background (the selvage says 1990!), I'm thinking I'll use different backgrounds. And I'm ok with that! Really. Of course, there is always ebay...