My Small World: The Disney Version

I'm kind of astonished that the Disney version of My Small World is actually completely done--quilted and bound! I'm usually way behind, especially things involving quilt-alongs.

I wrote more about my inspiration to do "a day at Disneyland" here. Fortunately, when I get obsessed with a scrappy quilt, it spurs me on to completion for the simple reason that I want to clean up the mess! Scraps everywhere. You know what I'm talking about, right?

I omitted all the specialty things in Section 5--the dresden, the rainbow, the hexies, because I felt that there was already so much going on with the sky. So I will make Section 5 as a mini quilt for my sewing room.

The day at Disneyland starts on the left side with the sunrise, Main Street and Fantasyland, with a hint of all the beautiful flowers around the park.

Be sure to bring lots of money. You'll need it. Do you have your autograph book handy when you spot one of the princesses walking around?

Take a ride on the teacups. Drink a Coke (although I hear as of 2015 they have switched over to Pepsi products. What??)

Say hi to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Offer to help poor Snow White wash all those socks she dries on the chimney of their house.

Head over to Tomorrowland. Some rides are closed down as they prepare to build a new Star Wars area. I must have seen into the future!

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.

Ride the Jungle Cruise.

And then head over to the Haunted Mansion. Boo!

Go ahead and sing "It's a small world after all" for the rest of the day.

 

End your day with fireworks above Sleeping Beauty's Castle. And don't forget to look for Tinkerbell!

This has been such a fun quilt to make. Thanks, Jen Kingwell, for designing this fabulous and intricate pattern, and to Kerry for organizing all the tips and tricks to make this project easier to accomplish.

I was clueless when it came to choosing fabric for a finding, so I used my friend Elizabeth's tutorial on a faced binding--perfect choice. And I hope you notice what a great job Darby did by choosing mouse ears for the quilting!

I hope you have enjoyed your day at the Happiest Place on Earth. Come back soon!

Good Neighbors Pincushion Party--and a Giveaway!

The giveaway is now closed.
Welcome to my stop on the Pincushion Party to celebrate Amanda Jean's beautiful new line of fabric for Connecting Threads, Good Neighbors.

Amanda Jean, well known as Crazy Mom Quilts, is a dear friend and I am fortunate enough to spend a few days with her every July at a quilting retreat in Minnesota, including a night at her home, always under one of her fabulous quilts!

I have already had a lot of fun playing with her fabric (here --scroll all the way down to the bottom of the post--and here). And it is just as bright and cheerful as Amanda Jean herself. You can see that there is a wonderful range of cheery prints, each with a touch of white.

After contemplating several different ideas, I finally decided to do a mini dresden block (pattern here) with some hand stitching. If you know Amanda Jean, you know she loves all things small and scrappy, so this seemed like the perfect way to use lots of the different prints. I used the X's print as the base. I love this print--the only way to make it better would be to have it in all the colors!

Connecting Threads has generously offered to give one of you a charm pack of this fun fabric line. So leave a comment and tell me if you are a scrap quilter and what is the smallest scrap you save.

Good Neighbors is available as yardage and precuts, as well as 108" backing from one of the prints.

Here is a list of all the participants, so if you love pincushions, you will get lots of good ideas. Which is great since the holidays are just around the corner and pincushions make great gifts for your quilty friends.

Date	Blogger Name	Blog URL
9/1/2015	Amanda Jean	http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/ (kick off blog post)
9/2/2015	Anna	http://www.noodle-head.com/
9/3/2015	Mary	http://maryonlakepulaski.blogspot.com/
9/4/2015	Svetlana	http://sotakhandmade.blogspot.com/
9/5/2015	Debbie	http://www.eschhousequilts.com/
9/6/2015	Holly	http://www.bijoulovelydesigns.com/
9/7/2015	Carla	http://carla-graceandfavour.blogspot.com/
9/8/2015	Faith	www.FreshLemonsQuilts.com
9/9/2015	Vanessa	http://www.vanessachristenson.com/
9/10/2015	Anna	http://www.thimbleanna.com/
9/11/2015	Krista	http://poppyprintcreates.blogspot.com/
9/12/2015	Erin	http://whynotsew.blogspot.com/
9/13/2015	Lee	http://www.maychappell.com/
9/14/2015	Alex	http://teaginnydesigns.blogspot.com/
9/15/2015	Cheryl	http://naptimequilter.blogspot.com/
9/16/2015	Penny	http://sewtakeahike.typepad.com/
9/17/2015	Amy	http://duringquiettime.com/
9/18/2015	Debbie	http://aquilterstable.blogspot.com/
9/19/2015	Anne	http://www.springleafstudios.com/
9/20/2015	Melissa Corry	http://www.happyquiltingmelissa.com/
9/21/2015	Amber	http://www.oneshabbychick.typepad.com/
9/22/2015	Nettie	http://aquiltisnice.blogspot.com/
9/23/2015	Adrianne	http://www.littlebluebell.com/
9/24/2015	Cindy	http://www.liveacolorfullife.net/
9/25/2015	Amy	http://www.diaryofaquilter.com/
9/26/2015	Chase	http://quarterinchmark.blogspot.com/
9/27/2015	Rene	http://www.renecreates.com/
9/28/2015	Erin	http://www.houseonhillroad.com/
9/29/2015	Nicole	http://modernhandcraft.com/
9/30/2015	Teri	http://blog.connectingthreads.com/ (wrap-up blog post)

Get Quilty

Have you every received a Quilty Box? I was a member when the subscription was first available in 2013 and enjoyed each box I received.

Then the service shut down but has now been revived by Patrick Claytor, the son of a quilter. So when he offered to let me review the box that will be going out in October, naturally I jumped at the chance!

Ooh, what could be inside?

If you aren't familiar with Quilty Box, it is a monthly subscription where you received a box filled with lots of great items. Here are a few more details.

• Quilty Box is a monthly subscription box. We offer plans from $44-48/mo.
• 5% of the profits of multi-month subscriptions are donated to Quilts for Kids - a non-profit which donates quilts for children in need
• Each month we have 4 or more products (Fabric, patterns, thread, or notions)
• Our retail value of the products in the box is always more than $50
• The next Quilty Box will ship around October 11th. You will need to purchase before October 10th to receive this shipment.

The October box includes all these items--and I will use each and every one:
*Two charm packs of Riley Blake small dots
*A needle threader--I have been wanting one of these forever.
*Wonder clips--you can never had too many of these.
*A package of Foot Magic--small pieces of tape to make your presser foot glide over difficult-to-sew fabrics such as plastic, leather, etc.
*A 45 mm rotary replacement blade
*A seam presser--handy when you don't want to get up and down for pressing a seam
*A package of flower head pins

So please check out Quilty Box--you can find all kinds of useful information at their website.

Disclaimer: The above post is a sponsored post but the opinions are my own.

Finish It Friday: !!!

Awhile back, I received an email from a good friend, asking if she could share my name with Cloud 9 Fabrics as someone to sew a quilt with her daughter's new fabric line, Typography, that daughter being Jessica Jones of How About Orange fame (her blog is no longer active, but there's still lots of cool stuff available on it, and now you can follow her on instagram at @howaboutorange).

Of course! Soon after, this arrived in the mail.

The colors in this line are so pretty, and I'm a total sucker for all things texty and font-related.


Cloud 9 asked me to make a quilt that I believe will be a free pattern available on their website, so I didn't even have to decide what to make. While I had a graphic of what the finished quilt should look like, there was no formal pattern at this point, so I figured it out and made extensive notes.

The block finishes at 14" and is an easy one to make. It involves a simple paper piecing component for the main section that is the body of the exclamation point. Beyond that, the construction is simple and fast.

Next, the quilt top went to quilter extraordinaire, Darby from Quilted Squid, for machine quilting.

The black "helvetica" font print was perfect for the binding.

And it is now on its way back to Cloud 9 Fabrics.

 

It might be in the Cloud 9 booth at quilt market. If someone sees it, I hope you will take a picture and send it to me. :)

It's a great fabric line for bags and other items as well. Look at these awesome projects made by Jessica's mother, Grandma G, a bag making expert!

Get pattern details here. Photo used with permission

I'm linking up today with Crazy Mom Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Good Neighbors + Not Quite Granny

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Really Random Thursday programming today because I'm over at Notions, the Connecting Threads blog, with a post about this lovely quilt.

Isn't it cute? It is made with the first fabric line designed by my good friend Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts. The line is called Good Neighbors and you can read all about her design process here. So interesting to see the behind the scenes. The pattern is also a new design by Amanda Jean called Not Quite Granny. It comes in multiple sizes and is available here.

Head over to Notions to see more pictures. And don't forget to follow the pincushion party for a chance to win a charm pack of this super cute fabric!

See you back next week for the latest edition of Really Random Thursday.

My Small World: Part 6 (not really....)

First of all, let me begin with the confession that I have not even started Part 6. However, it is very similar to the bottom of Parts 1 through 4. When I volunteered to host Part 6, it seemed so far in the future. Note to self: things are closer than they appear.

With that said, it doesn't mean I haven't been working on My Small World, this fabulous pattern by Jen Kingwell. I'm hoping that my procrastination has worked to my advantage, although as I'm about midway through the project, I'm not quite sure. It could be epic. It could be an epic fail. One thing for sure: it is busy. There is a LOT going on in this quilt.

My thought process took a bit of a journey as I contemplated different ideas. I had seen a night sky which was amazing. But I didn't want the whole quilt to have a night sky.

Disneyland is a very special place to our family--fairly frequent visits and lots of good memories. And with the title, My Small World, my mind wandered to the ride, It's a Small World, where the song never gets out of your brain once it lodges itself there, and then to the thought of making a Disneyland version, and then further to A Day at Disney, from sunrise to nighttime. There may be just too much going on in this quilt for some of you, but it will become an I Spy quilt for my grandchildren so I'm having fun adding lots of special surprises.

 January 2014

 I began with completing the whole sky as I wanted to know if sun up to sun down would even work, and it needed to transition smoothly from section to section without any abrupt changes. After spending several days cutting lots of tiny pieces and sewing them together, I realized I had left out one whole section. Lots of seam ripping and more cutting ensued. A good hint for the sky in Part 5 is to cut larger pieces that will be hidden by the dresden portion and the hexies. No need to be sewing 1" pieces together for something that will be covered up!

Top picture has a section of blue sky missing, corrected in bottom picture

Next up was Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

January 2013

The bottom portion of the castle is grey, then there are pink turrets with pointy roofs of blue. I altered the pattern and paper pieced the blue triangles.

Can you see Sleeping Beauty and her Prince in the window? And Malificent down in the corner--it kind of looks like she is in a dungeon. There is also a selvage that says Sleeping Beauty above the lavender door.

I moved on to It's a Small World.

 January 2014

Most of the outside portion of the ride is white with gold highlights, so it was fun to use some glitzy fabric. Every 15 minutes, the clock tower opens to a parade of figures. These little British soldiers were the perfect size, as was the little clock.

I had a world map panel by Jill McDonald from her What a World line (no longer available). It was perfect and I chopped it to pieces. (Note: If you have one of these for sale, please contact me!)

In the little churn dash blocks above, I included the flag of a place I have been (Italy) and a place I've always wanted to visit (Ireland).

Here is the rest of Part 2. (These skinny panels are really hard to photograph).

With a stroke of good fortune, I remembered the Quirky Idioms fabric I had purchased from Berene Campbell. Perfect, right? And the music fabric is a reminder about that pesky song that won't go away.

Let's move on to Adventureland.

 

There is one little piece of fabric that has made it into this quilt. I have been protecting for years--it came to me through a hexie exchange years ago from a person in Portugal. It has always been a favorite of mine, as well as my two grandsons. Finally it will live on in Adventureland. Because who doesn't love a pirate monkey?! This is the Pirates of the Caribbean section and that little monkey just makes me so happy.

Next is the Jungle Cruise. I had very little fabric that worked for this part but it wasn't a very large section.

And last up in Part 3 is the Haunted Mansion. My biggest tip for making this quilt is to get the templates that Sarah Bailey from Sew What Sherlock has put together. They have been invaluable timesavers. They are free if you send her a picture proving that you have the pattern. Also, Kerry has an extensive list of tips and shortcuts for each section, along with a lot of links to further tips and shortcuts.

I'm also including "hidden Mickeys" in each section.

Thanks for joining me on this half-completed tour of Disney. Next up is Fantasyland/Tomorrowland, and then I'll start on Main Street.

Want to know what Mark's favorite ride is? Here's a hint.

January 2014

And while Disneyland is touted as the Happiest Place on Earth, at some point nearly everyone is ready to go home and take a nap.

January 2013

And for the first time in months I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday, and I think for the first time ever, Sew Fresh Quilts.