A Year of Schnibbles Parade

In no particular order, here are the twelve quilts I made as part of The Year of Schnibbles. All of these are quilts except one. The star quilt in the upper right corner is only a flimsy. That is Plan C from last month and I haven't had a chance to turn it into a completed quilt yet.

Plan C

August is the last month for the Year of Schnibbles. It has been a fun year! This month we were able to chose from two patterns. I chose Plan C because I have grown fond of star designs. I had the hardest time getting those the pictures of the patterns on this post. Blogger has been a bugger to work with lately.

I found this pink fabric with red hearts and the Valentine's fabric with all kinds of love sayings on it. I also had a little bit of the red and red/white hearts buried in the cabinet.  I don't think my camera picks up the colors very well though. I think it was too bright outside when I took the pictures.

I also knew I wanted to make the blocks bigger than the pattern called for. I was aiming for 12" blocks thinking it would turn into a 36" X 36" baby quilt. I started cutting without planning again. I made the centers of the stars 12.5" and the four patch blocks 12.5" not thinking about the star points.

It now measure 61" X61". Now instead of a little baby quilt, it will be a toddler/lap quilt. Works for me!

What is black and white and red all over?

A zebra with a sunburn lol.  I remember hearing that joke so many times over the years. I was trying to come up with a name for my daughter's quilt and that's the only thing that kept popping in my head. So, let me introduce you to "Zebra With A Sunburn"

This is May's Schnibble McGuffey that I made for my daughter Mandy (19). Mandy and I had to go out to JoAnn's twice to get enough backing fabric. 

We started with the black and bought all that JoAnn's had in the store. Of course it wasn't enough. When we went back we found the red and bought a bunch of it. If you enlarge the picture you will see that there are skulls all over both fabrics. They have a bandanna feel to them.

 

On our first trip fabric shopping we bought this black fabric with grey swirls for the binding. I was going to go scrappy but Mandy wanted the black to calm the quilt and give it a frame. Mandy also requested straight line quilting. I don't think she really likes  free motion quilting. I guess since it is her quilt I should let her have what she wants lol. Can't let it happen too often though. She actually planned this quilt from the very beginning. She chose the pattern and then we went through my stash to find the right fabric. Nothing with flowers. We also ended up buying a handful of fat quarters.The only decision I got to make was to use red thread for the quilting. When Mandy gets an idea in her head she is very stubborn about it. You can't change her mind at all. I know that is a good thing but there were some difficult times as she was growing up. 

As she was walking in the house she let the wind blow the quilt behind her. She lost the breeze when she got too close to the house. She decided to back up and try to catch the wind again.

The only problem with that idea was that the quilt got under her feet and when she backed up she landed on her butt. I was so happy that I caught this picture. I usually miss out on the good shots.

My little girl is all grown up now. She leaves for the Army in just a couple weeks (August 17th). I'm going to miss my buddy.

 

Orange Sorbet

This month's Schnibble was Joy Luck. I had some orange fat quarters and decided to use them on this project.

I made my rectangles larger and used my Go! to cut them and the 2.5" black squares. I also put mine together sideways 'cuz that's how I roll (quilt) lol.

It's hard to tell in this picture but I used bright orange thread to quilt it. I love how the orange thread pops out.

The back, binding, and sashing are all the same fabric. It looks like an orange camouflage.

I actual managed to get this one posted in my shop.

January's Schnibble was Madeline....

I was way too busy in January to even think of making it. This month I had some time to whip up a smaller version.

I skipped the setting triangles because I always struggle with them and I didn't feel like fussing with it right now. With this fabric and layout, Madeline isn't even recognizable. Leave it to me to take a perfectly good pattern and change it all up.

I will use this little beauty on a small side table as a table topper. Perfect size for the top of a little filing cabinet I have. I have officially made a Schnibble each month for the Year of Schnibbles. I feel much better now :)

June Schnibble

This month's Schnibble is all quilted and has its binding attached. I really like how this one turned out except for a couple of the binding corners. I only had 3 seams for the binding and wouldn't you know it 2 of them landed on corners!! Rotten luck. I'm starting to think I had better start checking the binding before sewing it on. That way I can avoid seams landing on corners...hopefully.

State Fair

This month's pattern for the Year of Schnibbles is State Fair. I really enjoyed making this one. The pattern was simple especially since I only chose the two colors. Most of these fabrics are left over from Mandy's quilt. I'm not a big fan of the piano key borders for all the Schnibbles though. This one needed a simpler border to calm the quilt down. I will be using black for the binding.

McGuffey has a growth spurt

This month for The Year of Schnibbles we were able to choose any Schnibble pattern. My daughter Mandy (19) needs a new quilt so I let her choose from the patterns I had in my stash. She chose McGuffey and wanted to use red, black, and white for the colors.

Mandy chose all the fabrics. As I was working on it I wasn't sure if I liked it. Once I started putting the rows together it started looking a bit better. Now that the top is done...I really like it. It measures 72" X 84". A nice size for a double bed.

Mandy was questioning if it was going to be big enough for her though. So after we had it all spread out on the front lawn, I had her lay on it to test out the size. I wrapped her up to show her that it was plenty big enough. Here at my house we don't need any rulers or measuring tape. Just lay on it and see if it is big enough lol.

I couldn't resist this picture. When the kids were little I always took pictures of there little piggy toes. So cute! Now that she is a "Big girl now" (that's what she always tells me anyways) I guess I should switch to the other end of the body lol. Next week she is off to Alabama for a vacation to spend some time with her best-est friend. Then in August she is off to the Army. Don't know what I will do without my shopping buddy lol.

Tagalong and Postcards

Aimee over at Adventures and Pursuits is hosting a few postcard swaps. I am in group 3 for this round. I send out 49 Florida postcards, one to each state. Then, 49 other people will each send me a postcard from their state. I thought Robbie would get a kick out of receiving post cards from all the states. I know I love postcards.

Mandy and I went to Walmart today to pick up my new glasses, get some groceries, and of course to pick out our postcards.  I picked out 60 Florida cards that looked fun. I like to keep extra postcards to add to swap packages (when I remember lol). I always grab the shark one you see here. I used to have a t-shirt that said "Send more tourists. The last ones were delicious" lol. I loved that shirt. I will be slowly addressing these. Florida is scheduled to mail out at the end of May. Each state mails at a different time so we should receive a postcard a week.

April's Schnibble Tagalong is all quilted, bound, and washed. I just did some straight line quilting. Nothing too exciting because I couldn't decide on the color of thread to use. You can  see here   why mine looks different from the pattern.

I love the fabric on the back. I've noticed that I am drawn to circle things lately.

Another bright Schnibble done. I wonder what next month's pattern will be. At least we don't have to wait very long.

Yesterday's finishes

This is Suzi and her quilt. These are the practice blocks from last year when I was trying out improv blocks. Just a bunch of scraps but they look nice and bright for Suzi. I only had the binding left to do. Don't know why I never finished it. I found it in the bottom drawer of my sewing desk and decided to finish it up.

I also put together this month's Schnibble Tagalong.

.
I'm still struggling with the square in a square block. The pattern called for them to be 5" unfinished but if I did that, I would have lost lots of points. I ended up squaring them at 6.5". The other 9 patches were already 5" so they needed some borders to bring them up to size. I actually like the way it turned out.

March Schnibble done!

I was able to finish up the quilting on this month's Schnibble Roundabout before surgery.

I actually finished hand sewing the binding on just a couple hours before we left for the hospital.

I didn't find the exact number of green thread that I was using but it is so darn close you can't tell.

I found this fun frog fabric at JoAnn's and thought it would be fun for the back of this quilt.

No green thread means no quilting

I started and finished making this month's Schnibble this past Wednesday (my day off). When I went to quilt it on Thursday I ran out of matching green thread. It looked like the spool was half full but I only had enough to quilt a 1/4 of the quilt.

It's hard to get a good pic of the true colors in this quilt.

I think the colors are fun for a baby. I found some thread that seems to be close enough to the same shade that looks like it will work. I'll probably finish up quilting it sometime this week. I want to have it finished before the surgery date (March 24th) since I won't be able to do any quilting for a few weeks.