Ben Came Home!

Well it has been a little busy at our house with Easter and the beautiful weather.  Saturday was spent cleaning flower beds, and planting new flowers. Trimming plants, adding new edging and all that fun stuff we get to do in the yard at spring time.  This is truly my favorite time of the year! We also had the family over for Easter lunch, we enjoyed food, pinata, cascarones. Fun was had by all.

 My oldest son, Ben, came home for Easter weekend from the Army!  Happy Happy, Joy Joy! Usually when he gets home, he is off to see his friends. Lucky me, he decided to hang out in the Ginger Hut Friday night!   As we were talking and I was doing very little quilting, he asked me where his quilts were.  I have made him many quilts over the years, but I knew what two he was talking about! I said I guess up in the attic with the rest of your stuff, and he told me he wanted to take them when he left. Awww who doesn't get teary-eyed over that? Sunday night when he was packing up to leave, he said, "Mom where are my Quilts"?  So up to the attic we climbed, as we were going up there, he was worried, I hope they are not damaged from being in the attic, I hope something hasn't nested in them! Awww... they were just fine, needed some fresh air, maybe even washed, but nothing had nested in them! Here are the two Quilts my grown son took back to Base/Post when he left.

Ben on the bed hugging Sam.  Ben's pinwheel quilt, the first large quilt I made him.

Ben's Dino Quilt! He loved dinosaurs as a kid, we lived in Maryland when he was 2 years old to 5 years old.  I swear we went to the museum of Natural History every month so Ben could see the dinosaur bones and get his Dino fix! We moved back to Maryland when he was starting 4th grade, he was so excited to show his brothers around the Natural History Museum!

As Ben left with those Quilts all I could think was, it is time I made him a adult quilt!

Bella's Block Party!

The first class I taught at Sew Special Quilts was Bella's Block Party. I love this Quilt!  I used a Moda Jelly Roll, Block Party by Sandy Gervais for the blocks.  It amazed me I made all 24 blocks from one Jelly Roll. I think this quilt looks harder to make than it was, you sew your strips together then cut out triangles from your strips.  Why a Jelly Roll works so good for this pattern is, most Jelly Rolls have two different color directions making it hard to use all of one Jelly Roll in a quilt.  This pattern works because you separate the two colors, I used the oranges for half of the block and the greens and blues for the other half.  I believe what really makes this quilt pop is having high contrast between the two halfs of the block.

I like the way the borders are done, it looks like the quilt is framed, I could not be happier with how this quilt turned out!

The pattern was out of the book Smash Your Precut Stash, This is really a great book, the directions are well written and easy to follow.

I have been able to see a couple of the quilts made in the class, I love seeing finished projects!  Bring on the show and tell!

My favorite thing is seeing my beautiful niece, who the quilt was made for, sitting under it!

The Ginger Hut!

 This is where all the fun happens! I love my little sewing house, so affectionately called "The Ginger hut"! My niece Patti came up with the name and it stuck.

When we bought our house there was this little bonus shed in the back yard.  It had electricity and A/C but little else, I thought I can work with that!  It had a drainage issue and a roof leak but other than that it was a solid little building.

First things first the roof and drainage was addressed. Then we added new lighting and started painting the roof. We hired a handyman to put up drywall and texture.  Silly me, my son Sam and I did the molding and base boards, next time I will have the handy man do that.  I painted cabinets we took out of our kitchen and painted the concrete floor. Sam made me a counter.  My husband Ric decided I needed a TV, so he gave me one and even hung it on the wall, he is so sweet! But the best day was when I got to bring in my fabric and all my sewing things that were stored under the stairs in the house.  Ric was shocked at how much stuff I had :) 

This is Fred

This is Fred, he is my resident lizard. I don't have a bug problem in the Ginger Hut, so I let him stay.  He likes to hang out with me when I am sewing, and you can not imagine how many times he has scared me.  You just don't expect to see a lizard hanging out by your rotary cutter, or in your fabric or under a quilt! He has gotten very comfortable with me and I am forever having to shoo him out of the way. I don't want to cut fabric when he is on my mat.  One good thing, he knows better than to get on my machine!

Fred has a girl, but she is shy!  Most likely we will have little Freds one day soon.

New projects!

A couple of the fun things I have been playing with are, For You by Zen Chic and Canyon by Kate Spain. Both are Moda fabric lines. I have quilts started out of both lines and can't wait to share them when I get a little further along.  

I have a lopsided log cabin quilt out of the Zen Chic fabric, I used the pinks and oranges for that quilt.  I have plans for two other quilts out of that line! 

I started a Jacob ladder Quilt out of the Canyon, the layout is super fun.  The really exciting thing about the Jacob ladder quilt is I am using the precut mini charm squares.  The quilt takes 428 - 2 1/2" squares, I am using 10 mini charm packs and will only have to cut a handful of additional squares, this makes me Happy!