WIP's

Amandajean @ crazymomquilts is celebrating her 500th blog post with a giveaway. To enter you have to comment on your favorite WIP. I have many WIP. I often speculate that if I stayed away from fabric stores, websites, ebay for a year, I would not run out of things to sew. So why do I keep buying? It is definitely my addiction. At least it doesn't hurt anyone, just occasionally my wallet. Ok, anyway, I decided to blog about my favorite here. I actually have two that I will share because both need to be finished and if I were to get these completed I would feel GREAT!

The first is this Patriotic Sampler that I started about 5 years ago. The top has been done awhile now and I need to get it quilted. I am proud of this one. It was a block of the month and I modified it a bit because it was going to be too big. I always look at it when I need to remind myself that I can do applique.

The eagle and the circles with stars are all machine appliqued.

I love house blocks and stars anyway, so there were lots of these in this quilt. I was going to put this on my son's bed at the time and it can still go there. It is even more appropriate for him now because he has become very patriotic and wants to join the military in some way after college. I think he would just be pleased that I actually finished it for him.

The next WIP is definitely more recent. It is my Project Improv quilt top. I will probably quilt this one first and get myself used to quilting a bigger quilt on my machine again. These two quilts couldn't be more different, could they? I don't know what I am going to do with this one. Probably love it awhile and then donate it somewhere.

I had fun with the Project Improv quilt. Unlike the Patriotic Sampler, there were no patterns, no rules, just sewing and cutting anyway I wanted. I love the pieced border and sashing. It doesn't make a lot of sense but that was the fun part.

I want to end today by thanking blogland, especially the two blogs that I have highlighted today, for getting me sewing on a regular basis again. I love to sew and don't know what I would do without it, but it is much more fun to share it with those who love it as much as I do. Reading about everyone else's projects has just lit a spark in me that hasn't flickered quite that brightly in a long time! Thanks everyone!

Dear Jane Motivation & My Sampler Quilt

I have been reading about Dear Jane Quilts in my Real Women Quilt yahoo group this week. I had been mildly interested in them before but after reading about them and seeing all kinds of finished baby Janes, I am hooked on making one for myself. I think it will be a long work in progress but what an accomplishment it will be to finish one. Check out the raffle quilt at the Empire Quilters website. It is one fantastic quilt that is two quilts in one. Unbelievable!

If you have read my other blog posts here, you know that I am working on the Patchwork Times Block of the Month by Judy Laquidara. This has really motivated me to sew, sew, sew. I was kind of in a slump but it has jump started me again and now my project list is growing. I am trying to finish some WIP/UFO's as well. One of my nearly finished quilts is this sampler quilt

that I made with purple Batiks, Kaffe Fasset's paperweights, and Laurel Burch cats.

It is a whirlwind of purple and red and lots of other colors in between. I wanted to do something different with this sampler by taking a regular block and using it four times in one block to make a bigger block. At one time, I was going to teach a sampler class and I thought this would be a way to show how you can turn a simple block into something different. I never taught the class but I have almost finished the quilting. I quilted in the ditch first and then kept adding more quilting here and there. One of these days I will get it done.

Happy sewing everyone, I am off to the sewing machine. Debbie