Sweat and Swoon

The weather has been beautiful, sunny with high 70's to low 80's and nights in the low 60's to high 50's!  So not August weather and I am very grateful. So with it being to nice out we have been busy outside. 

We have these evergreen bushes along the front and one side of the house with river rocks all around them and then just an empty bed of rocks along the opposite side of the house.  Ever since we bought the house four years ago I have wanted to get rid of it all and this week we finally decided to do it.  I'm excited that it is getting done, but I am SO tired!  The bushes in front of the house were small and were really quite easy to dig out, but the bushes on the side of the house were much bigger and much more difficult to deal with.  And the rocks...a LOT of shoveling!  So I've been pretty busy.

However, I did manage to get two Swoon blocks done!  Oh how I love this pattern!

So four down and 12 to go.  I only have enough fabric to make 4 more so I will need to do some shopping here soon.

Now I'm off to bed to sleep like a baby!

Swooning

I have loved the Swoon pattern from Camile since I first laid eyes on it, I've been seriously drooling over Angela's blocks!  So of course I'm jumping in. 

I'm going to us my Sugar and Spice and Kona Ash for the background. Here's my first block!

I just love it!  Even though there are 61 pieces in each block I think it comes together in a decent amount of time.  The unfinished block measures 24.5 square.  I like how big it is, only needing 16 blocks for a king size quilt is awesome.  The thought of a quilt that big with this block doesn't seem so daunting!

The fabric for Kayce's Quilt arrived today, right on time, so hopefully tomorrow I can get the borders on and at least get it basted if not start quilting it.  I also got some Ta Dots in the same package. I love them!  I think they are so fun.  I will probably change my mind before I get to them, but I think they might make up my next pinwheel quilt.

Alrighty, I gotta run.  I'm taking my nieces and son to the movies.  We are either going to see the Smurfs movie or The Zookeeper, they haven't decided yet...

Stash and Plans

These beautiful stacks of fabric are some of my recent purchases!  Hi, my name's Christine and I'm a fabricaholic!  I have only recently slipped into this addiction so I don't have a large stash, but it growing quite steadily.

I have no plans for these wonderful Metro Living fat quarters.  I just really love the colors and print and wanted to show them off!

Some more Metro Living and some Kona Cotton.  I didn't have any concrete plans when I picked this out.  I've been wanting to do a black and white quilt for a while now, but I've been falling for grey lately and after browsing through the Metro Living Collection, decided that black, white and grey would be awesome.  So I picked up this lovely stack and after a bit of pondering I think I might do hexagons.  (I might be crazy for planning on doing another hand pieced quilt when I have barley just started my first one!)  We'll see...

I LOVE this stack and it is my first entire collection purchase.  It's Sugar and Spice from The Quilted Fish/Riley Blake Designs in two color ways: aqua and red.  I just love it!  My current plan for it is a pickle dish or double wedding ring quilt.

These are some solids I picked up from Joanne's and some Kona Cotton in Ash.  Originally I picked these up for a double hour glass quilt.

But after deciding to try my hand at English Paper Piecing I cut into it for my diamonds.  However, I think there will be enough to complete both projects...hopefully!

I also have a large stack of fat quarters in every color of the rainbow just waiting for me to start slicing them into strips for a string quilt!  

What's holding me up you ask...Well, the thing that got me into quilting was my niece wanting a quilt and I told her I would try to make her one.  If I only knew what I was getting myself into...  I had always wanted to make a quilt, I just had never done it and now I had a reason. 

My first attempt was pretty pathetic!  I didn't know anything about quilting, didn't know about this wonderful community and it didn't even cross my mind to do any research...I just jumped in.  It was a mess, nothing lined up, no consistent seam allowance...a total mess.  

So I decided to give it another try and just start over.  This time I started searching the internet for every ounce of information I could get and I found Crazy Mom Quilts!  Wow!  The doors opened up to this wonderful world of inspiration and knowledge!  I feel like I have read hundreds of quiting books with all of the information I have gotten from reading all of these blogs and tutorials.  It's just amazing. 

Anyway, the quilt still has a ton of flaws and I would do it completely different if I were to do it again (I will never!), but it is worlds better than the first attempt.  My point to this whole rambling story:  It isn't finished yet and until it is I wont let myself start a new quilt.  I've cheated a bit, but nothing too major (well, except for my EPP star quilt.) 

So that is why all of this beautiful fabric is just sitting and waiting...

Do you buy fabric with or without a plan?