selina quilts: 2024

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

WICKED HOP

Gosh I'm gonna miss this annual hop the most. Thank you Joan and Carol for the many years of creepyness.

I love October and all it brings with it especially Halloween. Lots of us are already working on Christmas but I'm not there yet. I see something Halloweenie and I drop everything to give it a try no matter what craft type it falls under. So while this hop is generally a Quilting group I will be tossing in a couple of other ideas with my quilted stuff.

Last month one of my crafting groups picked an easy table runner from Jenny at Missouri Star from 2011 to work on. The group in general picked Christmas as the theme. Not me I started with a fall leading into Halloween theme

I finished it and decided that I needed to make one a bit more Halloween based. One of my nieces ( the one who also loves Halloween) just moved into her first house and I decided she needed it to start the Creepy season off right.

Ok, I have a few non quilt things to toss here in the middle of this posting including a small give away.

This month I got dragged into Rhinestones. The group I mentioned earlier is having a mini retreat and the big item on the to do list is learning to add Rhinestones to a tee shirt. I was the test subject. I never liked shirts with Rhinestones so I didn't enter into the test with a great attitude. Well I got hooked on the process if not the Tee Shirt concept. The test was for a Christmas design. it was successful. I left and tried my hand at a more ME idea. The design for this Batty Tee were cut on my Cricut.

I couldn't let it go and tried it on a card (several actually, but the others weren't Halloweenish)

It was suggested that I try Holographic Vinyl instead of real Rhinestones so that's what I used on my cards.

Before I get back to quilty stuff here are few of the other Halloween goodies I have been up to.

How about a creepy candy holder

Or maybe a lollipop holder or 2

Oh and then there is my tiny give away, I have 5 creepy book marks to send to the first 5 of you who request one. Just make sure I have a way to reach you for mailing info. I was amazed at how many of my friends requested them, I didn't think that many of them still read real books.

So lets close with a couple more of my sewing machine projects

This sweet Trick or Treat bag was a combo of sewing and Rhinestones. It was made for me to use in Disney World last week for our annual visit for their Halloween event. Didn't get to use it due to MILTON shutting down the parks and the Event.

Did you notice that the tee shirt above has Mickey Mouse Bats. I made it for the trip too.

This is the second year of making and posting my ghosts. Last year I posted them hanging on my front door. These ghosts are brand new for this year. I was requested to do a demo on them for another group I quilt with. They are actually meant to be mug rugs. I'm glad I still have the ones from last year as these have already flown away to friends.

the difference in size is due to the thickness of the rope I used. the instructions can be found on the Bernina web site.

Wishing you a very happy, creepy, scary, treat filled etc. etc. Halloween. This hop is a great start so be sure to visit everyone and leave a note, even a creepy one would be appreciated. Here is the whole list of Hoppers to make it as easy as possible.

OCTOBER 21

Just Let Me Quilt

Just Sew Quilter

Sew Many Yarns

Patchouli Moon Studio

OCTOBER 22

OCTOBER 23

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Beaquilter

Homespun Hannah's Blog

OCTOBER 24

MooseStashQuilting

Ms P Designs USA

Quilted Delights

Quilting Between the Rails

Monday, September 23, 2024

Bee Kind Blog Hop

Thanks Joan for yet another very interesting and wide open to interpretation Hop Topic.

For me to talk about my Kindness I need to share a little of my current lifestyle.. We are retired and living in an adult community in Central Florida with a population of around 150,000. Yes that number is correct. While not all of the residents are retired the large majority are and they are very, very active. We have any physical activity you can imagine available including but not limited to golf, bowling, tennis, pickle ball, bocce ball, bicycle riding at many levels, walking, swimming, dragon boats etc. etc. We also have well over 2500 different registered clubs covering any and everything including any craft you can think of.

Many of the various groups support in one way or another a charity either locally or nationally. I belong to 4 different craft groups, quilting, embroidery, yarn work, and cricut . All of which support many groups in need including but not limited to NICU's and Cancer care.

By now you should have a picture of how and why I am able to be kind and share that kindness. It's just pretty much everywhere you look.

This community also boasts a huge US Veteran population. Two of my favorite areas to show kindness are associated with the Men and Women who are putting or have put their lives on the line for us.

I am an active member of Operation Shoebox, a group that sends goodie bags to active troops around the world. This year the group is on target to send 30,000 bags out to the troops. The bags contain hand written Thank You notes, HBA items, cookies and snacks, puzzle pages from the local papers, paracord bracelets and various other small items.

The group has several hundred members broken out into multiple sub groups each with a specific job. I belong to 2 groups and do occasional work with 2 more. My main table is Paracord Bracelet's. The photo above shows 50 bracelets, my labor contribution most weeks. I aim to make 10 each night during the week after dinner. The group is made up of cord cutters, bracelet (macrame) makers, the folks who seal the ends of the bracelets, fund raisers etc.

I also work with the misc. craft makers fund raising group. We make assorted items for sale to earn money to pay for shipping the bags around the world. It is a perfect group for me as it gives me an outlet for all my misc. crafting ideas. I am one of those crafters that never makes one of something if I can make 5. These trays and pot holders are my current contributions.

I also work with Honor Flight. That's a National Organization that takes Vets to Washington DC to see the Veterans memorials, National Cemetery and the changing of the Guard. Sorry but I'm not sure what else they do on the trips. The local chapter makes 4 trips per year with 64 vets per flight. Part of what the local chapter includes in this 24 hour event is that each Vet gets a RWB quilt at least 40 x 60. Most of the quilts are made by members of the Quilt Guild of the Villages either individually or as chapter group projects. Quilts are set out and each Vet gets to choose one from among the 80 or so that are available for each trip. These quilts were my contributions for this year.

So what I take away from all of this is that kindness is a 2 way street. Yes I give but what I get back, on so many levels is incalculable. I have made so many new friends and learned so many new things working with these groups and what positive things we are able to accomplish. I feel that I have received back so much more then I give or I could possibly have imagined.

Now on to the Bee part of this hop. I assume that most of you have seen the zip pouch made from Dollar Tree Dish Drying Mats that have been all over YouTube. A couple of months ago I saw a video (by Chelse at She Sews Seams) and made a couple for the fun of it. They came out fine and took less than half an hour.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a Drying Mat with Bees and Bee Hives at I think Hobby Lobby. The mat was much larger then the one from $tree and I thought it would be a great extra for this hop. I sat down the other night to knock one out and realized that this was a directional design going the wrong way for it to be used for the quickie pouch. Very annoying to say the least. I left it and came back to it the next morning and decided that I could cut it up and put it back together again and all would be well.

Ta Da and I still half of the mat left to do it again. The mat was really a lot bigger than my original mats from $ tree, thankfully, and did allow me to get a usable pouch made. The inside isn't as neat as an uncut mat but I'm not going to advertise that fact.

So it's time to say so long for this month. I hope you will follow along and see just how much kindness this group provides. Here is a complete list of all of all of the participants for this month.

Oh and BEE KIND and leave a sweet word or two for each of them if possible.

Monday Sept 23

Tuesday Sept 24

Patchouli Moon Studio

Wednesday Sept 25

BeaQuilter

Karrin's Crazy World

That Fabric Feeling

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilting Between the Rails

Thursday Sept 26^th

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE -

It's that time again. Time to Hop along with this fun and creative group under the leadership of calicojoan.

The brilliant idea for this month is to create something that relates to the jungle. Sounded like fun when I signed up and it stayed fun from beginning to todays posting. I didn't have any plan up front but I think "jungle " as beautiful greenery or adorable animals. Yea I grew up in a city type environment.

Last month I participated in a Quilt Shop Hop and this wonderful fabric jumped off the shelf into my cart at one of the stops.

Absolutely perfect for this event. Now that I had the beautiful jungle background I needed to find some adorable animals. I have gotten very dependent on Creative Fabrica for lots of my crafting needs. I headed in and asked for ideas for machine embroidered animals.

So how did I do finding occupants for my little jungle? I love them to pieces. Our local Quilt Chapter of the Quilt Guild of the Villages, throws an annual baby shower for the Children's Home Society, as a group we make things for children under the age of 5. Lots of quilts and blankets, pillowcases , stuffed animals and the like. We also give things such as diapers and baby products.

So this is the fun blanket from the jungle. that I put together for the event. Sorry I couldn't get the blocks to show in detail but they are the same blocks from above.

I also felt that a small child could use some personal jungle fun and came up with the idea of a back pack with a fun jungle buddy. I tossed in a coloring book and a pack of crayons.

Well I hope you enjoyed your visit to my jungle. I enjoyed having you come. Have you visited with the other Jungle stops. Well if not, here is a list of the other locations. It will be worth taking the trips.

Monday August 19

MooseStashQuilting

Ms P Designs USA

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilting Between the Rails

High Road Quilter

Tuesday August 20

Patchouli Moon Studio

Karrins Crazy World

Quilting Gail

Quilted Delights

Wednesday August 21

Thursday August 22

Thursday, July 25, 2024

Fishy

Welcome to the last stop on the Smelly Fish Hop

A sweet way to start if you ask me.

Last months HOP, For The Birds, was as always, full of great talents sharing wonderful ideas to add to our to do lists. I had an idea for this months hop but one of last months ideas from Daryl of Patchouli Moon Studio jumped to the top of my idea list for this HOP.

In her post she showed several of the purses she makes for the SEW POWERFUL PURSE PROJECT. I looked into the link she provided and decided to give a try to one of these bags.

After making the first bag with fabric I had on hand I decided I would make a couple more if I made a JoAnn's run to find some fishy based fabric.

The bag pattern that this organization requires is very nice and very simple to do. It has 2 pockets and no zipper. They are also addicting. I've got 10 done to date. I took them with me to 2 different meetings for show and tell and had several members ask for the link.

I also went to a mini retreat and had a couple of members make them for this group and a few just wanting this easy breezy pattern.

My original idea was to make a set of Zipper Pouches using designs by Minki Kim based on her panel by Riley Blake. Since I got as far as getting the fishy fabric for them, that turned into my mini retreat project.

I must have been in purse making mode this month because once I got the fabric for the Sew Powerful purses I had enough left over to make one zip type for my sister.

Now onto the Fishy block from my Polaroid quilt. There was only 1 fish related block. Good thing it was cute.

Well now that I've shared all my smelly fish with you I would like to extend my thanks to Carol for another fun idea for us to stretch our quilting imaginations.

I hope you have stopped by to visit all of the smelly fish presented this week. Just in case here is the list of where you can find any you may have missed.

JULY 22

JULY 23

Patchouli Moon Studio

Words & Stitches

Quilted Snail

Quilting Between The Rails

JULY 24

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

JULY 25

Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again next month

Monday, June 17, 2024

FOR THE BIRDS - BLOG HOP

Tweet, tweet to Joan for organizing another thought provoking hop. I thought Birds sounded fun and relatively simple. Fun, yes, but by my own creatively which got out of hand not so simple.

Lets begin with my bird of choice

Yes he is an American Eagle. I live in The Villages, Fl with about 150,000 other Adults. We are very heavy into supporting our many veterans around here. The local American Legion is the largest in the world.

The local chapter of HONOR FLIGHT sends 4 flights with about 64 Vets on each flight to Washington, DC each year and 1 Virtual flight. All for Vets from this area.

Each Vet receives a patriotic themed quilt. Several different organizations make the quilts including the Quilt Guild of The Villages of which I'm a member. While any patriotic themed quilt is appreciated many of the vets prefer a quilt that is Branch Specific. The panel I was asked to work on was for the Navy with THE BIRD. Such great timing.

I had an idea of what I wanted to do with this panel. I'm old school so I took out my graph paper and markers and set to it. My thoughts started with 3 maybe 4 stars across the top. Somehow I ended up with 20 stars surrounding the panel. So I now had my plan and headed out on vacation.

The problem was that I kinda forgot that this quilt was to be finished for this hop, Honor Flight doesn't need it until September. It didn't kick in until Joan started sending participant notes to us.

Thankfully I really do my best work under pressure. I started working on it Friday morning and finished it this morning (Sunday). The friendship stars took a lot longer than I planned on. I really hate trimming up HST's.

I love how it is coming out. I still need to do the final sew down of the binding and want to add a bit more quilting but if I had to gift it tomorrow I could.

Next up are the birds on my polaroid quilt. I am getting a lot of milage out of that quilt. Amazing how diverse it is.