pinwheels quilt top

My second quilt top for myself is finished and even though I had reservations at first, I love it! I'm a big fan of red and this is such a yummy, warm, red quilt. Made with Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush line and some Kona Bone, it's an oversized lap quilt.

I followed this pinwheels quilt tutorial found here from This Domestic Bliss.

I was very unsure how to quilt this one because I wanted to keep the shape of the pinwheels. After lots of thought and advice, I've straight line quilted it following the triangles. The lines have made a great pattern that you can really see well from the back. Love it!!

The back is pieced using the left over fabric. I really love the HST square in the middle. Yummy.

new year, new kitchen

I'm impulsive. Yes, I am.  Last Sunday I looked at the kitchen and said to Kevin, "I want a red kitchen." He agreed. We both hated the strange periwinkle blue that made the kitchen feel cold and open. The rest of our house is very warm feeling (so I think) and with my love for red, and the desire for a red kitchen, I jumped on it. Monday I came home with paint samples and a gallon of ceiling paint.

original kitchen during walk-through

Enter Thursday, three coats of red Cherry Cobbler paint and lots of blue tape, I have a red kitchen. It turned out amazing!  We picked the perfect color of red! It's warm, but not too bright, and just makes you feel all fuzzy inside. I think it's inviting! "Common in! Stay awhile and have a drink! Let me make you something tasty to eat!

To get a good paint line, let me share a tip I read and tried. This only works with painted woodwork. After putting down the blue tape, I painted the seam with the matching white color. That way, when I went over with the red, if anything bled through, the white did, not the red. It worked really well. I have a few errors, but this really helped keep them to a minimum.

Here's a not-so-great picture of the only full wall in the kitchen.

Behr Cherry Cobbler in Satin finish

poppy fields forever

The poppy fields forever quilt is complete! Washed and dried today. Somehow I also managed to squeeze in a matching pillow sham. Haven't made one of those before, did it without a tutorial, and it turned out pretty good. I'm pleased at how great the quilt looks in the poppy bedroom with the matching duvet.

The bedroom was painted before my parents bought the house. The colors are amazing in the room; the flowers are my favorite part. Charlotte loves looking for birds, bees, fairies and scary gnome like goblins hiding in the trees. It truly is a magical forest. When I ran across the poppy print from Pottery Barn I knew it was perfect for the room. But, since Charlotte is now in a big bed, we needed a matching quilt for her bed, however, the poppy is out of print. Luckily somebody had a bed skirt on eBay which prompted me to turn it into a quilt.

poppy fields forever front

The quilt blocks are 12.5" and the other blocks are wonky blocks from Elizabeth Hartman in matching colors to the poppy colors. Twin sized. Sashing and binding are Kona Snow. The back is a red sheet from Ikea with some poppy squares filled in. I stippled this in a variegated red/pink thread. It's so bright and looks wonderful in the room.