If you haven’t seen the Blogger’s Quilt Festival quilts, you are missing something wonderful. If you have just a little time – be sure to look at the flickr pool of quilt photos. More time? Be sure to follow the links and read the great stories that go along with the photos. Here is my submission to the Spring 2010 Blogger’s Quilt Festival.

Renee’s Quilt

I chose this quilt as my entry because I haven’t completed a new quilt since finishing this one! While I have lots of works in progress like this baby shower quilt (the beautiful babe is here now, but I am still collecting squares) and this project (off to the machine quilter today), life has been just too busy to start to new quilt projects (well, unless you count this one, but it was really large squares…and this one, but it was really small squares)! Anyways…

Back to the quilt! I made this quilt last year for a friend finishing graduate school. Graduating from school is an awesome achievement for anyone, but for this friend, I had been there when she made the first decision to go back to school (after a number of years), take the GRE, and submit her application. It is a wonderful thing to see someone make the decision to make a change in their life and go for it with everything they have.

The quilt itself I explain in this previous post, so I won’t go into detail about the process, but what I love about this quilt is how only three different fabrics come together to look simple and complex at the same time. I had always wanted to use a batik, and it was actually my fiance that said the multi colored print reminded him of my friend (yes, I dragged him to the fabric store – I needed a second opinion on some backing fabric).

This quilt was probably one of the fastest quilts I have made from start to finish, and also one of the only I have probably completed prior to the event in which I was giving the quilt. I am not sure why that is – maybe the simplicity of the pattern (although the borders were tricky) or the size of the squares or the quilt or just procrastinating from packing? I am sure I will use this pattern again and it would be fun to see it in a whole different color combination!

Thanks, Amy, for hosting the quilt festival. What a wonderful way to bring the crafty, quilting blogging world together!

For June’s issue of Sandbox Press I decided to do a simpler project that any Mom or Dad can do with the kids. Bubbles are super easy to make and you can use them as a refill for your bubble bottles or put them in a ball jar or other resealable container.

The supplies are simple: 1 1/2 cup warm water, 1/2 cup dishwashing soap, and 2 teaspoons of sugar. For your bubble wand, you can try any sort of bendable wire or other utensil with natural holes. Here are our wands:

The directions are simple as well: mix it all together in a large cup or the container you are storing it in. Try not to over mix but make sure all the sugar is melted.

Then comes to the fun: blow bubbles!

After a while, we got the hang of it and blew lots of bubbles!

Now go outside and have some fun!

Since Carrie has been busy with her new babe (updates soon) and I have some big changes coming up (and I’ll have to share some crafty projects I’ve been working on), we have been a little absent! But May Giveaway Day is here! We are so happy to participating again! Be sure to check out the entire list of giveaways on the Sew Mam Sew blog.

For our giveaway, I picked up a great charm pack of Garden Song prints (36 squares) to go along with a few things from my stash. I’ll follow up with the randomly selected winner with some questions to see what would be best to go along with the charm pack.

To enter tell us what you would make with these great squares. Please post before midnight May 20th. We’ll be happy to ship internationally, too!

Best of luck!

Update: We have a winner! Full announcement tomorrow, but congrats to Christine R. #287 who said, “I think a table topper would be nice!! Thanks for the giveaway.”

Here are some springy / summery cupcakes I made that turned out super cute. They were for a baby shower and were modeled after the Mommy’s wedding cupcakes:

There are vanilla with chocolate icing and chocolate with vanilla icing.

I ran out of the chocolate icing with two left so they got some pink vanilla icing that looked so cute I wished I had done more like them!

Welcome, Spring. Please stay a few more weeks before ushering in the hot summer.

Yum! Yum!

My mom and my grandma are incredible influences on my life in many ways – especially my crafty, sewing, creative life. Happy Mother’s Day!