Giveaway at Julie's

If you haven't yet, you should hop over to Having Fun Quilting for Julie's patriotic wall hanging quilt giveaway.  There are three ways to enter and you have a chance to win a Liberty Logs quilt kit.

 Isn't it pretty :) Now go sign-up!

Stash Report

I've been adding some new fabrics to my stash lately!  I totally fell in love with the Michael Miller children at play fabrics after buying the pink balloons fabric for the Novelty Squares exchange.  Luckily I order extra of that fabric because I knew I wanted some for myself too.  Now, I've added a few more fabrics from that line to my stash along with some others that I'm squirreling away for future projects. 

I'm so grateful to Cotton Blossom Farm for the quick and reasonable shipping and actually having all the fabrics that I was looking for (including some that I wasn't looking for but had to have after seeing them; funny how that happens.  It's like how chocolate magically jumps into my cart at the grocery store).  I'm always happy to discover fabric shops that carry everything I'm looking for in one place.  It saves on both hassle and shipping to order all at once.  It's also nice when an online store has such great customer service :-) I'm a very happy girl today!

 The "On Parade" border fabric might be my favorite.  I really want to make a birthday dress for my daughter out of this print.  Her birthday has already passed this year, but I wanted to order this fabric now because you never know when a line will become hard to find.  I looked at a lot of online fabric stores who were sold out already.

I also got some polka-dot fabric in yellow and blue, some American Jane "tickets in cream" and some little apples fabric in red that will make it into an I spy, and of course the children at play fabric.  I just love the little girls playing with their dolls and the boy chasing the airplane.

  I also broke down and ordered some flea market fancy fabric. I have got to admit that I now know why everyone seems to love this fabric.  It is beautiful.  I'm thinking that the bouquet in grey is going to end up as a little purse for me.  The blues and yellow are likely going to be in a quilt.  I also planted my window boxes yesterday.  I'm loving my new red geraniums.  It's finally starting to feel like spring here.

Quiltspiration: The Netherlands

I truly believe that inspiration can be found just about anywhere.  I've recently been to several places here in Europe that provided ample inspiration opportunities.  Today, I'm going to share a bit about our recent trip to Holland to see the Keukenhof  flower garden show and also share a bit of tulip inspired quiltspiration.

We went the first week that the show was open so not all of the millions of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths were blooming yet, but it was still an incredible site.  It was pretty cold for spring when we visited, but as we drove in we could see that the big tulip fields where already full of color. 

I wanted to design a simple and modern quilt that reflected the look of the tulip fields in full bloom when you see them from above. I wish I had a photo to share of the fields but you can Google them and the images are really incredible. 

This is honestly a straight forward little quilt. To make it you can use a jelly roll of various flower colored solids or blenders (or 2.5inch strips) and a honey bun (1.5inch strips) of a dark brown-green color for in between the rows. Using the whole length of the strip, join the same colors together following the picture. On strips where the color breaks at some point on the strip Just join the ends and place the strip where you want the color to break for the row. There is really no reason to worry about being exact. Then just add your brown-green strip between the flower colors. I think that this would come together really quickly. I'd finish it off with a fun print for the binding to give it a bit of zing, but to each his own :)

We had a great time, and saw some really beautiful flowers. Here are a few more images of our trip just for fun, and maybe they will inspire you in some way too.

Can you tell it was cold. My daughter is wearing my husbands hat and coat.

I'd never seen tulips with fuzzy edges before this.

They also had a special exhibit of orchids too. So beautiful.