Last year I made Christmas stockings for a couple of friends.  It turned out that their dogs were jealous, so this year they will have their very own stockings for Santa to fill.

They are made with scraps of wool that have been machine pieced in a crazy quilt fashion.  I used embroidery floss to hand stitch all the embellishments.  I think my favorite stitch is the herringbone stitch on Izzy's toe.

Put Me In The Zoo has always been one of my favorite books.

I loved the illustrations as a kid and still love them today.  Luckily, both the kids love the story so we read it on a fairly regular basis.

When I saw the polka dots fabrics in the freebird line by MoMo fabrics for Moda, my first thought was of those polka dots flying across the sky.

I couldn't resist making a quilt top with all those great big polka dots.

It's quilted with a horizontal stripes with a chocolate brown thread.  Turns out, it's going to go live at my mom's house.

Here's the back -

These prints are so cute.  They are loaded with flowers and geometrics, there are even hats and shoes.

It's available now over at mybricole on etsy.

I loved these crazy prints the moment I saw them, especially the rooster...

I cut them into little bricks and pieced them into diagonals.  I think the repetition of the diagonals really emphasizes the cool graphics on the fabrics.

Here is what the back looks like

It's available now in my etsy shop.

Here's a full view of the spouse's new quilt.

It's made from the Happy Trails line by Benartex.  I took my cue for the design from the name and created lines from all different sized strips of fabric.  The quilted the center of the top with horizontals in various widths.  I quilted all the seams as well.

The back is also from the Happy Trails line - I used a strip each of pistols and barbed wire along with the orange plaid.

Here it is on it's first test drive.

When I saw the prompt for this week's The Sunday Creative was "connect" the first thing that came to mind was connecting pieces to make a quilt.  I planned a shot of rows of pieces that had just been stitched together.  I even cut them out last night so I could take the pictures today.  They are waiting in a stack by the sewing machine. Then I caught this -

It's the quilt I finished last night for the spouse.  He was taking it for a test spin.

pieced top - quilted layers - gift to spouse - wedding ring

When I saw the photo in the viewer, a big light bulb flashing *connect* went on above my head.

These are the last of the totes.

Now I can get back to the  picnic quilt

I didn't have a plan with this.  I started with 3 charm packs and 6 yards of fabrics (Verna by Kate Spain for Moda) and made it up as I went along.  I used malabrigo yarn in pollen for the ties. Here's the back.

Close up of the ties

How is it that cutting fabric into little squares and then sewing back together is so satisfying? Here I am, cutting this stack

and sewing it into these.

then more cutting-

then more sewing-

then choosing placement-

then more sewing-

then more pressing-

maybe there is a quilt maker hidden away inside me