It's time for the 2018 round of the "I wish I could go too traveling quilt bee" and I'm so excited. For 2017, I chose to have members make me a block to go in my Christmas quilt. (Click here to see a pic of the top.)  This year I'm going with another holiday: Valentine's Day!  I usually take down my Christmas decorations in mid-January and would love to have some Valentine's Day decor to put out: like a Valentine's Day quilt!

For this quilt I am asking for small (3" - 5") heart blocks. I will assemble all the small squares myself when everything makes it's way back to me. I plan to mix up all the different small heart blocks and intersperse them with square of pink fabric (negative space). I found a couple of tutorials or patterns for small heart blocks. Below are two from Happy Zombie (right - pic from Natalie of Sew Hungry Hippie) and Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew (left). More inspiration pics and tutorials/patterns can be found on my Pinterest page for this project.  My starter block is shown above, and can be seen in it's entirety here. I was inspired by a pillow that Cath of Wombat Quilts made and used her paper-piecing pattern.

The inspiration for the color palette for my quilt is Jeni's (from In Color Order) Monochromatic Quilt. I love the deep red on the light pink background I would even add some medium purples for my quilt blocks.

I'm sending my package off tomorrow and can't wait to get it back in 2019! To see the blocks and quilts that we made last year check out #IwishIcouldgotootravelingquiltbee.

We will be posting progress shots for 2018 under the hashtag #iwishicouldgotootravelingquiltbee2.

Thanks for stopping by!

First Fabric Diet post for 2018!

I started January off very excited to make a heart-themed block to kick off the second round of the "I wish I could go too traveling quilt bee" (#iwishicouldgotootravelingquiltbee2). I loved my Christmas quilt from 2017, and decided to go for a heart-themed quilt for 2018.  I'll write a separate blog post for the round robin, but I will say that I played around with heart blocks for a while before I settled on the above bock as my "starter" block.  This block was inspired by, and uses a pattern from Cath of Wombat Quilts.

While I was working out what I wanted for the round robin, I also had in the back of my head that I wanted to make something for a Valentine's swap with my traveling-quilt group ladies.  I can't show the swap projects yet (they haven't been received), but I can say that  I ended up with a few extra big red scrappy heart blocks. So I made myself a little Valentine's Day wall hanging.

Making these projects made me realize how small my red fabric stash had become.  (See my post from January for a visual.) So...I used my Christmas gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop and rectified that problem. (See below!)

Yes - I bought a fair amount of fabric this month, and I am happy about it. In working on projects this month, I realized that I was lacking in a few colors in my stash. So I replenished - with intention!

Fabric Diet Standings
Fabric Purchases: 15.75
Fabric Used in Projects: 10.5
Net for the Month: 5.25
Net for the Year: 5.25

I don't feel like I sewed a whole lot this month, but I did have fun with the seasonal projects that I worked on. February is going to also be a month with not a whole lot of sewing - and I'm going to Quiltcon! So there will be not much sewing, and there will probably be fabric purchasing. That means that March is going to have to be a big sewing month to make up for it all!