Three very different Castles

I have finally assembled the three castles that I have been working on all year long and hope they don't join my ever growing UFO pile.  When I joined so many BOM's this last year I really didn't think the part out about them all becoming UFO's at the same time.  It only makes matters worse that all the new BOM's for the New Year are starting to reel me in hook, line, and sinker...YIKES!!!
Right about now I am seriously feeling the need to join the 2014 Lovely Year of Finishes and actually would be a fool not to.  I wish I wasn't such a chicken sh...It's not like the po po will arrest me if I don't complete my to do list.  I seriously need to read up on the consequences and consider the risks of failure vs the benefit factor. They don't even know where I live so my knee caps should be safe right???

In the meantime...I have made progress on my current year's BOM goals.  Here are the Three castles I have been doing from Ula Lenz's website this year.  She has yet to announce what 2014 will bring and I suppose that is good but I am so curious!!!

I love all three and they will make great wall hangings in 2014

I am currently working on the last of my 20 blocks in the Pile 'O Fabric Skillbuilder 2013 BOM.  Block 19 kicked my bootie and I am hoping number 20 will take it easy on me... It took me three attempts to get number 19 right.  I am surprised I stuck it out although I did give it a long rest between each try which is why I am still struggling to get this one done.  Block 19 was a paper pieced triangle and it had a very nasty Y seam in it.  The first block I picked apart so many times it got a hole in the center :(  In the second attempt the triangles never matched up and I refused to pick it apart.  For the third attempt, I decided to follow the directions ( I know, I know) but she had us use glue on the seams and I HATE unpicking the seams and paper off the glue. Nasty business...but in this case SEW necessary.  I forget what Alyssa called this block but I nick named mine Stargate because the fabrics I used look like space junk floating around the center triangle (Stargate).  Wish me luck on the last one...at least send happy thoughts my way...Thanks!!!

Keep Stitchin'

Haunted Castle

Well... I had intended to share this much earlier in October...and now it is Halloween so I had better get it together!!!  In my defense I have been having camera tech-NO-calities.  Santa may be needing to get me a new one so I had better be on my best behavior for the rest of the year :)

I have been sharing two castles each month but working on three and it is time to reveal the third castle...where the wild and spooky things have been taking up residence each month.

 Two more months to finish it off but it seemed appropriate to share today.  Lots of spooky critters living inside it and a witch flying past.  Not sure what to call the ogre thing up in the sky, but he looks up to no good!  The whole castle is sitting on a hill of pumpkins, just too cute.  I wanted haunted but fun!  I think where the trees don't look right in the upper left hand side , I will have to do lots of thread play to feather the trees into the upper block when it comes time to quilt it so it looks more normal.

Here is how the Gnome castle is looking:

And here is the Princess castle:

I have to admit to taking a little liberty with the pattern this month.  For some reason Ula made this part of the castle look very Bavarian in style and for me it just didn't fit with the rest of the pattern...so I eliminated the Bavarian wood beams from the pattern and must admit it sure made the pattern go a lot quicker this month so it was win-win for me as I am very happy with the result.

Hoping your evening was filled with delightful little ghosties and goblins and treats and maybe a little cute trick or two.

June Castle BOM blocks

 Time marches on so quickly...Ula Lenz has the July castle block available and I am really looking forward to getting it done and added to the castles.  Before I can do that I need to share what the June addition to the castle properties has brought to the gnomes and princesses.

The gnomes have some lovely new roofs emphasizing LOVE.

What appears to be red stairs is actually going to be a rooftop on a July castle building.

The princesses new block has a little deviance from this one.

When I started putting it together I forgot that the top of the roof was the roof and instead made it into a window for the orange building instead.  I was so excited to pick out a little owl to live there that I messed up the roof.  Oh well the grand-daughters will as excited to see an owl living there as I was!!!  I started this one with pastels in mind but I kind of like what the darker colors do to jazz up the castle. It was looking a little to washed out for my liking.

I also got July off to a quick start with my Craftsy block.  This month Laura had us making a Tumbling block which was another first for me.  One of the things that was a pleasant surprise to me was that she eliminated the Y seams by having us put it together in vertical rows by splitting one of the diamond shapes by replacing it with two triangles instead.

Laura warned us that one of the hardest things would be picking out three distinct values to make the light, medium and dark values.  I messed around with fabrics for a while and really wanted to use fabrics from my current stash as I am trying to use some fabrics I've had around for years and feel like it is time to use them in a project.  I think I could have done better with the blues in my stash but chose green just to add something different from the other colors that are predominant in the quilt top so far.  My dark and medium values are too close to each other to read as distinctly different from a distance even though up close they appear to be different shades. They probably needed to be at least three shades lighter than each other. Oh well, lessoned learned but I can live with it.

I laid them out in the general placement they will be in .  I will have to say this is one crazy layout with all the different sized blocks.  When I trimmed this one to size I decided I had better trim last months block down, too. Problem is it ended up a 1/4 inch bigger all around then it suppose to be because I refuse to cut it to her size and lose my perfect points on the Lemoyne Star.  I think when I put it into the quilt I will be able to reduce the border that Laura must be having us put around it and no one will know but me and you and I'm not going to tell and I am sure you won't be turning me into the quilt police either, right???

Thanks for stopping by and Keep Stitchin'

Winner and a frog invasion

It has been an amazingly fun week with all the blog hoppers stopping by.  A huge welcome to all the new followers it has certainly chased my Winter Blues away reading all your kind comments.  You certainly helped me blow way past my 100 milestone I was looking for...144 followers today!!! WOOT WOOT  thanks

Without further ado the winner of the Blog Hop giveaway as chosen by Mr Random is (insert drum roll here) 

Mr Random choose NUMBER 184

Barb said:

I love the fabric. I enjoyed your blog so much that i am now a new follower via email. babscorbitt@gmail.com

Congratulations to Barb!!!

I will be emailing you soon and after you respond with your necessary 411.  I will get these fat quarters and your little surprise out in the mail to you. Sorry I took a picture of Mr. Random but he is hiding on my computer and I can't find him. You will have to trust me he choose 184. Thanks for following me Barb and I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Now on to that frog invasion:

For those of you that remember the great frog round up of last Spring from my backyard (for those of you that are new we rounded up like 29 over zealous ---twitterpated--- frogs and relocated their croaking bootees to the other side of town) this is not that kind of invasion.  A little too early in the year to know if this year will find us having to do that again but look what I have been up to the last few days.

I made this as the next block for the princess castle but it didn't seem right.  The colors were too washed out for one.  I was really unhappy with the light color just too boring.  I thought about redoing the block --- which I abhor but I have limited sky fabric and fretted about not having enough if I did it again. I have looked around hoping to find more of this fabric but no luck. I even put the three blocks together but didn't like it.

Then it dawned on me I could keep most of the sky and would only lose the tiny triangle attached to the roof when I remade that section.  I thought green should be on both sides of the little house to complement each other so I changed it up to this:

 It was at this point that I noticed the
frog invasion.  No wonder this part 
of the castle turned green.  Five frogs 
took up resident in the March castle block. I wonder if they are Irish frogs. With St Patty's day just around the corner they could be. I just couldn't resist having a litlle fun with this after having to ruin my day by ripping out
all the previous work. I figured my grand  daughters would love them!!!  I may have to let more creatures move in soon.

Keep Stitchin'

Giveaway Update

This weekend you all have put a very big smile on my lips and warmed my heart with your comments on the giveaway.  Spring already feels so much closer with all your help.  A big welcome to all my new followers and a huge thanks for pushing me over my goal of 100.  I have found three more fq's to add to the giveaway as promised for all your help with reaching my milestone!!!  Here are the three fq's that will be joining the three fq's below on a journey to one Winter Blues Blog Hopper soon along with a surprise...you'll have to wait to see what the surprise is a while longer.

The pink one on the end has two 2 1/2 inch square bites taken out of it so I am adding in a seventh fq that you can see in the next pic...lighting is not the best ...the seventh is a brown with pink polka dots!

The giveaway continues to March 14th.  I will let Mr Random choose a random winner on the 15th.  To enter please leave a comment on the original post you can get to it by clicking here

This weekend I got a couple more of my March Bom's completed. 

I made the March block for the And Sew On...BOM @ Quiet Play.  You can check it out more  by clicking on the And Sew On button on my sidebar.  Each month Kristy is posting a free sewing themed paper pieced block on her blog and after the end of that month you can find the pattern for sale at her etsy shop.  So if you missed January and February you can still join in.

Isn't this block sew much fun!!!

Next I finished the March block for the Castle BOM offered this year by Ula Lenz for free.  You can find out more about it here   Remember I do this one three times each month so I still have two more to go.  This one for right now is my favorite.  Each is done in a different theme.  This castle I am making for a bunch of gnomes.  They didn't commission me to do it but it has been a pleasure to make it for them anyway.  I seem to have a gnome crush after making the Quilt U Be Mine wall hanging featuring Gnome-o and Juliet.   You will see one has already moved in a set up residence in this month's block!

I now have the three parts made in January-February-March put together to form this part of the castle. 

Now I will go back and make it in a fairy princess theme and the third remains a secret that you will have to wait till I reveal it in October to see.  

Hope you are starting to see Spring revealed to you a little more this week.

Bom progress and oopsx2

February Castles and more...

I was busy piecing the castles together last week and went to post my progress when much to my surprise look what I caught on the picture.

First castle looking good:

 

Here is what I spotted when I went to post the second castle.  I thought it was really looking good...

until I noticed that the first window had no wall to the left of it.  The second window has way too much extra wall.  A few choice words and out came the seam ripper.  I HATE taking a paper piece block apart.  Due to the fact that you sew it together with small stitches it is a nightmare to undo.  In this instance, I had to rip out something like four different sections in order to make it right.  After much frustration it now looks like this...

I must say it was worth re-doing as I really like how this one is coming along.

So with that fixed it was back to work on my words for the baby quilt I am working on here is what I have so far:

 

and then here we go again...another oops...now I have to figure out if I should fix it.  This time I would just make a whole new letter and replace the one with the boo boo.

 You probably can't see the mistake but it screams at me and taunts me with very unkind words.  Can't let that go...The 'd' above is suppose to look more like the 'b' in baby above.  It is missing a piece of fabric and because of that it actually has a couple unsewn areas in the pointy area of the inside of the d. More bad words on my part. Drats and double drats.
I won't have much time to work on this tomorrow as we are celebrating our grand-daughter, Kiara's, fifth birthday tomorrow but hopefully I will have time to share my February BOM that I made for Kristi's Sew On BOM and start working on my post for sharing my QuiltUBeMine project.  The group will be sharing them on Valentine's Day and I am so excited to see how my group's blocks all turned out.  I sure had fun working on them and can't wait to see how they all turned out and to share mine.