Festival of Half-Square Triangles

I have been so excited for this linky party! I went to a birthday party recently and I needed a gift to take with me. I found this tutorial awhile ago and thought a table runner with these blocks would make the perfect present. It was also about that time that I began seeing Megan's posts about the Festival of Half-Square Triangles linky party. What great timing!!!

I had a small fat quarter bundle of Kate Spain's Good Fortune fabric that I used for this project, along with some Kona solids. The polka dot backing/binding is from the Aunt Edna line by Denyse Schmidt.

 As per usual with HST's, I started with a bunch of squares (for measurements to make your own, check the tutorial HERE on the Freshly Pieced blog).

Here are my finished HST's. I then sewed them together to start forming the blocks.

I wasn't sure how to quilt this one (I usually become stumped at this part of the process) so I turned to twitter for some suggestions. I got a few suggestions for straight lines so decided to go with that. I did them on the diagonal to go with the lines of the fabrics.

I debated whether or not to do more quilting with diagonal lines going the other way for a criss-cross effect, but that would have been way too much.

This is the finished product and I absolutely love how it turned out. The birthday girl liked it as well. I hope you do too!

Go check out Megans blog to see all of the other wonder HST creations, and if you have a HST project you've made recently, link up so we can see yours too!

Here Comes the Sun

I love spring. I hear the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun" play in my head every morning. In case you don't know that song (or love it and want to hear it) here it is. It's definitely my anthem for springtime.

There is one thing, however, that I don't like about spring. I feel guilty about sitting in the house sewing when it's so gorgeous outside. Because of that I have gotten literally NO SEWING done for 2 weeks now. But I shouldn't feel guilty about sewing since I can go outside and take pictures in the sunshine when I'm finished! Tuesday was my 32nd birthday, so this week has been especially lazy. It has been dubbed "birthday week" around here.

The things I love about spring far outweigh my one complaint about it though. I hate shoes. I mean, I love really cute shoes (as all girls do), but I hate wearing them. That's why spring is great! Because I get to wear flip-flops! Which also means I get a pedicure for my birthday!

I also love sun streaming through the windows when I wake up and sitting out on the deck to have my morning coffee. (And this is my new Keurig, also for my birthday. A present to myself!)

Lots of cleaning up was done outside yesterday. The yard still doesn't look beautiful, but much better than it did. I have empty pots waiting for some pretties to be planted in them.

Spring also means morning walks with my husband. I had to stop and take a picture of this beautiful tree I saw during our walk today:

What is your favorite season? I think they all have good things about them (except winter...) but obviously my favorite time is now. I suppose it depends on where you live too, since weather is different everywhere. I am inspired to make pretty things in bright, fun fabrics, but am also inspired to play outside and be a kid again.