All's Quiet in the Shadows...

...really, it's not. All is entirely too busy in the Shadows of the Blue Ridge resulting in my blog being pretty much silent. Before I catch up on what's been happening here let me share a couple of Fall photographs:




We are so fortunate to have a Civil War preservation park directly beyond our back yard so we enjoy beautiful views of the woods all year around. I really have no favorite season as they each have beauty of their own. 

Okay, now that we are all calm and peaceful from the beautiful views on to the descriptions of stress what's been going on over this way:

At the end of the summer I was all prepared to dive right in and begin on the fabulous Penny Sampler class taught by the talented Rachel Houser {StitchedinColor.com}. For about the first 4-5 weeks I was able to keep up with the pace of the class. Here is my sampler quilt so far:

The super idea of using the black line drawing and pasting pictures of each block on top comes from Nicolette {DutchComfort}...she's brilliant! Anyway, by now I should be finished with almost all of the blocks and starting to stitch them together. I hope to make some good progress on these blocks this weekend.

One thing that has been taking up so much of my time is these mean, green hunting socks:




I am so happy to say they are almost finished!! I've been kind of making the pattern for these up as I go along...maybe they are a kind of Frankenstein of socks, if you please. I've used little bits of instructions from several different sources and had to redo portions of them a few times to get them just right. They kind of have a funny story behind them. Last year during Christmas I was teasing one of my brother's-in-law that I was going to make him a pair of homemade crochet socks. Mostly I was doing this because I knew he would never take me up on the offer. Well, my other brother-in-law overheard me and said that he would wear a pair of crochet hunting socks if I could make him some. I could never say no. He chose green camo for the color. Wow was it hard to find yarn in right shades. This yarn is Ivy Malagrigo Sock Yarn. It's the first time I've used their sock weight and I have to say...I can't wait to make a pair for myself...not in green, though!

All of the other busyness is not so fun as sewing on sampler quilts, or crocheting socks. Mostly it comes from the school year starting back up again and attending way too many meetings. Hopefully things are now coming to a more manageable pace. 

Happy Fall to you! Here's to cozy mugs of hot chocolate and snuggling under quilts :o)

Planning a Sampler

This Fall I enrolled in The Penny Sampler online class taught by the talented Rachel of Stitched in Color. The main class project is a beautifully designed Scandinavian sampler quilt which Rachel named, "The Penny Sampler." The class focuses on developing skills in three areas:

• machine applique
• precise piecing
• machine paper piecing

Rachel teaches these skills through mini stand-alone projects. The first skill we are working on is machine applique with various techniques to choose from. 

I chose to try the stitch and flip method to create my dogwood petals and then use sketch stitch applique to attach them to my quilted-in-advance background fabric. I seem to be on a grid-quilting roll lately...really like the look of it. It is super fun to sketch stitch! I think I've found something I will continue to enjoy and will add variety to my quilting skills :o) I ended up using my darning foot and free-motion quilting for the sketch stitching. I love the "slightly" messy look of it...so freeing! (Note: this is a stand along project...not part of the Penny Sampler quilt top. It can be used as the front of a pillow, although I may just set this aside for now and try making a quilt-as-you-go mini medallion quilt with it.)

I used three online color palette builders to help me select the colors for my Penny Sampler quilt top. The photo I used for my inspiration is not mine so I'll not post it for public viewing. However, I will show you the rich, beautiful colors that resulted from it!


I am really loving these colors! Deep, dark chocolate browns, teal (this word does not even need any adjectives...it's super all by itself!) rich eggplant purples blending into lively magenta's, mustard yellows, and creamy neutrals. Sounds good enough to eat!

Rachel provided us with a black-line master of the quilt top so we can color it in to help balance out the use of color across the quilt.


Clearly I need more depth to the variety of shades in my colored pencils :o) I just have basic colors so the shades don't match up too well with my fabrics, but I do get an idea where I want to put my main colors. 

This is going to be a fun Fall! Hope you have a great Labor Day weekend~I'm off to work on my next class assignments :o)