Sunny Gnomes (Mystery Stitch-A-Long) Blocks #1-3 (& Gnome for Thanksgiving Blog Hop too)

Joan of Moosestash Quilting is hosting this blog hop. Her Challenge is: To “Gnome” them is to love them! Throw a little Thanksgiving twist into your “Gnomie” project! Or anything that shows your thankful!

I am so Thankful to Joan and Carol (Just Let Me Quilt) for all the years that they have taken turns in hosting these wonderful blog hops! Thanks Joan & Carol!!! This blog hop and December's blog hop hosted by Carol will be the end of their blog hosting team effort as they say goodbye to hosting blog hops and move on to doing other things that they want to pursue. I wish the two of you much happiness and success in whatever you do in the future. This is my last blog hop (with Carol & Joan that is), since I am not participating in the December hop. If anyone else hosts a blog hop now and again, I may join in. If you don't follow my blog, I invite you to follow me if you would like to see the things I create. Thanks!

I joined the Sunny Gnomes Mystery Stitch-A-Long by Calico Patch Designs in July, so I wanted to share whatever blocks I got made so far, with you for the Gnome for Thanksgiving Blog Hop. The Stitch-A-Long is 8 months long and ends in March 2025. I have 3 blocks done so far. I have the appliqué pieces for the 4th block cut out and the 5th block just came out on the 20th (they all come out the 20th of each month), so no time to share that one with you. I focused on the Gnome part of this blog hop.

The patterns call for a flannel background and using wool pieces for the gnomes and sunflowers, etc. I had purchased a lot of Woolies Flannel years ago, so I decided to use that instead of real wool and I chose to use sky prints for the backgrounds. I had to add more grass or dirt to each block so the grass piece didn't look like it was floating up in the sky 😀.

Ladybugs was also part of the theme and if you bought the kit, you would get ladybug buttons and little wooden signs to add. I wanted to use whatever I had on hand, so I added some butterfly buttons and a little leather piece with the word Sunshine written on it for the 1st block and I added a sign on the 3rd block too, using a leather piece with a word as well. 

I am not sure right now if I will put all the blocks into one quilt or make each into separate quilts. It depends on how the blocks will be set into one quilt and if I like it. I still have more blocks to make as they are released and then I will see how they all look before deciding what I want to do.

Block #1 is fused in place ready to be stitched here.

All stitched down with machine blanket stitching, some hand embroidery

 too, buttons, and a little Sunshine sign.

Closeup of the sign and butterfly button.

Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers (Echinacea is also a favorite flower) and I love cute gnomes, so when I saw this Mystery Stitch-A-Long on Facebook, I knew I had to sign up for it. 

Here is Block #2. 

Block #3 is done too. This gnome was supposed to have a braided mustache, but I didn't want it as it was long down to his arms. I may add a regular mustache later. What do you think?

Here is the schedule for the week:

Monday Nov 18

MooseStashQuilting

Ms P Designs

Quilt Schmilt

Scrapdash

 

Tuesday Nov 19

Words & Stitches

Karrins Crazy World

Days Filled With Joy

Quilted Delights

Wednesday Nov 20

Quilting Gail

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilted Snail

Selina Quilts

 

Thursday Nov 21

Just Let Me Quilt

Patchouli Moon Studio (me)

Songbird Design

Joan has set up a Pinterest Page sharing all of the projects that the participants have shared, so you can see them all together. Check the Pinterest Page out here.

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Bear with Santa Hat (wall quilt)

This cute bear wall quilt in a Santa Hat is in the local gift shop for sale.

🐻🧸🎅🎄🤶

                                                       Quilt measures 13" wide x 10" high.

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Gnome for Thanksgiving Blog Hop Coming Soon: November 18-21, 2024

Joan from Moosestash Quilting, is hosting this blog hop.

"Challenge: To “Gnome” them is to love them! Throw a little Thanksgiving twist into your “Gnomie” project! Or anything that shows you're thankful!"

Be sure to hop along and check out all the participants~

Monday Nov 18

MooseStashQuilting

Ms P Designs

Quilt Schmilt

Scrapdash

 

Tuesday Nov 19

Words & Stitches

Karrins Crazy World

Days Filled With Joy

Quilted Delights

 

Wednesday Nov 20

Quilting Gail

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilted Snail

Selina Quilts

 

Thursday Nov 21

Just Let Me Quilt

Patchouli Moon Studio (see you soon)

Songbird Designs

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Sew Powerful Purse- #221 (2024)

Scrappy flap with upcycled denim jeans purse body. 

Scrappy pieced background with appliqué over it.

Front jean pocket is a fun added front pocket.

I appliquéd a flower to the denim jean pocket.

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Sew Powerful Purse #220 (2024)

I made this purse flap by experimenting with using a canvas print. The print was framed and I took off the frame. I wet the print and soaked it in water to make sure it would be okay. It is a bit stiff and has a coating on it, but the water didn't hurt it at all.  I bought several of these prints from the Dollar Tree quite some time ago. Only one Dollar Tree near me had them. This is the 3rd flap I made using the canvas prints I got.

It sewed fine and needed some extra fabric to make the purse wide enough and tall enough (after I first had to trim the bottom down so the woman's head could be seen on the flap), so I added some ribbon strips to this one. A couple of appliqué pieces and buttons too. I have other styles of canvas prints that I haven't made into flaps yet. Next year I will make the flaps and purses on those.

The whole flap here so you can see it all. Above in the first photo the flap is folded to the back side.

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Sew Powerful Purse #219 (2024)

Using up some pieced stuff I made a long time ago and found recently to make a flap for purse. Here is one I came across and now it is a purse to donate to a sweet girl in Zambia.

Donating to Sew Powerful Purse Project.

Added back pocket.

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Scrappy Log Cabin Variation Free Form Quilt~ Donation for Project Linus

I made and donated this quilt along with some other quilts in October to Project Linus. Apparently something happened that caused a stir and brought on some new rules. Someone wrote a letter, but the contents of the letter wasn't disclosed to us PL volunteers, so who knows what it said or if it was a real concern to warrant making so many changes?

PL used to give us labels for us to sew on to our own quilts that we donated, although they guarded those labels and only gave us some when we needed them, but they won't give us labels anymore. They need to inspect each quilt (who knows what they are looking for exactly?) and only certain people will do the inspection and then they will sew on the label for each quilt that will be going to PL. 

We have to now use batting in all quilts, which is pricey and we often buy our own batting or whenever they have batting that is donated to us we can take some. A long arm quilter would quilt our quilts if we wanted her to if we gave them to her and she used Minky on the back and folded it over as a self binding and they were beautiful and soft and didn't really need batting. Now, I have no idea if she will be quilting at all anymore or need to use batting with the Minky backing or no Minky at all? No one has answered my questions about that when I emailed the group leader. 

I would use Polar Fleece as a backing and would not use batting as it was thick enough (like Minky) as it was and it saved on having to buy batting too. This quilt here that I am sharing today, I used no batting, but did use Polar Fleece on the back and it also acted like a batting at the same time. I turned in a few quilts in October that had no batting and wonder if they were rejected as a PL quilt? Did they donate my quilts to the Humane Society for a dog quilt or somewhere else without my knowledge? I made these for PL donations and I really do not want them donated anywhere else but to PL, but I will never know where they went. If I wanted to donate to the Humane Society, I would have made simple dog and cat blankets to donate to them and not spent weeks sewing scraps to create quilt tops and then quilting them to donate to PL for a child to have. PL quilts that are donated to a hospital can be disposed of if they find something that is questionable, such as pet fur/hair on it, chemical smell, smoke, etc. All of this I knew before and none of my quilts ever had these things on them.

 

While there were other changes made too such as using bright kid friendly colors and adding an appliqué on a Polar Fleece blanket that has a crochet edging to make it more kid friendly is something that should have been mentioned years ago. Plus, these quilts are for newborn to 18 years old, so I would add they should be kid friendly for the age of the child they will be going to as well. You wouldn't want to put a babyish appliqué on a quilt going to an 18 year old. So whatever that letter said that brought all the changes about may have been valid, but to not have my questions answered and not knowing whether my quilts were given to a child through PL or donated elsewhere has left me with a bad feeling.

I have now decided to make and donate quilts to send to Ukraine refugees through Wrap the World with Quilts. They need all sizes from baby to adult and anything we make will be wanted and used. We can use any colors. I will mail them through Give Back Box (which is how I mail purses to Sew Powerful) for only $20 and use a large box that can fit several quilts inside the box. They are sent to Utah to be distributed. I had been wanting to make a few quilts to donate to this cause anyhow, so now it will be my charity to donate quilts to.

Here is a scrappy quilt that I had donated to PL, and I hope some older child did receive this quilt. 

Quilt measures 41 1/2" wide x  56 1/2" high.

Polar Fleece backing.

I used up a lot of scraps making this quilt, which tends to take me much more time than cutting out a particular pattern to make, but it is satisfying using up the scraps.

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