a long overdue brag

During the summer, my sweet and talented niece Sarah Traynor visited me and the boys to help with the new baby since Erik was on the other side of the world. And not only did she come and help me take care of my crew, she also brought baby Henry a beautiful handmade quilt that she finished from the reunion. She even quilted it people! The back is the softest chocolate brown minky fabric and Henry just loves the quilt and his cousin Sarah.

Here's Sarah and her three week old recipient, back in June at our house in California.
Thanks, Sarah! We love you!

Special Edition fabric swap!

(Just for fun, I added this picture I found on Amy Butler's website. I fell in love with that quilt! I'm excited to see all the gorgeous things that this group will make with our fabric swap charm squares!)

Okay, for the 30 of you that participated in the Amy Butler fabric swap (and thanks for being forgiving of my late notice about that...), here are the instructions:

We are calling this the Arnett Quilting Bee Reunion Quilt!

We'll each end up with over 70 charm squares (5" squares) to make something with. The only "rules" are that while we are free to add some favorite fabrics from our stash to the reunion quilt, we should try to keep our finished product around 75% made from the charm square pack that we'll receive. Is that clear as mud?

Basically, the fun is in seeing how different each of our quilts end up when we all started with almost identical groups of charm squares. Adding different fabrics to the quilt makes it unique to each of us and our own tastes, and that's fun! But adding too much makes it maybe a little too unique, and then we'll lose the commonality in all of our finished projects.

So feel free to make it your own, but for the fun of it, let's all play the game and make our very own reunion quilt! I went on flickr and searched "Amy Butler charm squares" and this is what I found. Check this out for some inspiration of what to do with your charm square pack. Also, don't forget the post on this blog showing cute projects made with charm squares. Most of the quilts have links to a tutorial on how to make it.

The most important part, of course, is to send me a picture of your finished quilt when you're done. We all want to see what you've made, and email you our "Oohs" and "Aahs".

And lastly, let's all give a big THANK YOU to the Sistahs (Donna, Glenna, Sally, and Peg) for cutting up all that fabric into charm squares. That was a big, tedious job, and we really appreciate your hard work in making this fun fabric swap happen.