The Darling Dogwood

Monday, June 1, 2026

Sunflower Spice blog hop!

There's a blog hop highlighting a beautiful rainbow collection that kicks off today! Sunflower Spice is a signature collection for Jennifer of Curlicue Creations by Island Batik/Lumin Fabrics. I love, love, love the bright colors in this collection! To celebrate, Jennifer is hosting a blog hop featuring beautiful quilts made with these fabrics AND she's giving away a fat quarter bundle of Sunflower Spice!

I am very excited to be participating! I have absolutely loved working with these fabrics. The colors are so bright, and I love the motifs of sunflowers, oak leaves, and acorns. Here's the schedule:

June 1: Curlicue Creations

June 2: Freemotion by the River

June 3: Lisa's Quilting Passion

June 4: Larkspur Lane Designs

June 5: Textile Time Travels

June 6: Lady Blue Quilt Studio

June 7: Sew Preeti Quilts

June 8: Quilted Delights

June 9: Sew Cute and Quirky

June 10: The Darling Dogwood

I don't get to show off what I've made until the very last day. To tide you over, here's a sneak peak of my project:

Sunday, May 31, 2026

Red Flare

May sure hustled it's way through my life! I think I blinked and missed it! I've been busy getting the teacher quilts ready for the end of the year. This year's homeroom & English teacher, Ms. W, stated that red is her favorite color. Red is frequently a struggle for me. I think partly because I don't tend to have much of it and partly because it's hard to do scrappy.

I decided on my pattern Flare, which I made previously for a blog hop for Berry Crush, a previous signature collection for Jennifer of Curlicue Creations. (The blog hop for Jennifer's next signature collection starts tomorrow!) I have made all but the very first teacher quilt usig Island Batik fabrics, mostly because I have so much of it. But as I said, I don't have a lot of red. I did have a fair amount of leftover from a wide back from a previous year's red quilt, so I decided to use that as my red fabric and paired it with black, white, and gray Island Batik solid.

Using the two types of fabric together was not a problem. They are both cotton, the batik just has a little bit of a tighter weave. Now that it's been washed, I can't feel a difference!

I also want to show two quilts I've posted previously, but they weren't completely finished yet. The first is Emerge, which I made for The Inquiring Quilter's blog hop in January. The fabrics are Starry Seas for Island Batik. I didn't quilt have the binding done on my day for the hop. Now here it is, bound and washed!

The second is my version of the Magnificent Mystery, made during the QAL led by Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs. I was working against Cheryl's deadline for the finish parade and just squeaked by with a finished top. It's now been quilted, bound, and washed. All fabrics are Island Batik.

Despite my lack of posts in May, I was actually busy with finishes!

Thursday, April 30, 2026

Round Robin Winners

I am dreadfully behind in posting our Stay at Home Round Robin winners. I believe the other hosts have shared already, but I wanted to make sure to post as well.

We kept a spreadsheet of all participants and everyone got a number when they linked up for each round. After the linky for the final quilt parade closed, the six hosts held a Zoom call. We used a random number generator to determine prize winners. Here we are, together on the call.

And here are our prize winners:

Andree

Betty C

Carol A

Carolyn B

Cathy L

Daryl

Dena E

Donna R

Janine

Kat

Laura R

Leanna

Linda

Lynn B

Nann

Pat

Sara

Sharon

Yvonne

Many, many thanks to our sponsors!

We've already talked about next year, so we hope you will all sew along with us again beginning in January 2027!

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Magnificent Mystery

Cheryl at Meadow Mist designs does a mystery quilt along every year. I love Cheryl's patterns and her mysteries always turn out great. This year it's the Magnificent Mystery. I started mine late, but I still got the top done just in time for her finishing parade! All of my fabrics are from Island Batik's Foundations.

I made a few minor changes to Cheryl's pattern, the advantage of starting once the design is revealed! 😃 Cheryl also does an un-mystery for those who don't want to commit without knowing the design. I cut out the partial blocks at the top and bottom, and chose something other than the background fabric for the center of the stars. I will use the same fabric from the chains as the binding, giving it a bit of a frame. This is for a teacher whose favorite colors are blue and green.

One of the best parts of these mysteries is seeing all the different color and fabric combinations that people use. Hundreds of quilters participate! There will be a finishing parade next week on Cheryl's blog.

Sunday, March 29, 2026

Stay at Home Round Robin Finish

The Stay at Home Round Robin is such a fun way to start the year! I can't believe we're at the end already! Thanks to everyone who has sewn along! I love how different everyone's quilts turn out!

I am a few days late posting my SAHRR finish. My dad passed away last week and I'm off my schedule and off my game. I was fortunate enough to make it across the country to be with him when he passed, and I had just been out a few weeks before and spent time with him. Here's a picture of him from 2019 with the tea cozy he asked me to make him.

My apologies for the late post, and I appreciate everyone's understanding.

I did my SAHRR as a row by row this year. When we last met, I had completed each row but had not sewn them together. There were a total of 7 rows: 6 hostess rounds and the opening round. (Opening round would have been the center had I done a medallion style quilt.) Because my rounds were all different block sizes, I used filler on the edges to get each row to 56" wide. Here are those 7 rows together, as they were after Anja's round 6.

I used a 10" stack of the Garden Gate collection by Island Batik. I also had 2 yards of a light fabric, which I used as the background, and 2 yards of a purple fabric. I used a little of the purple in the rows, but saved most of it so I would have it for sashing. I put a 1" finished strip of purple inbetween the rows. I did not keep the rows in the order in which I made them. I picked the layout that I thought looked most pleasing overall. I then decided I wanted it a little bigger, so I added a wide outer border as well. It measures approximately 60" x 80". I am calling this Garden Rows. It's just a top for now, as I did not have time to quilt it.

Kathleen has the final link up. The linky will close Tuesday night and on Saturday, the hostesses will get together and draw for prizes! Thanks again to our generous sponsors, who are listed at the end of this post.

I hope you have all enjoyed the Stay at Home Round Robin 2026! And yes, we are planning 2027! The Stay at Home Round Robin is one of my favorite projects all year and I am thrilled that we will back with another round (pun intended!) next year!

Stay at Home Round Robin Sponsors:

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Round Robin #6: Quilter's Choice

It's the last round of the Stay at Home Round Robin! This project always go so fast! This week, you will link up with Anja. She says Quilter's Choice! Choose whatever you think your quilt needs for its final round and link up this week. Then, come back in a month for our parade of finishes. You can display either a finished top or a finished quilt for the parade that opens on March 25th. For each week you link up, you get an entry into our prize drawing, to be done after the Parade of Finishes. Prizes and sponsors are listed at the end of the post.

My biggest challenge for this round was background fabric. I originally intended to use the 2 large cuts from Garden Gate that I had equally for background, but I ended up using the lighter multi as my background by default. The darker purple just didn't work as well in the blocks. I had some hourglass units for my first attempt at Brenda's round 1 that I didn't use, so I created a block using those units, and I added what I had of the lighter fabrics in the collection where I would have used background had I had enough. I needed a few more hourglass units, plus enough of the background to put sashing in-between blocks and at the edges. I pieces every little scrap I had together and while I made it through the blocks, I didn't have enough to make the row the same width as the others.

Gail to the rescue! She had some left from her Garden Gate project last fall and was generous enough to send it to me. Hooray! I was able to finish my row. The photos are from before the fabric arrived in the mail.

I now have seven rows. One of the things I like about doing the SAHRR as a row by row is that it's easy to move the rows around, so I'm not stuck with the order we chose the rounds. I'm going to play with what arrangement I think looks best and I'll have a completed top to show you next month.

January 14th: Center/Centre blocks Gail @ Quilting Gail

January 21st: First Round: hourglass units Brenda @ Songbird Designs

January 28th: Second Round: make it a double Kathleen @ Kathleen McMusing

February 4th: Third Round: Animal Kingdom That's me!!! Emily @ The Darling Dogwood

February 11th: Fourth Round: Curves Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life

February 18th: Fifth Round: Two Colors Gail @ Quilting Gail

February 25th: Sixth Round: Quilter's Choice Anja @ Anja Quilts

March 25th: Parade of Finishes showing all of your finished SAHRRs!

The Prizes:

Lumin Fabrics (Island Batik) - 3 Fat Quarter Bundles: Playful Posies, Geometric Symphony and Paradise Palms
Hobbs Batting: wool batt
Sew Fresh Quilts: 3 patterns
Aurifil Thread
Oliso mini Iron, mat and carrying case
Fat Quarter Shop: Gift certificate and 2 charm packs
Devoted Quilter: 2 patterns
Songbird Designs: 1 pdf pattern
Grace & Piece Co: t-shirt
Quilter's Dream: 8 assorted batts
Crafty Quilter: 2 patterns

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Round Robin #5: Two Colors

Welcome back to the Stay at Home Round Robin! It's been so fun to see all of these quilts take shape! This week, our mastermind Gail tells us what to do. She says this round is two colors, so you can do whatever you want, but only use two colors. If you wish, you may use two colors plus background.

The background fabric I'm using in my blocks is multi-colored, but I'm declaring that single fabric as one "color" for the sake of this round. Then my second color is purple. Each block has two purple fabrics, but they are both definitely purple, so I'm saying that counts. Therefore, my two colors are Background and Purple.

This round actually helped me out a lot because I'm running out of fabric! I'm using a 10" Stack (layer cake) of Garden Gate from Lumin Fabrics, and I'm down to mostly scraps. Luckily, I have a 2-yard cut of one of the darker purples, so I was able to combine that with some of the other purples in the collection for this round. I think that dark purple is photographing darker than it actually is; I promise that's it's clearly purple in person and not black!

These blocks are 8" finished. I made 6 of them and added 1" sashing in-between, and added enough on the rows to come out to 56" (even though it's off-center in the photo!)

Gail has the linky for this week. Remember, each week that you link up gets you an entry into our prize drawing at the end of the round robin. We have some really great sponsors and amazing prizes! The full list is at the end of this post.

One of the best parts of the SAHRR is everyone uses the same prompt in very different ways! Be sure to visit all the hosts to see all the ways we interpreted two colors.