24 September 2010

Graduation Quilt Done

I finally finished and mailed off the graduation quilt, and now I am finally able to post a picture.  I started this way back in May with the best of intentions to finish it.  But,  then I came home for two weeks, then went back to Vegas and helped get everything ready for our move to Colorado, so of course the back burner was where this was placed. It didn't turn out as big as I thought but I like it none the less, and of course so does Delsie.


As I was sitting here uploading this picture all I can think about is that I used to get a lot more done.  When I worked full time as a daycare provider I was turning out quilt tops left and right.  Now that I don't work and I am home all day long, I don't seem to get as much done.  I don't know if it is because all of the running around I am doing or what. It is kind of frustrating. I guess if I really think about it I do accomplish some things just not complete quilt things.  I did get 100 charity blocks done and a couple of tops for charity sewn together.

I did receive two large buckets of Christmas fabric from the Quilts from the Heart group, so now I have to sort through the fabric and cut up some kits.  We are trying to get another 60 or so done before Christmas so that is what will be on my agenda over the weekend. I have my niece today so I don't know how much I will accomplish, she is only 2 months old and is ornery one minute and ez pz the next, aren't all kiddos that way anyway.

Take care and get some sewing in.

Michelle

18 September 2010

Emroidering Away

Even though I had to go to the school carnival, help my parents unload groceries and of course play with my 2 month old niece, I was able to get a few things done today.

I of course spent about an hour cutting up my scraps, am making progress, slow but steady for sure.

I started the embroidery squares for the two baby quilts I am making. I finished my neices' squares today, tomorrow I will work on the frogs.  I love the girls I did today, the red work is simple and quick to do, no billion thread changes, and they come out nice. I tried to do a set in yellow but they came out way to light so I had to switch to orange. I am just hoping it doesn't look to "tacky" with the border fabric I am going to use.









There is going to be a total of 12 blocks so I had to repeat 2 of the designs twice.   I just think it is really cute. I know it is for a baby girl, but sometimes I am just get tired of doing the "baby" thing all of the time. I figure this way she can have it around for a long time before out growing it.

Since it never fails, when I am embroidering, if I leave the room my needle breaks, the bobbin thread breaks or some freak of embroidery happens. I decided to do something and I couldn't sew on the other machine since there is not outlet around, honey will work on that tomorrow, I brought up a small wall hanging to finish.  Now mind you it has been sitting around since oh probably January already bound and waiting for the last little bit to be done. So I pulled out the beads and tied them on lickety split, why I waited so long who knows......procrastination.....has a hold on my quite often. I have been working on these wall hanging for about 4 years now, maybe a little bit longer, I only have one more to do. I guess I should try getting that done so another thing is off my list.....just have to remember where I put it...I don't even remember what month I have left to do.



Yesterday I had planned on rearranging my quilt room, well I nixed that really quick. So I straightened and cleaned instead.  I cleaned out to shelves of magazines.  I pulled out the patterns I liked and the rest is on its way to recycle.  I probably got rid of about 100 magazines.  Now I have a little more room to store some fabric. I put all kinds of crap up as well....I seem to have a tendency to tell myself to clean up as I go but in reality I just put it aside and then after awhile I don't have anymore put aside space. So it is now vacuumed, dusted, and straightened....even some boxes left over from the move still......yeah......

Oh yeah the embroidery designs are from Hatched In Africa (http://www.hatchedinafrica.com/)... I love their designs.


Michelle

16 September 2010

Charity Blockathon

I have been busy all weekend and pretty much all week. It doesn't seem like I every accomplish anything or if I do it is only a minuscule amount.

I finished all of my shopping with my special "allowance" and then the rest of the weekend is kind of a blur.  I had a sew in with my online group "Quilted With Love" which was really nice. I ended up getting my cat purse done and straightening out my sewing room. ( Although, if you could see it you wouldn't think I had done anything in there.) One of the gals on the group had a contest that whomever bid the most blocks would get a wall hanging or table topper made for them.  Well, since I don't ever have anything to do, yeah right, there I go making a huge bid, guess my Vegas vibes are still hanging around.  I ended up winning the bid so I spend the rest of Saturday and Sunday picking out fabric from my stash to get these blocks done.  Oh yeah,  the number of blocks I had to make.............................75. Well since I was on a roll and I had a bunch of 4 1/2 inch squares left I just kept going, and going, and going.  Well I finished them all today and I ended up making 100 blocks total.  There are the Tams Patch, from www.quilterscache.com.  I really liked these blocks, they were easy to go together and I had all of the pieces precut from my 2.5 inch bucket, and the precut 4.5 left overs from another project.  I only needed to buy and cut the white on white.  Boy was that fun.  So they will hopefully go into the mail tomorrow and another good deed is done.


Yesterday, I had to run errands.  My husband informed me he needed some more dress shirts and such for work.  One big reason why I miss the military life, we never had to worry about what he was wearing to work. After hitting about 5 stores  (because I am a cheap shopper) to find the things for him, I went shopping for me again.  Hey now, I saved tons of money shopping so I had some to spare for quilty things. 

I ended up going to the local ARC thrift store and found some shirts for my stash.



It was great because I only bought the ones with the 50% off tag color for that day.  So each shirt only cost me about 2.00 a piece, not bad for some cool shirtings.  This next one I had to take a picture of it close up.  I think it is just the coolest for a shirt and will add some zip to whatever I end up putting it in.  Don't you think?

Is that not cool or what? Who would of thought that would appear in a shirt.?



I now have one more have to get done small project then I am free and clear.  I will cut some more scraps from my bin since I have been slacking on that this last week. I am aiming to get all of my Christmas stuff done by Oct. 1.  So I better get a move on.

Michelle

12 September 2010

A Sweet Husband

Friday afternoon my husband came home from work and put a substantial amount of money in front of me  (well enough to buy quit a few yards of fabric but not thousands or anything) and said go have fun at the quilt store.  Needless to say I was out of the house and in the van before my computer chair stopped spinning. Did I need fabric, well no not really, but who can resist. I did by some awesome yellow and red fabric for a quilt I want to make. I also bought some reds and neutrals.  I can never have enough of those.

I didn't get much quilting done until late Saturday afternoon. I spent the morning gallivanting around looking for some cat fabric so I could make this purse for a customer.  I finally found the fabric so home I came.

I was able to complete the purse today, while watching football. I quilted an outline of a cat on the pocket but you can't see it real well. I think I should have used a smaller stipple, guess I will keep that in mind for the next time.



We had a sew in with one of my yahoo groups this weekend, Quilted With Love, so I was on and off the computer and trying to get a lot of sewing done. I had this small table topper, wall hanging from a Schnibble pattern that I had done a long time ago. I ended up quilting it last night. I ended up doing an all over loopy star pattern, it came out OK but not one of my favorites. I think it may have ended up being too busy for me. What do you think?




I still have to bind it down by hand and with my track record it could take forever. I have one quilt that has needed binding for about a year and half almost two and I haven't done it yet. Although it is on the top of my binding pile....I only have 6 over there to bind I think.  Maybe I can get more of those done when all of my prime time shows start next week.

Tomorrow it is the normal household stuff and errands.  I also have my Quilts from the Heart meeting tomorrow as well. I hope I can get a lot accomplished then.


Well off to finish football and bed.

Sew in Piece,

Michelle

09 September 2010

Mindless Sewing....the wonderful 4 patch

I have had a hard time lately with staying home all day by myself.  Yeah, I never thought I would say that either. For the last 4 years I was a stay at home day care provider. I worked 630-500 M-F and I had 4-6 kiddos under the age of 5, plus my own 3 running in and out. I was getting really tired of it at the time, but right now I miss the company and all of my kiddos. I realize I am very lucky that we can afford for me to stay home and be here for the kids whether with school or illness and to be here for my mom as well. But.....I am gradually going crazy and it really has only been 2 weeks since everyone went off, boys to school and hubby to his job.

The funny thing is if I am able to go out and run errands or go spend money (hahaha) then it is no big deal, but the problem with that is you need an unlimited money tree in the backyard to access hourly and of course I don't.  So here I am.......

I couldn't decide on what to do today so I thought I would be productive and blah at the same time.  I have been piecing 2 inch squares together, one light and one dark, Bonnie Hunter style aka. Leaders and Enders, for awhile now and my bucket (which I thought was rather small) was starting to fill up, now mind you it was really about 3/4 full and didn't really look it.... since I was putting the squares in there rather nicely. Off I go chain piecing my little twosies into foursies and finally after hours and hours, not really it just seemed like it, I was done.  So off to the ironing board and then the cutting apart and then the counting.
Can you guess how many I did?........who would of thunk it.

chain piecing pile
ironed 4 patches

close up 4 patches




Ok ....again How many do you think is there? I ended up with 239 of them, yeah I know why couldn't I have just done one more?  I didn't realize that there would be that many, on top of the other 100 or so I have done I think I may have enough to do at least one of Bonnie's  patterns, but alas that will have to wait. I have other things simmering on the back burner, like Christmas gifts, that need to be done first.

I will have to go browse around http://www.quiltville.com/ really quick and see if there are some patterns that will use 2.5 or 1.5 4 patchs and switch gears for now.

The mindless sewing and the scrap cutting, 3 hours this morning, I would say I had a productive day for a change. Don't think I will get anything else major done tonight.  I am a football fan and tonight is the start of the regular season.....Go Saints!!!!!

Enjoy your day and take a few minutes to sew or craft everyday, it makes the day more bearable.

Michelle

07 September 2010

The best laid plans.....

never go according to plan.

Friday I went out and about with my mom and it was great, my tooth started hurting a little bit but no big deal.  Saturday was my day to quilt, well....

I ended up helping my husband install a ceiling fixture my mom had bought at the Restore for 6.99. So after a couple of hours of that I was able to head into the sewing room. My tooth was still hurting me but no big deal, and we were headed to the state fair the next day.



Sunday, up and out of the house early to head down to Pueblo for the fair, tooth is really starting to hurt me and I am popping pain pills every four hours and have been up since 230 the night before.

The fair turned out pretty good it was really hot, 99 degrees at one point. I did get to look at some of the quilts but couldn't bring my self to take any pictures because my tooth was giving me fits. I ended up leaving early with my parents and left my husband, boys, sister and niece there. I figured we paid 50 bucks for their ride passes, they were going to get good use out of it.

So, up on Monday and oh my goodness. My tooth was not hurting me anymore but the right side of my face was super duper swollen. I would post a picture but I don't want to scare anyone away. My dad informed me he was going to forward the picture to Stephen King for his next book. Gotta love my family.

So finally found a dentist that was open on the Holiday, and they ended up giving my some antibiotics and once they figure out exactly what tooth it is, a root canal will happen, scheduled for next Monday.

So here it is Monday....I get up this morning and my face looks worse than yesterday, if that is possible. So the normal routine has to kick in,  I get the boys up, take the middle schooler to school then off to Wal-Mart for milk and such.  Oh the looks I was getting...I did attempt to walk around as much as possible with my hand over my face but...... I look like I got severely beaten but without the bruises. So hopefully by tomorrow it will start to improve. It is kind of hard to do anything because I keep thinking I have something in my eye, that is how puffy it is around my eye.

So all of my plans for quilting on Saturday and Monday did not happen. I did iron 2 buckets of scraps and cut a lot up, figured it was the easiest thing to do with my vision problem.



It's almost empty. YEAH!!!

I did get a couple of sections done on my Joy quilt, I am still on step 1A and have 7 arcs I think. I only have 18 total of B and D to do.  The pictures below are for B.






I am off to attempt to get some more done.  I have a feeling this quilt will be a long ongoing project. I can only paper piece for a little while before I get tired of it, and the mess it makes. So i think I will try and get once small section done a week. I know it won't be a complete step because that is at least 36 sections at a time. Maybe I will aim for 2-4 sections a week. I don't want to get burned out on it and it isn't like I don't have enough stuff laying around to do and it is not something I have to have done right away.

Oh...... I did get a graduation project done Friday night. I can't post a picture yet since the recipient is nosey and comes on here every day to see if I posted a picture of it. Like I don't know she does that. So I have to wait and post after I send it out to her. Sorry Delsie you are just going to have to wait for your uber late gift.

Hope to check in again tomorrow with more progress.

Hope everyone had a better holiday than I did and did a lot of sewing as well.

Michelle

02 September 2010

A trip for one turns into many things.......

Well I did get the patterns almost all copied for my new project that I am starting. Some of them were too big for my printer so I will have to trace them and some of them took a little finagaling to get them to copy. So after all of that hard work...I went shopping.  I went looking for a basting gun and an Omingrid L96 ruler, no such luck on either of those but I did get some fabric instead. I am trying to stock up on lights and they are so hard to find so I try and buy when I see them. They only had FQ's in most of these but I figured anything was better than nothing.



Then my mom has been wanting a purse with pockets on the side so I found this pattern, and the other one I thought was just too cute, will be good for on of my neices for sure.





I also thought I would share the fabric that I am getting ready to go iron, for the JOY project. I love them all and I hope that I don't go crazy and cut the fabric wrong since the pattern is kind of hard to understand.

This is actually one piece of fabric, the green is the center, blue the top, and red the bottom.



The sunflower is the main fabric throughout.


I just hope I can get it to work with out a lot of problems. I already decided I will save up and send this one out to be quilted.  Oh I can not wait until the day I can get a long arm......maybe I will win the lottery....oh that's right you have to play it first.....well.....I might just go get me a couple of them there tickets. You never know.....


Well don't think I will be getting a lot of quilting done this weekend. We have open house tonight, and I think I have been nominated to run the popcorn Fridays at the school. We then have the state fair on Sunday. Maybe a little bit on Saturday and Monday.

Everyone have a safe and sewful holiday weekend.

Michelle

01 September 2010

Charity Quilts

I finally had a day home so I spent it in the quilt room along with Rhett and Scarlet. I popped in the DVD for Gone With The Wind and away I went.

First thing I did was iron another 5 gallon bucket of scraps so that I could put them in the cutting pile I had finished the last pile last night, it only took me about 2.5 hours to iron it all (Who would have ever thought I would get calluses on my hands from ironing). The good news is that now I can close the lid to my scrap locker, which is one of those long black foot lockers with wheels, YEAH. So even though it doesn't look like I am making progress....I must be.  Only four more months to get them all done to meet my personal goal.

I did get two charity quilts finished, they were rather quick since I just turned them. One I did straight stitching and the other one I quilted with a meander.

Charity String Quilt
Charity Strings Close Up


Once I was done with those I decided that my string bucket was getting way too full, it was starting to overflow....so out came the last of the muslin foundations squares that I had precut and away I went. I did get 19 string blocks done....I don't think I made a dent in my string bucket though. What do you think?



I think tonight I will head back in the "dungeon", as my husband likes to call it, and cut some more foundation muslin squares. If I have any muslin left....if not I think I might dare to start my JOY kit that I have. I have been wanting to make this forever and I bought the kit cuz I love it so much, yet...I am kind of intimidated since it is A LOT of paper piecing.....but I guess I just have to remember one step at a time. So I am off to read the directions again and if I don't panic I will show you any progress I have made in a couple of days.

Sew In Piece,

Michelle