We Shall Sew

{WiP} Wednesday ~ 6/52

2012-02-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

(sigh)

This hasn't been the greatest week for me - emotionally, physically, creatively...so I don't have much to show for my very limited efforts. I wish I did, but I think the about the only WiP I made any progress on is Juice. He's growing and healthy and active and that's all good, it's just that pretty much every other element in my life has taken a hit this week.

That's not entirely true. We celebrated our first birthday as the Front Range MQG on Saturday, so there was a lot that went into the preparations for the wonderful meeting, and then it's a whole day (we have a meeting in the morning, then a sew in the afternoon), and I think I just over did it. Last week was a busy week anyways, then the meet-and-sew on Saturday, and then Sunday I was tired, and Monday I was tired (and my fibroid was overactive) and Tuesday I was tired (and my fibroid was active), and all of that just doesn't make for much time to sew!!

I can show you this, though. Oh, wait. I was going to show you pictures of the swaddling blankets and burp cloths I made for Kelly, but I just realized that I sent them without taking any pictures! I'm a dork! I was so focused on keeping them a secret that I am keeping them a total secret! Doh!

Eh, you've all seen flannel swaddling blankets and burp cloths. I was just kind of excited to be able to show you a FINISH!!! :o) Thank you, by the way, to all of you that said the "lettuce edge" (i.e., wavy edge) to the blankets was attractive and not an unhappy accident. I appreciate it!

One thing (not sewing related, though), that I did accomplish this week was making Valentine's for my oldest daughter's preschool class. They were very specific that we couldn't bring anything edible since some kids have allergies, so I went with the oh-so-popular-on-Pinterest heart-shaped crayon idea. (I used the tutorial from Chef Messy, but there are tons out there.)

Here's a picture of the girls watching the crayons melt. They, of course, did not stick around for the entire process.

Here are the crayons after they came out of the oven:

Here is Mookie writing each one. All. By. Herself. Holy shemozzle, my blood pressure was sky-high during this! I know how to clean Sharpie off, that's not what was stressful, it was the whole process of her writing...the...capital...T...then...writing...the...lowercase...o...
then...two...dots...for...the...colon...then...starting...each...kid's...name...
Oy! Girlfriend was proud of herself, though, and that's more important, I know. :)

And here's a picture of Miss Proud-of-Herself with a finished Valentine:

So, yeah. There's a finish for the week! And, believe you me, it took nearly all week!!

Here's what's on the menu for this week, though:

Still Cooking

The Harrison Quilts ~ even more progress, though not finished.
Christmas Cards ~ no progress. I think I might just put these away and call it a failure.
Bee Blocks ~ Back to 9. Being in 4 bees kinda stinks right about now. :)
Seaglass Quilt ~ I'm making some VERY slow progress on the back. I keep wanting to work on it, but bedtime keeps happening. Or dinner needs to be made. It'll happen, I know it will. I was very disappointed to not be able to show it on Saturday at our meeting since I fully expect to be finished with it and it be gone by the next meeting, but that's what Flickr is for, right? :)

Here. Here's a picture of a print out of a picture of the back that I need to work on:
(it's purposely a crappy photo because I want to keep it a secret) :o)
Baby Gifts ~ making progress! Some gifts done (Kelly received her receiving blankets last week! Yay!). I was down to 12 friends pregnant, but then another friend made known how fruitful her uterus is, so we're back to 13. It is IN the water, folks.
Juice ~ daily progress. I'm getting larger and more uncomfortable every day. I'm not very excited about the fact that he's taking my breath away, and he's not even born yet!
Mod Mosaic Quilt ~ I haven't done anything on it this week, but the FRMQG retreat is coming up, and I plan to Mod Mosaic my way through that weekend.

On The Back Burner

Fruit Strip Quilt ~ stalled.
Mod Mosaic Blocks ~ stalled.
Puppet Theater Backdrop ~ stalled. The girls think it's superfab without it, so why bother?
MQG Showcase Quilt ~ stalled...and I'm not actually sure it's going to go anywhere. Which is a real disappointment because I really wanted to do it and submit it for the MQG showcase, but I just don't know how realistic it is to finish it by March 2nd without completely abandoning all my other responsibilities and commitments.
Secret Projects ~ stalled, sigh, 8 still to go.
Maternity Skirts ~ I'm taking these off. There's no point in even thinking about making them.
Quilt-alongs ~ stalled, but I had a great conversation with some of the gals coming to the FRMQG retreat, and we're going to have our own little Shhhhwoon-Along at the retreat. Yay!
Juice's Quilt ~ stalled.
T-Shirt Quilts ~ stalled. Since I'm doing this with/for other people, I'm waiting on them to make it urgent.
Sprout's Goodnight Moon Quilt ~ stalled, her birthday is in May, so maybe I'll finish it then.

I've also kinda tried to stay away from the computer this last week, trying to spend my upright-and-on-a-machine time to the sewing machine, so if you left me a comment last week, I apologize for not responding! I totally meant to! :-( I love that you commented! Rilly, I do!

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for her regular WiP Wednesday feature. Check out what other people have accomplished this week!

{WiP} Wednesday - 5/52

2012-02-07T23:18:00.000-07:00

Not the greatest week in the "Done" department, but not as bad as the past few, at least! :)

Done

Bee Happy Blocks - January - Janice sent pieces of Hope Valley and asked us to make one block with (non-wonky) triangles, and one block with a circle of Hope Valley set into a white circle. Here's what I made. The triangles are loosely based on something I saw called a Friendship Block, and the circle is loosely based on Denyse Schmidt's Pie In The Sky quilt block:

Swaddling Blankets - I got a small stack of swaddling/receiving blankets finished for Kelly once I got my serger back (hooray!), but there is a steep learning curve with that thing! It's a totally different kind of animal than a regular sewing machine! Sheesh! So, there were some hiccups, and some re-doing, and, well, they're done. Kelly also had her baby on time, so I'm way behind now. I was totally counting on that boy being a week late like her other kids. :)

Interestingly, I found that if I did a regular 4-thread chain stitch (below, on the left), the edge laid flat, but I didn't really like it. It wasn't decorative enough. So I did a 3-thread rolled hem (below on the right), with a contrasting thread, and I like it much better.

Still Cooking

The Harrison Quilts ~ some progress, though not finished.
Christmas Cards ~ no progress.
Bee Blocks ~ 2 down, 8 to go! :) Heck, probably 9 or 10 by now, I've lost track.
Seaglass Quilt ~ I'm still stuck on the back. It'll happen, I know it will.
Baby Gifts ~ making progress! Some gifts done, and I remembered another friend who is pregnant, so for about 2 days, I had 13 friends who are pregnant. Then Kelly had her adorable little Tucker Man, and I'm back to 12. :)
Juice ~ progressing nicely, I guess. No status change...which is a really really good thing at 30 weeks!
Mod Mosaic Quilt ~ As a member of the Flickr Mod Mosaic bee, I got to be first, and I went with monochromatic blocks so I can make a (say it with me) spectrum quilt. Take a gander at this bad boy, and try to curb your jealousy:

On The Back Burner

Fruit Strip Quilt ~ stalled.
Mod Mosaic Blocks ~ stalled.
Puppet Theater Backdrop ~ stalled. The girls think it's superfab without it, so why bother?
MQG Showcase Quilt ~ stalled, but there needs to be!! I need to move this one up!
Secret Projects ~ stalled, sigh, 8 still to go.
Maternity Skirts ~ heck, at this rate, I might as well just leave them alone and wear them after I have the baby!
Quilt-alongs ~ stalled.
Juice's Quilt ~ stalled.
T-Shirt Quilts ~ stalled. Since I'm doing this with/for other people, I'm waiting on them to make it urgent.
Sprout's Goodnight Moon Quilt ~ stalled, her birthday is in May, so maybe I'll finish it then.

Lots and lots to do this week! Hopefully I'll get more done. I'd really love to be able to show the Seaglass quilt at my MQG meeting on Saturday.

I hope you have a great, and productive, week!

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for her regular WiP Wednesday feature. Check out what other people have accomplished this week!

Taking It For Granite

2012-02-04T09:06:00.001-07:00

I discovered something yesterday.

And it relates to a very important discovery I made Wednesday morning.

In a box marked "batting", I found nearly 25 yards of flannel prints. Yes I have a problem. I realize this, but that isn't the point. The point is, rather than having to buy flannel to make receiving blankets for the 13 people I know that are pregnant (I realized I forgot another friend! Gah!), I can just go "shopping" in my stash!

Hello happy wallet, eh?! :)

Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, I guess, most of it is definitely girlie. In general, I think that cute flannel for boys is just hard to find anyways, and also, I've got two little girls, and most of my friends were having girls, so my eyes went to the girlie flannel. Good then, not necessarily bad now, because of my 13 friends that are pregnant, half are having girls, so I'm good. I think I may still need to buy some boy flannel, but I know I'm saving money right now.

Which is nice.

Anyway. After that discovery, I chose a few prints and washed them. I always prewash flannel. I don't always prewash my quilting cotton. Flannel shrinks. Not good. Prewash. Good.

Now, as hard as I try to prevent it, there are inevitably wrinkles in the flannel. And those wrinkles run deep, you know? I kind of hate to have to iron out the wrinkles in flannel, but it seems like something I just can't avoid. :-/

Back to Line 1 -- I discovered something yesterday.

My (granite) kitchen island is PERFECT for ironing flannel. PERFECT!!!

It's just the right height, it is muuuuuch wider than my ironing board, I don't have to worry about the flannel sticking to the board, I don't have to worry about stray threads from other fabric sticking to the flannel, I get to be near my children when they don't want to play upstairs near my ironing board...the list goes on and on.

I ironed the piece on the left, and you can see how different it is compared to the piece on the right, that I didn't iron, yet. It's not, you know, scientific, or anything, but to me, it's a pretty significant difference. Especially since some of my cuts of flannel are 2 yards. Ironing 2 yards of sticky flannel on an ironing board is aaaaggggoooonnnnyyy. Ironing 2 yards of flannel on my island is eeeeaaaassssyyyy. Zip, zip, zip.

Now, if only I could find a cutting mat that fit the island exactly...THAT would be a dream come true. :)

In other news, I finished my bee blocks for Janice (for the Bee Happy bee). She sent us Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley and asked us to make on block with triangles, no wonky allowed, and one block with a set-in circle, where the innards of the circle could be any design we wanted.

I looked and looked at block designs with triangles, and kept coming back to the simple ones. I saw what someone called a friendship block, so I went with it, modifying it a bit. And for the inside of the circle, I decided to go with a loosely inspired version of Denyse Schmidt's Pie In The Sky pattern. The setting-in was challenging, and I was really sure it would come out all warped and gross and, well, just wrong.

But it turned out with very microscopic warps, and Janice is pleased with both, so that's a win.

OH...and in other, exciting news...I get to pick up my serger today!! They figured out how to make the knocking stop, and get the rocking started! I'm so excited. I'm not sure, yet, what the problem was, but I've prepped a bit so, hopefully I can crank out some things tonight and tomorrow.

THAT would make me happy as this has been a low-sew week.

{WiP} Wednesday 4/52

2012-02-01T00:15:00.003-07:00

Wednesday to Wednesday goes fast!

(I linked up with Lee at Freshly Pieced again. There are some really great things being created all over, and linked up there.)

I had some success this week with a (sshhh!) new project.

I decided on Thursday, or was it Friday, to take out a serger that had been given to me, and see if I could figure out how to make it work. Keep in mind that I'd never even plugged it in! I had it serviced, so I knew it worked...I just didn't know HOW! :o) But I was determined. And I had my friends on Facebook to help me.

Friday I learned that even though it was serviced, and worked in the shop, it didn't work at home. It's a 5-thread serger, and when I took it back to the shop on Saturday, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with the 5th thread over there - the chain-looper. One theory is that the thread is just, plain, old. Another is that there is a problem with that looper. I decided I didn't need to chain loop anything, so I bought 4 cones of new thread, and tested it out there in the shop, and was PLEASED!! With myself. With them. With the serger. With my new list of possibilities (like I need more projects??)...pleased.

I took it home, cut out some fabric for a possible baby gift idea I can (a) whip out like butter, and (b) save a ton of money on, and proceeded to serge my way to glory.

Oh, that serger was a-rockin'! And then...it started knockin'. :-( At precisely 3:50, and the repair shop closes at 4:00. On the other side of town. :-( And it stopped working altogether. My serger went belly up, and took my motivation with it! Saturday at 4:00pm.

And I haven't seen my motivation since. I took my serger in Monday morning to see if they can get the timing back to sync, and I'm sure hoping they can! I want it back! It's only been sitting in my closet collecting dust for over a year, but I'm desperate to have it back rightnow!!

Still Cooking

The Harrison Quilts ~ some progress, though not finished.
Christmas Cards ~ no progress.
Bee Blocks ~ I've only got, like 10 to make...hah! Here's one, though, for Janice in the Bee Happy Bee. She asked for one block with triangles of any sort (just not wonky), and one with circles. I haven't started that one yet since I haven't seen my mojo in a while.
Unnamed Quilt ~ I actually have a name for it (Seaglass), and have finished the top, and even know what I'm going to do for the back, but I can't share any of it with you. It's stalled because while I am excited about the back, I am also intimidated. I shouldn't be. I know this. But I am. :o) I'm silly.
Baby Gifts ~ stalled, although I am making preparational progress. I just can't make actual progress until I find out the fate of my serger. I actually know of 11 other people that are pregnant right now. Oh, dang! 12! My neighbor! Shoot. I have GOT to get on the ball with this!!
Juice ~ He's growing nicely. I had an ultrasound yesterday, and he is measuring right on track, maybe even a little big (gasp!). And his current estimated weight is a hefty 3.4 pounds. But if you think that from this point the baby gains about 1/2 pound a week, and I've got 9-10 weeks left, that puts him between 7.5 and 8 pounds! Yipes! I won't know what to do with a baby that big! Both my girls weighed 6 1/2 pounds at birth. :o)

On The Back Burner

Fruit Strip Quilt ~ stalled.
Mod Mosaic Blocks ~ stalled.
Puppet Theater Backdrop ~ stalled. The girls think it's superfab without it, so why bother?
MQG Showcase Quilt ~ stalled, but there needs to be!! I need to move this one up!
Secret Projects ~ stalled, sigh, 8 still to go.
Maternity Skirts ~ heck, at this rate, I might as well just leave them alone and wear them after I have the baby!
Quilt-alongs ~ stalled.
Juice's Quilt ~ stalled.
T-Shirt Quilts ~ stalled. Since I'm doing this with/for other people, I'm waiting on them to make it urgent.
Sprout's Goodnight Moon Quilt ~ stalled, her birthday is in May, so maybe I'll finish it then.

So, yeah. I need to find that dadgum pile of motivation and get. to. work!!! I need to get some finishes under my belt!!

I hope you have a great week, and get more done than I am! :o)

{WiP} Wednesday ~ 3/52

2012-01-25T09:15:00.002-07:00

I had some successes this week, but no finishes that I can show you. :)

Stick a Fork In It!
I finished the dadgum frustrating block from Friday's post. I said I was tempted to throw it out and start over...well, that's pretty much what I did! I salvaged as much of the original fabric as I could, but just started over. I like how it turned out, but I'm glad it's done! That's one thing about bees, they definitely yank you out of your comfort zone! No mercy! :) I love my bees, though. Here's a peek at the pile of ~~trash~~ scraps I generated:

Cooking

The Harrison Quilts -- I used the Fruit Stripe binding to bind my solids challenge quilt. Last fall, I bought The Binding Tool, and this is the first chance I've had to use it. I watched the video a couple of times, and went confidently to the cutting table. I held the ruler just so, I marked where I was supposed to mark, I held my breath and cut. Much to my dismay, it was too short. I had at least 6 inches of extra binding, and I cut it too short. Mama was not happy! :) So I went to bed. I should know not to operate a rotary cutter after 11pm. The next morning I woke up and realized what my problem was, and what my solution was. Now I'm debating whether to finish the binding by machine or by hand.

Christmas Cards -- I sent two out! Yay me!
Bee Blocks -- No progress. I have my plan, I just need to execute it. Here are the lovely Hope Valley prints that Janice sent.

Happy Quilt -- (aka Fruit Stripe Quilt). I'm moving this to the Back Burner.
Unnamed Quilt -- I got the fabric cut for another baby quilt, and I'm excited to get started. And finished! I can't wait to see what it looks like. :) I think this can be done quickly (if I can stay off the computer!)
Baby Gifts -- Hi, Kelly! :)
Juice -- "Juice". That's what I've decided to name the little Chinese cabbage-sized human growing in my womb. "Juice" because that's pretty much all I could drink from mid-August till about mid-November. Yesterday I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and was quite surprised by this.

Look how round that bump is! I am 28 weeks along, and everything is progressing normally. :)

On the Back Burner

Fruit Stripe Quilt-- the colored fabric is all cut, now I just need to cut the background.

Mod Mosaic Blocks -- not urgent. Yet.
Puppet Theater Backdrop -- not urgent.
MQG Showcase Quilt -- I just have to get some other stuff done first.
Secret Projects -- one down, at least 8 more to go! :)

Maternity Skirts -- still too cold.
Quilt-alongs -- I think I'm going with the Swoon Quiltalong, and I'll do the wonky star quilt for myself some other time. I just think my uncle (and aunt!) will like the Swoon quilt more than a wonky star quilt. I'm also holding off on starting Amy's Craftsy Block of the Month one because, for the life of me, I can't figure out what fabric to use!
Juice's Quilt -- eh, he won't know the difference for at least 3 years. :)
T-shirt Quilts -- no change.
Sprout's Goodnight Moon Quilt -- gotta get other stuff done first!

Other than that, hahaha, I think it should be a quiet week around here.

I hope you have a great, and crafty week!

(I linked up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. Check out the other WiPs out there. Intimidating and inspirational all at the same time!)

Tangled in The Web

2012-01-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

So, yes. I cleaned off my workstation. Yes, I've been productive. The whole "everyone off the Internet for a whole day" thing helped on Wednesday. Thank you, lawmakers. :o)

Unfortunately, I've been productive doing things that I can't post about!!

What's the point in having a creative blog to show everyone what you're secretly creating when the people you're secretly creating for are reading same said blog?? :-( Such is the life in this interconnected interwebby world, eh?

So, anyways, here's a picture of the mostly stuck on the design wall Happy Quilt for you:

I've got to cut some background fabric for it, and I can start piecing it, but I had to order a very small amount of fabric to complete it. I'm hoping to break out of this odd habit I have where I canNOT begin a project until I have all the parts for it. Even if I'm waiting on something miniscule to be used at the end. It's just wrong for me to behave and create that way! It's an incredible waste of precious time...so, yeah. I want to stop that silliness. :o)

I also got the binding ready for the quilt I have to bind. The binding reminds me of Fruit Stripe gum. Remember that? It was good. Except the flavor lasted exactly 9.4 seconds.

I think I'll probably bind The Happy Quilt with the Fruit Stripe binding also, and change the name of the quilt to Fruit Stripe. :o)

I worked on a frustrating bee block that I can't show you (see interwebbyness above), and didn't get it done. First of all, I'm following a tutorial that isn't written quite as accurately and explicitly as I need. Second, this one isn't a mindless block, if that makes sense. There's a lot of attention required. And maybe a lot more patience and confidence than I have. I'm very tempted to throw it away and just start over. I just don't have the time or the energy to attempt to take something that is a failure and make it look fabulous, when, in the end, it's going to look like a failure anyways. I've already spent more time on it than I care to admit, and I'm just not sure that spending more time will make a difference. I'm ready to cut my losses and start over.

In a Truth Project update, I'm finding it really hard to live within the limits I set for myself. Some things are easier than others, of course, but some of them are just really hard! Last week we did really well with not eating out, but this week, we've eaten out twice. I did buy fabric, but I only bought fabric for projects that I have in mind, and are already in progress, so that's okay. I did buy a sewing tool I could possibly borrow, but I'm not sure if I know anyone who actually has said tool, so I haven't used it yet, and I'm still holding onto the receipt. :o) And I did have to buy an office supply item. I had to buy a new printer because our old one was possessed by evil spirits. And it was on super sale. And I know I'll be infinitely happier (right??). That printer was what blew my budget, though. And our trash can broke, so I need to buy a new one of those. Sweet little, angel-faced, Sprout loves to get stuff out of the trash can, so we need a robust one. With a lid. ;o)

Aww, just look at that sweet little face.

It's strange, though. Sorta. Yes and no. That in my attempt to cut out the "spirit of poverty", I'm feeling more strapped than ever!

The Truth is depressing, isn't it!

{WiP} Wednesday ~ Week 20!

2012-01-18T08:49:00.003-07:00

(I'm linking with Lee at Freshly Pieced for {WiP} Wednesday)

I have less to report this week than I was hoping for (and no pictures! How depressing!), but I am very proud to report that my sewing table has been cleared of myriad junk that had taken up residence on it. So now I feel like ~~I have no excuse~~ I can sew like the wind! :)

Here. I'll show you a picture of that:

Oh, and I have so much to DO!! It's pretty ridiculous, really.

I'm really glad I made my calendar last week, so now I feel like I can focus on what I need to finish first, and then can have some free brain cells to work on what I really want to work on. What a novel concept, eh? :)

Done
Well, I wouldn't call them finished, per se, but I sure got a lot further than I was on the Harrison quilts. All the quilts for the kids are bound, and 3 of the 4 have the hand quilting completed. Now I just need to tie up the loose threads, hand quilt that 4th, and get a binding on the quilt for the mother. It will feel so good to get those done! I know this. I know this.

I tried to work on some bee blocks on Saturday at our guild sew. I promise I tried!! Audrey even tried to help me, but the tutorial I was using wasn't very clear, and so I didn't bring enough fabric. Boo, hiss.

Cooking

The Harrison Quilts -- still here in this list, but I'm closer! Go me!
Christmas Cards -- Oh, I crack myself up. I sent out 2 today. Progress? Meh.
Bee Blocks -- I have the fabric in my hands, now, to make 2 blocks for Janice. I also need to work on that one from above that didn't start off so well... :-(
A Happy Quilt -- kinda secretive, but I've pulled fabrics and started cutting to make a happy quilt for someone. :) See the picture above? I found some cool, meaningful, inspirational fabric last week, and now I'm ready to go! (Oh, but I left out the meaningful fabric.)

On the Back Burner

Mod Mosaic Blocks -- I have at least 3 that must be done for other people, and 24 that have to be done for me. (Stalled)
Puppet Theater Backdrop -- I moved the fabric a little. Does that count? :)
MQG Showcase Quilt -- I'm waiting till I get some other must-do projects finished before I start on this. It's all designed, though!
Secret Projects -- I made a list on my laptop of these gazillion secret projects...
Kelly's Baby Gifts -- I have a pattern! I have some fabric! I should be cutting it up!! Seriously, though. I'm a bit scared of following a pattern. I kinda believe that most pattern writers either (a) don't have ~~a clue how poorly written the pattern is~~ copy editors or proof-readers because they are TOO confusing and redundant and waste fabric like crazy, or (b) they do it that way on purpose so you have to buy the pattern. This, and flannel blankets. :) She knows that. (Hi, Kelly!)
Maternity Skirts -- too cold to wear skirts!
Quilt-alongs --

I'm still on the fence about the Swoon one. I've changed my mind on the quilt I'm going to make for my uncle, and I'm MUCH more excited about this design!(see #11 below) It's not necessarily easier? But maybe? Anyways, I was inspired by THIS ridackulously gorgeous quilt by Jennifer.
I'm still planning on doing Amy's Block of the Month at Craftsy, I just can't commit to any fabric, yet! Not inspired...YET! :)

My Baby's Quilt -- no change. I've got the fabric, and the plan, but there are other things ahead of it.
T-shirt quilts -- no change. Joann's has interfacing on sale this week, so I'll get some of that, and I need to wash and prep the shirts, but there's no urgency on this one, so it languishes.
Sprout's Goodnight Moon Quilt -- I hope to finish it for her birthday in May.
Uncle Phil's Quilt -- here's the fabric I get to use (so excited!)

And in other news, if you're still with me. I L<3VE Vistaprint products. Today's LivingSocial deal is for $50 worth of their products for $10. I love it when they do that!!! Click HERE for the link if you want to get the deal.

That's all for now! Have a great week - good luck getting your WiPs into your DuNs pile. :)

If You Fail To Plan...

2012-01-13T12:02:00.003-07:00

Yes, I am aware that my WiP list is long and intimidating and kind of ridiculous. :-)

Sometime between yesterday and today, I realized that as I jumped from one project to another to another I need to come up with a PLAN.I need to figure out which projects need to be done and when. What fabric needs to be bought for each project, and when. Who is having what kind of baby, and when.So I printed out a calendar, got out a lovely pack of pens, and I'm ready to

Plan!!

I really think this will help me stay true to my fabric-buying restriction and not get caught at the end of the month with a bunch of fabric, and no diapers!! :-)

I'm actually pretty excited about one (probably two) quilts on the horizon. I've decided to admit to the world that I'm not ever going to even start my Bottled Rainbows quilt, and use the solids for these two quilts rather than buying more identical fabric. You know I love me some rainbows, so I'll be using the solids to make a couple of new, oh-so-lovely quilts. And actually working within my stash rather than buying new fabric. Win!

And so far, I've done better this week about eating out. Yay me! The added benefit is that the girls seem to have better days in the digestional department when we eat at home more than we eat out. :)

We have a FRMQG guild sew tomorrow, and I'm taking two things: the Harrison quilts to bind, and some mod mosaic blocks to work on. I hope to have something good to report next week!

Have a great weekend!

{WiP} Wednesday ~ Week 19

2012-01-11T01:13:00.000-07:00

(I'm linking with Lee at Freshly Pieced for {WiP} Wednesday)

Oh, there are SO many projects in my head that I want to DO!!

And I'm totally feeling the pressure and stress from the fact that life as I know it will end (for a while) come early April, and I just want to get things done Done DONE!!

Problem is, I spend most of my potential sewing time in a horizontal position. My unhappy uterus prefers it that way. Although my tail bones don't really prefer it that way! They start to hurt after awhile. Hurt this way, hurt that...oh, it's fun being pregnant me.

So, I do what I can, when I can. And hope for more sitting-up time tomorrow. Or the next day. :o)

But I have SO many little things that I need to get done, too, for various collaborative projects, so I need to write those down. Some might not make sense to you, but that's okay. Maybe they are supposed to be secrets. The real trick is going to be if I remember what the code means from one week to the next! :o)

Finished

Last week I reported that I was making a Dresden Plate block for Kelly. I finished it, and I love it!
I don't want to make an entire quilt of Dresdens for myself, but I really do think it's a gorgeous block. Kelly picked some really great, cheery colors, which I think pretty much makes this block.

Ummm...Yup. That's it. I did ONE thing this week. Granted, it's been a very busy week with loads of FRMQG stuff, but not much sewing got done. :)

Ongoing

The Harrison Quilts -- same status as last week. Although I do believe I moved them from the chair to the box.
Christmas Cards -- I got one letter written to send in the card. But I haven't sent that card. I'm not winning this battle right now.
Mod Mosaic Blocks -- There are 13 people in the Mod Mosaic bee, and with them sending me 2 blocks, I will have 24 blocks made by other people. The quilt I want to make for me will be at least 48, so I've got some sewing to do!! Plus, since it's the same block each month, just different color choices, some of us have chosen to sew ahead, and I already know what the February blocks will look like. So I need to make 2 for Laura, and, slowly, over time, 24 for me. Personally, I think it's pretty cool that I can make ahead! Especially with the baby coming...
Puppet Theater backdrop -- it's not going to be hard. I've got the fabric, I just need to sit down and sew it into a little curtain. Should take about 8 minutes. But the girls won't care, so it's not a real priority. :)

New

MQG Showcase Quilt - have you heard about this? There will be a showcase of modern quilts at the Fall Quilt Market this year? RIGHT ON!!! The call for submissions is open through March 2nd, and I've got one in my head that I need to convert into fabric. Tout de suite, Maynard!
Secret Projects - in code, but hopefully coded so I can remember!

SBLL - end of Feb
MMKT - end of Feb
PPDD - on-going
L&OCG - on-going

Kelly's Baby Gift(s?) -- It's okay. Kelly knows I'm going to make her something. She and I just don't quite know what, yet. :o) -- due end of Feb. NO!! Ack!! Earlier than that!! Shoot. Better get on it. Flannel blankets are for sure,
Maternity Skirts - a week or two ago, I pinned a couple tutorials for converting regular skirts into maternity skirts. There's a consignment shop in town that periodically has ridiculously good sales, so I went and bought 8 skirts for $16, and plan to slice and dice them a bit, add a big belly panel, and hopefully end up with a decent maternity skirt or two! Right now, I've got one. And I'm NOT buying any more! It's hard, though, because some of the skirts are really cute, and I don't want to cut them in case my plan goes ary, and I've now ruined what could be a nice post-partum skirt! Oh, sewing can be so risky. :o)
Quilt-alongs - sigh. I've been sucked into a couple of really good ones. There are just so many good QALs this year! Dangit!

Craftsy.com is hosting a free block of the month class, taught by the lovely and talented, Amy Gibson. And it is REEEEEEdiculously popular. Holy frijoles, Batman. I just need to settle down and settle on a fabric line I want to use. It's all video, and it's all fun and friendly and really great for new sewists!
Katy of I'm A Ginger Monkey is hosting the Swoon Along. Now, I my mommy brain isn't that bad. I know I cursed the day the Swoon block was created. And cursed the day(s) I had to make one. But the finished quilt is really gorgeous, and my aunt wants me to make a quilt for my favorite uncle, and he loves stars, and I have some gloriously gorgeous blue and green fabric that he would love, and I already have the pattern, and 2 other girls in my guild are going to do it, too. So, basically, it's a labor of love, right? Remind me of this when I'm, again, cursing the day the 65 triangles and 81 pieces were created. :o)

Bee Blocks

do.Good Stitches {Faith} Circle - Oh, right. We're taking January off. SWEET!!
Bee Happy Bee (which, by the way, is the bestest bee on the face of the Earth) - we're making 2 blocks for Janice -- one "maker's choice" with triangles and flying geese and pinwheels, and the other with a set-in circle.

My Baby's Quilt - I know what fabrics I want to use, and I kinda know what pattern I want to use, but that's as far as I've gotten! I know full well that he won't know if I don't get it done before he's born. :)
T-shirt Quilts - I think I mentioned this before? But I'm going to be making 2 t-shirt quilts, over time, along with a friend of mine who has a bunch of t-shirts from days gone by. One of mine will be for Dave, from his shirts, and the other will be for his cousin, made with shirts from her high school athletic events. Step 1: wash the shirts that have been in a gray bin since 2004 and have been carted all over the globe. :o)
Sprout's Goodnight Moon Quilt- my child loves the book, Goodnight Moon. She wants to sleep with it she loves it so bad! Well, yesterday I saw a Goodnight Moon panel and some backing fabric, so I got it. I figure a quilt is better than a book, right? It shouldn't take me too long, since it's a panel, and all. And it will save me from having to tape-mend the pages of her lovey.

Oh my goodness. I can't even look at that without thinking I'm insane!! Now, we should all realize that I realize that these aren't all going to be done anytime soon. Some of them are truly on-going projects that don't have any urgency, so they will stay low on the priority list.

The main reason I wanted to get all this down is so that I can have a place to refer back to when I feel like it's time to rest on my laurels a bit. This list isn't about impressing anyone or making anyone think I'm off my rocker. It's for me. Somewhere that won't get covered up with junk. :)

With that, I wish you all the best this week! I hope you and I both get a lot accomplished! :)

Mmm...That's Pretty!

2012-01-08T17:11:00.001-07:00

"Mmmm...that's pretty!"

"Oooh, look at that! It lays flat!"

"Gosh...that's just pretty!"

This is what I said about 134 times last week as I was making this lovely little block:

I made it for Kelly, who is in the Front Range MQG with me, and we're both part of the in-guild bee. This is the first Dresden Plate that I've made, and while I've always respected the Dresden and thought they were beautiful, I never really had the desire to make one.

That's why quilting bees are SUCH good things! They force you out of your comfort zone and make you do things, and try things, and stretch in ways you probably never wanted!

Honestly, the only thing about making the Dresden that I didn't like was cutting the blades! And even when I sewed all the blades together and they didn't quite lay down like I thought they should, I still didn't dislike it like I've disliked making other blocks.

In this case, I jumped on Facebook, went to The Modern Quilt Guild Facebook group and said "Help! My Dresden is warbly. How can I get those blades to submit to my will?" And within a minute, maybe two, I had two really good suggestions, and then more followed later. I was able to snip a little, press a little and work out the kinks to get the circle to lay down flat, and I was pleased! :)

Next challenge was putting on the hide-my-edges circle. Applique. I'm not afraid of it, at all, but I wanted it to be a good circle, and I wanted the look to be clean, not raw-edged. My friend, Susan, who is also in the FRMQG, told me this trick:

Take fusible one-sided, sew-on interfacing (I used SF 101) and put the fusible, bumpy part against the right-side of the gray polka-dot fabric (cut into a square larger than the circle you want to cut), and then trace your circle with a pencil of fabric marker, and stitch around that line, with a smaller stitch-length for easier turning. Trim a 1/4" outside that seam line (I used pinking shears), and you've got a circle! Next, cut a little slit in the interfacing, and pull the polka dot fabric out through the hole and push out the edges. (I'm not explaining this right!). Next you iron it into place on the Dresden, following the directions for the fusible interfacing. The circle should fuse to the Dresden, provided you laid your interfacing right! :) After that, I took some thread and did a little whip-stitch all the way around. Happy!!

I think a lot of Dresden plate tutorials have you do something very similar, it's just that you use two pieces of the same fabric, right sides together, stitch a circle, cut a slit, etc. But how in the name of all things holy, do you get it to STAY while you sew? This way, it's fused down, but not stiff like other fusibles, and it worked like an absolute charm. Charm! Loved the technique. Thanks, Susan!

I really love that little block. :) I don't see myself making an entire quilt of Dresdens any time soon, like Mary did, but I definitely think they are more beautiful now than I did before.

And, in other news. Truth news...being financially responsible is HARD!! Not eating out for lunch but once a week? HARD!! I think I've used up all my mulligans through March! :) Ugh. Why does convenience have to be so expensive??

I'm going to do better this week, though. That's my vow. It's tempting to just take that off my list, but I know that a lot of my disposable income goes to ~~Chick-fil-A~~ lunch out, and if I'm going to reign in my spending, then I need to not be eating out. And not buying fabric. So far, so good, there. It's been tempting since there have been some ROCKING good sales, but I don't need any new fabric right now, I'm being good.

HOWEVER...tomorrow night, the FRMQG is having a meeting at a new-ish fabric shop in Denver called Snappy Quilts, and we're having the ladies from Sweetwater come and speak!! Yes, you read that right. Yes, you can be jealous. I am SO

EXCITED!!!!!!

Excited to meet at Snappy Quilts, excited to meet in Denver (we usually meet in Monument, north of Colorado Springs), excited to meet some new friends, excited to hear the ladies of Sweetwater talk about how lucrative fabric design, and pattern writing, and book writing can be. (hardy har har, I know...there ain't NO money in it!). I'm glad the weather is cooperating. :) And I know it's gonna be a fabulous night. Well, for everything except my budget. :-/

I hope you have a great week!

100 Days of Modern Quilting ~ Day 5

2012-01-06T08:47:00.001-07:00

Wow. What a wake-up call this morning when I saw that my TNT quilt was featured on 100 Days of Modern Quilting today!

I mean, I knew they were doing it, I just didn't know when. :)

So, WELCOME to all of you who have come over here from the 100 Days feature! If you're interested in the original post, and all the new things I tried (like spray basting the hexies before I sewed them on), the original post is HERE.

And, FYI - the hexies were all cut with the Accuquilt Go! Studio cutter hexagon die.

I am really SO excited about this feature on The Modern Quilt Guild. I can't wait to see all the quilters that are featured, and learn some new techniques, and get inspired, and add more things to the want-to-do list that seems to grow more quickly than the baby in my belly...

Thank you to Alissa and Latifah and Elizabeth and Jacquie, and everyone else behind the 100 Days of Modern Quilting feature. I know you guys have put in a TON of work, and we all appreciate what you do to bring us together and lead us in modern quilting. :)

{WiP} Wednesday ~ Number 18

2012-01-04T08:39:00.003-07:00

(I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for {WiP} Wednesday)

Yay!! I'm so glad we get to start up with {WiP} Wednesdays! I need a place to keep track of what I'm doing so I don't get depressed and think that all I do is sit in bed on the computer and don't make anything and don't get anything done!

Which, is kinda true. I spend WAY more time sitting in bed on the computer than I would like, but my body seems to like it WAY more than me sitting at my sewing machine, or leaning over the cutting station. And, unfortunately, when I'm pregnant, it's body over mind. :-/ Such is life...and the creation of it. :o)

So far in 2012, I have one finish. The Rosary Bag I made for Caitlin, the USAFA cadet we sponsor.

The more I look at the pictures, the more I like it. I still contend that the construction of this tiny bag was not enjoyable, and I still contend that it's not perfect - far from it - but it looks home-made, and I think that's kind of charming. Plus, I just know Caitlin wouldn't have appreciated a perfect one any more than she appreciated this one. Does that make sense? She was super surprised, and touched, and happy to have it. And I actually made a gift that surprised and touched and made someone happy. I took something she said a long time ago and made it real for her. THAT is a gift worth giving - perfect in lots of ways. :o)

Now. Onto The List. The actual {WiP}s that cry to me from my sewing room as I'm lounging in bed.

1. The Harrison Quilts ~ I am ashamed to admit that I still have not delivered these quilts to the homeless family in my church. I've stalled on binding the quilt for the mom. I suck. I'm going to try, this week, to make some progress. Keep me on track, okay? Honestly...I realize that this is totally something I can finish while lounging, but I've got quilter's block, or something. :)

2. FRMQG Adventure Bee Blocks ~ In the Front Range MQG, we do a bee block exchange once a month, and this month I'm making a Dresden Plate block for Kelly, and she's making my "bubbles" block. It's my first Dresden Plate block, and I think I'm just oblivious to it's difficulties, because so far, the worst part has been the cutting. Of course, I've only sewn the top seam on each little blade and haven't even begun to join them, but I got something accomplished!

3. Christmas Cards ~ Even though this isn't quilt-related, I think this needs to go somewhere. I still haven't written and sent out my Christmas cards. Again, I realize this is something I could do while sitting in bed, don't remind me. :)

4. Mod Mosaic Bee Blocks ~ Yes, I joined another bee. I'm a lunatic. I realize this, but Yolanda promised to help me when I get overwhelmed, so I'm going to take her up on it! :) This is a new bee that she just started up, and it's going to be fun! We all make mod mosaic blocks in each other's color combo with fabrics from our stash...which is good. This is my month, and the blocks folks are making for me are SO wonderful!!

My goal is to make as many blocks as get made for me (and then some), so I can make a lovely, and large, rainbow quilt of monochromatic strips, like this one. RIGHT up my alley.

5. Puppet Theater Backdrop ~ Dave asked me to make a backdrop for the puppet theater he made the girls. I have the supplies, I just need to cut and sew.

There are also LOADS of other things on my list that I need to start...and finish! The baby is due April 14th, so I need to get some stuff accomplished before then. Otherwise, it'll be a long, long while before I really complete much.

Soooo, with that, I will get up out of bed, feed my children, maybe take the girls to the park while the weather is nice...and cross my fingers that I'll get some more sewing done today.

Have a great week, and I hope you get more accomplished than you expect!

One Last Christmas Gift ~ Well Received

2012-01-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

I finished the rosary bag I was working on yesterday with plenty of time to spare, BUT...it looks atrocious! I will not, repeat NOT, be sewing a teeny bag with linen and satin again ANY time soon. Ugh.

It looks SO homemade. Like something a 9 year old might make in 4-H. I seriously doubt I'll be joining the Pretty Little Pouch Swap in, oh, the next 4 years. :)

I used KelbySew's Zippered Pouch Tutorial, which is really quite good. My problems with creating this pouch are ALL MINE!! First, I made it pretty small (4 x 3.5"), which made it challenging. Second, I should have shortened my zipper since the pouch was so small, but I didn't realize how small it was going to become until it was too late. I wanted the pouch to be small, but it just added another level of challenge. And, third, (sigh), I decided to use linen for the outside and satin for the inside. Fire. And. Ice. It wasn't THAT bad, really, there was just more coaxing than I expected. :) And the left and right side of the zipper aren't perfect/identical/symmetrical/whatever.

The good news is, though, that Caitlin really seemed to love it. She was genuinely surprised, not expecting me to (a) remember that she'd wanted one, and (b) figure out how to make one, and (c) actually take the time to make something for her. She had mentioned months ago that she wanted to go and buy a bag to protect her rosary, but, luckily for me, she never did. :) She seemed pleased with the fabric choices, and the size, and the Chi-Rho symbol on the front, though she didn't know what it was, and I didn't remember enough about what I read on Wikipedia to tell her! Good thing Google is so handy, right? She didn't even seem to notice all the flaws! Jackpot!

And, really. I saw the ones in the store. I saw the ones online. THIS is so much more appropriate for an 18-year old, I think. She wouldn't like tapestry. She wouldn't like pleather, she wouldn't like denim, or crochet or felt. I mean, I guess if I took the time to make one like that for her, she would appreciate it, but those just aren't HER! I am going to think that this one is much more her style.

And...she loved the Barnes and Noble gift card inside. :)

So. There you have it! A late Christmas gift that counts towards the 2012 finishes! And it makes me feel good that she was so excited and surprised about it. I'll sleep better at night.

The Truth Project: Day 1

2012-01-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

Day 1 of my Truth Project went well yesterday. 365 more days to go, right? :)

To be fair, we went to church and came straight home. I didn't have a chance to spend any money (other than on the Internet, of course!)

Which is a good thing since I discovered (truth) that I have $3.72 in my regular checking account. Shocking, I know! :) I have cash in my wallet, and money in other places, and money from Christmas, but as far as my daily disposable account...it's slim. And the next time my funds get an injection? January 9th. This should be a challenging week! And nutritionally creative, I'm sure. :)

Onto crafty things...

We sponsor a cadet at the US Air Force Academy, and a long time ago, she mentioned wanting to buy a rosary bag, to keep her rosary safe. Well, I decided yesterday, or the day before, to make her one for Christmas -- and put a gift card inside, of course...can't give an empty pouch, now can I? So yesterday I started searching for tutorials to make a sewn rosary bag. Umm...they don't exist. :-/ So I somehow figured out the sorta/kinda measurements, and cut some fabric. Then I decided that I wanted to jazz it up a bit, so I searched for something meaningful, and found the labarum, or Chi-Rho. It looked simple enough for me to hand embroider (poorly), and I'm still working on it... (I know the Chi isn't finished, so it looks a bit silly right now.) :)

My plan (haha) was to take my time and finish it up in the next few days, then mail it to her because cadets don't get much fun mail.

But...about 9:00 this morning, I got a call from her asking if I could pick her up from the airport. Tonight. (Her flight was delayed and she'd miss the shuttle). Of course I said "Yes", because that's what sponsors do, but I realized I need to put my embroidery and sewing skills on hyper drive to get this done for her tonight! It's not a difficult project by any means, it's just that I have limited sewing time during the day.

And the weather is GORGEOUS today, so I was planning on taking the girls to the park for a picnic.

Picnics in the park are more important than late Christmas gifts. :)

So, there's my truth for the day. I'll post pictures of the posted rosary bag when I finish. It's not going to be fancy, but it'll be done. And heck, I might just write a tutorial in case anyone else in the crafting world wants to make one. :)

Have a great day!

Truth. My Goal for 2012.

2012-01-01T01:05:00.000-07:00

I want to be honest. I want to be open. I want to be vulnerable on my blog, but for whatever reason, I tend to keep it all sunshine and roses. (Right now I'm going to type until I'm done, and then I'm going to hit "publish"...no editing. K? You've been warned!)

Now, I know this is my sewing blog, and I've got another blog that is supposed to be about my life, but I think what I'm about to say and do will best be done here.

I'm going to try a couple of new things in 2012.

First, I'm going to try to be honest and vulnerable about something every day. Or so. :) Whatever works out. I just want to say what I really feel somewhere.

Second, I'm going to try to be way more financially responsible in 2012. And I'm going to post my can-buy and can't-buy list here so (a) I can refer back to it, and (b) if you see me in Target with a bunch of stuff from the clearance rack, you can say "Ummm...Melissa...what's this???" Keep me accountable, will ya? Because I don't have the will-power to do this on my own.

Just so you know, this is something that has been brewing inside of me for a little while now. I'm not one for resolutions because I feel that we always have a chance to start over and start fresh. And I totally believe in forgiveness and that I don't/won't need to feel horrible if I fall...wait...when I fall. But I want to be able to have the freedom (and the encouragement from friends) to start fresh again and not feel ashamed and guilty.

See, here's the thing...and we all have "things", you know? Idiosyncrasies. Money is one of mine. We didn't have a lot growing up. We had what we needed, and enough of what we wanted, but we didn't have a lot. And when my brother went to college, we had even less. And while it is true that Dave and I are in a TOTALLY and COMPLETELY different financial state than what I was in when I was a child, the feelings about money still linger. And I know that we are stewards of what God has given to us, which is part of why I want to do better. But the reality is this: I often feel poor.

There. I said it. We have enough. More than enough. And yet I feel poor. And it's largely because I make bad choices with my budget and with my spending.

Also, since this has been brewing inside of me for a while, this isn't actually something I've discussed with Dave. Not that he would care. Because, well, he wouldn't. (truth) My personal decision to be more financially responsible will not affect him one way or the other. He won't love me any more or any less, he won't respect me any more or any less, he won't support me any more or any less. It won't change his life at all. So why should I bother discussing it with him? And, okay, to be fair, my decision to be more financially responsible shouldn't have any affect on the way he feels about me. He should love/respect/support me regardless, which he does, but this just won't matter to him.

And also, too...I'm not doing this to shout from the rooftops and be like "I'm going to be GOOD this year! Be proud of me!" I hope to do this quietly, which doesn't make any sense about why I'm blogging about it, but I want people to help keep me accountable, and I don't really have many local friends who are close enough to me to really help me do that.

I don't know, yet, if I'm going to report here on the blog when I've been good and when I've fallen, but maybe. Maybe I'll post on Facebook something like "I just couldn't resist getting a Coke at the 7-11." I don't know. I mean, I'll know in my heart and in my head when I've fallen, but maybe y'all don't want to hear about it.

But what I do know is that I've written out a few can-buy's and a few can't-buy's for me to have and refer to throughout the year. Obviously, there are certain things I won't limit myself on...such as food...but maybe I can be better about that stuff, too! So here are the cans and can'ts:

Can Buy

Necessities - such as diapers, clothes for the kids, cat litter, etc.
Eat out for lunch 1x a week/the girls and 1x a week for dinner/all 4 of us
Fabric and supplies for gifts or charity projects
Cleaning supplies
Educationally nutritional stuff for the kids
Gifts for others
Absolutely necessary clothing for Melissa (like undergarments) :)
New saucepan since I burned the good one I had...otherwise no kitchen items!
Make-up that costs less than $5
Party supplies for whatever parties we might have, but borrow what I can.

Can't Buy (because we already have enough of these things!)

Fabric just because it's pretty and I want to have it (to "stash")
Thread just because it's on sale.
Paper and pens and blank cards and office supplies (unless we're out).
Toys for the kids (except birthday/Christmas gifts).
Clothes for me. At all. Maternity or otherwise (unless it's a necessity, see above)
Sippy cups. Hah!
Fabric for "ideas in my head" -- I can only buy fabric for projects I will actually DO!
Convenience store candy/snacks/drinks
Any dishes or kitchen items (except the saucepan I mentioned above!)
Sewing tools I could borrow
Colored nail polish
Wrapping paper and accessories
ANYTHING on clearance. (Unless it's on the "can buy" list already) - but nothing "just because"
Shoes for me. At all. Unless it's a necessity.

Just so you know, I am offering myself one "Mulligan" each month. I don't know, yet, how big I will let that mulligan be, but I know I'll fall off the wagon, and I want to give myself one forgiveness pass without guilt...and then the rest of the times I fall, I'll have to figure out how to make restitution. :)

There are a lot of other things going on in my family life right now that are challenging and stressful to me, so maybe if I can cut out the "spirit of poverty" in my life, I'll be able to look at those other things with more clarity. And I promise to honestly, openly, vulnerabe-ly share those things, too. :)

With that, I will save and hit publish. THIS is my goal for 2012. It'll be tough, and I'll fall, but I hope I don't fail. :) Thanks for listening.

Sewing Recap of 2011

2011-12-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

I think it's really good for me to see all the things I've made this year.

I often feel like I'm doing stuff, but not really getting anything done, you know? I mean, I know I've made stuff, but it's just nice to capture it all.

I suspect, however, (OH...I should totally have an ultrasound picture in there somewhere, eh?) (except I'm not quite finished crafting the baby, yet)

Sorry...I suspect, however, that I will have significantly fewer finishes in 2012. :) The baby isn't due until mid-April, but I never have much energy in my past pregnancies (Nesting? What is THAT?), and I have 2 very active fibroids that, if I don't get enough rest each day, they make my life MISerable. SO...even though I've got a while till the baby comes, I don't envision myself spending tons of hours at my sewing machine. Maybe I'll actually get around to some hand-sewing... :)

Anyways, here's a recap of my 2011!

Here are all the blocks I made for the bees I'm in.

And here is a mosaic of all the crafty things I made (or finished) (or started, then never finished) over the course of the last year.These are in no particular order, by the way. :)

I do, of course, have some sewing goals, and some life goals, for the year ahead, but I'll put those in a different post. I've got loads of WiPs, I've got loads of fabric set aside for specific projects, and loads of other fabric just waiting to be assigned to a project.

I imagine that if fabric had feelings, that "waiting for a project" fabric might feel like the puppies at the pound when people come looking for a new pet. They are fondled, they are taken out of their spot, they are admired and told how pretty they are, but yet, they go back on the shelf. :)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Christmas 2011 ~ Oh, the Joy.

2011-12-27T23:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Tuesday now, the 27th, and we finally ate Christmas dinner tonight. :) There is no real reason for the delay, except that I kept sleeping through my put-the-turkey-in-the-oven-NOW window. How was I supposed to prepare a turkey and get it in the oven smack dab in the middle of my nap time?

And I sure needed my nap on Christmas day.

Dave and I were up until after 3am Christmas morning, and we were tuckered out! It was totally worth it, though.

TOTALLY!!

As referenced in my last post, we made a puppet theater for the girls. Other than the curtains and the re-build upstairs, it was done in plenty of time. But the curtains took me a while since I took my sweet time. And the re-build took a while since Dave had to hand screw everything in so as not to wake the girls up with the drill.

See, we went from having only a little tree, and no presents, in the loft area when the girls went to bed Saturday night, to having a large puppet theater and a mass of Christmas gifts in the loft area when they woke up.

That kind of transformation takes time, people. It takes time.

Every morning, Mookie has this tradition, if you will, of stumbling into our bedroom around 7:30 for a bit of a snuggle and to play games or read while we all wake up. So we weren't really worried that she would see anything out of the ordinary before we were ready for her to see it. And Sprout has this tradition, if you will, of sleeping till about 8:30, so we were all set in that regard. Once Sprout woke up, we all went downstairs for some breakfast...and to build the hype a bit. Since Mookie hadn't seen any presents under the tree, she didn't really expect anything out of the ordinary, but we kept talking about this BIG surprise, and how excited we were, and how excited she would be, and how much fun we were going to have, etc.

So about 9:30, I went upstairs first to set up the video camera and to hide in the puppet theater to take pictures, and then Dave brought the girls up.

Here's the before (you can see the puppet theater on the left):

Mookie was so startled by the transformation! You can see the surprise, and fear?, in her face.

She was actually so scared that she got down on the floor and started to crawl! Poor girl!

But when she figured out that it was a puppet theater and that it was all good, she jumped up and RAN for the "puppet feetar" as she calls it. :)

I love that photo! I love that face!! :)

"Look, Mama! I can do my very own puppet shows!"

Then she came around back, grabbed the few puppets we had (many more showed up soon!), and commensed to wowwing us with her mad puppetry skillz.

There were quite a few puppet shows that day...and every day since. :)

Not one to be left out, Sprout was trying to get in on the puppet show action. (LOVE the hair!)

Here's the whole family before we opened any of the presents. The loft was a WRECK by the time we were all done. Still is...

Dave gave me a pair of Christmas socks (among other things...like an Accuquilt Go! Cutter) (Score!!) and Sprout desperately wanted to wear them. How can you say no to that cute face?

Here she is with them on. These are certainly easier for her to wear than my regular slippers!

This is such a goofy shot of my goofy girl. I love it.

We got Sprout a little kitchen tools set, and both girls really loved it. Occupied them for quite a while, actually.

I found these little fairy wings at Target on clearance, and thought Sprout might like them. Well. Little did I know! She immediately said "Ningabow! Ningabow!!" (For Tinkerbell), and held out her arms. I said "Do you want to put these on? And she said "Yup" And I said "Okay." And she said "K." I just adore this age!!

Her Tinkerbell wings stay on pretty much every moment she knows they're there. We sneak them off every now and then, but when she sees them, she wants them on again.

I love that she's wearing fairy wings and trying to build something with her Mega Blocks. Every fairy is an engineer, my love. :)

Here's Dave with his fairy baby.

Poor girl. She was just poopin' out, there! We'd only been going for about an hour and a half at this point...

She found her second wind, though, and got to playing again.

So, that's it! We took our sweet time, and very leisurely opened all of our presents. It took us about 3 hours, really, but there weren't THAT many presents. We just took. our. time. We read stories. We had puppet shows. We snacked on candy. We played with new toys. We stayed in our jammies all day.

And then we used our new sandwich press to make fancy triangle sandwiches, and then had a nice, well-deserved nap.

Which explains why I slept right through my put-the-turkey-in-the-oven-NOW window, and we didn't eat our Christmas Turkey until 2 days later. It was good, though. :)

Merry Christmas To You!!

2011-12-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

Oh, Blind Hem. I just don't think you and I have much of a future together. You are way too complicated and moody and I just don't have it in me to fuss over something the likes of you!

Velvet, you're not far behind.

The good news is, I was able to finish the red velvet curtains for the El Capitan of puppet theaters that Dave made for the girls. The Mann's Chinese Puppet Theater. The Globe Theater of Puppetry Arts.

The girls are gonna LOVE it! :o) I've already got the video camera set up so to record their faces as they enter the Galleria of Gifts.

I wish you all a very happy, very blessed, very meaniful, wonderful, laughter-filled Christmas, and may you know the joy and peace of the Lord in the year ahead.

Wavy Prism Bee Blocks

2011-12-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

As part of the {Faith} Circle of the do.Good Stitches bee, I have the privilege of being a part of making quilts for people in need every month. The Faith circle gives quilts to people in our church, or Christian community, that need a little uplifting and love quilty style.

This month, Kelsey was inspired by Elizabeth"s (Oh Fransson) New Wave quilt and Faith's (Fresh Lemons Quilts) Prism quilt to create a wavey prism quilt. She sent us the design and the color specs for paper piecing these blocks to come together into a very cool quilt.

Here is one block, all by itself:

Here are Taffyjane-Des's blocks:

And here are Rachel's blocks:

Just look how vibrant and colorful and geometric it's gonna be! As I always say, I can't wait to see the finished quilt! And, as always, I would love to make one similar for myself! :)

Oh, and a big HUGE whodathunkit <3THANK YOU<3 to all who voted for my quilted tree wall hanging for Pink Chalk Fabric's Handmade with Love contest. I am in shock that my simple tree won the Deck the Halls category.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Handmade with Love...

2011-12-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

GO VOTE!

(For me...)

At Pink Chalk Fabric's blog. Kathy and her staff asked for tutorials for gifts and decorations that were handmade with love.

There were over 150 tutorials submitted to 3 categories - gifts for friends, gifts for kids, and Christmas decorations.

I submitted the tutorial for the Quilted Tree that I made for Beth, and they chose me as one of the five finalists! Wowwee!!

So, if you would be so kind, please go HERE and vote for my tutorial. :) (Only one vote per IP address).

And vote for your favorites in the other categories, too. :)

The Quilted Tree ~ A Tutorial

2011-12-15T00:57:00.000-07:00

As I promised in my last post, I've got a tutorial for you on how to make the quilted tree that I made for Beth.

It's really a simple project, and I hope you take the time to make one!

Materials

16x20 canvas for painting. Or any size you want, really. :)
3/4 - 1 yard of white solid cotton or muslin
17 x 21 piece of thin, white batting (this size allows for quilting shrinkage, but is perfect at the end when you wrap your "quilt" around the canvas frame)
7 various Christmas scraps from 2x4.5" to 2x13.5"
brown scrap for tree trunk and yellow scrap for star
2 yards pom-pom trim
1/2 yard Heat-n-Bond lite fusible webbing.
thread, iron, hot glue gun or staple gun

Steps

Find the size canvas frame you want to use. I used 16x20 because that's what I had. Press your scraps (mine are always kinda wrinkled!) and your muslin. Trim your muslin so that there are 3" extra muslin on either side of where the frame is. And cut it in half along the fold line (opposite the selvage), so that you have two identical pieces of muslin. Your trimmed muslin should be approximately 22x26".

2. Determine the placement of your scrap "branches", then trim them as follows:

2 x 4.5"
2 x 6"
2 x 7.5"
2 x 9"
2 x 10.5"
2 x 12"
2 x 13.5"

3. Fuse Heat-n-Bond Lite to the back of each strip, including the brown tree trunk and the yellow square that will become the star. Trust me on this one...you'll want to put the fusible on the square before you trim it to become a star. :)

4. If desired, pink the edges of your branches. I did this for aesthetics more than anything since this won't be washed, you don't really need to worry about fraying.

5. With a water or air-soluble pen, draw an outline on your muslin of where the wall hanging will attach to the canvas. This outline should be 16 x 20, and your muslin should be 3" larger, all around, than your outline, making it 22 x 26".

6. Lay out your "branches" again, to be sure they're in the right place, and then remove the paper backing from the fusible webbing, and fuse (iron) to one piece of the muslin.

7. Raw-edge applique the branches to the muslin using a 1/8(ish)" stitch. Again, this is purely for grins. Since this won't be washed and since each branch is fused down, you don't need to worry about the branches going anywhere! I just think it adds to the finished look.

8. Make your quilt sandwich with batting (17 x 21 is much easier when it comes to wrapping it later!) and your other piece of muslin. (I am a spray baster from way back. I don't even know how to use a safety pin!) Then proceed to quilt your swirly snow. I used this tutorial from Leah Day. If you want to get away from stippling, then her blog is THE BEST place to go! Hands down.

Don't look too closely at the quilting - it's far from perfect! You can see that I made some large and some small swirls, and I also tried to change direction of the swirls. I don't know if that was necessary, I just thought it would create some movement and dimension.

9. Quilt all the white, then relax your shoulders, allow your eyes to focus again, and admire your quilty goodness. :)

10. Commence to attaching the pom-pom trim for the garland. I found this to be the most challenging part of the entire project. You can see that I used a regular foot, but moved my needle to the left or right as necessary. A friend recommended using an invisible zipper foot, but I don't have one of those. :) This works, it's just that the trim tends to travel a bit as I'm sewing. But that's okay, garland never lays on the tree perfectly, now does it? :)

11. I decided my star looked a little lost up there, so I outlined it with yellow embroidery floss. I'm not sure how much it added, but it's just another touch. :)

12. Do a final once-over before you're ready to mount it to the canvas frame. I discovered that I hadn't quilted any snow above the star, so I put the "quilt" back into the machine and did a few more swirls.

12. I placed the "quilt" on top of the frame and made sure it was centered, then I put little pins in the corners just to hold it in place while I permanently attached it to the canvas frame. I used a hot glue gun because that's what I had available, but I think I like this better than stapling it on. It's just much cleaner looking. I'll keep my eyes on it and if it seems to be pulling away from the frame, then I might follow with staples, but it's great for now!

13. Admire your hard work! And put it in a place where others can admire it, too. :)

And there you have it! How I made a 3-dimensional quilted tree wall hanging! I hope you like it, and if you have any questions about any of the steps, please don't hesitate to ask me!

*I thought of a couple of other ways to enhance this, if you're interested.

One is to drop the garland and make it into an Advent Calendar. I don't know the measurements, but it would be easy to make little pockets in each "branch" simply by making the branch 5 1/2" wide by whatever length, then folding it into almost thirds lengthwise. Then you would sew a vertical stitch every, I don't know, inch and a half or so, then do your 1/8" stitch all the way around. I my head that would make little pockets. If you try it, I hope it works! :)

Another idea is to make a trio of quilted wall hangings. You could make a tree, and a snowman, and a stocking using the same method, really. Pick your focus fabrics for the tree/stocking/snowman, fuse then raw-edge applique them onto your muslin, make your quilt sandwich, quilt your snow around, add your pom-pom/button/ric-rac embellishment, mount them on the frames, and be extra proud of yourself! :)

I'm sure there are a million ways to take this idea and make it better -- go for it!

If you decide to make one (or three!), let me know! I'd love to see how yours turns out! :)

Have a great week!

The First Annual FRMQG Christmas Scrap Swap

2011-12-10T21:32:00.001-07:00

Last Christmas, I saw a piece of art at my LQS that really caught my eye. It was a canvas, like you buy at Michael's or any hobby store and paint on, but it had strips of green fabric stitched onto a neutral background, then attached to the canvas to make it look like a Christmas tree!

Fast forward a year, to the Christmas Scrap Swap we had in the Front Range MQG, and I decided to make something similar for Beth. We each received a baggie full of Christmas scraps from our partner in September, and we were encouraged to make something for their kitchen. Well, I made her a few things, but I knew I wanted to make this scrappy Christmas tree, no matter what else I made her. :) I did catch a bit of flack for all the things I made her, but that's okay. She loved them. :)

For her kitchen/dining room, I made a table-runner:

That's the only kitchen thing I actually made her. :) It seemed SO much bigger when I was binding it than when she held it up. Oh well. She liked it, and that's all that matters.

Then I took some small strips of fabric and made her a little spool tree:

If I do it again, I'll figure out a way to make a little stump so the "tree" stands up off the base a bit more, but heck, it was my first try.

And, best of all, I made her my version of the Scrappy Christmas Tree:

Strips sewn on, but there is batting involved, and I quilted some snow around the tree. Then I added pom-pom garland for that extra-special touch. Maybe over the top, but check out her reaction...
I expect her to shoot me for sharing this picture, but I love it too much to keep it to myself. :)

(I'm working on writing a tutorial for how I made it, so check back in a day or two.)

When it was my turn to open the presents, Kate gave me a giant bag, and I was quite intrigued. :)

She took my incredibly random bag of scraps, (I gave her some Alexander Henry Main Street fabric, and a bunch of other stuff that kinda went with it. Sorta.) and made me a really cute wreath! She said she knows I don't like to spend much time in the kitchen lately (hah! or EVER?!), so she chose an anywhere decoration instead.

I have it hanging backwards here, but you can totally see how cool it is with the dangling trees! Love it!

She also made me a little kitchen towel. I don't have a better picture of it than this, and I really want to finish this post tonight, so take a little of this, and add some imagination, and you'll get to see the whole thing. :) It's really cute.

(gratuitous baby bump shot)

SO...that's me and my give and take from the FRMQG Christmas Scrap Swap. From everyone's reactions, I think it was a big hit, and we'll do it again next year.

Now, please excuse me while I go to bed. I have visions of quilt blocks dancing through my head. :)

{WiP} Wednesday - Oh My December Stars!

2011-12-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

I promise I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. I've even been sewing! Not much, but some. Taking care of a 3 year old, a 1 year old and being pregnant with a third is really taxing! Who knew? :o)

Most of what I've been working on has been bee blocks, though I did create a few simple gifts for our Front Range Modern Quilt Guild Christmas Scrap Swap. That was fun. :o) I plan to do a separate post about that...one of these days.

For now, though, I'm going to tell you what I'm currently working on...since this is a WiP post, and all.

First, I'm stuck in the final stages of finishing the do.Good Stitches quilts for the homeless family. Final stages. Binding. I don't know why I'm stuck, but I am. I really need to finish them, though. And soon!

Second, today I am finishing a little colored pencil roll that we will give to one of Mookie's little friends for her 4th birthday on Friday. I used Pynkhope's tutorial, but wanted to make it for 16 pencils, so I enlarged it. I've loved the fabric (from Joann's) forever, and I'm glad to finally be using it!

I also want to write up a tutorial for the Christmas tree wall hanging I made for Beth for the FRMQG swap. I've got the fabric all ready, I just need to find the motivation! :) Here are the fabrics I'm going to use, though:

And then I'm going to make an infinity scarf for each of Mookie's preschool teachers. We made the mug rugs for the start of school, so I wanted to come up with something different, yet simple.

Gosh!! I can't believe I didn't blog about that?! Well, yes I can. September kicked my butt. I'm not surprised. Anyways, here's a picture of the mug rugs we made. I "painted" over where she wrote her name since I don't ever put it on here. :) We used Crayola's Fabric Markers, and OH MAN!!!! Those things are FANTABULOUS!!! I was incredibly impressed with the colors, with the saturation, with the lack of bleeding. If you do any writing or coloring on fabric, I suggest you fork over the $5 and get a set of them. They are really that good.

I don't plan on making any other Christmas gifts, other than the Shutterfly calendars we do every year. Does that count? I think it should! :)

But I do have at least 3 quilts in my head that I would LOVE to start. One will be secret for a gift that I wanted to make months ago, one will use the yellow and gray hexies I got from our last Flickr swap, and the other will use a rainbow of scraps. I know it's terribly shocking that I want to make another rainbow quilt. :) I've only made 2. That's not excessive! And, I've given both away, so it's not like I've got a stash of rainbow quilts by the sofa. I think it's high time to make another. Plus, it's going to be COOL! And different. In a "we've kinda seen this before, but not really" kind of way.

I'm sure there's more that I'm working on, but that's all I can think of right now. I really want to get that colored pencil roll done, so no more computer time for me!

OH...and in case you recall from my last {WiP} post...6 weeks ago...we had the "anatomy scan" ultrasound, and there is, as I suspected, a very healthy baby boy in there. He is very active, and everything appears to be going and growing as it should. So, come April, my world will officially go from pink to blue. :)

Hope you have a great week!

(Lee at Freshly Pieced isn't hosting her {WiP} weekly linky-do till after the first of the year, but I still wanted to do my own :)

{WiP} Wednesday

2011-10-26T10:13:00.000-06:00

It's already Wednesday? Ugh.

I totally forgot until I read Randi's post for {WiP} Wednesday.

I pretty much have nothing done, all the same Ws in P are still Ws in P.

Mostly because of this.

THIS is the work I've been progressing for 15 weeks now.

And, man, has my body taken a beating. Whew. Pretty much the last half of August, and the entire month of September and the first half of October were spent barely surviving each moment of each day. Somehow I barely managed (and still somehow barely manage!) to feed my family, make sure we all had clean ~~enough~~ clothes, and that the girls had clean underbottoms. That was my expectation and high standard for each day. Exhaustion was at an ALL TIME HIGH!

Sewing? Not so much.

I did a few things, like quilt the quilts for the homeless family at the long arm. When I was doing the first two, the tension was off, I was SUPER sick, and I just felt HORRIBLE horrible horrible horrible. I actually laid down on the floor in the fabric shop and cried. It wasn't terribly humiliating because the long arm is in a back room, but still. I wanted to be in bed, not at the long arm!

But I survived!!

Here's a picture of me quilting the two boys' quilts. I'm not sure if this saved much time, but I sewed the two tops and the two backs together so it was like quilting one big quilt on the long arm. Then I had to spend time un-sewing them, but that's okay. All that's left is the binding.

Sorry the lighting is so harsh, I used my phone, and couldn't make that light go away.Anyway, that's it for me.

Those are my Ws in P. I think I completed a few bee blocks, too, but can't remember. Mommy brain...

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for her weekly {WiP} Wednesday post.

Snow Over Sew

2011-10-08T15:12:00.000-06:00

I'm not sewing because I spent all my energy oustide playing and building a snow man with my oldest. It is the first snow of the season, and she wanted to get out there first thing! I held her off till about noon. Till I mustered the courage to go into the cold.

I'll sew again soon. These first moments are too precious to miss. :)

One Swoon Block.

2011-10-03T09:36:00.000-06:00

No lie. I think this is the only thing I've sewn in a month.

Well, I've done some other things, too, but this has taken a LOT out of me!

It's a Swoon block, designed by Camille Roskelley of Bonnie and Camille/Bliss fame. There are 81 pieces, 65 of which are triangles (HSTs or Flying Geese). It finishes to 24 1/2". Can you believe it? One block? 2 feet square? Some of you have kitchen floor tiles as large as that!

I made it for the {Faith} Circle of the do.Good Stitches bee. As usual, the story behind this quilt, and the family it is going to is just heart-breaking. And as much work as this was, as challenging as it was for me, I tried really hard to have a good attitude while I was working on it, knowing that the family who gets this quilt is going through WAY worse than the 8 hours I spent working on it. The biggest challenge for me, besides finding the right colors, was just the precision with which I had to sew it. It's a very specific pattern that required a very exact 'scant 1/4" seam'. And since there were so many points coming together, Ramona suggested I press the seams open. (She just made an entire Swoon quilt in like, a day, or something ridiculous like that. She is a machine!) I think I spent as much time at the iron as I did at the sewing machine! :)

But seriously, folks. One of the things I LOVE LOVE LOVE about modern quilting is the ability to create something beautiful without that kind of precision. Yes, I believe in accuracy and quality craftsmanship, but being a recovering perfectionist, precision is not my best friend. :)

And I'm pretty sure the only swooning I did was after midnight one night when I had already spent 4+ hours on it and I was nowhere near finished.

{WiP} Wednesday ~ Number 15

2011-08-24T08:58:00.000-06:00

(I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for {WiP} Wednesday)

We had our FRMQG meet-and-sew this past weekend, and I actually got to do a leetle bit of sewing, which is kinda miraculous since I haven't every actually sewn at a sew since we moved here. :) I give credit to the awesome team of leaders that run this guild with me - they seriously keep my head on straight...and give me the opportunity to sew! I'm so blessed.

Two things I worked on were:

(a) Paper Piecing, with a fabulous tutorial from the lovely Audrey. I made an M. If I had the energy (and the time?) I would like to make a little zipper pouch for the mama I'm giving (b) to. But the shower is this Saturday, and I'm not sure I'll be able to do it in time. (I'm kinda slow).

and

(b) Zee Baseball Quilt! I'm not finished with it, but I finished the quilting last night, now I just need to bury the stitches, trim the batting, clean up all the stray threads, fold the back over and "bind" it. Oh, and put a label on it. I haven't the froggiest idea what to put on the label, though. Maybe I'll just put the baby's name and date of birth and my name and the date of the shower? Is that too lame?

What isn't lame, though, is this quilt. The stitches got a little out of hand till I determined that I needed to use my regular automatic stitch function (i.e., not my own, irregular foot at the end of my leg). And let me just tell you, if you attempt this yourself? Unpicking is NOT a joyous occasion. There were a lot of "frickin's" and "frackin's" coming out of my mouth... But I love it! It isn't perfect, but I like how it turned out, and I'll probably keep the idea in my back pocket for other baseball loving boys getting born.

In my non-meet-and-sew time, I worked a teensy bit on my Fenced In quilt-along I'm doing with my 9 year-old neighbor. We trimmed all her fabric (and by "we", I mean "I" because she couldn't figure out how to run the rotary cutter and not her mouth...), and I gave her the homework of evenly distributing her strips among 30 pieces of cardstock so when it comes time to sew her blocks, we'll be all set. Personally, I've got too many other quilts on the go to stop and work on my Fenced In quilt right now. I'll catch up to her, though. She's coming over Thursday to get started. Lord help me. :)

And, lastly, I'm binding a quilt for my local Quilts of Valor chapter. The leader and I were the only ones at the August meeting, and we didn't get much accomplished, so I agreed to bring home one of the quilts to (machine - ack!) bind. I'm going to try to use a wavy stitch this time. Maybe my failure has been using a straight stitch... :)

Other than that, I haven't done a thing. I hope you have a great, productive week!

{WiP} Wednesday - my 14th

2011-08-17T20:20:00.000-06:00

June 28th was the last time I blogged here. Ugh.

I got WAY over my head trying to finish my Robert Kaufman Kona Solids Challenge quilt (which I finished about 2 hours before the meeting started!), and then we went on vacation, and then we came back and I've just been working, working working on a few projects.

First, here's a picture of my Solids Challenge. It's actually still a WiP, though, because I have to redo the binding. It just didn't turn out like I wanted, and I just can't live with it like it is, so I'm not finished. One of these days I'll actually write a whole blog post about it. :)

I've also made a few bee blocks. One Christmas set for Libby, and one Confetti block for Traci.

Here are Libby's blocks:

She asked for one tree block, and said that, if we wanted to do another one, we could do whatever we want. Well, inspiration struck twice! :) She sent us a bit of Laurie Wisbrun's Santa Boots fabric, and I decided to make a gigantic block of Christmas boots. This was special to me because at Christmas, instead of filling stockings on Christmas Eve, we decorate our rain boots and fill those instead. It's our goofy little tradition, but it's fun. :) And the other block was inspired by Japanese quilter, Yoshiko Jinzenji. I knew Libby would be cool with it, so I went with it. I tried paper-piecing, and had to throw out the first try...it wasn't worth trying to unpick it! But the second one turned out like I planned. Yay!

Here's Traci's block:

The Front Range Modern Quilt Guild is doing a block swap, and we decide which block we want, then each month someone else makes one for us. She gave me all the fabric for it, and then set me free to make a Confetti block. I used Liz's tutorial and went a little crazy with the confetti bits. :) I think Traci likes it, though.

I also finished a little "repurpose" project. Sometime in June, I was given free access to a PILE of home dec fabrics that were donated to a community center in town. I only had a minute, but when I started digging, I found a "scrap" from a satin comforter that I thought would be the perfect size for a little baby blanket. I told the people who run the community center that I would bind it and bring it back to them. I absolutely love how it turned out. And all I had to do was bind it! Although I did add a little brown satin loop on one side and a blue satin loop on the other. Babies love satin, and moms love loops. :)

When I dropped that off last week, I showed them the first of 5 (yes, five) quilts that I am making for a homeless family at our church. See, August is my month for the do.Good Stitches {Faith} circle, and when I approached my church about a family in need, I was sent to the man who runs the community center. He told me of a homeless family that lives at the community center when they can...otherwise they stay in a "no-tell motel", if ya know what I mean. I have yet to meet the family, but they sound really cool. There are four kids, ages 9, 6, 5 and 3, and the parents work opposite shifts at 7-11 so someone is always home with the kids. As we were talking, I got to thinking that maybe my {Faith} Circle ladies would be willing to step it up a bit and make 4 simple blocks for me rather than 2 complicated blocks, so I said I thought we could make a small quilt for each child. (I sent each bee member a small square of character fabric, one for each child, and asked for simple, two-border blocks). Not too much on my plate, really...

Then we were talking some more, and I learned that 2 years ago, they had a little baby that died in her sleep. 4 months old. Tragic. I was sitting there feeding goldfish to my two, wondering if that smell belonged to one of mine, or not, as they were telling me the story. And then they showed me her picture, and my heart broke into a million pieces. This is Emma.

Isn't she gorgeous? Seriously. Every time I look at that picture, even now, I shake my head and think "that could have been Sprout." Her eyes are so bright, and her cheeks so smoochy, and it looks like there was always a smile on her face. The best picture they have of her is a cell phone picture. And they don't even have a wall to hang it on, you know? So, I decided that I could incorporate her picture into each of the quilts using Artist Transfer Paper. And I wanted to embroider her name and dates of birth and death on each one. That proved to be a bit challenging, but in the end, my friend and guild-mate, Jodi, was able to do it for me. And, y'all? I am SO doggone glad I did it. I'll be honest with you. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of having a picture of a baby that was no longer with us on each of the quilts. "Isn't that a bit morbid?", I thought. "Isn't that going to be a constant reminder to them of what happened?" But I went with the guidance of the people who know the family best, and did it. And after they were done, and I'd put the first Emma block into the first quilt, I realized that they were right and that I was being small-minded.

This family doesn't have a home. They don't have a mailing address. They don't have a wall or a mantle to put a single picture of Emma on. Me? I've got my wall of family pictures, don't you? And I've got thousands on my computer. They have ONE cell phone picture of her. ONE. This way, at least they'll be able to see her gorgeous little face and remember her fondly instead of being sad that they might be forgetting what she looked like.

And when I showed this to Stacy, the one who knows the family the best, she nearly started to cry. It's only the quilt top, and she was floored. The ladies in the {Faith} Circle really showed that we're the best circle out there. :) I especially love how we each made blocks independently, but they go together SO well!

I'm finishing up the second quilt top tonight.

I've got two more quilt tops to make for the two boys, but I'm waiting on a few blocks from my bee mates. I plan on backing each of them with minkee so they're soft and warm on these cold Colorado nights.

And, finally...as we continued to talk, I realized something very important. Moms often get overlooked when gifts are given. So in a moment of weakness, I decided to make the mom a quilt all on my own. Moms deserve their own quilts, too, you know. :) I didn't know at the time what I would make for her, but I believed that God would lead me. Shortly thereafter, the Front Range MQG was given our pieces of Jay McCarroll's Habitat fabric for our challenge. And it just clicked! Habitat. For a homeless mom. A habitat is where we live, and they live wherever they can. But she'll (hopefully) take this quilt with her, so she'll always have something lovely for her habitat.

Here is the beginning of that quilt. I'm using these 3 pieces of Habitat with a lovely Eggplant solid to make Joelle Hoverson's Little Bits quilt.

But I can't get started on that until I finish a baby quilt I'm working on. Some friends just had a baby boy, so I conjured up the idea of making a baseball quilt for them using red, white and blue Kona solids, and using a decorative baseball-like stitch from my machine in red thread to quilt it. My plan is to quilt in the ditch around the block lines in blue, and then quilting waves in red just over the white circles so it will look like a baseball. I've still got to put the top together and then I hope to quilt it at our MQG Sew this weekend. In my head, it's gonna look fabulous! :)

And THAT, my friends, is the short list of what I'm working on. :)

Hopefully I'll be back next week with some more in-progress pictures. I hope you have a great, productive week!

I'm late for the link-up, but I want to link up to Lee's Freshly Pieced {WiP} Wednesday post.

{WiP} Wednesday, Lucky 13

2011-06-29T00:30:00.000-06:00

Finito!

I'll count this block as a "finish", although I'm not completely finished with the entire task. June was Katie's month for the Bee Happy bee, and she sent us two sets of fabric and asked us to make two tree blocks. One for a Christmas tree quilt (red and aqua), and the other for a rainbow tree quilt. We either got the red or the aqua for the Christmas tree quilt, and we each got one color for the rainbow tree quilt. Kelly and Natalie have both finished and posted about theirs, so if you want to see what my blocks are up against, you should go there! :) I'm happy with the aqua Christmas tree block (although I'm glad I didn't get red because it looks a LOT like the Macy's Christmas tree logo, no?). I'm not as happy, though, with my rainbow tree block. I don't really like how it evolved. Which is to say that it is nothing like it looked in my head! I'm still working on it.

I still need to get it to the right size, but since I'm a quilting vampire, I wanted to take a picture of it in daylight!

Also finished are my lollipop tree blocks for the Faith circle of the do.Good Stitches bee. Lots of trees in June... :o) Taffyjane-Des asked for 4 little blocks for a quilt for a new baby, using a modification of the Moda Bakeshop pattern for Love Beads. They were super easy, and I suspect the final quilt will be incredibly cute.

And, finally, among the finishes, I completed two more blocks for my Birdie Stitches Block-of-the-Month stitch-along. March and April are done, and I've started on May. Forever behind... but the good thing is, there's no real deadline for this, and I can complete it when I have the time. And I plan for it to be for me, so I'm not trying to hit a gift or mail deadline. Whew!

All of the ones I've completed, although I'm unsure of the layout.

March

April

Still Needing Some Lovin'

Robert Kaufman Solids Challenge -- it is in progress. It's such a mess right now that I won't even bother to show you pictures of the pile of fabric that WILL become this quilt. I've also identified who I'm giving it to. Now I just need to get it done!
Jen's purse -- no progress, no change, nothing.
Bottled Rainbows QAL -- unstarted, still.
Secretive Get Better Quilt -- unstarted, still. Which is a good thing when you consider that it will be a gift for someone going through a difficult time...meaning that person isn't going through that difficult time, yet!
Secretive P&P Quilt -- unstarted, sigh. I have to have this done by October, so I guess I need to get started now, eh? :)
Fabric Hutch-- I took off some doors, and put baking soda in there. I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't the smell of the wood I'm smelling. Whatever. I'm not in any rush. :)
Mug Rugs -- no progress. I didn't even put any thread through the eye of a needle to work on this one!

New This Week

Habitat Challenge -- Free Spirit has graciously offered 6 fat eighths to all MQG members wanting to participate in a challenge. We got our fabric bolts yesterday and will be giving out the bundles once the fat eighths are cut. I'm either going to make a skirt or a bag... And this one will be for ME!!!
Camera Strap Cover -- this one is for the back burner, too, but I want to keep track of it.
T-shirt Quilts -- I am going to be a part of making 3 t-shirt quilts over the next few months. One has a deadline and is for someone else, and the other two are for a quilt-along with a friend whose husband doesn't appreciate her pile(s) of t-shirts. :) Between her pile(s) of shirts, and Dave's pile(s) of shirts, we should come up with two very lovely quilts!

I think that about wraps it up! I fully acknowledge that this is JUST TOO MUCH, but I'm not sure how to minimize, and what to eliminate. It seems that as I finish one project, three more crop up. I love what I'm doing, I'm just feeling too much pressure right now. (That's me bearing my heart to y'all. I know you know where I'm at because a lot of you have either been there too, or are there now.)

Now, you should totally go over to Lee's place and see what my {WiP} compadres are doing this week.

{WiP} Wednesday #12

2011-06-15T10:51:00.000-06:00

(I've been doing this for 12 weeks? How is that even possible?!)

I'm here again, linking up with Lee, to report to y'all how I've done this week getting stuff OFF my to-do list.

Finishes this week:

I finished my quilt for Craft Hope (to be sent to Alabama) and sent it off. I miss it already. :) You can read about what that quilt taught me here.

I've finished prepping 2 more of my Birdie Stitches block-a-month blocks. I need to trace the embroidery on the center blocks, and then they're ready to be stitched. It'll be nice to only be 3 months behind instead of 4. :)

I also finished that ding-dang camera strap cover I promised my friend at Christmas. (Slacker!) I really hope she likes it. It's a bit scrappy, and I don't know if she'll like that part of it, but the other side is solid, so that's good. I like it, and if she doesn't, well, no harm done. (I used THIS tutorial again.)

In looking at my blog post when I made my own last year, I realized that I had fully intended to make another one for myself. Then when I took it off the camera strap to try Jamie's I realized that it's stained, and it shrank, and it's just...elementary. I totally need a new one! I can not, however, make a new one for myself right now. WAY too much to do. Maybe next week. :)

Still needing some lovin'

Robert Kaufman Solids Challenge -- (sigh). I still haven't started piecing it. I'm SUCH a bad role model. I hope to get piecing on it this week. I HAVE TO get piecing on it this week! Dang.
do. Good Stitches Bee {Faith Circle} -- lollipop blocks, still unstarted. I haven't even pulled fabrics. I will, though!
Katie's Bee Happy bee blocks -- Christmas tree and Rainbow tree. I had hoped to finish these Tuesday, but dadgum "life" just got the best of me. I hope to get to them today or tonight.
Birdie Stitches BOM blocks -- even though I got some prepped, I'm still shamefully behind. I hope to make some good progress this week as I will be away from my electric sewing machine and will have to rely solely on the sewing machine attached to the end of my wrist.
Jen's purse -- right. I need to start this one on the back burner so maybe it'll simmer enough to actually create an idea I can go on! :)
Bottled Rainbows QAL -- unstarted. I'm collecting scraps for it, though. Does that count? :)
Secretive Get Better Quilt -- unstarted, I could at least start it so when the time comes to need it, I won't have to panic. Hmmm....
Secretive P&P Quilt -- unstarted, must buy fabric and set this on the back burner as well.
Fabric Hutch-- the doors are open and airing out the cigar smell.
Mug Rugs -- I unearthed a couple of mug rugs I started in January, I think? I'm going to work on them this week. They're for a very sweet couple who could use some cheering up.

New This Week
Hmmm...I don't think anything! I've certainly got enough on my plate! But I will add "camera strap cover" here, so that next week, when I look back and maybe have a bit of time (hahaha!), I'll remember that I wanted to make one. I'm thinking yellow and aqua this time. I'm SO loving that combination. :) Or rainbow. Always love the rainbow.

Have a great week, and I hope you get a lot done! And if you've got some extra time, you should see what others are working on this week. Click here to go to Lee's link-up.

Right Where It Belongs

2011-06-11T22:19:00.000-06:00

I finished my quilt for the Craft Hope // Security Blankets drive. Good thing, too, since it's due on Wednesday. It felt SO good to get it in the box (had to do the old sit-on-the-suitcase maneuver, though!), and take it to the post office and see it on its way.

I've been working on this quilt for about a month. Not a record time for anyone, but since I can only work on it, really, after the girls are in bed, it has taken me a while. I remember hearing about the Craft Hope drive the first week of May, buying my fat quarters around the 11th or 12th of May, and then really hitting it hard after that. I quilted it Memorial Day weekend, and bound it this last week. I washed it last night, took pictures this morning, and then took it to the post office.

It's gone. I don't know its future. I know it's going to New Jersey, and will then make it down to a charity in Alabama, but from there, I do not know.

I don't know anything about the family that will get it, what happened to their property when the tornado hit, or what devastation they have been through since that awful day in April. I don't know if they believe in God now, or whether the tornado had anything to do with that. I can imagine that for some, their faith was quite shaken after the dust settled. But I can only hope that more people came to know that God was with them as they huddled together as a family, unsure of the future.

So many people lost so much. So many lost everything. And even what was left had to be destroyed because it was so far beyond repair. And yet they have hope. Beautiful, enduring, peace-giving HOPE. And the knowledge that they are not alone, that they will be cared for, and their needs will be met. As I was working on this quilt, I prayed that the family receiving it will have all their needs me, and will know that God is with them.

And as I worked on this quilt, I knew I would have to send it off before our next Modern Quilt Guild meeting. Kristen stopped by the LQS as I finished quilting it, so she got to see it (sorta/kinda) as I was taking it off the long arm. My neighbor saw it when I brought it home that day. You've all seen it in pictures on the blog. But that's it. That's IT!!

I've spent ~~more than~~ a little bit of time this last week wallowing in the fact that no one else (that I know) gets to see this quilt. No one else gets to appreciate it. No one else gets to tell me how beautiful it is, or how colorful, or how much they love how I quilted it, or how perfect my hand-binding and mitered corners are. No one.

But as I was finishing the binding, I felt God saying that this isn't about me. I didn't do this for the glory. I didn't do this so people would tell me wonderful things. I didn't do this to feed my pride.

I made this quilt for a family who lost everything. I made this quilt for a mother who doesn't have anything to wrap around herself as she thinks about how she will rebuild her life. I made this quilt for a young couple who don't have anything to cuddle under and remember that they can get through this together. I made it for a couple of kids who don't have a big enough blanket to make a fort. I made it so they would know they are not alone.

So, rather than have this quilt here where people can admire it, it is on its way to its new home...where people can admire it. Right where it belongs. And I've put my pride away. Right where it belongs. :o)

My Kitty Cat Helper

2011-06-10T20:36:00.000-06:00

Alley is helping me with my binding.
I wish I could be someone's helper by simply curling up on their work.

{WiP} Wednesday #11

2011-06-07T09:50:00.000-06:00

Sadly, I didn't chew down my {WiP} list as much as I would have liked. Such is the life of a crafter, though, right? I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't have a ton of stuff on my to-do list!

Finishes

Kelly's Bee Happy Bee blocks -- Kelly asked for one door block and one window block. I made the door first, modeled after the front door of our house in England. The big tree on the right was a gangly bay tree. I maybe picked two bay leaves the entire time we lived there. :) I modeled the window block after a circular window of an old building where I used to work. The windows had SO much character. Well, the whole building (and the entire campus!) had so much character. The other Bee Happy bees are making some INCREDIBLE doors and windows. These ladies are seriously super creative.

Mystery mod mosaic block -- done. Kicked my butt, but it's done. That design? Wow. I've seen it done, and never realized how intense it was to make! Now I understand why I haven't seen a zillion of them! :) Wonky log cabin? Zillions. Easy. Mod mosaic? Few. Challenging. And, of course, since it's a mystery, I can't show you pictures. :)

Recap of WiPs:

Craft Hope/Alabama quilt -- stll binding. I had a bit of a disagreement with my sewing machine, and so I'm hand binding this. I am a hand-binder, mind you. I don't really like to machine bind, but I don't have much time left. However, if I were serious about machine binding this, I would have to rip out the stitches where I attached the binding to the front of the quilt and start over from scratch. And that would take MORE time than binding by hand. So bind I do.
Plus, I tried my hand at making a continuous bias binding? Never again. That was such a pain in the neck. Preparing the binding takes enough time as it is. One does not need to increase the time spent by following an agonizing and not-that-worthwhile process to get the binding strip(s) cut.
Robert Kaufman Kona Solids Challenge - unfinished. I have my design (I chose RF3 since it's a little edgier and way more modern!) I have my background fabric (Kona Pacific, bought with a coupon at Fabric Bliss for $3.85/yd. Woot!), now I just need to do the math (EQ7 would be super handy right about now!), and start cutting. (it's due at our July meeting)

Camera Strap - unstarted, but I need to move this up on the must-do list! Seriously. I kinda need to finish this one this week. Gah!
Jen's Purse - unstarted.
Birdie Stitches - some unfinished, some unstarted. I'm going to a retreat in June, and I plan to take these along to work on there. I'll have lots of handwork time on my hands. :)
Bottled Rainbows Quilt-along - unstarted.
June do.Good Stitches bee - lollipop tree blocks. I need to move these up my list, too. I can't forget about them!
Secretive Get Better quilt - unstarted, but I'll put everything aside when the time comes to make this.
Secretive P-n-P quilt - unstarted, must buy the fabric and then figure out a pattern. (I actually love the pattern I used for my Alabama quilt, so I might just go with that again!)

New this week

June Bee Happy bee -- Katie is having us make 2 "tree" blocks, one Christmas and one rainbow. Sounds cool! I should get the fabric in the mail this week.
Fabric Hutch -- I found this hutch on CraigsList on Saturday, and spent the better part of the day (a) getting it into my SUV, (b) getting it out of my SUV, and (c) cleaning the film of ick off of it. I love the design, but not the wood finish. Or the handles. Or the permeating scent of cigar smoke. I don't mind the smell of cigars, it reminds me of my great-grandpa, but I don't want my fabric smelling like Great-grandpa Williams! :) So I will be sanding it down, temporarily removing the glass, repainting it black, and putting lots and lots of baking soda inside to try to draw out the smell in the wood. :)

I feel like there must be more on my list! Am I forgetting something? This just can't be everything on my craft list! I've got a couple of baby blankets in mind...maybe by next week I'll have a plan for those. :)

Anyway, go to Lee's blog and see what my fellow crafters are up to their necks in this week! :) Me? I've got about 290" to go until that baby is bound.

Really? That's it?

2011-06-05T23:02:00.000-06:00

You would think 492 feet of continuous bias binding would look more impressive than this!

(it's actually about 465" long)

Since my quilt for Alabama (Craft Hope) is so large, there is quite a bit of real estate to be bound. (sigh). I don't mind binding. Some people hate it. Tonight, however, I am hating the continuous bias binding process. I'm not convinced it was faster or better than simply cutting the strips and sewing them together.

If I never see a continuous bias binding again, I'll be a happy woman!

{WiP} Wednesday #10

2011-06-01T14:21:00.000-06:00

Smell ya later, May. Butt-whoopin' time is over. Go away and let me get some rest!

Whew. From top to bottom, May has been stressful. I feel like we've just gone non-stop, had parties or guests all the time, had birthdays and deaths, finals and graduation, projects completed and more projects started. I'm really hoping June isn't half as crazy and sleepless as May was.

Last week, we saw me partway finished with the quilt top for the quilt I'm going to donate to Craft Hope Project 13 for their Security Blanket drive for survivors of the tornadoes in Alabama.

I'm calling it Building Blocks of Hope, I think. Something like that. Anyway, I was on a very tight timeline to finish the top and the back because I had a 1:00 sew-time on Friday at the long-arm. I finished the back at 12:20, and still had to cut the batting, square up the edges, pack up, grab some lunch, and drive the 20 minutes down there. Needless to say, I was late. :) Not too bad, and I'd reserved the machine for the entire afternoon, so it wasn't a big deal, really.

Mookie wanted to dance on the quilt.

I used 10 fat quarters for the top, and was able to make a strip of leftovers on the back. Overall, I used about 6 yards of Kona Snow, but that was for the front and the back. I've got a pile of scraps and strips that probably come close to a yard, so if I had been extra careful, or pieced some of the scraps, I could have gotten away with less. But, like I said, I was in a hurry, and that $5.00 in extra yardage was worth it.

I quilted it with a random, meandering loop-de-loop design, and I am SO VERY GLAD that I did this on the long-arm. There is just no flippin' way I could have man-handled this huge quilt on my home machine...large throat and all. The finished size (before binding) is 6 1/2 feet by 7 feet. It took me about 2 hours of actual quilting (and walking around/taking a break) time, which is phenomenal compared to how long it would have taken me to do at home.

The colors in this strip were the inspiration for the rest of the quilt. Like I've said, this isn't in my normal range of color choices, but I like how they all came together. I hope the recipient does too. :)

I'm going to bind it in the aqua in this picture, and plan to have that done and mailed off by next week. Honestly, I'm a bit bummed that the deadline for the drive is before our next MQG meeting. :) I like to show things off. (don't we all?) I am really pleased with it, though. Mistakes and all. Every time I walk past it on the dining room table, I pet it. There isn't anything fancy about this quilt, really. It's not an original design, it's not terribly funky or fresh or modern. The quilting isn't terribly inspired or intricate. But sometimes there is beauty in the simple. And I really hope that whoever gets this will agree. :o)

Between busting my tail to get that thing quilted, and a family-focused holiday weekend, I didn't get much else done.

I did finish (and mail) my squares for the May do.Good Stitches {Faith Circle} Bee. You can read about them here. The finished quilts are going to be SO cool!

(They look better in real life. It was super windy outside when I went to take pictures)

Recap of WiPs:

Robert Kaufman Kona Solids Challenge - unfinished, but I'm stoked about my design! (I actually came up with another new design yesterday. I created a mock-up in Excel and can't decide on RF1 or RF3. RF2 is just too predictable. This is supposed to be a challenge, doncha know.)
Kelly's Bee Happy door and window blocks - unfinished, but halfway done.
Camera Strap - unstarted, but I need to move this up on the must-do list!
Jen's Purse - unstarted.
Birdie Stitches - some unfinished, some unstarted. I'm going to a retreat in June, and I plan to take these along to work on there. I'll have lots of handwork time on my hands. :)
Bottled Rainbows Quilt-along - unstarted.
June do.Good Stitches bee - lollipop tree blocks. These are VERY new on the list, so I have no guilt about them. :)
Secretive Get Better quilt - unstarted, but I'll put everything aside when the time comes to make this.
Secretive P-n-P quilt - unstarted, must buy the fabric and then figure out a pattern. (I actually love the pattern I used for my Alabama quilt, so I might just go with that again!)

New this week

Mystery mod-mosaic block. I know some really great people that have THE BIGGEST hearts around. That's all I can say. I should be working on it right now, but I left the mailbox key in Dave's car, and his car isn't here right now, so I can't get the mail to get my fabrics!! Dangit!

Hopefully next week I will have a finished quilt to show you, some finished door and window blocks, some progress on my solids challenge quilt, (hah) progress on that dern camera strap, progress on my lollipop trees, and maybe a start on my June Bee Happy bee squares.

I hope you have a great, crafty week! I've linked up with Elizabeth at Don't Call Me Betsy (changed for this week) for the {WiP} Wednesday collaboration. Go and see what everyone else is up to!

...and this is what my littlest does while I'm focused on taking pictures of a quilt!

It's a good thing she's cute. :)

Where 24 + 48 = 4 (Quilter's Math)

2011-05-30T22:58:00.000-06:00

I just finished my second month as a stitcher in the {Faith} Circle of the do.Good Stitches bee. In April, we made the rainbow blocks (you can read about mine here), and Rachel (of Stitched in Color) has joined them into an INCREDIBLE (and huge!) quilt top. Don't you want one just like it? I know I do!

Anyway, for May, Kelsey asked us to make blocks for a little family in her church. The parents have been very active in the church, and they recently welcomed a set of twin boys into their family. They are preparing to move away, and Kelsey wanted to send them off with a set of matching quilts for the boys. She asked us to make 4 string blocks -- 2 using orange, gray, aqua and white fabrics, and 2 using yellow, gray, aqua and white (love!). She also asked us to add some textured fabrics, not just quilting cotton.

I had some orange minkee and orange jumbo ric rac, so I just bought some teensy little aqua pom-poms, and some aqua corduroy. And then I set about making a huge old mess while I tried to make some order out of the chaos! 24 different fabrics +48 seams = 4 blocks. (See? Quilter's Math.)

(I do not like making string blocks! They totally mess with my desire to create order!) (I always love the outcome, though...love the product, not the process!) :o)

I'm not sure how she's going to quilt over the pompoms, though! :)

Now that the mess on my sewing table is cleaned up, I'm excited to see her finished quilt! :)

And for June? We're making "Lollipop trees" for a little girl being born in August. I'm a little scared, but somehow I know I'll do it. :)

One Advantage of Being Slow...

2011-05-26T16:50:00.000-06:00

...is that the needle just bends the pin, but doesn't break it.

{WiP} Wednesday #9

2011-05-25T10:44:00.000-06:00

Look! It's Wednesday again! And I'm posting again! (I'm such a broken record!)

But I've really had my nose to the grindstone this week trying to get my quilt for Craft Hope/Alabama done. Well, and having a joint birthday party on Saturday (and having to super-clean because my grandma came down!) and guests coming to stay from Sunday till tomorrow.

The birthday girls. Scrumptious!

Nose to the grindstone. I haven't sewn anything else.

The blocks in pile. Not nearly as impressive as I thought they would be.

I had to clean up my ~~crap~~ craft area a bit so I could hang my design wall again. Storage will come one of these days...but I'd rather be sewing than spending the time organizing. What's that? You don't know what I'm talking about? Whatever.

The blocks all rolled up. There was a tiny patch of sun, and I the colors were brilliant

This is 80 blocks, and the back will have some pieces/scraps from the fat quarters I used for the front. I HAVE TO get the top and back done by Friday morning because I've reserved time on the long arm, and that's really the only time I can do it.

I'm using the Flowerbeds pattern from the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of McCall's Quilting. BUT, I will warn you...if you do this pattern on your own, you will not need as much of the border/sashing/white fabric as the pattern calls for. If you follow the pattern exactly, then you're good, but if you're a pattern-deviant like me, then you'll have a lot more than you really need.

I wasn't sure if I would dig the colors once I got the blocks together up on the wall, but I still do. They're definitely not my first choice of colors, but I wanted this quilt to be something that a man wouldn't mind having in his home. I mean, really. These people are rebuilding their lives from nothing. From the ground up, so I wanted to have it be a color combination that either a man or woman would be pleased to have decorating their new space.

Hopefully I will get to show you finished pictures next week, as well as other finishes!!

Recap of WiPs:

Robert Kaufman Kona Solids Challenge - unfinished, but I'm stoked about my design!
Kelly's Bee Happy door and window blocks - unfinished, but halfway done.
do.Good Stitches Bee - unfinished, but 5% done. :)
Camera Strap - unstarted, but I need to move this up on the must-do list!
Jen's Purse - unstarted.
Birdie Stitches - some unfinished, some unstarted. I'm going to a retreat in June, and I plan to take these along to work on there. I'll have lots of handwork time on my hands. :)
Bottled Rainbows Quilt-along - unstarted.

New this week (or more like "remembered" this week!)

Secretive Get Better quilt - unstarted, but I'll put everything aside when the time comes to make this.
Secretive P-n-P quilt - unstarted, must buy the fabric and then figure out a pattern.

{WiP} Wednesday

2011-05-19T02:02:00.000-06:00

I wonder if I'll ever post on days other than Wednesday again? :o)

Finished

do. Good Stitches Rainbow pouch. It was my first zippered pouch, and there were some technical difficulties, but I think it looks fine. I know I'll be making more, but I won't be making piles and piles of these this weekend! :)
Email Bee Happy Bees. It's not really a craft to-do, but it is related to crafting! And it was something I had been needing to do for a while. :) So I'm gonna count it as a victory. :o)

In Progress

Kelly's Bee Happy Blocks. I have (mostly) finished one block. She asked for one door and one window block. I just have to finish the trim on the door, then I can start on the window. (I'll share pictures when I'm done with both.)
Alabama Quilt. I bought the fabric and have cut all the colored strips, and am about 1/90th of the way done with the Snow strips. I'm really really excited about it, though! I love the fabrics that I never would have chosen otherwise. :) I need to get the lead out, though, and get this one done. The bottom fabric, the stripes on the left, there? That was the inspiration for the rest of the fabrics. Again, not my normal color scheme, but I really like it. Since I have no idea who I'm donating to, I wanted it to be gender neutral.

Not Yet Started

do.Good Stitches {Faith Circle} Blocks. I'll start them Thursday night or Friday. I hope. I've got my textured fabric (she asked for string blocks with some texture), and just need to get started.
March/April/May Birdie Stitches Blocks. Yup. No progress. I've still got to embroider March's and then make (and embroider) the April and May blocks. Heck, I might as well just add June to this list since it'll be June before I really get to it! :)
Camera Strap. Sorry, Jamie! I hope to get it done, though, by mid-June since Dave will be seeing his family then and can hand deliver it.
Jen's purse. Again with the "no progress". I want to work on it, but it'll just have to wait till I get struck with inspiration. Jen would appreciate me waiting till the fabric "speaks" to me. She gets it. :o)
Bottled Rainbows Quilt-along. I've made more scraps...does that count?

Added

Decorate the Living Room. I've been waiting to do this, and now I'm doing it! I've (obviously) got to hang the pictures, and get plants and lamps in here, but I like it a lot more than I thought I would. :o) I have, unfortunately, spent a lot of good crafting time shopping! (Yes, I do offer my baby her snack in a cake pan. It's less likely to end up inside my vacuum that way.)
Celebrate First and Third Birthdays!. My girls both have birthdays this month, so we've been celebrating with cupcakes and brownies and chocolate chip pancakes. We've been planning a (Dora) birthday party and cleaning (or not) in preparation for said Dora party. Birthdays take a lot of time away from crafting! :o)

Failed

Mug Rugs for Japan. I couldn't make any of these. My guild was asked to make mug rugs to sell at an art event and donate the money to Japanese Red Cross. I don't know how many others made mug rugs, but I didn't get it done. I've got loads of good excuses, but the truth is, I didn't get any made.

{WiP} Wednesday

2011-05-11T09:22:00.000-06:00

That's my to-sew list. That I can remember, at least!

Let's review:

RK Kona Solids Challenge - I decided to buy green background. I can't remember what it is, but I didn't want to use white, and I wanted it to be bright and happy, so I went with green. I think it's Kona Celery. (It's not on that list, but it totally should be!)
Mug Rugs for Japan - the Front Range Modern Quilt Guild has decided to try to sell mug rugs at the Monument Art Hop (Monument is a small town here, and the Art Hop is a summer series, and different shops host local artists). We are going to donate any money to the Japanese Red Cross. The Art Hop is May 19th, so I need to get busy!
Kelly's Bee Happy blocks - Kelly took on the first month in Round 2 of the Bee Happy virtual quilting bee. She gave us solids and some of Dena Designs fabrics and asked us to make one window block and one door block. I don't know what I'm going to do, quite yet, but I need to start drafting my ideas. I'm administrating this round, and it's not cool for the administrator to be late! Especially the first month! Hah!
May "Faith" do.Good Stitches blocks - For May, Kelsey asked us to make string blocks for two quilts she is making for a couple of boys in her church.
Sew the April and May Birdie Stitches blocks, and then, of course, embroider them! I'm falling further and further behind!
Alabama Quilt - Craft Hope has designated Project 13 to be security blankets for tornado survivors (of Alabaman). Since I spent some of the best years of my 20s in that lovely state, I can't very well make a quilt for Japan, and NOT make one for Alabama! I think I've got a line on some 108" wide fabric (not muslin, I'm going to see how the two are different), and I am either going to do something similar to my Japan design (with the hexies appliqued to the top), or I'm going to do something SIMPLE, but different. I think the deadline is June 15th, so I gotta get my boottackal region in gear! They are accepting ALL blankets, though, so if you know how to make a blanket (of any kind), head on over there and sign yourself up. Fleece, flannel, crocheted, knit, quilted, whatever. Blankets. To people whose entirely livelihood has literally been wiped off the map.
Pouch for April do.Good.Stitches recipient. I asked Rachel if I could send anything extra with the quilt for the lady who we made the rainbow blocks for, and she said sure! So I'm going to jump on the pouch bandwagon and make her a rainbow pouch. And include a little something inside, too. :o)
Camera Strap for a friend - oh my goodness. At Christmas, a friend made a comment on my camera strap, and I told her I'd make her one. It's now May. I suck.
Quilted bag for my step-mom - Jen said she wanted to have something that I made, and she loves purses, so I'm going to make her a purse. After I make Jamie's camera strap.
Embroider March's Birdie Stitches block - sigh.
Bottled Rainbows quilt - holy cow. I love the Bottle Rainbows quilts that everyone seems to be finishing, and I haven't even started, but this is at the bottom of my list for a reason...it's NOT a priority!

And here are my finishes go from the last week or two:

I finished Audrey's mug rug (and didn't take any pictures, but I'll add them if I can!). She and I both went to Auburn University (in Alabama) (War Eagle!), so I made her a mug rug with the AU logo on it. Audrey is also kinda notorious for loving scraps, so made the AU and the stripe down the side out of scraps. I've never used a satin stitch for applique, and I wasn't really pleased with how it shifted on the fabric, but I had a few near-catastrophic mug rug events the day I was finishing it, and I just couldn't bring myself to cut out the AU and piece it in. I was lucky to get out the door with my inside clothes on the inside that day!
I finished Janice's Wonky Log Cabin house blocks for Round 1 of the Bee Happy VQG. She sent all the fabric we needed, but designated some special fabric she really wanted us to use. She said she wanted them super-scrappy (which is super-hard for me!), and that was pretty much it! Here are my two blocks together, and you can just click on the picture and go to my photostream to see them individually.

I believe that is all I've got to share? There's a whole heckuva lot more on the to-sew list than on the done-sewed list. But maybe that will change this week.

I hope you all are having a great, and crafty, week!

Tell Her What She's Won!!

2011-05-07T10:56:00.000-06:00

First, I want to apologize to Aunt Spicy for taking so long to post this. I'm really awful about acknowledging kindness. It's not that I didn't appreciate it when it came, it's that I...well, I just suck.

So, anyway, back in, what, February? I won a Kona Color Card in the Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway. When I was notified that I won, I started to laugh. And I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Oh, how I wanted the Kona solids charm pack set. I have a really cool quilt design that will require all the charm squares, and I was eager to win it. Instead, I won a Kona Color Card. To add to my collection. At the time, I already had 2, and now I was going to get a 3rd? Ha. Haha. Haha. Sigh.

:o)

I emailed Kelly and Aunt Spicy and Erica and made some joke about now having a 3rd color card. Aunt Spicy replied that she would gladly trade me some fabric for my color card. I was pretty stoked! She has great taste in fabric, and I know the color cards can be hard to find, so it was a win-win proposition! (note: I knew full well that I was getting the better end of the deal!) :o)

(a color card for that JACKPOT pile of fabric? I totally scored.)

I contacted Robert Kaufman and asked them to send the color card to her, and she went through her stash and sent me some of her coveted Jennifer Paganelli fabrics.

I consider using them for every project I've done since I got them, but nothing seems quite right. I want it to be meaningful, something that will always reflect my sweet friend, Aunt Spicy.

One day I will use it to make something wonderful!

THANK YOU!!!!

A Week of Rainbows

2011-05-02T12:41:00.000-06:00

Oh, if only I was talking about the weather. It's still very wintery here in Colorado. I'm not really complaining...we all know the weather has been MUCH much worse elsewhere. I'm just tired of being cold. :o)

The rainbows this week came at the end of needles and thread.

I finished the quilt I made to send to Japan. I call it my TNT Quilt because I tried new things for this quilt. (Also because there were many times I thought the best thing that could happen to the quilt would be for it to get too close to a stick of dynamite! But my old saying is true, most of the errors disappear in the quilting, thank God!)

(I had to show my little rainbow baby!)

And once I'd finished that up, I was able to start working on some bee blocks I wanted to make. This is my first month as a stitcher on the Faith circle of the do.Good.Stitches bee. Rachel of Stitched in Color has a total of 8 circles going now, and each month the members make blocks from their own stash following the guidelines from that month's quilter. The quilter decides where to send that quilt and does all the hard work. I LOVE that I still get to make quilts, but that these quilts are going to people in need, and not just a pile to the left of my couch.

For April, Rachel asked us to make rainbow blocks for a single mom in her church that has 6 kids. Yes, single mom. 6 kids. She surely deserves a nice warm, snuggly, bright quilt, doncha think? I put these 3 blocks in the mail this morning.

I used Lady Harvatine's fabulous machine-pieced hexagon tutorial. If you like hexies, this is life changing. And the hexies are all from the Hexagon Swap group on Flickr. We're just finishing up Round #5, so if you want to swap hexies with us, go over there and join!

I used the fabulous tutorial from Jacquie/Tallgrass Prairie Studio to make this wonky log cabin. I also used scraps that I've been given by others. The only fabric that was mine is the pink on the outside. I love that this was a collaborative block. :o)

And I just wanted to get this one done so I could send her the blocks. I know she's keen to get started!

I can't wait to see the finished quilt!

*********
I'm linking up with Megan's {Sew} Modern Monday. Go there and see what else got made modern this week! There's some GORGEOUS stuff over there. :o)

{FiW} Wednesday

2011-04-26T23:43:00.000-06:00

I propose we change the name of this weekly post to {FiW} Wednesday...as in FINISHED it Wednesday.

(which I guess should be {Fi} Wednesday, but go with me, here.)

Because there were a LOT of finishes this week. Phew!

Well, two. But that feels like A LOT when you consider how long those things have been on my WiP list.

First, I finished my pineapple blocks for Yolanda in the Bee Happy Bee. I was (as usual) intimidated by her blocks, mostly because of what I've heard people say about pineapple blocks. She found a pattern by Allison Quilt Designs (called the Crimson Rambler) that didn't require paper piecing, and assured us these weren't difficult. I believed her, really I did! It's just that I had to finish Libby's blocks before I felt like it was fair to start Yolanda's. AND...and that's a big and...I knew I needed to be able to do them when I could concentrate (read: not while the girls were awake and playing) and when I had a large enough block of time to finish them (read: not while the girls were simply napping). But I found time to wrap my head around the process, and another chunk of time to get them finished. I really like the way the two I made turned out, and I can't wait to see her finished quilt! It'll be stunning!

My other big finish this week is the quilt I have been working on for the Quilts for Japan drive. There has been a wonderfully huge push to encourage the quilters of the world to make quilts for the people who were devastated by the earthquake/tsunami that hit Japan in March.

I've had this design in my head since I started swapping hexies in (funny, Yolanda's) hexagon swap on Flickr. (Yolanda is clearly a big part of my quilting life this week!) The Quilts for Japan drive was just the push I needed to actually get the hexies out and work them into a quilt.

I have decided to call this my "TNT Quilt." Mostly because the best thing that could happen to this quilt is if it got just a little too close to a stick of dynamite. :o) No. Really, it's because I tried SO doggone MANY new things with this quilt. Get it? Tried New Things? Catchy, no? For starters, I used quilter's spray adhesive to hold the hexies on until I raw-edge appliqued them down. Second, I used Kona Premium muslin for the white. It was VERY nice to have a whole piece of fabric and not have to piece anything. I also added a little yellow hexie for the label.

Oh, and FYI - the hexagons were all cut with the Accuquilt Go! Studio hexagon die.

Next, I quilted it myself. (TOTALLY new thing for me!) I knew this was too big for me to quilt on my home machine, though, so when my rock star friend, Traci, and I took a long arm class at our LQS, I knew this quilt was destined to be quilted on the big APQS Millenium (a.k.a. "Millie". Unique, no?) The class was really good, but I didn't have enough time to finish it there that day. Thankfully, I have a wonderful neighbor who offered to watch Mookie (who will be 3 in a few weeks! Gasp!) last Friday morning while I went down and finished this. I took Sprout (and a bag full of toys) with me.

Just in case anyone is wondering, the floor of a quilt shop is probably not the best place for a curious 11 month old who thinks every single thing on the floor belongs in her mouth.)

Sprout didn't last on the floor nearly as long as I was hoping, so I'm thankful I had my Ergo with me. She fell asleep as I was quilting this, which is suprising considering how much commotion and noise that machine makes!

I have to say - I was surprised at how much the backing and the top moved and shrank during the quilting process. Well, and during the trimming process! I had to cut a LOT off to square it up!

And then came the binding. (sigh). I decided that since I needed to finish this quilt quickly (Lecien, a Japanese fabric distributor in California, is offering to send them to needy families in Japan), I needed to machine bind it. I really should have taken a step back and watched some tutorials and talked to people who machine bind, because I could have used some serious help! My corners look like something the dog would roll in, you can sometimes see the stitches from the other side, and it's not perfectly even all the way around like it would have been if I'd hand-bound it. BUT I don't know how many months later I would be finishing it if I'd had to bind it by hand!

(notice how I am not showing you any pictures of the binding? I'll leave that to Kelly and her superstar binding!)

Mookie has helped make this quilt from the very beginning. Since she loves to swipe the hexies and make a "fairy path", I had to explain to her that this quilt was for a special family. A family that doesn't have a home anymore. A family that is very sad. And so anytime I was working on it, she would talk to me about the family, and ask me ~~a zillion~~ questions. When I showed it to her this morning and asked her to help me take pictures, she was very excited. I love that she's compassionate even at a young age. :o)

The finished quilt is about 50x80". Kinda long, but that's okay. That's how long it had to be to incorporate all the hexies. I like that the quilt "became," for lack of a better term. I had no plan (which is very unlike me) - just a handful of hexies that I wanted to use. The quilt dictated the rest for me. Rather like how a novel "writes" itself, well this quilt "created" itself. :o)

And since Sprout was such an integral part of the making of this quilt, I will shower you with a handful of gratuitous baby shots. :o)

Now then.

Back to the works in progress...

I haven't touched anything else all week. :o) I haven't started anything new (including the bee blocks for Janice that are about to be a month behind...). But I've got a few more things that I have to finish soon, so I hope to get to work on them tomorrow.

For my sake, I'm just going to type out a little list. I know I'm going to need to refer back to it soon enough. :o)

-Audrey's mug rug (and about 3 other mug rugs for other people)
- A few more infinity scarves
- My Robert Kaufman Kona Solids Challenge Quilt
- A few bee blocks
- My birdie stitches blocks

Oh, and in the "canvas" department, Dave and had a little "wine time creations" of our own on Friday night. It was Good Friday, and I thought it would be nice to paint something to reflect the sacrifice Jesus made for us that day. I showed Dave a few photos of my idea, and we got started.

Even though it was Good Friday, we painted the scene for Sunday morning.

Dave wants to paint The Scream next. I'm not sure, but I think that one is going to have to go in the "unspeakable wifely duties" category. (I do not like that painting!) The good thing about Canvas and Cocktails is that you don't have to paint what the rest of the class is painting. Thank goodness! :o)

I hope you have a great and crafty week!

(Yesterday's bad weather moved on and left us with a clear, bright morning for taking outside pictures.)

{WIP} Wednesday

2011-04-20T13:04:00.000-06:00

I'm in the middle of WAY WAY WAY too many things. Ugh. I want to be at the END of some of these! And yet, somehow, I still keep adding more...I'm not too bright. :o)

Well, okay. I do have one finish. See that new little button on the right? Yup. We now have a button for our local Front Range Modern Quilt Guild! Yay!

And on that note, we are going to do something in the fall that I'm just a little too excited about. I don't know what we're going to call it, but something like "UFO"...as in "Un Finished October" where anyone who wants to participate agrees to not start any new projects for the entire month.

Did you swallow that? No. New. Projects. For an entire month. And it's a big month, too! Not a little month like February or April. A month with 31 days! We do get one mulligan, though, if we need to start something new. :o) The idea is that we spend our creative time finishing projects. Especially leading up to the holidays, this should be a good thing. I'll let you know how it goes. Heck, maybe I'll even make a button for it since I'm all skilled up in that department now. :o)

Where was I? Oh, right. Works In Progress = Too Many.

I've got my Japan Quilt. I took a class at a LQS on their long arm machine, and I was able to do one row of meander stitching before I had to hustle home to my babies. Unfortunately, the tension was off for about 1/4 of it, so I spent a little time last night doing some "reverse sewing" with my reverse sewing machine (a.k.a. seam ripper). (sigh) I am going to spend a couple more hours on the long arm on Friday, and I absolutely positively MUST finish the quilting on it. I found a pretty rainbow polka dot (on a black background) for the binding, and I'm going to try my hand at machine binding the behemoth. Otherwise I'll never finish it in time!

I used Lady Harvatine's Hexagonia tutorial for machine piecing hexagons, and I'm totally smitten. Here's a sneak peak at a block I did. I'll tell you the story about it later. The important thing is that I am now The Hexagon Master east of the Rocky Mountains.

I am in the middle of making my bee blocks for Yolanda. She asked us to make pineapple blocks that do not require paper piecing! Did you swallow that? No paper piecing! And the pictures that the other worker bees have done look really great. She's going to have an incredible quilt when we're all done!

I still need to embroider my Birdie Stitches for March and create my block for April. (Heck, I might as well just create my May block while I'm at it.) You can see the orange border here for March. April's block will have a yellow border, and May's will have a green border. I am surrounded by rainbows right now! (Which I love...)

And then there's a mug rug for my guild-mate, Audrey (I'm only showing you the carnage). I'll show you the finished mug rug after I give it to her. We were supposed to give them to our partners at the April MQG meeting, but she wasn't able to attend. She asked me to give it to her in person, so we'll all just have to wait till after May 9th. I'm kind of excited about it, though. :o)

And, of course, my Robert Kaufman Kona Solids Challenge. See the dust collecting on my charm pack? Hah. I have a million ideas -- some easier than others, of course. And I had a fabulous idea the other morning, but I need to do a test run to see how easy it is. If I wait much longer, I'm going to have to default to my easiest design and just whip it out!

And with that, I'm off. I know there are other projects I'm in the middle of, but I just can't think of them.

OH...how could I forget!! It's not really a true "finish", but it is something creative that happened this week. Last Saturday night, Dave and I went to a place in Denver called Canvas and Cocktails. They give you all the supplies to paint a picture, AND they put an instructor at the front of the room to tell you everything you need to know! It was a lot of fun. Saturday was their first "Guys' Night", so half the room was men, which really changed the chemistry of the night. Normally it's a bunch of women and a lot of wine, and there's a whole lotta chatting going on. We all know men are different, and are less likely to chat while they're doing...well, heck. Let's be real. They're just less likely to chat. Period. No matter what they're doing. :o) Can't use up their 500 words for the day, right? Haha. :o)

Here's what Dave and I made. You can see the inspiration painting in the background. He didn't do too bad, did he? :o)

I hope you have a great week.

{WIP} Wednesday

2011-03-30T23:07:00.000-06:00

You know? I love traveling to see family and friends, but MAN, is re-entry hard!

We spent a fabulous spring break week in LA seeing old friends and just really enjoying being back. Really. Sprout and I went to a LAMQG weekend sew, and got to see our buddies there. We went to Sew Modern and bought loads of yummy scrummy fabrics from Lauren. I bought some prints for stash and for swaps. (and, let us just be real, here...I bought them just to pet and admire).

I bought a lovely, rainbow array of Kona solids. Some for Stitched in Color's Bottled Rainbows Ticker Tape Quilt-along, and some for the next round of the Hexagon Swap on Flickr.

We went to Momen+ and bought too many fat quarters.

We ate at In-and-Out Burgers, and the Omelette and Waffle Shop. We went to the Aquarium. We spent time with people we love. Good, good times. I miss my LA friends and my LA life. People often ask if I'm glad to be back in Colorado, and I always feel bad for saying "Not really", even though it's true. Colorado is wonderful and beautiful and has lots of wonderful and beautiful things and people, but it's just not the life that we had created in LA.

Then the girls and I traveled to Phoenix to spend a few days with my brother and his wife. There's a whole lot of mutual idolizing going on between Uncle Robbie and Mookie. I took pictures, but they're on the other computer, so I'll try to upload some later to my other blog.

Because we were gone, I don't have much in the way of finished works. Really only one. I finished my February block for the Birdie Stitches Block of the Month. March is ready to be stitched. And the April design comes out Friday. Oh how I love to be behind.

I am doing each month in a different color, so January was pink, February was red, March was orange, April will be yellow, etc. And I decided to use embroidery thread to match the block color, for the most part. I was really surprised to see the stark difference between the pink January stitching and the red February stitching. Hopefully in the end, it will all be cool and I'll love the finished quilt. :o)

But while I was gone, I received two gigantic and bountiful packages of scraps. I participated in Sew Sara's scrap swap, and Mariliz and Jessica both sent WAY too many scraps. :o)

And check out this rogue, super cool scrap from Mariliz! I'm desperate to know what it is, and where I can find loads more of it. I don't drink coffee or tea, really, but I just LOVE this design!

Eventually, I'll be using those scraps to make my own Bottled Rainbows Ticker Tape quilt. I have all the supplies now, so I can get started on it whenever I want, but I've got a zillion other projects that MUST get done, and that one would be just for fun, and just for me, so I'm going to wait.

Speaking of other projects, I decided to use some of my hexies from the Hexagon Swap to start a quilt to send to a survivor of the earthquake in Japan. I am taking a class on how to use a long arm machine at a LQS, and we're supposed to bring a quilt to practice on, so I decided to hustle up and get this one finished so I can quilt it there at the shop. Here's the quilt top so far.

I used 52 hexagons (cut using the Accuquilt Go! die), and I'm so glad that I participated in so many rounds of the Hexie Swap so that I would have enough to sort through and have enough of each color to really use. Needless to say, I totally love it. It's symmetrical, it's rainbow-ey, and it's modern. My kind of quilt. My next task is to applique the hexies to the top. THAT, my friends, is what's going to take me a while. :o)

And, I've still got Libby's bee blocks, Yolanda's bee blocks, Janice's bee blocks, Audrey's mug rug, mug rugs for other friends, a camera strap, a quilted purse, squares to cut for the next round of the hexie swap and more to cut for the Around the Circle swap. Oh, duh. And my Kona Solids Challenge quilt.

Ugh. You know I loved that trip to LA and Phoenix, but it was hard to be away from my sewing machine for so long! There is just SO much to do!

But that, my friends, is what's on my {WIP} list this week. I hope you have a great, and productive week!

{WIP} Wednesday (on Wednesday, even!)

2011-03-15T22:05:00.000-06:00

Yes, I had a busy week. Lots to do, lots to get done, lots more on the list.

Here are a few finished projects from last week. I didn't blog about this first one because I totally spaced on it. :o) No, really. Can you believe it?! :o)

It's an adorable felt book with removable cupcake shapes. You may remember I made a felt board for Mookie last year, and she still loves it. Calls it her "games". Don't know why. :o) Anyways, a few weeks ago, I saw this tutorial by Wild Olive, and thought about how easy it would be and how pretty much every kid I know would just LOVE it. :o) We had a birthday party to go to on Saturday for a little 3 year old, and so I made this for her. On the front cover, I glued a cupcake and the letter K for her name.
Cupcake book ~ cover:

Here is a picture of the inside. If I make any more, I will insert a piece of fabric along the top edge so that I can fold it down and help keep all the pieces in place. You know felt sticks to itself, and it's pretty indiscriminate about which piece of felt it's sticking to...so when it's closed, it's nice and tidy, but when you open it up, the pieces are all skewhiffy. And I just didn't like that! So, again. I'll insert fabric along the top, and fold it down before I close the book.
Cupcake book ~ ingredients:

Since I knew all the pieces were going to go everywhere, I decided (at the almost-last minute) to create a little bag for K to put her pieces in. It's pretty crappy, but it's not bad for never having done one before! And I just kept telling myself that it's for a 3 year old, you know? It's not going to be judged at the county fair, or anything! :o) I, of course, had to stay within the theme.

Cupcake bag:

K was very pleased with it, as was her mother. Mookie was all over it. Wanting it, interrupting the gift opening process to go get it to play with it, asking me repeatedly to make one for her...fun. You know what they say about the children of cobblers and doctors, right? It's the same for the children of crafters -- Mama's always making for other people, and doesn't make for her! One day. Maybe in May when she turns 3. :o)

I also finished my Barcelona skirt! Yay! Let's just all promise to not show Mrs Wadsworth my hem, okay? Because she would not be very proud of her student... :o)

I shortened the 4th panel because I wanted it to hit my knee, but that's the only modification I made. And other than the zipper being a bit tricky, the instructions were VERY VERY clear! I can safely say that this is the first garment pattern I used that didn't make me feel like a complete, single-digit IQ, idiot.

And for the summer, I'm going to make one with some rrrrred fabric I have yet to find. :o) I've always wanted a red summer skirt, and now I'm gonna get me one! :o)
Barcelona Skirt:

As for my works in progress, I'm still working on Libby's house blocks (with no pictures because that's how much progress I've made, ahem!)

And I'm designing a mug rug for a swap within my modern quilt guild. I got Audrey's name, and I'm totally stoked. I have the design all done (in my head), now I just need to get it on paper and then execute it. It's going to take my mug rug expertise to the next level, lemme tell ya. :o)

I'm also part of a couple of scrap swaps, so I need to get my scraps all sorted and in the mail. Like, yesterday!

AND...I'm pretty excited that I think I've decided on a design for my Solids Challenge quilt! I'm almost 100% sure I'll blog the process because I'm not eligible for any prizes, and I just want to share what I'm doing! :o)

Now. I must get my nose back to the grind stone. I must get Libby's blocks done. I must get my scraps sent. I must, I must, I must.

Have a great week!

{WIP} Wednesday (even though it's Friday)

2011-03-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

I met a cool girl last week, and we were talking about what we do for "fun" since we both have two young children. She mentioned that she sews, and I invited her to join our modern quilt guild. She said, "Oh, I don't quilt." I laughed and said "Yeah, well, neither do I." :) At least it doesn't seem like it! I just seem to spend my sewing time making things for other people!

Speaking of making things for other people, I've been stumped by Libby's blocks for the Bee Happy Bee. Stumped! It's just like with Lori's dessert blocks. I have an idea in my head, it's just that the execution of it seems impossible. I know it's not, but it seems like that. But you know that old saying about eating an elephant? One bite at a time...

She sent us fabrics and asked us to make 2 "neighborhood" blocks, with a herringbone gray for the sky. Because she lives in LA, and the sky is more often gray and gloomy than blue and brilliant. Here is the layout for the beginning of my first block. I've still got to add a door and windows. And the gray, of course. :o)

I've also been making more infinity scarves. Traci showed me how to reach in, pull out, twist, shove back, sew, reach in, pull out, and sew so that the seams are now hidden. I like it a lot better than my first, where the seams were exposed, and it wasn't any harder at all, really! Once I got my brain around it. :o)

Actually, I have been making a few things for myself. :o)

First up, a skirt! With a ZIPPER!! (which strikes fear in the hearts of most sewists I know!) But it's a fairly simple pattern, and it's really cute. It's the Barcelona skirt pattern from Amy Butler. I decided to make it in denim first, and then if I want to make it in a different print, I can. Here is part of the back. Last night, after I took this picture, I decided to add one more panel since it seemed a little short. And I really like it! I'm going to sew the front to the back today, then I've got to do the lining (more fear-in-heart striking!), then the seam at the top and the hem at the bottom. SO...maybe I'll be done by, oh, July. :o)

This is an update on my Birdie Stitches block-of-the-month stitch-along (that's a LOT of words!). I finished the stitching on the January block, and built the February and March blocks. You can't really tell, but I did trace the embroidery pattern onto the center of the block, but my "water soluble" transfer pen seems to be evaporating in this arid climate...which shouldn't make any sense. :o) Some of the others doing the stitch-along are using one line of fabric for their outer rings, but I decided to use fabrics from my stash and change the color each month. So far, I'm liking it. :o) I am not much of an orange fan, but I have to say that I like this orange block more than I expected to! I fully expect to be caught up with the embroidery by the end of March. Just in time to get behind with my April block. :-/

And, last, but mostest certainly NOT least, is a lovely charm pack. Of lovely Kona solids. From the lovely Robert Kaufman team. They offered a charm pack to every member of every modern quilt guild with the idea that we would make "challenge" quilts. Every guild sets their own challenge, and it's really been cool to see what the guilds have been coming up with! There's a new Flickr group where all the finished quilts are posted, even! There is some inSANE talent there, my friends. In. Sane. Love it! We will be handing these out at our meeting on Monday. I, personally, have about 5 legitimate designs in my head, and just need to decide on one. :o) Our parameters are that we must use at least some of each charm, and that we can only use one fabric for the front. The back and the binding can be whatever we want, and the finished quilt must be at least 40" x 40", and we'll show-and-tell the finished quilts at the June meeting. I promise to keep you updated as I challenge along.

I'm sure I've got about 18 other projects half complete, but I can't think of any of them right now. :o) Isn't that the way it goes!

I hope you have a great weekend!

Following A Trend...the Plus Pillow

2011-03-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the plus pillows and quilts and wall hangings all over the internet like I have? They just seem to be the hottest design right now!

In February, Sew, Mama, Sew had the I ♥ Pillows theme going on, and when Aunt Spicy, Erica and I saw this one by Cherie, we were all hooked! And got to scheming. We decided we wanted to make this pillow. All 3 of us. With the same fabrics. Because they're cool like that and I want to be like them, frankly.

A few days (and many emails) later, we had divvied up the colors and agreed to mail each other the appropriate strips so we could have have matchy-matchy pillows even though we all live a million miles apart. I got busy coloring in squares in my MS Word doc, and pretty soon, we had a pattern to work with! The problem was, we didn't have each other's fabrics! I'm not entirely sure why I didn't think about making it with other fabric first, but I tend to have tunnel vision to the nth degree, and just can not seem to modify my original plan once it's in my head.

Thankfully, though, Kelly stepped in and tested out the pattern for us. She made this lovely pillow with her scraps, and said that the pattern was easy to use and easy to modify. Which, YAY!

Aunt Spicy and Erica and I finally got our swapped strips, and I started to sew mine together. As I was motoring along, I wasn't sure I was going to love the final result (but I do!), and I didn't know what color border I should use since I wanted to make a 20" pillow cover to go on the 20" pillow I already have. :)

I knew wanted the pillow cover to be quilted, so after my internet friends helped me decide on Kona Charcoal as the border, I added some backing and some muslin to the top and quilted it corner to corner. I really like the effect, and will probably do that again when I do another plus pattern pillow or quilt.

Along with the suggestion for a charcoal border, a few suggested a Kona Aqua binding. Well... I wasn't about to do a binding on a pillow, but I loved the idea of something extra around the edge, so I used some aqua scraps and made what I'm calling a "flange" around the outside.

It was fairly simple to do, and I imagine the installation process was similar to using ric rac or pompoms or piping. I just laid the strips along the edge before I joined the back to the front, and sewed it all together.

I kept the back very simple, mostly because I just wanted to be D.U.N. Done. with this pillow. :)

And D.U.N. it is. It's living on it's new home, our new (to us) Ikea couch I found on CraigsList for $50.

I know Aunt Spicy has made a few of these now, too, following our pattern, with great success. And, without further ado, you can have the pattern for yourself!

Plus Pillow Pattern (JEM Collaborations)

(please excuse the highly unprofessional format of this pattern...you get what you pay for!)

I hope you feel empowered and able to make this pillow, now! To me, it looked WAY more complicated than it really was. :o) If you make one from this pattern, please come back and leave a comment (with a link to your blog post with pictures??!!) or email me to let me know how it went! I don't ever plan to sell this pattern, but I would like to make sure it's user-friendly, you know? :o)

Have a great day!

-----------------
While this isn't the point of this post, I have decided to enter this pillow into Stitched In Color's Blogger's Pillow Party for March. You should TOTALLY go over there and see the fabulous (and highly inspirational) pillows that people are entering! Wowzers, Man.

I Won on Sew, Mama, Sew!!

2011-02-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to mention something VERY exciting...

I won a highly coveted, and not widely available Kona Color Card

from the Sew, Mama, Sew Pillow Month Giveaways! They were SUPER generous, and gave tons and tons of good stuff away.

A couple of my friends won stuff, too, which makes it more like a party!

Thanks, Sew, Mama, Sew! We had fun, and were VERY inspired!

Wanna Swap Some Scraps?

2011-02-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

I'm kinda bored with the scraps I have, so I've actually been on the lookout for some kind of friendly scrap swap. I think I've found it!

The idea is simple: sign up to send between 1 and 5 envelopes stuffed with scraps. Sara will give you the addresses of the people you'll send to. Wait ~~not so~~ patiently to get your envelopes back!

The sign-ups end at midnight March 4th, so if you're interested, head on over there.

I'm going to use mine for the Stitched in Color Bottled Rainbows quilt-along.

I probably won't be able to do it on her timeline, but I want to make a rainbow quilt, and I want to make a ticker tape quilt, so why not blend the two ideas, right?

Making A Hug

2011-02-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, my good friend, Aunt Spicy told me she was doing a tutorial for Sew, Mama, Sew's Pillow Month and shared her tutorial with me early. The tutorial is fabulous, and if you haven't seen it, you should go check it out. It's something that I believe anyone can do.

I believe it so much that I decided to ~~have~~ help Mookie make it! Well, a modified version of it, but still, Aunt Spicy inspired me! I decided that Mookie could make a special fleece pillow for Dave for Valentine's Day. She's all about calling us "Mom" and "Dad" whenever anyone else is around, but if it's just us at home, we're "Mommy" and "Papa" again. She's pretty cute.

I will tell you that I spent a little time online looking at tutorials for sewing with children. Sew, Mama, Sew has a really good blog post about sewing with kids of different ages. And I found this one on Whipstitch. It's an ongoing series, so you'll have to check back, but they make some really great points and encouragements.

I started over a week ago. Mookie is 2, and has the attention span of a two year old. :o) If you are planning on doing this with your toddler for, say, Mother's Day or Father's Day, I would suggest starting at least a week or two early.

All of the steps are very basic, but the teacher in me is pushing and shoving her way out...so you get a tutorial! Lucky you, right. But, I will say this...there are some precious photos that make reading this tutorial TOTALLY worth it. :)

Ingredients
1/2 yard red fleece
fusible interfacing
6"x10" white quilting cotton
poly-fil pillow stuffing
red yarn
yarn needle (plastic if working with a toddler)
white embroidery floss
Crop-A-Dile (scrapbookers know what I'm talking about. It's a tool I somehow find a million uses for!)

Step 1 -- Prepare your fusible interfacing. I used a lightweight heat-n-bond, but that's all I had. I would recommend using something a bit stronger if you're going to be fusing onto fleece like I did.
Follow the instructions on the label...especially the part about writing or drawing your image backwards on the paper part of the fusible interfacing. If you've never fused for applique, you may not know what I'm talking about. Just trust me on this one. For me, the I, the ©, and the U were reversible, so it didn't matter, but I've run into trouble before when I've forgotten to reverse my image when drawing it out.

Step 2 -- Iron your design onto the white cotton. Following the directions on the label, iron your design onto the white quilting cotton. Make sure it's all fused onto the cotton. And not your ironing board. :o)

Step 3 -- cut out your images, your letters, your design. If your child is comfortable with cutting along a line, you could have him/her help you with this step.

Step 4 -- Prepare the design for toddler sewing. This is where I used my Crop-A-Dile. I love this thing. If you've never seen one, or used one, in real life, it's a real treat...especially if you scrapbook or make cards! This thing makes light work of some of the heavy lifting in scrapbooking and card making. It came to my rescue when I wanted to pre-cut some little holes for Mookie to sew through, though. Wow. I'm glad I had this. If you don't have one, though, you could try to borrow one from a friend, or make holes in your design another way. A regular hole punch didn't work very well. You could take an exacto knife and cut a small X at each point you want your child to sew.
Anyways, I marked out some places I wanted to punch holes. (Oh, and leave the paper on for this step...you are marking the paper here, and the Crop-A-Dile works best with the paper still attached.)

Step 5 -- Punch holes in your image. This probably isn't necessary for most children, especially older ones, but I found that if Mookie had a hole already there, she was more likely to put the needle into that hole. If there was nothing there, she didn't know where to put the needle. We'll work on that, but for now, this is what worked for us.

Step 6 -- Remove the paper, revealing the shiny (adhesive) side of your image.

Step 7 -- Grab a large cup of patience, and set the other parts aside for, oh, 3 days. In this step, the child will "sew" an outline around each shape with the red yarn. Mookie really liked sewing, but she wouldn't do it for very long. So, we'd put it away, and pick it up later in the day, or the next day. I used one strand of red yarn, threaded and knotted the needle, and let her go. She totally understood what she was supposed to do. She didn't necessarily stitch a perfect running stitch, but she went into the fabric, and out of the fabric. Like a champ.

Step 8 -- Actually, while your child is sewing the outline on the design, you can be preparing the pillow. I folded my 1/2 yard of fleece in half, and then cut about 15 inches in, so I had 2 layers of fleece. I then freehanded my heart, and pinned around the heart. I started to cut around the pins, but I decided that wasn't necessary, so I stopped. :o)

Step 9 -- Sew heart pieces together. It wasn't necessary to cut around the outside of the pins because I was going to sew it, then cut around the seam! I used a zigzag stitch and stayed pretty close to my line (perfection is not necessary here because the stuffing will make your lines go out the window anyways!). I sewed almost all the way around the pillow, but left a 4" gap for stuffing the pillow.

Step 10 -- NOW you can cut the heart shape! I cut about 1/2" past the seam. Again, perfection is a waste of your time. (doncha love it?!)

Step 11 -- Admire your work. And grab another cup of patience because it's taking your child a sweet forever to sew that silly thing! :o) Or, just put it away for another day.

Step 12 -- Prepare to fuse the image onto the fleece. (make sure the shiny side of your design is down, touching the fleece, because that's the adhesive and you don't want to fuse the © to your iron! I just put them down to determine placement while the iron was heating up.

Step 13 -- Fuse image to fleece. I place a scrap of muslin between my iron and the fleece and yarn, just because I didn't know if the iron would melt any of that. It was a good thing. You can check your work to see if the image did fuse to the fleece, and if not, you can iron again.

Step 14 -- Admire your work. It's gonna look good!

Step 15 -- Stuff the pillow. I pulled little handfuls of the pillow stuffing out of the bag and piled them up for Mookie to stuff into the pillow. She had a hard time at first, until I pinned the front and back sides of the opening, well, open for her. That made her job so much easier. Have your child stuff away.

Tell me, though...did your child open his/her mouth subconsciously as they were stuffing the pillow? Because I still get the biggest kick out of looking at these pictures of her. Mouth wide open watching Mickey Mouse while she stuffed this pillow she's so proud of. :o)

Dude. You can't make this stuff up. I love this girl so much.

Doesn't she look proud of her work here? And she should be! She is making something for Dave that he will treasure.

Step 16 -- Test it. She wanted to make sure it was fluffy enough. It was.

Step 17 -- Sew 4" opening closed. It was a little tricky, but not terrible to sew an already stuffed pillow.

Step 18 -- Sew border around pillow. I threaded a yarn needle with 6 strands (one layer?) of embroidery floss, and I sat her on my lap, and let her go to town sewing a border around the pillow. She never hurt herself, and she did a pretty good job of staying fairly close to her last stitch. I think this step took 3 or 4 sessions.

Have your child stitch all the way around the pillow.

And, the big finish:

It's certainly not perfect, and I helped, probably, more than I needed to, but Mookie is pretty proud of herself and her work. (the picture at the top was taken when Mookie gave the pillow to Dave)

****
I have entered this pillow into Stitched In Color's Blogger's Pillow Party. There are some truly amazingly beautiful pillows there, but I did it because I want to encourage other moms of young kids to start sewing with their littles early! It may not win any awards, but it won her father's heart, and that's all that matters. :o)

To Bee, or Not To Bee (Block Party Post)

2011-02-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

Quilt Story is hosting a Block Party this week, and it's just a fun way to showcase the blocks people are making. Traditional, modern, or creative -- there are some really great, and inspirational, blocks out there! Go see...after you look at mine, of course! :o)

(I made these blocks for members of a virtual quilting bee made up of some spectacular LA Modern Quilt Guild members.)

First, is my trifle block. This one nearly destroyed me. Seriously. I wrote about the emotional angst and the waffling and the emptiness here (I just re-read it, and I'm so glad I wrote about that block like I did!). Lori asked for blocks with dessert on a pedastal, and when she first gave us the fabrics, I thought I could could come up with something good. Lori is a really wonderful person, and I wanted to make something wonderful for her, you know? After quite a bit of vascillating, and questioning myself and my abilities, and even trying to give the fabric back to Lori and bow out (she wouldn't let me), I decided to create a trifle for her. A layered dessert on a pedastal. Before I cut into her fabrics, I used my own to make a sample block, and I'm SO glad I did. It allowed me to proceed with confidence as I made the block that I could proudly give to Lori.

I can't wait to see her finished quilt!

I seriously felt like a rock star when I was making this block. And I want an entire king-sized quilt made with these blocks. And I want it rightthisveryminute!! Natalie asked us to make "porthole" blocks for her using a fabulous technique by Ric Rac. Circles. Pieced circles. Scary!! But, just like my trifle block, I decided to make a sample before I cut into Natalie's fabric. The fabric I wanted to use (Laurie Wisbrun's Tufted Tweets) just so happened to be pre-cut into a large hexie, but when I began, I intended to still piece it into my background as a circle. But then? I had a brilliant idea...why not piece the hexagon? Right into the background fabric!? And I kid you not, I felt like I'd just won the lottery!

The picture leaves a lot to be desired, but I have this block hanging near my sewing table so I can look at it and think about how much I enjoy modern quilting and how the challenges I've had learning new techniques have been SO very good for me.

She Is A Natural, Of Course

2011-02-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Mookie has been wanting to help me sew. :o) She comes from a long line of sewists, so wanting to help me sew is obviously in her blood. Sew, Mama, Sew has a great post here about different ideas for small hands at different ages.

If it wasn't (oh my goodness) -10*F, I would be planning a trip to Michael's for more supplies. As it is, we'll be working from what we've got.

Wrapping Infinity Around Your Neck - Take Two

2011-01-31T01:05:00.000-07:00

I have had a chance to make a few more infinity scarves, and I have discovered a way to sew it so that the seams are completely hidden.

Plus, I think it's easier and quicker this way. And, seriously, when I can make an infinity scarf, from start to finish, in less than an hour? That must be a good thing!

So, I'll just start from the beginning and repeat some of the previous post, but that's okay. You can go back and read the history if you want, but, basically, I wanted to make an Infinity Scarf with Anna Maria Horner's lahverly voiles, and couldn't find a tutorial that was a true Infinity ∞ Scarf. So I wrote one. :)

Materials:
1/4 yard of two coordinating fabrics, any material you like, really. If you want to have a solid scarf, then just use 1/2 yard cut.
*Note: the voiles happen to be 54" wide, so if you use something else, you will need to compensate for that! Which I think is just one more reason to use voiles!
A ton of pins
Thread
Hot Iron

Steps:

Trim your voiles (I'm going to speak of voiles here because that's what I used and you should, too) so that they are identical in size and the edges are straight. It can be 9" wide, or 9 3/8" wide, or 8 7/16" wide, it doesn't matter. Just straight and identical.
Put right sides together and pin, pin, pin. It can be tough to find the right sides with voiles, but I found it doesn't really matter. These are slippery, so pinning now will make your sewing life SO much easier!
Stitch (3/8"-ish seam) almost all the way around, but leave a 3-4" gap on one of the long sides near a short side. Clip the excess fabric at the corners, but not the stitches! :)
Reach into the tube and reach all the way to the opposite short end. Grab it and pull it up to the near short end. You will need to give it a slight twist so that the white fabric from one short end touches the green from the other short end. (This is SO hard to explain!!). In the picture below, you can see the inside, and how I've twisted it so that the white will actually touch the green.

You'll need to poke out the corners so they're as pointy and square as possible. Now, stuff the inside short end into the corners of the outside short end and pin. (in the picture above, they are stuffed together already.)

If you look closely, you can see through the voile and see that the next layer behind the green is the white print.
Sew a second seam to attach those two short sides together.

Pull the right side of the tube out through your gap, and straighten it as much as possible. You should be able to see your seam where the white fabric is stitched to the green, and on the reverse, the green is attached to the white. (Gosh. Maybe I need to try to do a video of this?) You can see the gap in the upper left-hand corner of this picture, and you can see my hidden seam. Well...you can't see my hidden seam, really. :)

Anyway, I took out my Best Press and pressed the seams all the way around. I just like to do that because it looks SO crisp! Plus, if it's for a gift, the Best Press gives it a nice fragrance.
Hand-stitch your 3-4" gap closed, and admire your work!

Now. You can wear it as one long loop,

Or as a double loop close to your neck.

To make the double loop, put the scarf over your neck as one long loop, then pull the bottom and twist it once close to your neck. Now take that opening at the bottom, and put it over your head. Once both loops are around your neck, you can adjust as you need to.

Again, if you make this, let me know how it goes! :) And don't hesitate to ask if you have ANY questions.

Wrapping Infinity Around Your Neck

2011-01-28T23:44:00.000-07:00

I love it when a plan comes together, don't you?

A few weeks ago, Traci posted a picture of herself wearing a new Infinity Scarf that she had made. I immediately wanted one. Except I wanted to use voiles. I don't believe I'd ever actually gotten my mitts on any of the voiles, but I knew people said they were just LAHVERLY.

Then earlier this week, a quilty friend from out of town emailed me and said she was alluvasudden gonna be in town, and asked if I wanted to go fabric shopping one evening.

Did I?! There's a fabric shop in Denver called Fancy Tiger that I've been wanting to go to a few years, and since her local quilt shop is Joann's (bleck!), we decided to strap in the girlies and go to Fancy Tiger!

I knew that the only thing I really wanted was to see what voiles they had. I admit that I purchased a few other pieces, but that's beside the point. :o) At one point my friend looked over and saw a SALE table. (play "Hallelujah Chorus" here). The first thing I found was the lovely Anna Maria Horner Little Folks Kiwi solid voile. It's such a beautiful, fun, bright, springy color. And the feeling of the voile is just dreamy. It's delicate and flowy and drapey and rich and silky. I knew I needed some of that regardless of whether or not I found anything else! But then I found the equally lovely AMH LF Four Square Sweet voile. I wasn't sure how they went together, but I set them on the table, and stepped away. From a distance, they looked really good together, so I, not knowing anything about making an Infinity Scarf, asked for 1/4 yard of each. My friend decided she wanted to get 1/2 yard of each. Sweet!

After we got home and I put the girls to bed, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the web searching for patterns. Cart before the horse, anyone? I didn't find a single one that I liked. Anna Maria Horner even has a tutorial on her blog, but she used 1/2 yard cuts - one of her Innocent Crush velveteen and one of a voile, and she didn't say how much of each fabric to use, so I couldn't really use her tutorial. I was a bit nervous that 1/4 yard wouldn't be enough, but I decided to give it a shot. It's a scarf, for Pete's sake, right?! :o)

So, since I couldn't find a tutorial I liked for me, here's one for you.

Materials:
1/4 yard of two coordinating fabrics, any material you like, really. If you want to have a solid scarf, then just use 1/2 yard cut.
*Note: the voiles happen to be 54" wide, so if you use something else, you will need to compensate for that! Which I think is just one more reason to use voiles!
A ton of pins
Thread
Hot Iron

Steps:

(1) Trim your voiles (I'm going to speak of voiles here because that's what I used and you should, too) so that they are identical in size and the edges are straight. It can be 9" wide, or 9 3/8" wide, or 8 7/16" wide, it doesn't matter. Just straight and identical.

(2) Put right sides together and pin, pin, pin. It can be tough to find the right sides with voiles, but I found it doesn't really matter. These are slippery, so pinning now will make your sewing life SO much easier!

(3)Next you want to sew along the long edges only. I used a 3/8" seam allowance because I've never sewn with voile before, and I read that it's smart to use a little wider seam allowance. (Note: I added some notes at the bottom about how I learned a different way. I think it's actually easier. And much tidier!)

(5) Then, because the tube was a bit puffy, I decided to iron the sides so the scarf tube was flat. I don't know if you have to do that or not, but I did.

∞.

∞

And you are FINISHED! What did that take you, about an hour? If that? With a cookie break?

You can wear it a few ways, either one long loop.

Or two short loops.

I like it this way because it keeps my neck nice and toasty warm.

(ETA: To accomplish the double loop, I first put it on long, as one loop, then I grab the bottom, twist it once close to my neck, and then take the larger loop in my hands and put that over my head. Once both loops are on my neck, I can finagle them to be comfy.)

You could also have one long loop and one short. I don't have a picture of that, but you've got a vivid imagination, right?

(ETA also: I discovered another way to make it so that the seams are actually hidden or sealed. It's just a bit hard to explain, so if you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask!)

Here goes: (picking up after Step 2 above)
Step 3. Pin right sides together. Stitch (3/8"-ish seam) almost all the way around, but leave a 3-4" gap on one of the long sides near a short side. Clip the excess fabric at the corners, but not the stitches! :)

Step 4. Reach into the tube and reach all the way to the opposite short end. Grab it and pull it up to the near short end. You will need to give it a slight twist so that the white fabric from one short end touches the green from the other short end. (This is SO hard to explain!!). You'll need to press out the corners so they're as pointy and square as possible. Now, stuff the inside short end into the corners of the outside short end and pin. Sew a second seam to attach those two short sides together.

Step 5. Pull the right side of the tube out through your gap, and straighten it as much as possible. You should be able to see your seam where the white fabric is stitched to the green, and on the reverse, the green is attached to the white. (Gosh. Maybe I need to try to do a video of this?) Anyway, I took out my Best Press and pressed the seams all the way around. I just like to do that because it looks SO crisp!
Step 6. Hand-stitch your 3-4" gap closed, and admire your work!

If you make this, let me know how it goes!

Portholing for Natalie

2011-01-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

In November, Natalie sent the Bee Happy Bee members a few Kona solids and asked us to make blocks with portholes using a technique by Ric-Rac. I'll admit that I was super intimidated! First, Natalie is incredibly talented and meticulous and brilliant and creative and unafraid and I could go on and on about her, but my point is that I didn't want to create crappy blocks for her. You know, the ones that get put on the back of the quilt? Or on a pillow...in the closet? Yeah, I was afraid of that. Second, I've never piece circles before. I've seen the Dale Fleming "6-Minute Circle" technique done (although it took more than 6 minutes...), and I just thought it was too many steps, and I would surely screw it up.

So I hopped on the "I'm Moving" excuse bus, and put the fabric aside. :o)

Now it's January, and I've completed other sewing projects, so I really had no excuse anymore. Plus, I didn't want to make her wait too terribly long for her blocks! As I've done with the other months, I decided to create a sample block to work out any kinks before I cut into her fabrics. So I got a block of Kona White, and was going through my hexagons from my Hexagon Swap, looking for a fun, bright fabric for the circle. I found a piece of Laurie Wisbrun's fabulous Tufted Tweets, and had a brilliant idea...why did I need to make a circle? Janice had used the technique to piece a square...could I piece a hexagon? It was just a sample block, and if it went haywire, I would just give it to Mookie for her "sewing" collection. :o)

Let me just tell you, when I was making this block, I felt like a rock star! I was on top of the world! I totally hated having just moved because I would have been running up the street to Kelly to show this to her right then and there! But, alas, I could only email her about my fantabulous new creation.

I'm pretty sure I said something to the effect of "I am the bomb!" as I was finishing this up. SO proud of myself! Not only had I conquered my fear of piecing something and it not looking wretched, I actually stepped it up and tried something that hadn't been done before and it looks great! It's not perfect, but I totally love it!

AND...when I posted it on Flickr!, the real deal, Ms Laurie Wisbrun herself, left me a comment! Woot woot!

I went on to my actual project, drafting a few ideas of circles in the block, and I started with this one. She gave us Kona Charcoal, Celadon, and (ooh, let me go consult my color card...) and Teal.
I went back to the top of Ric-Rac's tutorial, got a Christmas candy tin to trace my first circle, and got about the business of teaching my grandmother to suck a few eggs...as Ms Ric-Rac has deemed her technique. :o)

Natalie asked that our thread be kinda sketchy, which I will admit was hard for symmetrical me. You can see on the first circle (on the left) that I didn't do that. Then I decided to close my eyes and try. :o) I love being encouraged and allowed to be imperfect! Thanks, Natalie! I changed up my topstitch thread color as I went along, and by the third circle, I wanted to use opposite colors as accents.

Here's a mosaic of all the blocks together. Pretty cool!

(links to all the blocks:
1. Lori's Block #1 for me for Bee Happy, 2. Lori's Block #2 for me for Bee Happy, 3. Bee Happy November Sample Block, 4. Bee happy porthole for Natalie 1/2, 5. Bee happy porthole for Natalie 2/2, 6. Natalie's Block, 7. Bee Happy: November, 8. Block one from Leslie--Bee Happy, 9. Block Two from Leslie--Bee Happy, 10. Porthole block, 11. bee block 2 for Natalie, 12. bee block 1 for Natalie, 13. Natalie's Bee Happy Bee block #1

Natalie did mention that it helped to pin the heck out of your final circle (when putting the green on the bottom of the gray). That helped. And for my hexagon, I had to clip the corners so it would turn right, as opposed to clipping the curves if you're piecing a circle. I suppose Janice had to clip the corners of her square, too.

I am currently working on her second block, but I felt like blogging, and as it's been 4 blue moons since I blogged, I figured I better go with the feeling! I'll post pictures of my second block when I'm finished.

Oh, but first, I want to encourage you to try this technique. It's not only for making quilt blocks. It's for making anything where you want to have a sewn circle. For instance, if you're going to make a pair of trousers for your little boy's Mickey Mouse doll and need a hole for the tail...here you go! Again, it can be used for any shape. Go for it!

Single Girl and a Baby

2011-01-08T22:46:00.000-07:00

Miss Pee-Pie let me sew for OVER an HOUR the other day. Can you believe it? I can't!! She was totally content to just sit up and chew on the package of D-rings, rattle them around, drop them, cry for me to give them back to her, then chew on them some more...

(She's getting SO big! And just really becoming so much fun.She'll be 8 months old on Monday - I can't believe it either!)

I was working on piecing curves for Denyse Schmidt's Single Girl quilt pattern. My Bee Happy Bee friend, Rosanna, asked us each to piece one block for her. She did all the arduous cutting of the zillion pieces, and just asked us to piece it for her. Good golly, it's a good thing I didn't have to cut them! I would have given up at about piece number 35, but she's going to have an amazing quilt when we're all finished. :o)

Here's Sprout and one of the rings of my block:

And here's a picture of the package of D-rings:

I'm not entirely sure what happened to that corner, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be seeing it in a few days...

And I'm going to do something I don't think I've done before. I'm going to link to a few giveaways. Both are giving away some coveted Heather Ross fabrics, and both are fairly new blogs, and both are super talented quilters, so you should hop on over and paruse their little corner of the blogosphere.
(1) Fussycut: http://fussycut.blogspot.com/2011/01/heather-ross-giveaway.html
(2) Jednoiglec: She's in Poland, but she translates her blog posts for us, thank goodness! http://jednoiglec.blogspot.com/2011/01/giveaway-100-posts-100-followers-100-b.html
Here is my absolute favorite thing of hers.

It's a pillow with rainbow stripes and she put some hexagons on it, and if you look, she straight-line quilted each line with thread the color of that rainbow stripe! Sheer genius.

Good luck winning some of that HR fabric! And good luck getting some sewing done! I'm going to try to do some more of that right about now.

What Can I Say?

2011-01-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

November and December were a blur. An absolute blur! And January is kinda shaping up to be the same way!

I can't give this post and this blog any time right now -- my must-do list is TOO long, but I did want to give a short recap of what's been going on, and what's been keeping me from blogging, these last few months.

First up...um...well, we moved. To a new house. From California to Colorado. And, MAN, what a "state" we live in! It's a wreck! Beautiful new house, s.t.u.f.f. everywhere. Still! It's not as bad as it could be, but MAN, what a state. That was November. All about the move.

Oh, and I, like a goober, decided to participate in the popular Flickr Scrappy Mug Rug Swap. Right in the middle of the move. My mug rug wasn't finished, yet, and the movers were loading my sewing machine onto the truck! Here's a picture of it before I chose the binding fabric.

And I was supposed to mail it a few days after they delivered our goods! And not too long after I took that picture, I decided I didn't like it, and changed my mind! (What mind, you ask? I don't have one, apparently!) Completely. Sewing machine packed in the midst of 200+ boxes on a truck? Sure, now's the PERFECT time to start a new project! Hah! But the design I picked was one I could do entirely by hand, and other than using my machine to attach the binding to the front, the project was done entirely by hand. Here's the finished mug rug:

I got a fantabulous mug rug in return from Sarah at Stash Resolution: Can you believe that double dresden plate! I'm SO lucky! :o)

So, where was I? Oh, right. I was explaining why I haven't blogged in over two months! Here's a quick recap. I said goodbye to my LA MQG family, the movers came, they took all our stuff, the girls and I flew to Colorado while Dave drove the cat and the car, we closed on our house, the movers showed up the next day to deliver a zillion pounds worth of household goods, we had to go to a satellite launch party that night(*1), we spent the next few days unpacking and unpacking and unpacking, it was Thanksgiving, we unpacked some more, Dave officially started back to work, the unpacking came to a screeching halt, I started the Front Range Modern Quilt Guild, we had parties to go to, I sent a little gift to my friend, Melissa P, in LA since we didn't get to participate in the LAMQG Holiday Swap(*2), I FINALLY finished my LAMQG mini-quilt for Kelly's (June) birthday (*3), we flew to Michigan for Dave's grandmother's 100th birthday (*4) and Christmas, we went for a sled-dog ride (*5), we hung out with wonderful family, we came back to ARCTIC weather in Colorado, we exchanged our presents here (I got a new laptop, hazzah!), Dave went back to work, I'm failing at getting Sprout to eat solids, and, basically, nothing is getting done around here.

(*1)Dave works with undergraduate engineering students that design, build and launch satellites, and that night was the successful launch of another satellite. That, my friends, is a pretty big deal! Undergrads. Building satellites. Launching satellites. Successfully flying overhead. What were you doing at age 22?

(*2) Here is a picture of what I sent to Melissa:
and here's a shot of the back (by the way, I did give him some arms!) And I love the snowflake stitching on the back, too! I had to do something to cover up the fact that I still haven't found my thread and I didn't like one row of plain, white stitches, so I covered it up with snowflakes! :o) I'm gonna have to do more of that in the future.

and here's one other thing I sent to her: a hexie needle book (tutorial here)

(*3) Did I ever tell you about this project? Probably not. Well, the quick and the dirty is this: Kelly is a military wife, and the Air Force will be calling her husband to a new duty station soon, and I knew she was loving her time in the LA MQG, so I decided to make her a collaborative/commemorative mini-quilt. I asked the members to sign their names on strips of fabric, which I then embroidered over in contrasting colors. I then sewed them all together in a stacked-books design. I took inspiration from Jane's LAMQG logo to make the banner at the top of Kelly's quilt, and then stitched it all together. I was (for once!) bright enough to copy the signatures so I can (eventually!) make one for myself! I really really really RILLY big puffy heart love how this turned out.

Here's the top:

(*4) Yes, Grandma R turned 100 years old. I found my mind wandering to what it was like to have a newborn a century ago. Wow. She is one AMAZING woman. In every sense of the word. She is a blessing to everyone who knows her. :o)

Whenever she would hold Sprout, she would talk about "the beginning and the end", and "bookends." I'm definitely glad to be a part of the legacy that this lady has created. :o)

(*5) Dave's aunt and uncle live in Alaska and Michigan, and take their sled dogs with them wherever they are living. His uncle ran the Iditarod, even! Cool, eh? So, anyways, here's an action shot of Mookie and me on the sled:

There. Now you have it. Hopefully, I will be better about crafting AND blogging in 2011!! :o) I hope you have a great year!

Thank You, New Friend!!

2010-10-31T13:14:00.000-06:00

About this time last year, I remember reading a sweet post on a new bloggy friend's blog. Aunt Spicy had just completed the FRIENDS Swap, and I thought that had to be about the coolest thing ever!

I, of course, became a regular stalker of Aunt Spicy, but somehow, I also became a regular reader of Sew Prim Khris, the Swap Mama of the FRIENDS Swap.

So in July, when she made the announcement that she was taking sign-ups for the 2010 FRIENDS Swap, I jumped right on it! A week, or so, later, I got an email from Khris with information about my swap partner, Melinda. Then Melinda and I exchanged emails, and started reading each others' blogs, and started getting to know each other. Started becoming friends.

The idea behind the FRIENDS Swap is that you send your new friend 7 gifts, one that starts with an F, one that starts with an R, etc., spelling out the word FRIENDS. And, hopefully, you have sent things that you now know your new friend would enjoy because you've been getting to know each other! :o)

I learned that Melinda is a fabulous and professional quilter in Atlanta, so when I had a quilting question, I asked her. She works at a really cute fabric store, and teaches quilting classes that I would love to take. (The commute might be a bit tough, though, eh?)

Well, that was way back in August, and the deadline to send was October 26th. In August, October seemed eons away. Like, EONS!! I started thinking of what gifts could represent each letter, and storing away little fun things to send to Melinda. I, of course, finished mine on Sunday night...the day before we HAD TO send our swap gifts out. :o) Somehow, those 3 months went super fast! :o)

I have been waiting so impatiently to hear that Melinda got her box o' goodies that I totally forgot I would be getting my own box from Melinda! :o) Haha...I'm bright like that. :o) So imagine my surprise and glee when I saw a box from the mailman Saturday, all the way from Atlanta. Yay!

I ran inside and tore into it, neglecting all my responsibilities (read: crying baby) so I could see what goodies Melinda had sent me! It was tough, but I had the clarity of mind to take a quick photo before I shredded all the wrapping to see what fun stuff she had sent me. :o)

I was SUPER EXCITED right away just reading the tags! All kinds of fabric and sewing aids! Yippee!! I was just giddy, really. And I hadn't even opened the packages.

So once I got that picture taken, I got about the business of digging in. And here's what she sent me! Yummy fun super stuff!

F = Fat Quarters from Sandy Gervais' Frolic line (Moda)
R = Red Thread...the Mettler I've just recently discovered and have been told it is far superior to Gutermann.
I = Ironing Aid. Just today I was telling one of my sewing buddies that I needed some of the Best Press!!
E = Easy Yo-yos. It's a Clover Yo-yo template! Cute!
N = Nickel Squares, also known as charm squares, in a sweet combination of red, white, and blue. :o) I LOVE the fact that I've got a quilt all ready to go, I just have to put it together! How easy is that?!
D = Dr. Seuss Fabric. I've been eyeing the Dr Seuss fabric since it was first an image on a website, and now I have some! It's a bit of a panel, and I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it, yet, but I know I can come up with something great!
S = Strips. There are two little rolls of sweet, delicate pink strips.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Melinda, every ounce of it is wonderful and perfect and I'm so delighted. Thank you!

And now, it's my turn to show off what I sent to her!

Here are all the gifts all wrapped up and tagged.

And here are the gifts before I wrapped them:
F = Fluids. Nuff said. :o)

R = Rug, as in Mug Rug. She said she loves black and white, so that's where I started, then I added the rainbow around the outside, and I backed it with that green, since she loves lime green. As per my usual, there are things I would do differently, and it's not perfect, but I liked it when I was finished.

I = Idea book. Since she is a quilt maker, and a quilt teacher, and a quilt quilter, I thought she might have use for a purse-sized graph paper book to jot down and sketch out her ideas.

E = Edamame. Dark chocolate covered Edamame to be specific. YUMMMMMY!! I love these. And she loves dark chocolate, so it was a double win, really.

N = Notecards. They are lime green and black and white and they say "cherish" on the front. If you look closely, you'll notice that each one is in a clear envelope. Stampin' Up makes them, and I love them! The post office will accept them if you have a stamp on the outside of the envelope (I usually write the address on a piece of paper and slip it in the back, then seal it and stick a stamp on the outside). I just love the idea of the recipient getting a peek at the card before they even open it. Just bright and happy in the mailbox. That's all. :o)

D = Drink. I found out she likes Chai tea, so I got her a little mug (to go with her rug...) and a box of tea.

And...
S = Sweets. Again, she likes dark chocolate. And I have recently learned that I like to snack on Chex Mix when I'm quilting. It is not unusual for me to quilt my way through a whole bag in a few short quilting sessions. :o) So maybe she likes to snack a little when she's quilting, too.

Whew! That was a lot of information, wasn't it? But, I know you all feel better now that you know all of that. :o)

I had a whole lotta fun with this, and I'll probably try to participate again next year, if I can! Yay for new friends and new goodies! :o)

I hope you all get a sweet surprise in the mail just like I did.