Christmas Break

Christmas break has arrived and I have not made much progess on my projects. So far the memorial quilt is about half quilted.

I am doing a random star motif for the quilting.

This quilt has one block completed.

With luck, over the holiday break I will make some progress. Unfortunatly, there are some other things that I have let slide (like hemmings), that also need taken care of. So, we will see.

Pin IT

Today is my day for the Pin It blog hop. Thanks so much to Mdm. Samm and Kristen from Meadowbrook for hosting this hop.
I made a lovely flower pot pincushion. I started this by cutting half circles and sewing them together, followed by some blanket stitching around the edge and then gathered to create the petals.

I had to make me a butterfly to perch on the pin cushion. He is crafted with stumpwork (wire and embroidery floss). I love butterflies, they are so delicate and beautiful.

The finished pincushion.

Here are all the other ladies who are sewing and creating for this Pin It! Hop on Thursday September 12th.

Cherrys Prairie Primitives

In Stitches& Seams

Sew And Sow Farm

Domestic Deficit Disorder

A Geeky Crafty Life

Moosestash Quilting

Englating

Quilter in Motion

In The Boondocks

Hill Valley Quilter

Kaydie

Callender’s Creations   

Kreatywnie By Editha

Sew New To Sewing

Pieced Brain

Sheila's Quilt World

Traveling Stash #4

You may have noticed I am giving away Traveling stash #3. Well, I also won traveling stash #4 a while ago. The box has been a little delayed, but has now arrived and needs to move on to the next lucky winner. The Lucky winner is Karyn from the Stylish Home.

Congratulations Karyn!

Rules

Each box is filled with quilt shop quality supplies, fabric, notions, etc and travels the USA. It stops at lucky winners homes, where the winner trades out any lovely items they want to own and puts back in items they no longer need. 

Have a active blog and post the giveaway fairly quickly after receiving the box

USA only, due to postage costs

Trade items you would be proud to own, this is not a dumping site for outdated or worn items

Trade like items, fabric for fabric, notions for notions

Try to avoid adding too many books, they add a lot of weight

No pet hairs, odors or smoke

See Katies blog at Snuggling up with a Dish from Karma. She tracks the boxes and updates the rules post.

Leave me a comment before September 16th if you would like this traveling stash to visit your house. 

New Traveling Stash Box #3

I am the happy winner of box #3. The box travels around the USA and when it stops at a house, the person who has the box trades for fabric or notions and then sends the box on its way.

This is the current contents of Box #3. I have removed some items and replaced them with a few things I have not found a use for. This box has quite a bit of fabric, a nice selection of patterns and some notions. Leave a comment for a chance for this box to come to your house. Deadline is Sept. 13th. 

Congratulations Karyn!

Rules are simple:

Have a active blog and post the giveaway fairly quickly after receiving the box

USA only, due to postage costs

Trade items you would be proud to own, this is not a dumping site for outdated or worn items

Trade like items, fabric for fabric, notions for notions

Try to avoid adding too many books, they add a lot of weight

No pet hairs, odors or smoke

See Katies blog at Snuggling up with a Dish from Karma. She tracks the boxes and updates the rules post.

Work Space

Ellison Lane is running a Studio Spotlight and Laura at Little and Lots thought it would be fun to see my space... Hrmm. My space is rather crowded and tends to get cluttered quickly when not in use. I did not straighten up first. Please keep that in mind.

The first picture is my sewing space. There is a small stool I sit on when sewing that fits under the table. The bag on the left is my crocheted afghan that is too hot to work on when it's 80 degrees outside. It has a few tools on it. The bag in front is one of my WIP, a full size quilt. (Love, Love, Love the tote bags from Cracker Barrel. HUGE and very cheap, $1 when on sale, 3/$5 full price) There is a small wooden basket with a lid between the table and the bookcase (brown 'wall' on the right).

The right picture is between the bookcase and the couch. The bookcase doesn't have the room to face the other way, due to the size of the couch and the location of our front door. Buried between the 2 is another CB tote and on the bottom shelves 2 large plastic food tins (the kind from halloween that have a ton of mini bags of pretzels inside), they hold my fabric stash. I also like to use the zippered plastic bags from sheets and pillowcases to organize.
My sewing machine is a Singer. It was originally my mothers, so probably dated 1950's or 1960's. My husband has currently taken over my workspace to restring a guitar. I will not be using the space once classes start next week, so I don't mind. When I have to baste a quilt, there is a large table area downstairs that I can use. (we live in an apartment complex)
It's a bit messy at time, but functions well and I can find things when I need them, which is what matters. =)

When it rains...

Well, we all know the saying. At my house it is definitely pouring. My plans of finishing this before classes started for fall semester have proven extremely optimistic.

(Excuse the blur in the corner, ipad cover was off a bit)

So instead of having a lovely finished quilt, I am halfway through 1 block.

It is currently draped over the couch, the only surface large enough(other than the bed)to quilt this on. It is actually upside down, the owls are intended to direct the flow of the quilt.

So the last 2 weeks we have had to take my husbands Gma to the emergency room, where they discovered that she broke her T12 vertebrae and they sent her to a larger hospital. That hospital fitted her for a brace and moved her on to rehab. Fortunately, we have had very good doctors. In about 2 weeks, after some healing and adjusting to the brace, along with working on her mobility while wearing it, she will be coming home.

At the same time I am in my senior year of college and will have an internship along with full time classes. I am Orientation Leader and secretary of our honor society. So, I will most likely disappear soon, hopefully to return around christmas. Perhaps a few short posts in between. 

In the middle of September is the Pin It! blog hop, hosted by Mdm Samm @ Sew We Quilt and Kristen @ Meadowbrook. This runs from the 10th - 17th. 

My day is the 12th, so I will need to find some time for that. Otherwise my days are going to be very full. Not sure how other people find the time to sew, but I'm fairly sure I'm not going to have the time.

Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe Giveaway

Just a little heads up. Nancy is celebrating her birthday and is giving away a very generous amount of goodies. If anyone is interested in putting their name in the hat, I get extra points for sending people over. So, I would appreciate it if you mention my name when you visit =)

Friday Night Sew In

Sugarlane Quilts is hosting a Friday Night Sew In. Since I am constantly working on one project or another, I thought "Why not? Sounds like fun". After all, when does getting together with a bunch of quilters to sew not fun?

Well... That depends. I spent the night on a task that some do not find fun and had my first venture into basting. We will see if I managed to maintain flatness. My sewing machine does not do machine quilting, so this is another hand quilting project. The Sweet Pea quilt is temp shelved as I seem to have forgotten to buy backing and that is now on it's way. Connecting Threads thankfully is currently running a backing sale. What perfect timing!

This picture is from the quilt roughly half basted. Ended up taking 3-4 hours total. Currently working on motifs for the hand quilting. Looking at stars and deciding on connections between them. Grateful to have this task out of the way. =)

This quilt is a memorial to my mother who passed away several years ago. She taught me to sew and love fabric when I was 10. She always wanted to ride in a Hot Air Balloon and see the land from the air. She would have loved this quilt. Some elements blend in, for example there is a purple blanket stitch used on the applique kite tail bows and a silver lining on the clouds(also blanket stitched). The rays of the sun are golden glass beads and the basket ropes are brown yarn.

Sweet Pea Quilt

I would love to say that I have made some progress. Mostly experiencing frustration.

This was the starting point. With a few additions over the last few months, I increased the size from 45" to 90"... or so I thought.

 I made a few changes. Mostly to the size of the blocks and the sashing.

I made the assumption that if I took 6" blocks and 2" sashing = 45", then doubling to 12" blocks and 4" sashing would = 90".
Well, I forgot to never assume and always double check your measurements. Somewhere along the line things shrank and now I have a lovely quilt that is only 77" square. I lost 13 INCHES!! Will take a few pictures when I go make the sandwich, currently very unhappy with the shrinkage and do not have an easy way to fix it without changing the pattern.

Bloglovin

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Switched from Reader to Bloglovin. Just claiming my blog on Bloglovin. Not much really changes.

Updates

Life got a bit busy around here when school let out. There is no such thing as summer vacation. My Grand mother in law has 1.5 acre of land around a 3 bedroom house. She is 81 years old and well she can still do many things, the house is a bit much for her. So the 3 of us (me, my hubby and my MIL) go up there at least every couple of days to help her with something. Be it dusting, weeding, mowing, etc. So sewing has taken a bit of a back seat to helping her keep up with things.

I did get the baby quilt finished. This one is hand quilted, so it was very portable and often went to grannies to get worked on during breaks.

These are part of the queen size quilt. The bottom 2 are Shasta Daisies, while the top 2 are fussy cut from some stained glass print that I love. The center of the Shasta Daisies are leftover bits from the stained glass print. I adore scraps. I can usually get quite a bit out of what some people will throw away. I have most of the blocks done and once they are completed I will start on the sashing, which is a beautiful brown and cream/pink.

Sorry about the lack of designer names, I don't really keep track. While I sometimes buy because of the designer, often I buy because the fabric works with the other fabric I have for a project, i love the print/color or because I have a project I am starting. I mix fabric collections all the time. Whatever looks good goes.

Lovely Quilts

Summer weather is a pain. We are riding the Hot/Cold roller coaster and it is no fun. I'd love mother nature to figure it out and settle for 60-75 degrees (oh, yeh, i'm in fantasy land).
I have gotten some progress on a few things and another distraction.
My SIL is having her first baby in a few weeks and I got a request to make her a baby quilt. So, of course, all my current projects got shelved.

 I had some cute fabric I was saving and I love the simple stars.
Did a little auditioning for the sashing. The toys fabric ended up vetoed (hubby gets veto power, he knows her better than I do). I had some jelly rolls of 3 Blind Mice, which ended up looking great as sashing. The toys have ended up as binding.

Got a few things done on the Sweet Pea quilt now that this one is at hand quilting stage. [I am using a decorative quilting thread (aka embroidery thread) and this is tough on the fingers, esp. since I do not use a thimble (i just can't get used to them). So, on breaks I work on other things.]

Since I am incorporating a few Shasta Daisies for the center of 3 blocks, I took pictures to keep track of where each petal goes on the flower. (My computer desk is part workbench and is well used)

The pattern I am using is over at Jinny Beyers.

Quiltmaker 100 Blocks Issue #7

Loving Quiltmaker right now. They are having a week long blog hop for their new issue, #7. I really enjoyed #6, so this one will be just as lovely. They always use such pretty colors in their example blocks. There are several block tutorials each day and they have made some really nice blocks.
Clicky right here to go see for yourself.

Things...

Are very busy around here right now. Tis the week before finals...
Sadly, my current quilting projects have sat and sat. Zero progress due to more and more homework projects and presentations as the semester reaches its end. Right before I got deluged in homework, I decided to make an addition to the Sweet Pea Quilt (and up the difficulty level =\).

I am making 3 of the block centers out of the Shasta Daisy Pattern over at Quilters Design Board.

I would post pictures of actual progress, but I have a cutting board piled in pieces, fabric, and snack bags. Not much to see right now. Then to add to the busy and shelve current projects, my sister-in-law is pregnant and my hubby thinks it's awesome when I make things for his family. =) So i'm making her a baby blanket and she is due in June.

In other news: Vroomans' Quilts has won the traveling stash!

Traveling Stash aka Pass it on Box

The Pass it on Box arrived a couple of days ago, and I have enjoyed going through the box and choosing a few things to trade. The box has some interesting pieces, for example, a sew and stuff santa and a sew and stuff cat. This box is mostly fabric, which is nice.

There are a few patterns and a christmas tree of buttons. I took out a few things.

And put in a few things.

The other nice thing about this box (in some ways) is that it currently fits in a medium size priority mail box. If you do straight trades, it will still fit. If you add a bunch, you will need to upgrade to the large box.

The Traveling Stashes are kept track of by Cherise over at Sewingly Along.
There are a few rules that go along with this giveaway, besides the fact that this box only travels the United States (due to shipping costs).

• Fabric only of quilting quality
• Items you would be proud to own
• Trade like sizes (FQ for FQ, Yd for Yd)
• Have an active blog
• Take and post pictures

For a complete list of the rules, please visit Sewingly Along's Rules List.

Leave a comment for a chance at the Traveling Stash. Good luck and I will pick a winner next Saturday, April 27th.

Christa's Year of Giveaways!

I follow a good many blogs and every so often one does a giveaway. Christa Quilts is starting a year of giveaways and is looking for suggestions for items we would like her to give away. I know I love fabric (and who doesn't), but there are many other quilting related items, such as thread, bobbins, pins, and (if you crazy quilt) lace, embroidery thread, buttons. The list is near endless.

Her blog typically follows her as she makes quilts, as a weekly tutorial. I follow her with email to make the posts easy to find.

There is a traveling stash on the way. Will have a post up with the giveaway once it arrives.

See Cherise's blog for details on how the traveling stash works.

April Showers

Mdm. Samm over at Sew We Quilt runs various blog hops over the course of the year. Currently running is the April Showers Blog Hop. I love to follow the hops, they are a great source of inspiration!