Moving On..

This weekend I finally started making my dad's MSU string quilt (this years xmas gift), and I tell you what- it's  nice that the blocks can be assembled so quickly.  After making the Christmas tree blocks that averaged around and hour and a half construction time, these little babies fly off my machine like its on fire!  Downside?  I only have to make a zillion of them, I have 10 done so far, and I have no where near enough fabric.  Makes my husband's U of M quilt look like a distant dream...



I'm also avoiding the tree quilt like it's the plague.  Really.  I took a nap yesterday just to avoid it.  Today I thought that I should at least look at it since it is cute and I need to love it again.

Then I thought that I should maybe think about this border thing.  It was unanimous that I put one on there but that means I have to think about it some more and I'm running dangerously low on my red/green fabric that I'm pretty determined to use as backing.  (Thank you to all who gave their opinion!  I love reading them :)  ).  I did find this though, that I thought about including in the border.

It might even be cute to just use that.  I'm not ready for this commitment though so I'm taking it with me to quilting on Wednesday (I did fail to go last week which is why there has been no momentum- Mama Spark needs to push me to finish this one..)

My cat (Annie) has recently been quite put out that I am no longer letting her lounge all over my fabrics.  In attempts to get even with me she refuses to let me touch her and pouts constantly.  See her pout.

Luckily, she finds other shenanigans to get herself into and seems to forget that she no longer has fabric or sewing chair privileges.

Thursday I'm leaving for who-knows-where Canada to attend an AFS conference.  Luckily I am going with a crafty co-work who loves to knit and her idea of a good night is sitting with a glass of wine and creating things of sting.  We have already established that I will be bringing quilting and snacks and we will have a mini vacation after conference hours!  Well, that's what we hope anyways otherwise I will get virtually nothing done this week!   Until then...

Reading List

I love to read and I'll read anything and everything so long as it is mildly interesting.  I read before bed to help wind down from the day and I also read at work (audio books that is).  I go through about a book every 3 weeks and an audio book nearly every other day.  I enjoy it, though I can't even tell you how many books I've read lately.

In attempts to diversify and find something new I've started randomly wandering about my library and picking books with interesting spines or sweet titles.  Last month I happened to stumble upon Jennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilt novels and it has been lovely.  So far I have read the Lost Quilter, The Quilter's Homecoming and am reading The Union Quilters.  They are fantastic and since I read them before bed, I am constantly dreaming of quilting.  I find it works well for me since I don't have much time during the week to do it! Question; has anyone read this series and is there an order they should be read in?  Jennifer's site says that you can read them whenever, but I was curious what everyone else thought about it.

If you haven't read them and are a reader, I would highly recommend them!  A new book was just published (Sonoma Rose) and I can't wait to read it!

Christmas Trees and New Friends!

Thank you all for taking the time to stop by!  I couldn't believe it today when I emerged from my sewing room to discover everyone who had viewed my page since Mama Spark mentioned me on her last blog (thank you dear! and holy cow! on the progress made on her Dad's quilt). 

I had today off and wanted to get my Christmas trees at least in rows to maybe bring to the next quilting night.  This is where I'm at;

I have managed to sew together the horizontal rows but in the process of ironing all the seams I noticed that I did a very poor job matching sashings on some of them because I never intended to in the first place.  When putting the blocks together I noticed that some fit and some didn't- whatever, no big deal.  WRONG!  It is a big deal and I can't stop STARING at them!  I'm tempted to go through and rip them out and sew them back together but I spent 5 hours working on the stupid thing today and can't bring myself to do it yet.  To add to it there are some blocks that just won't match because the inner square turned into a monster for some reason so that disheartens me even more. 

I also have to decide if I should put a border around the whole thing or leave it be the way it is.  I'm tempted to leave it since my one experimental block turned into a table runner which turned into a lap quilt which turned into this odd two-person lap/decoration quilt thing.  Problem was I just couldn't stop making the blocks because they got cuter and cuter each time! 

I also received a lovely valentines card in the mail from my friend who moved south so now I have Hammy to watch over me in my sewing room.  I may bring him to work in attempts to have my friend's humor back at the lab :)

Any thoughts??  I'd love to hear them!

Progress?

Why Hello Again!

It's been a while, but I found I just had nothing to say!  These last two weeks have went by in a whirlwind of activity.  I have been putting in 50 hours at work attempting to finish a project and then the in-laws moved in.  They have been here for a week and a half and no progress has been made to get them back home so the countdown can't even be established yet!

Wednesdays I get together with Mama Spark and she helps me out with my projects and teaches me everything that I need to know!  The past two times all I have done is work on the binding to my first rail fence and no, it still isn't done but at least it looks nice so far.  I have made progress with my Christmas Tree quilt though!  I took pictures of 3 different blocks, loaded them into PowerPoint, and designed the top!  It worked though I had to have hubby help me so I didn't throw the computer through a wall due to slow loading pictures!  Now I'm about halfway done with the sashing and I hope to finish the remaining today so I can show you!

Also, if you aren't seeing me from Mama Spark's blog you should saunter over there since today is her last day of a giveaway!  She has reached 500 followers and has hit her 1000th blog post!  That's a feat if I do say so myself.

Week in review

Well, I was successful in getting just about nothing done this week at all.  DH is still working a ridiculous amount so I have no drive to do anything, plus my work load is amping up and I'm not exactly excited about it.  I missed quilting this week because I forgot my stuff at home that morning putting me behind (again) on my binding skills.  Then I met my parents for dinner on Thursday putting me home way past my bedtime.  This morning I wasn't feeling the greatest and then it was off to the dentist to spend some hard earned money on my teeth, then back onto the couch I went.  I also learned that my in-laws and their two dogs are going to be moving in with us for a month.  Fantastic.  Can't wait.

I was in the process of finishing my Christmas tree blocks until about 20 minutes ago when I got a call from DH telling me to research stoves to buy and set up in the basement since he NEVER STOPS WORKING.  Well, that was boring and I'm surprised that I actually started doing it because look at what I created minutes before...

My first, adorable, Christmas tree block.  I just want to snuggle it, it's so amazingly cute.  I'm hoping I'll be able to create a few of these this weekend even though all of my plans are up in the air now.  We might be celebrating DH's birthday this weekend (his parents will be in tow for his actual birthday which means that in the 6th year of us I will still not have spent a birthday alone with him), I probably will be up to my elbows in cleaning products preparing for two more people to roam my house, I'll definitely be doing all of my regular chores, I'll more than likely have to prepare super bowl snacks for DH, and I know I will be attempting to quilt to save my sanity.  As my sanity usually is the last thing to be attended to, the probability of sewing is getting smaller and smaller by the minute. 

I also decided that I want to learn how to embroider.  That should be interesting :)

Back to range shopping.  Hope you all had a good week!

Day Off

   Usually my day off every week is spent cleaning and busying myself with various errands or things that need to be done for the following week.  Today was not like that.

   DH and I have recently purchased a treadmill.  Wonderful!  Except that it is his busy season which leaves me stranded at home, by myself, for extended periods of time.  Bad idea.  This month I have managed to attack and kill wallpaper in two rooms upstairs which we never use and give them spackling measles from all the holes the previous owners decided to put into the walls.  Now they are waiting to be painted, but I haven't gotten there yet because without the wallpaper and various holes the rooms look quite good!  Anyways, treadmill.  DH manages to bring home the treadmill from Sears (because, of course, we aren't having the silly little thing delivered) and then we park the trail blazer (and the treadmill) in the garage for a while because we still need time to bring it in.  When we get time I decide we need an army to bring it in since it weighs like 300 pounds and we need to bring it in at an angle through the door because it's enormous.  DH goes to recruit the neighbors and comes back alone. 

  Great.  So me and DH attempt to shove it through the door in our garage loading-dock style as the house door and the car are at the same level.  No good, the thing is too big to simply shove through.  DH pulls the truck forward and we pull out the treadmill so that it looks like a ramp for the car. Then we stand there and ponder what to do next as it is half in and half out of the car.  We decide to flip the treadmill end-over-end and then push it into the house like a hot-dog, slide it across the kitchen and down the basement stairs where we decided to leave it for another evening.

   Now, I'll let you know that I am actually pretty handy and relatively strong for a girl.  I grew up on a lot of land with a dad who thought I should be completely self sufficient and therefore taught me lots of random stuff.  So, I figured on my day off I should put this together and perhaps go for a run.  I venture downstairs to see this.  Right where we left it.

How hard can this be?  Well, it took me 40 minutes and a stabbed palm just to get the box open.  Thinking to myself that I could have been quilting, I abandon ship and leave this for my husband:

He'll figure it out sometime.  As it was still 8am and I had only destroyed one level of our house I figured I' go back to the second story and see what sort of mischief I could get myself into.  OH! I know, DH needs all of the shelves out of the linen closet because the carpet installers had to take the door off and didn't put it back on properly!  I will be a good wife and remove the towels, place them randomly through the hallway and into the bedrooms, and suggest when he gets home that he go stand in the dark closet so we can put the door back on correctly.  Yep.  Sounds good, so that's what I proceeded to do.  DH has yet to find out.

At this point stores are actually open so I can go get that yard of fabric I need from the store.  When I walk in to the cozy little shop I tell myself to go straight where I need to and pick up the one bolt I was destined for.  But wait, what's that fabric to the upper left?  Oh no.  It's so cute.  It's better than the one I was going to use.  But there isn't enough of it and I'm sure it's an old line.  What to do...  I better carry around the thin bolt of fabric and carry both the one I need and the one I want with me to the clearance section where I tell myself there is nothing I need.  I leave the clearance section empty handed.  But, while I was there I decided I needed to go to the blues and greens.  Where of course I find more that I need and they come home with me too.

I am making a U of M string quilt for DH and an MSU string quilt for my dad for Christmas next year.  Trouble is that since I'm a new quilter I need to buy lot of different fabrics!  It's addicting and I need to stop but yet I don't have nearly enough...

So then I came home and started working on project # 2; a Christmas tree quilt.  I made four or five blocks an decided to count what I had.  I discovered I have more than I thought!

I technically have enough to make a couch-quilt and I just can't decide how I want to put the little cuties together.  They all still need a border, but those will go on after I settle on how I want them together- either out of the fabric I intended or from the one I thought was too cute to leave behind.  If anyone knows where I can find O'Snowy Night- green tree pattern you should probably let me know.



My First Project

      Now that you know a little about me I can start talking about quilting!  I know that my husband will be relieved that he doesn't have to try to understand me anymore :)

      I am learning from a friend (Mama Spark) and started with an easy lap quilt just to see if I actually enjoyed the process and not just the end result.  I meet up with her and some of her friends on Wednesday nights and she shows me, basically, how to do everything.  And then when I'm scared to do it, I make her do it show me again.  This is what I'm in the process of finishing;

     ...though I am far beyond this point.  Over Christmas I managed to make the "quilt sandwich" (with fusible batting of course, since I'm not quite that amazing), and used the walking foot on my new sewing machine (!) to quilt it using stitch in the ditch via youtube instructions.  Then at last week's meeting I was taught to bind the quilt, which I am horrible at.  I swear it took me 5 minutes to make the first two hand stitches, but I'm slowly getting better at it.  I have a feeling this will be the part that I will hate in any quilt I make. 

     I already have grand plans for other quilts I want to create and am currently making Christmas tree blocks for a holiday quilt.  I can't wait to see how that one turns out!

So Why......?

It's very interesting to decide where to begin in the first blog.  Where am I in my quilting adventure?  Have I made anything yet?  Why did I decide to start quilting?  Why the name?  Why am I blogging? Well I don't want to write an autobiography or anything so I'll just start with the Whys. 

Why did I decide to start quilting?  Well, my cousin wanted to have a baby.

Weird, right?  I guess, but I love my cousin so I'm sure I'll love her squirmy, slobbery child when she decides to push one out so I wanted the little being to have something from me.  We grew up very close but unfortunately when I got married I moved halfway across the state so I don't get to see her often.  I thought that perhaps if her baby has something from me, it can remember me that way too.  Who knows, maybe I'll be nice and make something for her too someday :)

Why the name?  If you've read my tiny profile, you'd already know that I'm 24.  Apparently quilters my age are rare and when I tell people I either get reactions of "OH! That's WONDERFUL!" or "You really quilt?  That's strange."  When I told my husband that I wanted to quilt he gave me something close to the second reaction.  Plus a "I didn't know I married an old lady."  Well, apparently you did DH, and guess what!  I like going to bed at 9pm, baking stuff to fatten you up, wearing comfy clothes/walking around in my pj's and yes, even sewing.  Maybe I'll get into yelling at kids for playing on my lawn, but I haven't decided yet.  So anyways, now DH always says I have an old soul, but usually in a loving way...

Now, why oh why am I blogging?  I don't tend to watch facebook like other people my age.  I've never even seen twitter.  And yet I'm here.  Talking to you.  Since I've moved I discovered that we don't have anyone our age in our neighborhood.. at all.  I've also discovered that my town doesn't have a lot of community events.  I don't like paying to exercise.  I work long hours (by choice) and have at least an hour commute each way when I'm not stuck in traffic.  These things make it difficult to find other people with my interests.  Plus the fact that I like to spend time with my DH on the weekends when I don't have time to do it during the week.  Hopefully this blog will give me a chance to hear from other quilters, get advice, and talk to myself you about what I'm working on.  Plus I found that I can spend HOURS on quilting blogs (and ironically, some parenting blogs though I'm nowhere near wanting kids) so why not?