Baby Blankets

I decided this year that I wanted to make a baby blanket for each of the new babies in my church's congregation this year, and one for my best friend. That means I have 5 on my list for now.

This is the one for my best friend. It's a peach color. Her little girl is due April 30th. It is nearly done.

The other 4 are for a girl who was born in January or February, a boy born around March 1st, another girl due at the end of April, and a boy due in February. Hopefully, I will be able to get a picture of each baby wrapped in their blankets to share.

The Mysteries of the Quilt Room

My son has found a spot in my room that he loves. It's the little alcove created by my sewing machine/computer desk and my cutting table. He has found all sorts of interesting things in the drawers and shelves there. His favorite by far has been the bag of buttons...and a few other small containers of buttons that were for other projects, but have now been mixed back in with the other buttons.

He has also loved to play with my pins. At this point I am lucky if he will let me use my pins for anything. He has been known to fuss if I try to take one of the TWO magnetic pin cushions. I also have given him a Christmas tree centerpiece to use as a pincushion.

I do have a picture of him playing with the pins that I would like to share, but I will have to wait and see if I can get it off my phone. Technology can be a great thing, and a big pain in the butt all at the same time. If I can get it on here before posting time I will, but if not, I will try to get it for another day.

The second email attempt came through as I typed that. As you can see he has also managed to work his way out of the corner he started in. I can't seem to keep my floor cleaned up, now that I don't insist on there being a gate in the doorway. I just wish he wouldn't bring soo many toys in, since he's found so many more in my room to play with.

The Great Room Cleaup

Back in January, I decided I'd had enough of my craft room being a mess. It had just gotten out of hand. I had boxes and buckets that had not been gone through in the entire time I'd been married (3.5 years). At first it had been because we lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and then because I had a son. So I said enough was enough (I also wanted to clear space to have a design wall. Pictured to the left is what I was starting with. I worked for a solid 2 days to complete it (ok, there were several short breaks worked in).

By the end of the 2 days I deemed it done enough. I still had a few boxes of papers and such from the period of time since we moved in hidden under my tables, but I had design wall space, and a much more organized room. I felt really good about myself.

Then in the middle of March, I decided that I needed to be fully finished, and that I wanted to be able to get into my whole closet. The left side was blocked by a table holding my sewing machine. I put in another 2 days of cleaning, though Nate was not as cooperative about being a happy calm little boy.

The final picture shows it in all it's organized glory. The fabric on the floor was being auditioned for borders for my Faux Hexagon Table Runner. But now I've created a much better atmosphere for my crafting. The boxes have all been emptied and I can use the underneath of my table for organized space instead of stuffing space.

Only thing left to do at this point is to set up my solid design wall. I'm so happy with it. Ok, I wish I had more table space for cutting, but for now this is what I've got and it works great for me.

Car Quilt-Straight Part 2

I told you I'd come back to this. When we last left our hero she was hanging from a cliff...oops sorry, too much Between the Lions.

I had just gotten to the part in the tale where I was cutting thousands of squares. Yes, it was in fact thousands. At that point, I had calculated that I needed 1872 2" squares and 233 5" squares between the two quilts. I got them all cut and ready to be randomized. Now I think I've mentioned this before but random and I are not good friends. So I used my friend Kendall the Kindle and found myself an app with a random number generator. This got quite the laugh at a recent Quilt Retreat. That generator and I have been good friends, as you can see from the picture.

On Sunday (3/17) I did a big push to finish my 9-patches. I thought I had finished. Then as I started to put them on my newly acquired foam boards I noticed a problem. Somehow it was turn out to be rectangular and only half the size I wanted. So I went back to my original math.

I wanted it 70" by 70" (ish, I think it's going to actually be 72"x72"). This meant a square of 16 blocks by 16 blocks. Since there are 2 blocks that means 8 blocks by 8 blocks of each, right? Well, that was my mistake. I divided both sides by 2, oops. I needed 8 blocks by 16 blocks. That meant I needed another 576 2" squares, and 64 5" squares. After cutting them, I realized my quilt was going to be lopsided (fabricwise) if I did even out the numbers of the 2" squares per fabric, so I had to go through and figure out which 9-patches to move. Luckily my random number generator helped again. Now I'm finally sitting with all of my 9-patches done, and I'm working on placing the 5" squares. My random number generator is helping again. Hopefully soon, I can post that the top is finished. I'm wondering if I should add a border around the outside or not. What do you think? If so, What color would you suggest? Please let me know in the comments.

May Fortune Smile Upon You.

Car Quilt-Straight

This is a quilt I started because I was at a standstill on all of the rest of my quilts, either because I needed my design board to be able to continue, or I needed a hoop for quilting, or I was dreading doing the binding. I decided I needed to do something with all of the fabrics I had acquired from Walmart. Most of the fabrics were acquired for making coin purses, but that project has since fallen by the wayside. I knew a good portion of these fabrics were of rather poor quality, so I immediately called it my car quilt.

I wanted to try something I had never done before, which left a lot of options open since I haven't done much quilting yet. So I sat down with some grid paper and went to town drawing up some options. I settled on a 9-patch option, with a few other designs for something else in the future.

This then had me trying to decide between a straight 9-patch or on point. Doing it on point would give me experience in yet another thing I had not tried yet. So to solve the problem I counted the number of cars we have. 1...2...perfect, I can try both. The Car Quilt-On Point will be blogged about at a later date. You know, once I actually start it.

With this decided, I had to decide on the size. I knew I wanted the finished product to be about 70"x70", so as my family grows it will still be big enough for a picnic in the park (or the backyard). I then took my regular scissors (because it had been instilled in me the difference between regular scissors and fabric scissors since I was a tiny person) and I cut 3 sets of paper examples to finished sizes (1" and 3", 1.5" and 4.5", and 2" and 6") and determined I wanted the 1.5" inch little squares with finished blocks at 4.5". I then spent the next 2 weeks cutting out 2" and 5" squares.

This quilt has lead me on the quite the adventure thusfar, but this is where I will leave you for now, as I really don't wish my posts to get too long.

Nate the Great

 Every once in awhile, I will need to stray from being crafty to focus on the main cause of my ups and downs. The fact that I am a mom. This is my son Nate. He is at times the sweetest little monster and at other times the most formidable angel. Sometimes moments apart from each other, in fact.

In this picture, I had given him fruit snacks just after his nap. He had a ball playing with them for half an hour. I don't think he ate a single one. But he was happy, so I wasn't going to fight it.

This picture is from last Thursday (3/14). The inserted picture shows the time on my stove when this picture was taken. This was the first day we had gone out and played at the park, this year. The weather was so pretty. He loved it. We played a solid hour and then came home to have dinner. This was shortly after dinner. He was so tired already that he kept laying down on the kitchen floor while I cleaned up dinner.

He loves to have his picture taken. I had just picked up my camera off the table to put it away, and he came over to see it. Such a happy boy this time.

These are the moments that make up for nights like last night. He decided he needed to be up at 3AM and again at 7AM. Both times I nearly had him asleep while rocking and as soon as I put him in his bed he screamed his head off. I don't think he ever went back to sleep after the 7 o'clock wakeup (until naptime at 1PM), but I'm pretty sure I dozed off on his floor trying to get him to lay back down. He woke me up by throwing his sippy cup at me a few times. Things did get better, but oh my, did we struggle first thing this morning.

Oh, how I love my little monster.

Until next time, dear friends.

Vomit Quilt

 Starting in September of 2012, the Payson Quilt Guild did a 5" vomit swap. Marion got the idea here. The idea was to bring together the ugliest fabrics we had to make a really scrappy quilt. Hence, the idea of a "vomit" quilt. I loved this idea, but I really wanted to try something that wasn't squares (remember, I like difficult) if I could find something that jumped out at me.

So I was looking through some older quilting magazines my mom sent me, and came across a really pretty blue and yellow pineapple in the October 2005 edition of American Patchwork & Quilting. I loved the colors and planned on doing it in some variant of blues and yellows. I have always been a BIG fan of blue, particularly dark blue. Then I saw the color variation option, and fell in love with the pattern all over again. The way it was done looked like a bunch of X's (as pictured). I thought this could be a really good scrappy quilt if you focus on the X's.

I checked the fabric requirements and found that all of the triangles are made from either 2" squares or 2.5" squares. This meant that I could get 4 out of each 5" square. If each of those 4 squares were placed in a coordinating location I could make the X's out of 5 coordinating large squares. Now to sort out the middles. I worked through the neutral palettes and settled on the most basic connections, black, white and grey. After seeing the variant in the magazine, I thought it would be great to variegate the colors from light to dark. This then left the centers for which I thought black would be just dandy.

Now the project has been started, and after the 1st block I am thrilled to say the colors are looking even better than I had originally hoped. I now have 8 of the 72 blocks done. It was at about block 5 that I realized that some of my block sizes had varied (seems odd to me since I was using the same thread, same foot, and same machine, but hey I think we can fix this). At this point, I think to fix this I will use a black to bring all of the blocks to the same size before piecing them together in the end. But that's still a few blocks off.

More Rat Hammocks

The pictures of the next 10 rat hammocks have been taken. They should be have been edited and posted in the next couple of days. This will add more variety to the ones already available in my shop. Please feel free to check out my shop at any time.

 The new hammocks are found here, and here, with one added to the old post here.

A direct link to the new hammocks will be added with a photo, if I get to the editing before this posts, if not you'll have to check out my shop to see what I'm talking about.

Hexagons

Back in December of 2011, my mother introduced me to quilting. While many women (and some men), start  by piecing together squares or strips and then progress to more difficult things, my mother knows me better. She decided that I would love to learn English paper piecing. She had been doing diamonds when she came to visit earlier in the year. I thought that looked like a good idea. I had been known on occasion to take my knitting needles and a small project to work on while I watched a movie, sat in a class, or even in church once in awhile. I liked to have something that I could keep my hands busy and my mind and eyes open.

So in December, while I was visiting, we went to Joann's and found a whole lot of fabrics that I loved together. We then went home, and she imparted of her hexagons, and hexagon knowledge, and I began. I have been working fairly steadily on this project since. It is often the exact excuse I need to sit back and enjoy a tv show on Netflix.

I have found that is a great stress reliever. It is easy to get lost in each of the tiny stitches. I typically keep it on a quilting hoop that my mom got me for my birthday this past September. This allows it to stay off of my lap, so I don't get too hot. It also means that I can see my edges better, to know where I'm working. By the time, I got my hoop, I found that I was spending a solid 5-10 minutes everytime I picked up my quilt just to find where my needle and thread were. I was also getting really tired of having such a lopsided quilt, since I couldn't see what part of the quilt I was adding to. (Some people find my difficulties with randomness a tad odd.)

Many quilters have commented on the craziness of starting quilting with something this difficult. I have actually found this to be almost easier for me than regular piecing. I can understand why they would say this would be difficult, but for me, this consists of no more than basting and stitching. Whereas, I dread squaring, and cutting, as these could so easily be messed up. Here it is at the quilt retreat at the end of February. Photo was kindly taken and shared by Suzanne.

...fortune is so variant, and the wheel so moveable --Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur

What a Week!

So I'm back. I really did mean to get this going and to post every other day at the latest. I promise that really was the plan. Unfortunately, I have fallen sick, I think I'm starting to get better, but I figured this was a good time to update (and maybe put some posts in reserve for later). Snapping the pictures was easy since I just gave myself a burst of energy with a Sprite. Otherwise, I've had no energy for the last few days.

Speaking of pictures, I know I probably shouldn't excuse myself this way, but I keep forgetting to remember to take pictures of the hammocks during the day while Nate is napping, so that I can get those up in my shop. I promise, I have not forgotten about them, if you are still wanting to see the different color options.

Today, I found that the bottom of my design wall can be very useful when you don't have the energy for standing for very long. I have continued work on my faux hexagon tablerunner. And actually now have all of the hex pieces sewn together. I actually got that done last night (with half a strip this morning). Today's main focus was on calculating the borders, and if I was going to have borders, and what fabric they should be. While this was all given to me by a friend of my mom's I found a fabric in there that I was not thrilled to have as a border, because I thought it clashed with one of the other fabrics that was along the edge of the pieced top. Now, I loved this fabric as much as the rest of them, and it went great with all of the other fabrics, so I spent an hour or two trying to figure out how to make it all work, since I decided it did need a border. It was also determined that it could still appear in the quilt as long as it was not directly next to the other fabric.

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough of any of the strips left to be able to use them for the border, so I decided I needed to stash hunt. While my husband complains that my stash is already too big, I struggled to find something I really loved until I came upon this brown and peach spiral acquired from Emily's retreat (either from her scrap bin or from the Ugly Fabric contest, not sure which, as I loved all the Uglies, too). If it's yours let me know, so I can give you a proper thanks.

 With the size of the borders now decided, all that's left to do is bring it to pass...Oh, and square it, and quilt it, and bind it, and label it...I swear I'm getting close, right?

May the wheel take you higher.

What a Day

 This is a day I feel confident blogging about. I managed to get a few of my rows sewn together on my faux hexagon table runner, that was given to me by my mom's friend. I received it in December while I was visiting my family and finished cutting out the pieces and got the layout the way I wanted it. Then it sat in a baggy waiting for me to have a design wall, since I said I could not work on it until I had one. Then once I got the design wall up, I put it on and it has stared at me for 2 weeks, mocking me with it's diagonal seams on straight rows. So I finally bit the bullet and did a few of them, and I don't know what I was so worried about.

If this had been all I got done today, I still felt like I had accomplished something. This helped me get through the morning. My son decided that he wanted to throw a fit because he wanted to go bye-bye and Mommy said no. No joke, he cried from 8:30 until 10:15 this morning about it, and 45 minutes of that was in his crib. We think part of it is that he is still recovering from being sick, poor kid.

He did much better after his nap after lunch. Then just before his bedtime I remembered that I needed to work on the grommets, since the first part (putting holes in the fabric) has to be done while he is awake. So I used the residual frustration from this morning to get the holes and grommets into another 10 double hammock sets. That's 80 holes and grommets. My grommet muscle hurts now. Here there are all ready for their photoshoot tomorrow. I'm hoping to have them posted all the way to Etsy before I go to bed tomorrow. Though I may just do the photo stuff tomorrow and post them on Friday. We shall see.

Then as if I hadn't done enough already, I had a mountain of laundry to tackle next, and a bed to make, since the sheets were in that pile of laundry.

Now I am joyously celebrating with a bowl of ice cream, prepared by my sweet husband, while blogging.

May Fortune smile upon you.

Rat Hammocks.

Woot. I finally have rat hammocks to show off. These are most of the ones I have completed and posted so far. More are to come (about a dozen of them in different stages in my room not counting the uncut ones). I hope to have more to add to my shop very soon, but for now check me out here. Now I should probably get something else done.

See you on the wheel.

Back (hopefully)

Wow. I had not realized that I had fallen as far behind on my blog as I have. I knew it had been awhile, but wow.

Anyway, after having gone to a quilt retreat hosted by Emily of Crazy Old Ladies. I've decided that I need to do better about this. If nothing else to keep myself motivated to make progress on things so that I can make blog posts. There were soo  many amazing ladies who had blogs that I felt like I needed to be trying to get myself posting more. There is no point in having a blog if I'm not going to update it.

This poor blog has gone from being a blog from a whiny teenager to a blatant advertisement of my Etsy shop. And now hopefully it will be a progress blog. Any encouragement I can get will be appreciated.

Please bear with me as I work to get into a good habit with this. For now, I need to find pictures of previously promised items, and get myself into a groove.

Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel! --Shakespeare