Sunday of catching up.............11/13/2011

Now that I am back from vacation and slowly getting back into things, I figured I would start by clearing up some of the mess that was laying around, and find out where Myra's mystery went. Yes I have been following, I am behind though and no I haven't blogged about it. Originally I picked out  LOTS of rainbow batiks, Myra listed her colors as a neutral, a print and 3 colors from the print.................hmmmmm, don't know if my rainbow will work. Step one was to make 3 blocks of my desire, I wasn't sure what I wanted to make. (I know now, but haven't made them) Then when step 2 came out, I changed my color selection to something I think would work better. Made all my 4 patches.

This is only some of them.

Then I did step 3, got all those HST with a square in it done too. 
Then life got in the way..............
Let's see then step 4 came out the Thursday before I went on vacation, I don't sew Thursday, Friday or Saturday for the most part. Then I went on vacation, came back and completely missed step 5. Then all of a sudden there was the final step............WHOOOAA, I had better get busy. It just so happens that one of the other QAL that I have been following came out with a block last week, that I am going to use for step one on this QAL too.  Myra has been wondering if I am indeed even following along, (It is a great easy quilt to make if you need one in a hurry.) I am making it a mystery to her what the final looks like, hehehe.. I am not the only one doing this either. So today, my Super Sewing Sunday has been catching up with steps 4, 5, and 6. To get this one done. Spent a lot of time making flying geese, I love to make mine the "no-waste" way.

 My quilt will be more scrappy controlled, instead of really controlled with only 5 fabrics. But so far it is looking pretty good. I am now seeing where I could have went more scrappy, next time. Yes, I think I will make this one again too. That is all the sneak peek you get today Myra, should have it done tomorrow though. :D

I need to really get some of these other projects OFF my table and FINISHED. Psycho cat Ely Mae, keeps dragging stuff off the tables and ironing board and leaving them all over the house, and I mean all over. 3 stories worth of all over! I find something else several times a day, scraps, pieces of blocks, whole blocks, chain pieced sets of blocks waiting to be ironed, fat quarters, even yardage. Maybe she is giving me a hint to spend more time up there. Maybe. This is what I picked up around the house in the past two days!

All of that, and see those white and blue pieces, not all at the same time either.
Jacob's Ladder blocks are all done, rows pinned together waiting to be chain pieced into a lovely top. Had them all pinned to the design board but that crazy cat kept pulling the pins out or pulling the blocks off with the pins still in them and either just leaving them all over the floor or dragging them all over the house. Didn't want anyone or any of the animals to get a pin stuck in their foot so I took them all off the board and safety pinned them together. Isn't the whole point of a design board so you don't have to pin???? Not in this house. LOL

Saturday I went shopping for my Secret Santa Swap person. I hope she is excited at getting what I am going to send to her, as I was shopping for it, and what I am going to make for her too. I have 3 weeks to put it all together and get it in the mail. SOOOOO exciting!!! Pics in a week or so for this one.

Oh yeah, you know it wouldn't be a complete blog post without pics of some of my helpers, here they were today...........

Super Sewing Sunday 09-04-11

Well it is Labor day weekend so that means I also have tomorrow off of work, YIPPEEEEE! Not sure what we will be doing tomorrow, but it has been raining her non stop for the past 36 hours due to whatshisname tropical storm.
Do you want to see what I have accomplished since last week? Of course you do, otherwise you wouldn't be here right! Oh I am so proud of myself.

First off check out this lovely piece of fabric I picked up yesterday to make me a new nightie. It is black with silver and turquoise butterflies all over it, and it even has little silver shiny things all over it too. It is a slinky satin type of fabric so soft and flowing. Going to use my favorite nightie for the pattern, it is starting to get ragged, and I have fixed it more times than I can count.

Ok I was working on the Garden Fence QAL, this is all that is leftover from 33 fat quarters.

I finished the last 2 stacks, the last 36 blocks. Now onto the design wall we go..........I have all the centers pinned on the board. The straight ones there are 3 each, and the on point ones there are 6 each. Except the top left there is only 1. Now to get the side pieces arranged so I can match them all up.

Here they all are.....

Now lets start pinning and matching, 100 blocks, with no duplicate matches. I know I can do it. Even though there are 19 polka dot middles. Whew, all done, now I will have to have a chain piecing marathon to put them all together.

But right now something else is calling my name. Sunkissed that I used for the Black A Palooza QAL.

I counted up my blocks, seen that I still needed to sew 2 more blocks, so I had to go through and find out which 2 I was still missing. Found them and got them pieced, finally!

So now that those are done, I can move onto the center part..........the flower garden. I haven't been able to do this because I needed some more of the GO! dies. Well I have all of them now, gotta love Mother's Day, & Birthdays too! Also finally found a silver permanent marker so I could mark the dies, and see where I was going to be cutting.

And now away we GO!..........What is that I hear, I hear snoring........what?? Look what I found under the cutting table!

on top of the cutting table are these two............surprise?! NOPE! They are always there, somewhere!

Oh on the otherside of the room is Riley...

Had to go look for Ressie, she wasn't at the top of the stairs where she normally is. Seems they pulled all the blankets out of the box my daughter had stashed up there, they are not stupid that is for sure!!! Reesie made herself COMFY too.

Oh yeah.............and away we GO!..............got so busy making this, I forgot to take pics as I went along, so here is the center of the BAP quilt, my Sunkissed Flower Garden.

It will measure 24X48 when it is in the center of the quilt. Big smile on my face, it is done. Well I still have to stitch it all down. and boy what a mess I made too. I guess I will clean this up next time I go up in my room.

It was nice listening to the rain all day long today while getting all this done. I am pooped today, and ready for bed. I have a lot to do this week, so I hope I have more mojo than I had this past week, because I just couldn't get with it, till today.

Super Sewing Sunday 08-07-11

 Well I got quite a bit done today, and even quit 4 hours earlier than normal. Was at a point of boredom, or not knowing what to do next that I wanted to do. So I know it is best to quit at that point before you lose the MOJO. First I spent a couple hours making a back for another secret project quilt I made last week. Here is a sneak peek..........................

 
Sorry that is all I can show you for now.

 Then I got these 100 HST's pressed open. Chainstitched together in rows of 5, and now there are enough to sew them onto 5 of the 29 blocks I have yet to finish so I can start piecing together RRCB. Remember I want the top done before my birthday is here, and I am running out of time. If I do this each day this week. Then next Sunday I can spend the whole day piecing it together, and just in time too! Keeping the fingers crossed. I want this one off my ironing board, and my tablessssss. Then it can sit in the pile to be quilted.

 I am thinking I might use this bunch of fabric to do my Garden Fence QAL. Will think a little more on that subject. PS See Jethro stretched out in the background.

 Here is a closer view, of him hanging over the little scrap basket he is sitting in, with his arm all stretched out, like usual.

Just as I was about to turn out the light, here comes Ely Mae to start cleaning Jethro.....silly cats.











Normally during the week, I sew Mon, Tues, & Wed evenings. But this past week, I only did some sewing on Monday. I worked on the Rockin Row Robin. Here are all my fabrics cut out, stacked assembly line style next to the machine.

 Here they are layed out on the floor.

and here from the other end. There is no background fabric on these, didn't think about that till after it was all done. Oh well that is ok. Still have 3 more rows to do. Using scraps, takes along time to cut out all the pieces you need for a row. I will work more on these 3 rows again during this week as well.










I also have 20 shirts to embroider this week. I keep putting it off, and I need to just do it and be done with it. So I can give my friend his work shirts back to him.

The Happy Quilting Stars QAL starts tomorrow. Are you going to QAL too????

Super sewing Sunday 07-25-11

The little Lion that could.......  There is this lady that comes into the Post Office (where I work) who just had her first child. She was soooo excited leading up to her due date. Not sure what happened, but she had to have an emergency C-section, 4 weeks early. The first 13 minutes of her sons life, he wasn't breathing. She is glad they never gave up on him. When they finally got him breathing, he was swollen ready bad, they said he had edema ( I think) and he was in a lot of pain because his skin could only stretch so far, and his body was still pushing. They didn't give him too many days to live. Then a week later, they said he more than likely has cerebral palsy, she was devastated. As the days ticked on, he kept defying the odds. Every time they said he wouldn't be able to do something, he would do it. They were both in Shands hospital in Gainesville Florida for about a month before she could finally bring him home. I finally got to meet the little guy this past week. He is doing great. He might grow up to have absolutely nothing wrong with him. When I asked her what she named him she said "Laith" it means little lion. He has been fighting for his life everyday so far, and he is a strong fighter. So I am making them a little lion baby quilt. I am not done with it yet, but here is what I have so far.

White minkee in the middle!! I have to add the borders yet, and piece the back with a special label. She is going to be super surprised. :D

I also quilted and bound my secret project I did last weekend, here is the sneak peak...

I also have my Kaleidoscope quilt almost all pieced together, I have 5 more seams left to do, but I have to press, and pin, pin, pin and pin some more before I can sew them. Soooo I will do them tomorrow. Glad to have that one off the design board.

Ely Mae, steals stuff out of my room all the time, today I caught her running around with a piece of lace, that had a ribbon in it, so..............

I tied it very loosely on her like a queen or something.


Good thing Jethro has a stub for a tail, otherwise I might have stitched it into my Kaleidoscope quilt.

See the fluff on the right, that is his stub, and he was trying to sit in the hole where I was sewing, I had to push him out.


Oh and CONNIE>>>>>>>>this one is for you. Connie made this flower for the flower quilt along, and I told her I had done the same one about 10 years ago, and she asked to see it, here it is.

First week accomplishments

Well last week was the first week of DH being on swing shift, it was lovely. I didn't get as much sewing done as I had hoped to, but did get some done. I did 2 kids taxes last week. Going to do mine probably tomorrow and Wednesday. Lets see the Layer Cake quilt along I was doing finished up last week on Thursday which was also my sit n stitch night. So I haven't put them all together yet. But here is the last block.

 and the one before that that I didn't show.

Then all 12 blocks together!

Block a Palooza is also done, here is the applique block from that set. I have one still left on the cutting table that I found today. and I still haven't found my lost lil goose. So I will have to make another one. Then I need to go buy some yardage for the center, and then it will sit there till I get the dies I want to use for the center portion to go with my GO!

Jethro helping me thread my machine. He is sooo helpful sometimes!!

When I was looking at the top of my fabric shelves I was thinking, then got another thought about breaking up those bundled fat quarters that were up there, and putting them on the shelves by color like everything else. So I pulled down some and threw them onto the table to pull apart and sort by color, and when I started to do that, I noticed that 3 bundles that were not stacked together went together very well, and well I had been looking for something to use for my TWEETS quilt. Ta Da, I found it. What do  you think??

 Well I pulled out the black white and red one this week as well, because I finally figured out what I was doing with it. But first I had to fix a small problem of having one block that only measured 11" and the rest that measured 12 1/2" so I made up this block to replace the one smaller one. I made these blocks when I first started to quilt some 9 years ago, and looking at the back of the one that is too small it is because my seams allowances are everywhere and there are a LOT of pieces in it. I didn't feel like picking it all out and resewing that one, so I will just add it to the back of the quilt instead.

 I was kinda limited to what I was going to do and how I was going to do it, because as I was looking at this piece of fabric I thought I had recently bought, the seam allowance told me probably not. The year is 2000 printed on the selvage. During the time I had been doing a lot of piecing of quilts, then everything went on the back burner for the past 5 years. Now I am here to clean it all up!

 So here is where the design wall sits as of an hour ago. Still adding the sashing, I will maybe finish it tomorrow. I want this top done before Friday. That is my goal!!!

 

Then sometime during the week, I took all my tiny little pieces of left over triangles that were in a neat but towering pile and stitched them all together to form lil pinwheels. Haven't a clue what I am going to do with them all, but they are put together and that is all that matters at this point.

 

The little pinwheels here in the front only measure 1 1/2 inches. The big pink one I think measured 4 "

 Another one of Jethro, napping.

And Ely Mae, not letting me touch that pile of fabric!!! Well till next week, happy sewing may your seam ripper have a week of vacation!