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...........

Not much sewing today

If you had these 36 fat quarters on the left and 24 fat eighths on the right, what would you do with them????

We were headed out of town last week, and good ol Jethro, wanted to go with me.

 all stretched out on top of our bag. Crazy cat.

Since we were out of town, I didn't get any sewing done last week. We were out of town car shopping. My 19 year old wanted a new to her car, and she had found one 6 hours away. ( They are a LOT cheaper out of this ripoff town). So off to the in laws we went. We left with intentions of getting a jeep or a Malibu, BUT she ended up getting a Lincoln MkZ, fully loaded! It is a very, very, nice looking car! It is an '08 with only 22,000 miles on it. She even had to borrow $1,700 from Grandpa to get it, because it was that much out of her range. But it is worth every penny and more! We spent 9 hours on Wednesday in 94° heat baking in the sun looking at cars! Only to go get the one she found the night before on our way down. But at least we showed her all her options. So after that ordeal, waking up this morning to it only being 62° in the house, and having to find my slippers, it was a wonderful feeling!!!!!

I did finish the borders for RRCB today. Now I need to spend the next day or so ironing them so I can stitch them all on and get this one sent off in the mail to be quilted. I am soooooooooooo glad this project is almost 100% over. It has almost 5000 pieces in it. Oh my!!!!

I bought a little fabric on line 2 weeks ago when Quilting Daze was having a stash reduction sale. I got these with snowmen on them.

In my normal bright colors.

Then I also got these, which are sooooooooooo not my style., I am way out of my box with these, but that is ok. Haven't a clue what I will use these for either.

Ok back to the original question, what pattern would you use those rainbow colors for?? I am trying to find a good pattern to use those fabrics in. Any suggestions would be great.

Super sewing sunday 09-11-11

Had a wonderful week of sewing and getting things done. First off I took these two piles,

and stitched them all together to make these........

I have 2 more piles to go, then I can sew them together to make a top.

Then I did a few of these.......

Oh I am getting soooooooooooo close to being able to sew this top together. Can't wait to get this one off the table. :D

Then I pulled some blocks off the design board and started sewing the pieces together to make the blocks. I no sooner put the 2 piles on the table, and Jethro came out of no where and took his spot. These stitch up very quickly. Hoping to have the whole top done by the end of the week. I did 2 sections out of 5.

 Then I grabbed my Block A Palooza blocks and stitched them together awaiting me to finished stitching down the flower garden center so I can attach these around the flower garden part. 6 more blocks are hanging off the table that you cant see.

I also quilted half of my snowman quilt, forgot to take a photo. Trying to figure out what to quilt in the rest of the areas.  I also reswed a binding back onto a blanket ( it isn't a quilt) that came undone two years ago. So now that is off the bench.....I almost cleared the bench off. Almost. I have just been cruising right along with all my projects this week. Gotta keep it all mixed up though so I don't get bored and burnt out on one project. Since a lot of them are all at the almost done stage, I should have a very exciting week coming soon when they all hit the top is finished stage!!!

I also found me a black and decker stowaway iron at the goodwill for $2.99 yesterday. Works great too!!! Now I can throw those other two pieces of junk in the trash.

Well I had 5 more hours I could have spent sewing today, but since the humidity was coming back last night, and hubby felt like a furnance, and the dogs wanted to bark non stop all night long, I didn't get much sleep so I am going to watch TV and be ready for bed really soon. I also start working at a different building tomorrow from where I had been the past 5.5 years. I am really looking forward to it for now, I needed a change in pace. Plus I have a few really good coworkers down there too.

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.

A day with Jack the Ripper, and a finish!

Well before I tell you how much I didn't get done today, lets see what I got done since last Sunday.
I spent a few days working on rows 2 and 3 from the Rockin Row Robin. Already have row 4 done.

  Here I have them sewn together, finally. Lots of pieces.

 My daughter wanted to know why I had one really BIG house, well that is because.......

 This is where Santa stays!!!

I have all the HST's from RRCB, sitting on top of their block, waiting to be sewn. I had other things to get done this week first. So I haven't touched them since I finished all the HST's

 Can't have a blog post without Jethro getting in there someplace. That poor cat is going to be sooo lost when my daughter moves out and takes him with her. He isn't going to know what to do without me around.

 Inside that bag he is guarding is 32 stockings, that needed hemming for the guild. The first one took me 8 minutes........Oh No. Push another button, need to find quicker fancy stitches, did these on Wednesday and they needed done so I could go to bed. Guild meeting was afterwork on Thursday. I think they are going to Covenant Hospice if I remember correctly.

Now the only thing left with a deadline is the last row on the Rockin Row Robin. I started playing with hexies today, and Jack the Ripper was in full swing...........is it a full moon or something??? Nope, I checked!! But for every 10 I put in, I would rip out 20......some seams I even ripped out 5 times before kinda getting them where I wanted them. It was one of those days, that if the deadline wasn't tomorrow, I would have left the sewing room and not went back today. But on I went with Jack right there with me, 10 in, 20 out, 10 in 20 out. Well I finally got this cool hexi block done....but see the points, they are right at the edge. Nothing I did wrong, the tutorial made them that way, next time I will add a little more to that strip so I have my 1/4 seam allowance. But for today, I will end up chopping off my points.

 I had one piece of striped fabric, managed to get this one done without too many issues.

 Here is the whole row, finally done.

 and the view from the other end.

 My whole quilt top!!! Woo Hoo, I made the deadline!! Wish me luck.

Now they only did 4 blocks wide in theirs, I did 6 so my quilt is wider than it is long...........so I am thinking up another row, or two. So it will either be square or longer than wide.

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????