A finish and a start............

The past 10 days have been out of the ordinary, haven't gotten hardly any sewing done whatsoever till today. Things are back to normal. (But not for long) So now that hubby is back at work, and I wasn't toting a box of tissues around with me, I got me some sewing done. First off the list...........I finished Myra's mystery quilt! Well the top of it is done.

The colors look a little muted in this pic. I did mine controlled scrappy. Thanks for hosting a wonderful mystery Myra, I love this quilt!!!

So now that I was able to get that one finished, now I can move on to Bonnie's Orca Bay mystery! So first up is to make a final decision on colors.............this is what I ended up with.

I am substituting turquoise for her red, purple for her blue, black is black, and pink is my neutral. This quilt is going to be LOUD and in your face! yippee!!!!!!!
So step one..........

Since I am not yet a Slash and Stash Queen like Bonnie, (that is a complement) I had to cut all my strips from my scrap baskets. I am glad to have them at least sorted by color, I think I finally got all the bags and baskets done since last year when I started. I will slowly start sorting them by size, and leave them done by color for pieces to be used in strings. So here is a pile sitting waiting to be ironed, then cut and sewn back together.
Then there is step two already out there................

These are the few I got done today before I start cutting all those black and pink strips out. Tomorrow is another day.

Now I am going to sit in front of the television for a few and work on a project that I am making for my Secret Santa, Shhhhhhhh I can give you a sneak peak................

They have other fabric fused to the back and they are starched pretty heavily, now I need to cut them up a bit, and then hand stitch them a bit too................
I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays, and made it home safe and sound. Till next weekend.......

Do you look around?

When your reading your favorite blogs, do you just read what they wrote, maybe or maybe not reply and move on to another blog? or do you look around their blog to see what they have on there usually down the sides. Usually there are lots of buttons too. Did you know that most of those buttons are clickable? Did you notice I added a lot of new buttons on the right hand side of my blog.......a lot more Quilt A Longs???? All the other buttons have been moved to the very bottom of my blog, and they are all still clickable as far as I know.

Right now I have 9, yes that is NINE QAL's listed on my side bar. Now mind you, I put them there if they sound good.......sometimes I never get to them, or don't have the time for them. But they are there if you want to click and go to them. I also move them around sometimes too. But right now I have....

Christmas is coming so I have a...................

Then there is a free BOM ............

and then

I love stars so there is this one...........

Myra has hers going full swing, there is time you can catch up..........(ps I haven't started yet) changing my mind on fabrics.

This one I am almost done with, so this button will be going to the bottom soon........

 I have always wanted to make one of these so why not............

and then the last one for now is the..........

So while you are browsing your friends blogs, stop for a moment, even if you follow over 400 blogs like I do, and look around a bit. You might find something you were looking for. You might find another great blog and end up meeting your next best friend that way. Or you could get yourself way over your head buried in projects too. But you will have fun any way it comes out. If you find anymore cool quilt alongs, that I don't have listed, drop me a line. I am a sucker for quilt alongs!!!!! It is the best way to get rid of your scraps and stash too, let someone else tell you what to do with them :D

I didn't make any of the buttons in this post clickable, but they are on the right and they will go to the beginning page of that said quilt along. Some of them are almost over, others haven't started yet.  Have fun!! You only have 81 days left till Christmas, get sewing!!!

Super Sewing Sunday 08-15-11

Wow, what a week it has been. Let me see what I have gotten done, Monday started out by pressing 100 HST's again, and getting them chain stitched into 4 rows of 5, so I have 5 more blocks waiting for them to be attached. Then I quilted The lil Lion quilt. Got the binding all done.

 And Embroidered a label, got it sewn on , then washed and dried it so I could gift it to the new mom.

She asked me how I knew.......I had to asked her know what?  She said they decorated Laith's room in the same print. NO WAY!!! I told her I had no clue, that I made that quilt just for him. What are the chances of that ever happening again????
Tuesday I had a migraine, so no sewing for me. Then on Wednesday I embroidered all 20 of my friends shirts, needed his name on them. Whew glad that is done and off the list. The machine ate the last shirt.....dang it. Good thing it was the last one and not the first one, otherwise I wouldn't have kept trying. Made these Cinnamon Crumb Cake Muffins for dessert Saturday, MMMMM they are good too.

No sewing for me on Thursday, Friday or (usually) Saturday, but this Saturday I was up at 4am, so off to my room I went. I started by picking out fabrics to join in Myra's mystery quilt along. I want to use up a few fat quarters I started using for a different QAL, but couldn't get into it. Since they are batik's I picked a rainbow of batik's out of my stash, and this is what I came up with. I think my color wheel is severely lopsided wouldn't you say???? Maybe it is because I have been using up alot of the warm colors?

 Sewed another 100 HST's together, that is 5 more blocks worth. 19 blocks worth to go.

Then I started working on 2 of my Rockin Robin Rows.The stars and the houses. Then hubby finally awoke so off we go to run errands, and work on the rental house a little bit, I so want that remodel job done. Can't wait till it cools off, it will be much easier to work on it then.
Now it is finally Sunday my super sewing day of the week. I started out by doing another 100 HST's so now there is only 280 more left to go, woo hoo past the half way point. Sew them on the respected blocks and I can start piecing the top of RRCB together, FINALLY!!!! Doesn't look like it will be put together by my Bday, but it is getting there. :D

I went back to working on my 2 rows of Rockin Row Robin, after about 6 hours, my machine started throwing tantrums. GO 3 stitches and it would thread lock underneath. For no apparent reason. Everything was the same as it was for the past 20 minutes or so. So I unthreaded it, still not working. Took out the bobbin and unthreaded it, still not working. Put on a new needle, still nothing. Took the machine apart and cleaned it out, rethreaded it, put the bobbin back in, and it STILL did it. URgghhhhh.

So I got out the ol Kenmore machine. WOW, what a difference!! There is a lot of things I actually liked better, and some I didn't. First off, see the left side of this foot, how it is going UNDER the seam allowance, that is on the good machine, drives me nuts.............

See this one, how the left side is raised up, so it NEVER grabs the seam allowance, this is the trusty Kenmore foot, LOVING IT!!!!

 I did have to rethread the Kenmore about 45 times while using it. But if I would remember to turn the fly wheel so the needle was down before hitting the foot pedal, I wouldn't have that problem. Oh yeah, I found out the reverse isn't working on the Kenmore. Also Kenmore doesn't have auto needle down no biggy today. I did manage to get a lot done on the two rows of the Rockin Row Robin though, here is the left half of the row, not all put together yet..........

 and here is the right side, I was trying to finish those two little stars, one is done, and the other one almost done, when the Kenmore decided to do the same exact thing the Big Brother is doing.........URGGHHHH!

Time to quit for me. Tomorrow, I will go up there, and both machines will probably work fine, that is usually how it rolls around here. I have less than 30 minutes to sew and these two rows are finished. One more to go. But since they are only doing 5 rows, and I added two more blocks wide, I am going to do another row of my own design so the quilt will be square at least. This way it isn't wider than it is long. Didn't think that one through when I started it. Well it is after midnight as usual so I am off to bed.

What have you been up to?? Know of any good QAL's going on right now. My table is almost cleared off, so I need to find a few more to work on. Still have lots of scraps and stash to use up before the end of the year. Resolutions.......still sticking with mine!!!