A few finishes..

But not too many pictures … I have managed to get 2 quilts quilted and finished.  One more quilted waiting for it’s binding.  I have two more ready to put on the frame – they are crib size so I’m going to try and do 2 at a time.  I’ve never tried that before, but shouldn’t be to difficult.

I told you I was wanting to make mug rugs/ snack mats in last post – well here they are:

I fused the little circles  and then used a blanket stitch and went around each one.  These were fun to have on the table while we were playing dominoes.

Sew Fest is in September this year.  Last year I wrote a mystery and made this quilt:

This year there is another mystery that Cathy B. has designed.  She’s chosen different block patterns and assigned different colors for the blocks.  The mystery is that those of us participating don’t know what blocks/colors we’ll be getting… Here are my first blocks:

I made a mistake in one  0f the blocks but I won’t point it out and if I have time, I will redo them…

Going to return my sister-in-law’s dog tomorrow.  Will be a long day 4½ hours up and then the trip back.  We won’t stay the night as her daughter is staying with her until her stuff gets shipped from WA and her daughter has 4 dogs and hubby is allergic!  Not to mention she doesn’t have the sleep space with her daughter there. 

Next Sunday I’ll be headed to Disneyland with my son & his family.  I’ve started calling it our annual trek!  So this next week will be busy with getting ready for the trip.

Until next time -

Katie

Ta Da!

Look at me starting out with a picture!  Now isn’t that new….  This is the Disappearing 9-Patch pattern that I made for my Brother-in-law.  Here’s a close up of blocks not yet sewn together:

This probably doesn’t measure a ‘true’ queen size as it measured 84 X 98” but big enough for a wedding gift for a young couple living in a 5th wheel camper trailer and who my BIL says he doesn’t really expect they’ll stay together.  What!?  My hubby suggested that he take the quilt home, put it on his own bed and give said couple a card with some money in it …..

So that done and not ready to move on to starting another quilt, which  I really shouldn’t anyway because I have my stack waiting, I made a few pillowcases:

These will be given to a lady in Ohio.  There is a hospital where she lives that makes up Easter baskets for all the children in the hospital and also for a couple other places.  She estimates they give out approximately 250 baskets each year.  She thought it would be nice to put something in the baskets that the children can take home with them and have for a while.  The children range in ages from babies up to 18.  The main body of the pillowcase is a width of fabric measure to 27” (3/4 yard) the cuff is 9” and the little trim piece is 2” so this is a good way to use up some excess fabric and scraps.  I’m using the tutorial that appears on You Tube done by Jenny Doan from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.  Speaking of Jenny…. I was watching the NBC news a few nights ago and she was featured.  I thought how great it was that someone from the general quilting world got some well deserved national recognition.

What’s next on my agenda?  I can think of at least 101 things I’d really like to do, but alas, I have my stack waiting…..  Hubby and I have what we call D & D night with our friends who were in Seattle 8 months while he underwent a stem cell transplant for Leukemia (he’s doing amazing!).  We love to play Dominoes with them (hubby doesn’t like to play cards….) and we’ve turned it into Dinner and Dominoes every Friday night.  We try to come up with new and different ideas for dinner.  We’ve had some really interesting (in a good way) meals.  We try to share the preparation of the meal and alternate between each other’s homes.  This week is my turn to host and we decided on soup and sandwich.  I will make a Tuscano soup and they are bringing the fixings for Ruebens.  Friday is supposed to finally be rainy here in AZ so this turns out to be the perfect meal…  Oh, yes and I was going where with this?  I’ve been wanting to make up some snack mats (mug rugs) for our D & D nights.  I want to make them look like a Dominoe tile so I may work on those today and quilting tomorrow…. I think it would just be a fun thing to do and have when we get together…

Okay, enough of the boring stuff…. Hope you all are staying well and being safe where there is so much bad weather (even be safe where there is good weather – there are some crazy drivers on the roads these days!)

Katie

Not again!

Sometimes I wonder why I even started a blog!  I seem to be getting worst and worst on posting… I think I only have a couple readers anyway, so again sometimes I wonder why I bother.  Ah well, if you’re one of my very few readers, thank you and I’m sorry I don’t post more often. 

I actually have been busy, busier than I’d like I almost say, but truly I do enjoy keeping my mind and hands busy.  QFC is in full swing again and again I have a stack of quilts waiting for me. ( By the way, Deb (if you’re reading), I put a box in the mail to you yesterday… ) I have a map of the U.S. panel also waiting not to mention a stack of my own quilts waiting.  Have you noticed I said “waiting”?  My brother-in-law (BIL) commissioned me to make a queen size quilt that he wants to give as a wedding gift.  He gave me a date of March 1st.  No problem, gave me plenty of time as he asked this back in December.  Fabrics chosen, pattern chosen – I am ready to rock:

Unfortunately – I rolled!  This is the Hidden Wells pattern and requires a lot of starch because once the strip sets are sewn, you’re working with bias edges.  Now, I know I’m not perfect – not even close.  And I am not a perfectionist by any stretch of the imagination, but I ended up with 3 different size blocks!  I was so frustrated, I even called a quilter friend to come tell me what I was doing wrong.  She checked my seam allowance, she checked the size of strips, she checked my squares and, like me, was totally stumped!  Well, I knew that trimming all these blocks to a matching size, I’d lose some of the impact and I also knew that frustration would make me crazy.  These are now all neatly put away and will be a UFO for when I get ready to simply throw it together and make it a ‘me’ quilt because I do love the colors and pattern.  So now what?  I still have a quilt to make by March 1st.  No pictures yet, but I decided on a Disappearing 9-patch using 9 different colors.  Moving right along and BAM – phone call from the police department in the town my sister-in-law (SIL) lives in.  They had to “breach” her home and she was being transported to the hospital.  Long story short, she was severely dehydrated and extremely weak.  If it had not been for a caring neighbor, we would not have my SIL today.  She is now in a rehab facility to try and regain her strength.  We brought her little rat dog chihuahua home with us and her daughter came from WA state to help.  But… consequently, I’m behind in getting a quilt done.  AND, my BIL calls last evening and was ‘wondering’ if the quilt will be ready this weekend.  Okay, let’s see.  the blocks are done, I just need to assemble the top – okay a couple hours there.  Get said quilt on the frame and get quilted – another 3 –4 hours there as I am going to do a simple free hand meander.  Cut and sew binding strips, get on quilt and thank God I do not hand secure binding but machine sew it.  So sure, I can do this …..  Yes, I will post pictures in a later post and hopefully, it won’t be too long from now…

Katie  who has to go to Tucson as Hubby has a doctor’s appointment, who has to buy a batting for a queen size quilt, who has to get some groceries, who really needs to get her butt in gear or Hubby may be later for said appointment ….

No sewing

I’ve not been doing much sewing at all.  After the holidays, I really felt the need to get some quilting done.  I have two quilts quilted and waiting for their binding and one on the frame that I will get done today and then I’ll get all three bound and sent off.

I did take 2 days to do some rearranging in the sewing & quilting rooms.   As you all know, I love thrift stores and have my favorites.  I stopped into one of my favorites and ended up coming home with a cabinet that I think was meant to be a wardrobe of some sort.  6’ high, 4’ wide and 20” deep.  Inside a shelf across the top about 20” down then the bottom  was divided in two with one side having 3 shelves and the other side having a hanging bar.  So the sewing room went from this:

Note: I had already started packing some stuff up…  To this:

My cutting table was in the corner before and had rounded ends.  I had hubby just square the ends off and now it sits flush with the wall and I can work on the 3 sides.  It also is on wheels so I can easily pull it out to utilize the full length of the table which I think is close to 4’.  I kept my peg board and even my ruler rack where it was as I still have room to squeeze into that corner.  I had my DH cut about 9” from the top of the book shelf and moved it into the quilting room:

The filing cabinet holds fabric, too.  Usually 10” to fat quarters and is a mess   I had a short shelf where this one is now sitting and because I really wanted to keep it, I moved it to the other side of the room:

It sits in the corner now and still gives me enough room to scoot around to the back side of the frame.  That’s my design wall with my sheets storage chest underneath.  The black you see is one of those plastic drawer units that I keep a variety of stuff in.  I have my tools for the quilter as well as my circular knitting needles.  I have patterns that I plan to sew up within the next few months (okay, it’s my dream and I’m sticking to it…) in another drawer…  Under the frame I also have large totes of fabric, yarn and other miscellaneous..

So that was my big project last week.  It was nice to get some organization.  I told my daughter that I like having the doors on the cabinet because now I can do what the kids used to do – shove it all in, slam the doors and say “done”     No, I wouldn’t really do that, but it is nice that the smaller storage containers are now nicely put away..

Next time I hope to have a few pictures of completed quilts to show…

Katie

Sewing desk organizer

I love gadgets!  And I have more than my share.  I am always on the look out for ways to better organize those gadgets and came up with this:
It starts as a small milk crate type basket that I got at the dollar store:

I do wish they’d had it in a different color….  Everything you see laying around on the desk came out of the organizer.

I think this basket is about 7” square and about 6” deep.  I made it with pockets inside and out.  On one set of the outside pockets, I added elastic as I wasn’t sure what I would be putting in all the pockets:

These pictures show the organizer from opposite angles.  I used ribbons in the corners to secure the flap sides.  I did not stitch the corners down as you would when making one of those can organizers because there is a small lip on the edge of the basket and I just felt the ribbon closures would allow the outside flaps to hang more smoothly. 

I am considering making another one of these as I already have the basket and I think I’d like to put deeper, narrower pockets that would hold a few different gadgets…  I also like that this has the deep space inside for tossing in a pincushion, pieces of fabric of whatever I need to toss in there….  Oh, and yes, I do use the toothbrush in the cleaning of my machine.  I find it does a great job of getting all the lint out of the feed dogs and for dusting around knobs and such on the machine.

Katie

#288

That’s the number of this blog post!  I started my blog in October 2010 and I still haven’t reached 300 posts!  I haven’t done much work in my sewing room – simply haven’t had the inclination or much time, for that matter.  I’m getting ready to put the repaired quilt on the frame and do some very simple stitch-in-the-ditch type quilting to simply secure all the layers.  When I took on this repair job, I didn’t really take the time to look closely at the fabrics.  I knew it was a variety of different types of fabric but I didn’t realize how delicate some of them are.  And maybe I should be saying ‘fragile’ instead of delicate…  I took several hours yesterday to do the hand repair work and I discovered that most of the damage to the quilt is where the squares were sewn together and then stitched over to secure to the top of the bedspread.  I will need to be vigilant in trying to avoid stitching over any previous spots.  I’m thinking I will do some very randomly placed stitching where the quilt is more stable.  This is my job for today and hope to be able to deliver the quilt back to it’s owner tomorrow.

I have a few quilts that were sent to me for quilting for QFC that I need to get done and sent off.  I also have to finish up Tiffani’s quilt before her birthday at the end of the month.  Also for her birthday, I bought an old ‘train’ case at the thrift store and tore the lining and everything out of the inside of it.  I’m going to reline it and repurpose it for Tiffani to put her Barbie princess dolls in.  I’m thinking I will make simple doll sleeping bags for her to put the individual dolls in.  Do I really think that’s how it’ll work out?  Not really, but who knows??? If nothing else, she will have a refurbished overnight case for when she comes to visit Grandma!

I don’t know what it is about January and getting focused.  I have so many different things I’d like to do on top of the things I feel committed to do.  I start on one thing then side track (yes, big surprise, huh?!) to something else.  I find myself starting new projects that I have no business doing until I finish up some of my other things.  I know, I know… one can never have too many projects.. But for me it’s a case of organization.  The more projects I have going or started, the bigger mess my sewing room is and then I don’t have any desire to work in there!  So maybe I need to get some of my obligations out of the way and clean the sewing room, kit up all the ‘projects’ and move on!  Okay, SELF, good luck with that one

Hope everyone has a great Monday…

Katie

#1

That’s as in number 1 not hash tag 1 – and no I don’t do Twitter!  But you hear about those Tweets and Hash tags…. so I’m just clarifying.  This is my first as in number 1 post of 2014.  And I’ve actually got something accomplished to share!!!

My granddaughter, Tiffani, will turn 4 the end of January and she’s getting her ‘big girl’ quilt:

The fabrics look quite a bit lighter than what they actually are.. but they are pastels.  The print fabric is Fairy Princesses but Tiffani wanted florals for her embroidery.  We sort of planned this quilt together as far back as August.  When I talked about making it, she said, “Gramma, I will help you with that!”  So she got to pick designs

About a week before Christmas I was in my favorite thrift/estate store and Kevin (the owner) said, “Hey, I’ve got something for you.”  He proceeded to fill 8 of the large lawn & leaf bags with sewing patterns, some fabric and notions.  One bag was full of shoulder pads!  He told me he figured I’d use it and it wasn’t going to sell anyway… There must be 200 patterns!  Stretch n Sew, Vogue, some I’ve never heard of.  Most, I’m guessing, are from the 80’s / 90’s.  Most are uncut!  Here’s a sampling:

I’m using the chair in this picture to give an idea of the size of the box.  The box is a medium sized packing box:

I’m not sure what I’ll do with all these patterns.  As I went through them originally, I pulled a couple out that I think I might use.  Some of the more common brands patterns are smaller sizes and I’m not a small person!  But I know what I can’t use will not be thrown into the trash.  I’ll take them to few different thrift stores – sort of share the wealth…

On the quilting front, I’ve been asked to repair a simple patchwork quilt for a friend.  The top was simply appliqued to an old polyester bedspread.  She asked me to put a new back on it and I’ve decided to add a batting and backing and bind it as well.  The fabrics used are a variety from old sheets to polyester pants.  A mix of flannel and wool also.  Simple squares, but means a lot to my friend’s guy friend as his mother made it many years ago.  So it will be nice to give it a little life extension…

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm in this crazy winter weather that the eastern states are experiencing. 

Katie