Quilty Things

It always seems like the more stressful work gets, the less I seem to post blogs....so as you can tell work has been very stressful. I'm hoping things will slow down a bit, but we'll just have to wait and see. I've been pretty stressed out the past few weeks and a little more than a week ago, a cold started to take hold. By Thursday of last week, I just had enough and went home early. Slept all evening Thursday, went to bed at 9pm and slept until 10am the next morning. Then slept off and on all Friday afternoon. I felt much better Saturday morning, so I think the rest was what my body needed to recharge itself and get back to "normal".

So quilty stuff....

There's a local quilt shop near me that will teach a one-on-one 3 hour class for using their Husqvarna MegaQuilter. I signed up for the class a few weeks ago, so I was able to go up there today and play on their MegaQuilter. I learned all the ins and outs of the machine and how to load the quilt on the frame. So hopefully I'll remember how to do it on my own frame. ;-) By the end of the 3 hours, my motion on the machine was much better and I was able to write out my name very well along with forming stars, hearts, and loops. I tried some feathers, and while they need some work, its getting better.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to order some velcro for the new leaders I got for my frame. The woman who had it before me cut the leaders down the middle so she could setup the frame for a 5' length. The problem is...she didn't hem any of the cut edges and they're raveling pretty good. So I picked up some leaders at Joann's the other weekend, but they didn't come with any velcro. So I'll have to get some off eBay and then hem the leaders and get the velcro attached...THEN I can try out my own quilting machine! ;-)

Anyway - I didn't mean for this post to be long since its already 9:30pm and almost bedtime. Have a good week!

Stash Busting - 8/24/2009

It has been a few weeks since I last posted. Things have been EXTREMELY busy between work, vacation and personal stuff. Work was insanely busy with not one, but two design reviews in late July. They were both within a week of each other which meant a lot of long hours at work to prepare for the reviews. Once those reviews were done, I was finally able to take a vacation. It was about a month overdue at that point! Vacation was good, but we didn't go anywhere special. I went to visit my Grandmother who's health was in very poor condition, and we went to visit my husband's Grandmother. We also spent a few days at my husband's parents as they have a cabin on a lake in the Adirondack Park and its very peaceful and quiet there...especially during the work week.

However, vacation ended on a bit of a sad note. My Grandmother whom I had just visited passed away on Friday, July 31st. While it wasn't unexpected has her health had been declining and she was 93, it was still sad to lose her. It was a very difficult few days and even now I run across photos of her and it makes me sad. She was a wonderful woman though and she spent the last 75 years of her life putting her family first. She was always there for all of us (4 kids, 15 grandchildren, 9 great grandchildren and 2 great-great grandchildren and too many neices and nephews to count). I do have very fond memories of her and she will always be an example for me to follow.

So back to the present....

I've finished up two quilt tops in the past few weeks. The first quilt top is for a co-worker who is expecting boy this fall. I've called this one Sweet Dreams. While I don't have any pictures of it while I was piecing it, I do have a few pictures of it about 75% quilted. I still have to outline stitch the yellow stars and put something into the center of the white blocks. The border also needs to be finished up, too. The best thing is....this quilt is 100% stash!! :-)

The second quilt top I've put together is from a pattern. The pattern is by Tammy Tadd and I posted about it here. I don't have any of it quilted yet, but here's the completed top along with a close-up of the appliques. This was my first time doing appliques and I think they came out really well for the first time of doing them.

So here's my stash report for the past few weeks(since I've been pretty delinquent):
Fabric Added this Week: 0.5 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 109.5 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 5.38 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 28.4 yards

Net Fabric: <81.1> yards

Kitty Approved!

A few weeks ago, I was able to pick up our large quilt from the longarm quilter. I haven't put binding on it yet, but we decided to put it on the bed anyway. Its very warm and comfy underneath the quilt and it looks good on the bed. Most importantly....

Its kitty approved!

Every morning this week, we've woken up to find our cat, Ellie, curled up on the blanket. The picture I took above was actually when I came home from work one night. I was looking around for Ellie in her usual spots and when I couldn't find her, I called her name and up popped her head from the quilt. She was very content and didn't want to move. :-)

That's my only picture to share at this point, but I have been doing some quilting... honest! I finished up quilting Garden Pleasures (I'll post a picture later this week) and I've started making binding for it and the big quilt. Right now, I have about 700 linear inches of binding to sew! Yikes! However, binding counts as using stash! :-)

Back to Reality

After being on vacation for a little more than a week, its been tough trying to get back into the swing of things. We had a great time visiting my parents at the lake and I was able to show my Mom how to use her "new" Bernina (at least it was new to her). We had a good time sewing together and we even got her garden cleaned up a bit.

While on vacation, I was able to completely finish hand sewing the binding on quilt #6 (I'll hopefully post a picture soon) and I've gotten 9 of 48 blocks completed for our queen sized quilt. They look really good and I only had to rip out a few seams to make everything line up just right.

We also put up a garage door opener while on vacation. We've been in our house for almost 3 years and we FINALLY put in the automatic opener. Now I won't have to get out of the car in the rain and snow to open the door. It took two tries to get the thing working as we found out (after everything was put together) that the circuit board on the first motor was shot. Back to the store it went and thankfully they gave us a partial return so we didn't have to unbolt everything that was attached to our garage already. The second machine worked fine and its definitely nice to not have to lift the door anymore.

We did find out, unfortunately, that the deer have finally decided that our neighborhood is safe again. Our neighborhood used to be just woods and when the construction started, the deer took off. However, Tuesday night I had MANY roses on my rose bushes, but Wednesday morning about half of them were gone. Deer LOVE to eat roses. Thankfully my mother-in-law used to have a huge deer problem in their last house and after many years of trying different things, she found an easy mix that you can spray around your property and it keeps the deer away. Since we started spraying, we haven't lost any more roses. Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup milk (preferrably spoiled)

1 large egg

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon lemon scented dish soap

1 gallon of water

You simply mix everything together (get the cheapest milk, eggs, oil, soap and sprayer you can find) in the sprayer and start spraying around your property. We essentially drew a line around our entire yard with the mix and used the remaining amount to really douse the wood chips beneath the roses and around other plants we didn't want eaten. When you spray, its best to spray on things that are going to stick around for a while (bushes instead of grass, wood chips instead of the actual plants). You do have to re-spray after it rains and if it doesn't rain, about once a week.

Anyway, the quilting has been progressing, somewhat slowly, but at least its still moving forward. I'm still somewhat annoyed at my triangles within a square, but its just because the cutting is taking a really long time to make sure I get everything "just right". I still end up having to fudge the end blocks a little bit, but its pretty close. Maybe by the time I get the 48th block made I may have it right. ;-)

As far as my other projects, I haven't made much progress on the needlepoint as all I have been doing is quilting. I think I'm going to have to devote at least a few hours a week to doing needlepoint so that keeps going forward, too.

Oooh - I also got turned onto some quilting books this weekend. My sister-in-law lent me the first five books in a series by Jennifer Chiaverini. The books are all based around a group of women who quilt. They actually pretty good and if anyone is interested, you can find information about them here: http://elmcreek.net/index.php/main/books/. The first book is The Quilter's Apprentice and its really a good story. I definitely recommend them.

Time to get back to work now that lunchtime is done.

Happy Quilting! Sarah

Blog Changes

So I don't know if people have noticed, but I've added a few progress bars to various parts of my blog. Right on the top there's one for the number of hours (estimated of course) I've spent sewing on my new sewing machine. I set the 500 hour mark as just a milestone, although I'm thinking maybe I should lower it to just 100. :-) Then I'll see more progress. Hahaha!

I also added two progress bars on the right side of the blog for the number of 12" blocks I need to make for Quilt #7 and the amount of hand stitching I have left on Quilt #6. Last night, in only 20 minutes I was able to sew about 16" of binding.

I didn't get much else done last night in terms of quilting. It was my sister-in-law's and her husband's anniversary (the couple that just had the baby), so Rich and I went up to visit them for a little while. It ended up being about an hour that we were up there, but it was good visiting with them.

When I did come back home, I finished cutting the blue and white strips that I sewed the night before so that I can sew them again into four-blockers. I do have to press them first though. Tonight I'm hoping to get some more hand stitching done and then start sewing my triangles while I'm awake. :-)

Happy Quilting! Sarah

Quilting Progress

I was able to find some time tonight to not only hand sew part of the binding on baby quilt #6, but I was also able to zig-zag stitch around some fat quarters (so they won't unravel during washing) and I sewed 13 strips of blue and white fabric together. The blue and white strips were 2.5" wide and will eventually make checkered blue and white blocks that are 4.5 x 4.5 (unfinished).

Sometimes I'm amazed at how much I can get done in only two hours in the evening. After coming home from working 9 hours, somehow I find the energy to trim our flowers, help Rich (DH) build concrete test specimens for a materials camp we volunteer for, make dinner, clean up after dinner AND get sewing done. No wonder I'm always tired. :-) The sewing is definitely worth it and unfortunately, everything will catch up to me and I won't sew for a few days or I'll do cross-stitch instead of machine sewing.

I think what I like best about doing the hand sewing of the binding is that its pretty much brainless. You just sit there and stitch away and there's no pattern to follow, no set rules, and you don't really have to pay that much attention to what you're doing. Its a nice break sometimes from trying to keep that 1/4" seam and trying to follow the gazillion characters that make up a cross-stitch pattern.

Anyway - hope everyone had a good evening and...

Happy Quilting!
Sarah

Quilting Frustrations

Last night, I finally did the hated ironing and ironed ALL of the pieces that needed to be ironed. After ironing, I started to layout the sashings along my flying geese units, and wouldn't you know, I cut them too short. Argh! I had measured and re-measured before cutting, but somehow they ended up short. Something else looked a little funny but I couldn't figure it out.

I finally figured it out this morning at about 5:45am when it woke me up from a good dream. Somehow while cutting I thought I needed strips at 2.5" rough cut (so 2" finished width), but I really need only 1.5" rough so that I have a 1" finished strip. Grr! I can salvage most of the strips that I've already cut and just have a 1" strip left for something else in the future, but its just somewhat irritating because I really wanted to sew last night and it wasn't going to happen with the strips cut wrong.

Oh well - I guess more cutting tonight before some sewing.