Patience

I have to have patience tonight. I finished one of my "secret" projects but cannot post it yet because it is a gift and I have to wait until the recepient receives it. Then I will have a photo of it here. I finished it today and was so excited. I always get so excited when I finish a project because that means I can either move on to another UFO OR start a new one!!!!!!

More Pink Today!

I'm on a pink kick. I bought this little pink sweatshirt at a consignment shop and had it stored away to put something on it. I decided to do a black and white zebra, envisioning a cute little black pair of leggings with it (or pants) and her little black shoes. It's getting so close to spring and warm weather now that she might not be able to wear it but it's a size 4 pre-loved sweatshirt and she might be able to wear it next year when it's cold again.

Pink, Pink, Pink!!

I love pink! This was so much fun to do. These burp cloths are being sent pronto to my oldest daughter in Nashville. She needs a baby gift and I was glad to "oblige". I hope the recepients like them as much as I do. What a cute name!

My Surprise Package!

Look at what audreypawdrey sent me today! A package with 50 (!) 3 1/2 inch squares already cut (and SO precisely, I might add!) for my I Spy quilt for my granddaughter! Thank you, thank you, thank you SO much Audrey. What a great gift and generous gift of your precious time. I have looked through them over and over and my granddaughter will just love these. You must have better fabric stores in your area than we do here. There's everything from airplanes, to trains to rocketships with a little Sesame St. and the Flintstones and even Scooby Doo thrown in. I saw tennis balls, butterflies, horses, flip flops, dresses, skates, even money! You name it - it's just wonderful. I have cut around 40 and now with these 50, I should be able to start arranging in my color groups and seeing how I'm going to start sewing this together. This will be so much fun. I just can't thank you enough Audrey. You're the greatest and I hope you don't mind that I shared this with everyone. Much love to you.

Problem Hopefully Solved!

I played around with my software on my machine last night and think I have solved the monogramming density problem. There was a tab I could go to that had choices of automatic or manual on the satin stitch. It was set to manual when I saw this tab. I thought that was strange. There was also a photograph of how the zig zaggety stitches looked in a little frame to the right. When I clicked from manual to automatic, the stitches in the photo were closer together so I thought, aha! I stitched out another B and it still looked the same. I went back to the tab and it was still on manual. I clicked automatic again and noticed a tool bar-like thing at the bottom where you had to click ok and I had not done that so I clicked it, stitched another B and it looked great, SO much denser and fuller and better - not white towel showing through! So I stitched another style B and another and another and they all looked good.

I still am going to take my little sample of all these B's back to the sewing shop and show them on their computer what I did and ask if they think that's the problem just to be sure. Technology and me are getting along a little bit better :)

A Problem Solved

If you are a follower of this blog and also read this one also, you will see this photo posted yesterday, the 19th, of these towels that I monogrammed for my oldest daughter for a (late) Christmas gift. I had such a problem with these. You can't tell from the photograph but the satin stitches were not dense enough and a lot of white towel was showing through and I was not happy at all with them, especially to give to my daughter or anyone for a gift. In fact, I would not be happy with them had I done them for myself. So I slept on it and decided to call the sewing shop this morning. I still was not satisfied and decided to take the towels along with a couple of other things I'd done that I WAS happy with using this same sewing machine. Long story short, they agreed with me after seeing the towels in person and asked me to try something in my program on an old towel. If that does not work, they think it's an update that needs to be performed on my software on the machine and they will do it at no charge.

In the meantime, they suggested that I take a Sharpie black marker and just fill in the white tiny towel marks showing through, saying it will look like stitching, is permanent and will not fade when the towels are washed because it's a permanent marker. So I did that tonight and it was very easy to do and it looks good. Now I will mail them to my daughter for her Christmas gift, bless her heart. She's been patiently waiting. And I will explain what I've done and what has happened. (She can just read about it here!) Then when she washes the towels, if they do fade or not look good for any reason to her, I will do them again for her. But I plan to have my machine updated so it performs as it should in the future. Sometimes technology is so frustrating.

Playing I Spy

Well, I finally have some squares cut to post for the I Spy quilt. Paige chose what she wanted me to cut first but I still have quite a stack to cut. I just love this fabric. Aren't these cute little purses? Each one is different.

Of course, you know she would choose Pooh and friends! If you'll look closely, some are 6 1/2 inch rectangles in these groupings and some are 9 1/2 inch squares in order to get the entire design in the cutting. As long as it's divisible by 3, it's ok, according to the designer.

Here are just three random prints - a little dog that looks like Snoopy, Hello Kitty, and the Care Bears. I am trying not to repeat a square.

These little penguins are cute and even though I've cut more than one from the same fabric, no square (or rectangle) is exactly the same. One penguin is skiing, one is sledding, etc.

These are bright and cheery "under the sea" creatures. I think I was able to cut 3 different colorways of each one - 3 of the octopus, 3 of the fish, and 3 of the crab. This cutting is very tedious and slow because I am trying to center the design in the square. This is very different from anything I've ever done but it's fun. I'm just taking my time and having fun. Hope you enjoyed the tour so far!

When I get ready to start sewing the squares together, I will group them into lights, mediums and darks. I want to make a big square in the middle of the quilt with the lights, then use the mediums and darks for the borders.

Rotary Cutting

I hope to have pics to post tomorrow but I AM rotary cutting for the I Spy quilt. It's a
"slow go" but I'm getting those little 3 1/2 inch squares cut. They're tedious to cut because of trying to center the motif. Also, I'm slowly working on my two "secret" projects :)

A Couple of Creations!

I think I feel like I haven't been creating anything because I am working on two "secret" projects that are gifts and cannot post them until the recepients receive them. But I finally did some sewing today that I can post and they were so much fun to do. These little burp pads will be a gift, too, but the recepient does not see my blog. I love the baby blue and chocolate brown together and how the pattern shows the little dog wagging his tail. Tomorrow I will be back on my "secret" projects!

Paige-isms

Thought all you "fabricholics" would enjoy this!! Last week, Paige and I were shopping for fabric for her I Spy quilt and she saw something she really liked. Since she was in a shopping cart, she asked if she could go "pet" it! ha! I told her yes, that was what I do with my fabrics most of the time - look at them and pet them! Another lady in the same aisle overheard our conversation and I could hear her giggling. I guess we're kindred spirits!

Toys, Toys, Toys!!!

My productivity is badly suffering in the creating department. All I'm doing is dreaming, collecting, and buying, it seems. I'm getting my energy level back up from being sick with so many things for so long. I had a dental appointment today, went shopping afterwards, and just couldn't live without this book! I really have got to stop this and start creating with what I have. But aren't these the cutest little animals to crochet?!? Crocheting is so portable and these little creatures require so little yarn and should work up quickly. I have so much yarn on-hand, too. There's just nothing like starting a new project! It just thrills me to no end!

Also, I am still collecting the fabrics for the I Spy quilt. I found a little place that is going out of business and had Moda, Robert Kaufman, etc. (nice) fabrics 50% off. I get anywhere from 1/16 yd. to 1/4 yd. for this quilt, depending on the size of the design I will use and I spent $20 (including tax!) and got 20 pieces of fabric to use. I will have plenty leftover for other I Spy quilts because the designs run a 45 inch width and I am using a design only one time. Some of the fabrics have many designs I can use but they do repeat across this 45 inch width. I know, I know - I sound like I am trying so much to justify spending money in this economic crunch!
I do have a free weekend (unless something pops up) and I DO plan to get busy and go to work and hope to have some actual results to post on here!

Decision Made

Have decided to make a doll quilt so I can hopefully make it quickly and practice my machine quilting and other skills since I'm fairly new to quilting. A couple of blogging friends have offered to send conversation prints to me from their collection and I am so happy with your generosity! Thank you so much. If anyone else is interested in contributing fabric to this community doll quilt, please let me know and we can get addresses, etc. This IS going to be fun! Maybe I can start cutting tomorrow. Have been on a babysitting marathon lately because of my daughter/husband going on a cruise vacation. We had fun keeping her though. NOTE: This is the very first post that I've used my spellcheck and there were no mistakes! ha!

A New Quilting Project!

Remember this? My favorite quilt pattern of the quilting calendar giveaway? Well, I have started shopping for fabrics to make this quilt. The "hunt" is very much fun because I am looking for specific kinds of fabric that have pictures of recognizable objects, people, things that a child can play "I Spy" by finding these on the quilt. I originally wanted to make the quilt which is a finished size of 48 x 48 inches. Now I have decided to either make an "I Spy" big floor pillow or a doll quilt because I have only made about a half dozen or so quilts and they have all been baby quilts. I've never finished a big quilt although 48 x 48 is not really that big. My purpose in doing this is to practice all the skills of quilting but especially the machine quilting.

Here are some of the fabrics I found this week. I found out that some stores will cut as little as 1/16 yd. for you so some of these pieces are 1/16 yd, some 1/8, and some 1/4 yd. I will still have fabric leftover so I can save those for a bigger quilt. I think this quilt would be a great birthday gift for a child. This is not intended to be a "pretty" quilt and you don't have to worry about color coordinating and all that "stuff". You just need certain size squares and sort your fabrics by light, medium, and dark. I guess you really don't need to do that if you didn't want and could just put it together in a random manner. But I am going to try to make my center square with lights and my outer border with mediums and darks. Can you see the possibilities in the top photo? A spider, butterfly, dragonfly, ladybug, the Sesame Street characters of Baby Big Bird, Elmo, Oscar the Grouch, a frog, carrots, you get my drift! These colors will fall into my darks.

Here is an example of my mediums with the Pooh characters. The designer of the quilt calls for cutting 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch squares sewn to a 3 inch square but says you can use any size square or rectangle as long as it's divisible by 3. With these I could cut a 6 1/2 x 6 1/2 inch rectangle or a 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 inch square since I would need more room to get the entire design in.

Here is one for my lights group with all kinds of animals and other things - giraffes, zebras, lions, a moon, palm tree on a polka dot border. But I will use each fabric character or object only once in the quilt.

Here are some possibilities to put either in the medium or light category. I love the little Hello Kitty, heart, baby block, duck, Care Bears and a little dog that looks a lot like Snoopy. Paige helped me choose these so that will make the little doll quilt or TV pillow special to her. She will remember helping me "buy" these. I think I only spent between $4 to $5 on all this fabric. I only bought fabric on sale racks. My next step is to look through all my fabrics I have here at home (including my charm packs), then plan how big I want the pillow or doll quilt to be and begin making my measurements and the plan before I start cutting. I don't have to use 3 inch blocks. I could use 2 inch block but make all my rectangles or bigger squares divisible by 2. So I have some planning to do first. After I finish the first one, I can group all these fabrics in one container for future quilts and go right to it. But I have to admit, the fabric shopping is the most fun!!!

Paige-isms

One night this week, Paige's daddy came to pick her up while she was eating pizza and watching The Backyardigans. A few minutes after he'd been here, her Paw Paw changed the channel on TV to watch the local news. She looked at me and said that she wanted to watch a movie. I told her that we would watch one later but right now her Paw Paw, Daddy, and I wanted to watch the news. She said, "but that's for boys!" ha!
I can remember when I was a child wondering what my parents thought was so fascinating about the news and how boring it was to me. Oh, to have the "not a care in the world" feelings of a child again. . . *sigh*

Finally, a Post Here!

You may say, ok, you silly woman - why are you going to so much trouble to do this? I am going to show you how I make a double matt in a picture frame just using stock card. Yes, it is easy. Maybe I just wanted to do something besides read, lie in the bed or on the couch, watch TV, read other blogs, check email - get the picture? I had fun just playing with paper and my camera, and, yes, I used a rotary cutter on paper. So the photo above shows all my supplies. (Did I mention this is good practice for doing a tutorial later? A friend wants me to do one on making a pillowcase dress but I just wasn't in the mood to sew today.)

Also, I can't believe I haven't posted anything here in almost a week! So first of all, I looked through my 12 x 12 papers and narrowed it down to these four - a blue pattern, a green with huge polka dot pattern, and two solids, a hot pink and a blue.

I eliminated the green immediately for two reasons - the walls in her playroom (where I am going to hang these photos) are green and that's just too much green and the polka dots were so big they just wouldn't show up in the inside "matt". Now I've got the patterned blue, the solid blue and the solid hot pink. The photos were taken of little "pooh bear" last year at a new shopping mall in the northern part of our state where I went with her and her mommy to meet her aunt for a weekend of shopping, eating out and just being together - just a girls' weekend. She was about 18 months old.

This is really a "back burner" project so I feel good that I got it done today. I printed these 4 x 6 photos with the purpose of hanging them in a frame such as this. So I place the frame over the three different papers to try to help me decide which paper to use.

I decide to use the hot pink because it makes the photos "pop". There's already so much blue in her dress in the photos and the blue mod print just doesn't show up that much. So now I measure and decide how I'm going to cut the pink because I only have one 12 x 12 sheet. The openings are for 5 x 7 photos and I have 4 x 6 photos so I am going to cute three 5 x 7 pieces of the hot pink cardstock.

Here I am drawing the pieces to cut.

I heard that scrapbooking enthusiasts are using rotary cutters now so I got out my quilting rotary cutter and tried it for the first time on paper. It works great. I have seen different blades in the stores for this purpose in wavy patterns, etc. I always wondered why you would get a wavy blade and now I know that you can use them on paper as well as fabric. So here I have cut my three 5 x 7 pieces out of the 12 x 12 sheet.

Then I use the photo stickers and place them on the back side of the three pieces of hot pink cardstock. Another reason to post this was for the purpose of practicing using my camera in a manual mode. I changed my F stop and shutter speed in almost every photo because in some, I wanted shallow depth of field and some I wanted deep depth of field. This was good practice.

Here I just turned them over and placed them directly on the paper with photos that came in the frame.

Now I place the triple 5 x 7 matt on top of my pink cardstock to make sure all areas are covered and only pink paper is showing - just checking :)

Now I am just directly placing (temporarily) the photos on top of the pink cardstock to see what arrangement of the photos I like the best before I permanent affix them. I like this arrangement the best. I really would have liked the photo on the left for the middle but she is looking to the right and I would have needed to place a photo in the left hand side looking to the left which would mean it would look off-balance with her looking left picking the flowers or looking left standing. So I chose the outside photos to be looking toward the center and put the "picking flowers" (which is a really different photo) in the middle. I hope all this makes sense. It just all felt right to me and I liked it.

Now I permanently affix the photos in the arrangement I like directly on top of the cardstock, place that part into the frame and place the white matt on top. I also cleaned and dusted everything and made sure the Windex was dry ( I sprayed the Windex on the cloth, not on the glass ).

With everything in the frame, now it is turned over to the back ready for the chipboard back to be put in place.

The chipboard backing is put back in place and locked.

Now I turn it over to make sure everything looks even and see if any adjustments need to be made.

Then I go hang it on the wall. I just "eyeballed" it, used a medium-sized nail with a big head and could not find the hammer so used a shoe! I like it. The green color of the wall is a little brighter than the photo, there are ice pink sheers over plantation shutters in the room, and the area rug in the middle is the same color as the hot pink cardstock. Furniture is white. I'll take a photo of the entire room when it's cleaned up! This is the same room that had the beanie baby Christmas tree with pink fabric and pink tulle for the Christmas tree skirt.

I'm happy to have finished something on the "back burner" for almost a year and felt like at least part of my day was useful and a little crafty! (The frame, including the matt, I think I got at CVS. I watch when they put their frames on sale - buy one regular price and get the second 50% off.) I think they have cute frames. NOTE: I think the reason I got such cute little poses from her is because I used a telephoto lens, sat on a bench and she thought I was just watching her play. She didn't know I was photographing her. The telephoto lens is supposedly good for portraits, less distortion.

Thirteen Quilts

Here are the thirteen quilts. One is out of order but that really doesn't matter. This one is called Holiday House Wall Quilt - is quick and easy. The book it came from also has tree skirts, table runners and more.

A Path Less Traveled is made with fat quarters.

Harlequin Carnival Quilt uses fat quarters and this particular one uses Mardis Gras colors.

A log cabin that says the designer shows her freehand, no-mark and no-stress techniques.

This one was my favorite, I Spy Squares Quilt, which the designer says you can never appreciate an I Spy quilt until you've seen a child play with one. Over 100 different fabrics were used for this one. Children discover and rediscover hidden pictures.

Sunflowers of Provence is an interpretation by the designer.

A Scrappy Nine Patch Quilt shows quilters basic skills needed to succeed at machine quilting and uses vintage fabrics.

I Spy Hearts Quilt - another I Spy quilt for children using heart shapes.

Butterfly Garden Quilt uses hand-dyed fabrics for the background and features decorative stitching and beads.

This was my second favorite, the Floral Fiesta Quilt, simply because it is easy to piece and is a good quilt to ease into machine quilting.

Bloomin' Hearts Quilt uses fusible applique.

Solar Twist Quilt supposedly teaches you to learn to hear what your quilt top is saying as far as how you quilt it.

This was the "extra" quilt pattern on the inside of the cover called Frosty Friends quilt. It is another fusible applique and uses a lot of buttons for details.

Remember you can click on the photo for a close-up look. Hope you enjoyed this tour of the thirteen quilts. And you might want to get your own calendar.

Would Love to Hear From You

This is me. I've seen this done on a few blogs (in different ways) and I thought it would be fun to do this. I am going to list 16 facts about myself that I think others may not know but the purpose in doing this is NOT to tell you things about me as it is to read about you, dear blogger! So after reading, please comment and give me your list of 16 facts about YOU that I might be interested in learning. Also, you might be interested in doing this on your blog.
1. I play the piano.
2. I used to teach elementary school.
3. When I was in high school, one of my biggest dreams was to be a cheerleader and it never came true.
4. I wanted to become either a professional baseball player or a concert pianist when I was a child.
5. I used to hate having animals in the house. Now I have 1 dog and 3 cats.
6. My husband and I announced to our parents early in our marriage that we did not want to have children. I have two wonderful daughters that I would not trade for the world!
7. When I was in college, I desperately wanted to sing in a band.
8. I can get lost anywhere. I have no sense of direction.
9. I hate to cook.
10. I hate to do housework.
11. I have never read the entire Bible and I want to do that before I die.
12. I am an "underdog" kind of person.
13. I dearly love to be alone.
14. I truly believe I have a keener sense of "tension in the air" than others. (I don't really know another way of stating this. It is really difficult to describe. I hope you understand what I mean.)
15. I am a mother of two "girls" and have one granddaughter so I truly do not understand boys or men.
16. I hate to exercise and go on diets. The only exercise I enjoy is riding my bike.

The Quilt Calendar

MamaB got her calendar and loved it :) She suggested I put photos of each quilt from the calendar on my blog so I will photograph tomorrow outside (they look so much better photographed outside in natural light ( I'm becoming a BIG fan of natural light!) and will post them tomorrow. I think the quilt lovers WILL enjoy seeing the different quilts. You might want to make a trip to BAM (or wherever) and get you a copy of the calendar. I think it's a great deal.

And the WINNER IS . . .

Today was the deadline on the quilt calendar giveaway. It was a little strange what happened. I checked and double-checked and I had 6 people guessing and told everyone they could have as many as 3 guesses. Not everybody took 3 guesses. We had 13 quilts to guess from and three people guessed the same quilt so there were still two quilts left that had not been guessed. They were Frosty Friends and I Spy Squares. (Someone DID guess I Spy Hearts) My favorite was I Spy Squares because the notes inside the calendar describing this quilt (it's the month of September, by the way) say that you can't truly appreciate an "I Spy" quilt until you've seen a child play with one. A child discovers and rediscovers the hidden pictures. This version is supposed to be fast and fun to make, with scraps from over 100 different fabrics!
Anyway - since no one guessed it, my husband drew a name out of my cupped hand :) and the winner is: MamaB!!!!! Congratulations! I will get the calendar to you pronto! I think you will really enjoy it! Thanks everybody. This was more fun for me, I think, than for anyone.

ANOTHER ONE??? You Say!

I know. I know. I'm addicted to blogging. It's ridiculous but I have yet another blog. If you're interested or curious or both, go here and check it out!