A belated introduction

*Before we begin, a disclaimer, please excuse any messes or anything that is not perfect. I am not perfect and don't pretend to be therefore my apartment is not perfect

I thought that this would be an appropriate time for an introduction to my life and why I have created this blog. Many people have this as their first post on their blog but as you can see from the disclaimer, I am not the perfect person and will not try to be for the sake of an online presence.

So here goes nothing,

My name is Kristyn and my fiance's name is Peter. We currently reside in VA and are both going to graduate school to get our master's degrees. I am studying human genetics and will hopefully be graduating in May. My thesis project surrounds genes and molecular pathways involved in alcohol abuse and to study this I am using fruit flies. Yes fruit flies, this surprises and sometimes grosses people out but they are an amazingly useful tool in human genetics research. I can tell you more if you are interested but for now I will leave it at that.

Peter and me at my last graduation for my B.S.

I got into quilting when I was about 14 years old. Since then I have grown and become more experienced (through tons of mistakes of course, thus the name of the blog). To date I have completed 2 lap size quilts, a baby quilt and a couple of small wall hangings.

My first quilt I finished in 2009

My second quilt I finished this past fall.

Up close and personal

I have started this blog for two reasons I suppose, one to share and get ideas and two to document my progress. So far in the past month that I have had this blog I have seen an improvement in my progress. I will often get stuck or upset with something that I'm working on and walk away from my sewing machine for 6 months at a time which is probably why I only have two quilts done. Now that I want to share I feel more inclined to get back into it. I have almost slipped back into it recently and part of that is classes starting and the rush to finish my thesis work but this weekend I have picked up the Eclipse quilt again and hope to finish it soon.

The name of my blog stems from two places. One is I make a lot of mistakes when I'm quilting either from inexperience or from just moving through the motions to quickly. The second is that my cat's name is Goofy and well he's adorable.


That's all for now, don't want to overwhelm. Hope this gives you context for future posts in this blog and a little insight to the person on the other side of the screen :)

ikea

I think I'm in love...

I found all of this for less than $25.
2 flower pots
1 funky vase
2 power cords
2 pillow forms
1 lint roller
4 small boxes
1/2 yd of green fabric

eek! I'm so proud of myself! 1 for spending so little and getting so much and 2 for not buying out the store because there were at least 20 things I saw that I wanted that I didn't get and we didn't even get to the top portion of the store.
When I get a real job and when I get a house big enough I will be going back, you can mark my words.

Rainy Day

It is an ugly cold rainy day here today. Stayed home from the lab and ended up going with the fiance to his grandmother's house to do a little bit of last cleaning and claiming before they put up the remainder of the stuff for auction. In all I have claimed 3 antique quilts from her house. Unfortunately before I was able to get there 2 had already been sent to the dry cleaner. Have you ever seen an antique quilt come back from the dry cleaner? Lets just say it is not pretty. I would post pictures but like I said it is dark and gloomy and I just know that I wouldn't be able to get any good shots.

I'm trying to decide how to best handle them. They have no sentimental value to me but they might for my soon to be mother in law and don't want to hurt her if I decide to cut them up and try and salvage what I can. However to leave them in the state they are in now would be just as bad. I think I might try to make pillows out of squares that are still in one piece and possibly take the best pieces and frame them. Any other ideas?

Eclipse update... I have worked a little more on it but again no new pics. The way I have it drawn there is still another half of the quilt to go, however it is getting quiet large for a wall hanging quilt that I pictured it to be. Going to think about it some more and decide whether I want to continue as planned or stop where I'm at with piecing. For now though I am going to continue my cleaning so I can fit all my 'new' finds from today in my tiny apartment somewhere.

Eclipse part 2

Here is some more progress on Eclipse
I am going to continue posting about this so that I keep on track with this. Hopefully I can get the piecing done before classes start.

2012

I have started 2012 kinda dragging my feet on the quilting front. I think being pushed against a wall to finish Christmas presents on time burnt me out. I go through these phases where I will sew and sew and sew and then one day I will just stop and go on a sewing hiatus for about 6 months or so. I really hope that this isn't happening now because I have so many neat ideas.

Tonight I gritted my teeth (so to speak) and conquered the walls I was starting to build up and started working on this...It is called Eclipse and hopefully soon that will be evident. I'm improvising on piecing this so we will see how it goes.

So to start this new year I have set some goals for myself quilting wise. Here they are in no particular order...
1. Try applique for the first time (that will come into play in eclipse)
2. Conquer my fear of triangles
3. Fully complete at least one lap size quilt (this may seem like a really small thing for some people but on average it takes me a year and half to do this and I have only done it twice)

Sure there are a few other goals but lets be realistic, I am in grad school and trying to graduate in May. That means I will be pushing out my thesis for the next few months. Then I will take on the daunting task of finding a job that utilizes the skills I have spent a good deal of money trying to learn. But right now I have free time in the evenings and hopefully I will have some time in once I do graduate (surrounding work hopefully) and I will try to use that wisely for quilting.