Stuff....

Zomg, I'm back. And yes I did just title the title first post after a long absence is "Stuff", problem?


Well no I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth, but here is a slight run down of what has been happening in case any one cares (If not I completely understand just skip down to the pretty pictures):

1. We moved. I now have a room (almost) completely to myself to sew
2. I started planning the wedding (finally, 3 years after being proposed to and after 7+ years of being together, Date :November and that is all that you are getting on here)
3. I started a Mario themed quilt for Peter (pictures when I have more progress)
4. I finished this wall hanging of a mario mushroom:

Now you may be wondering why I am making a Mario themed quilt and a Mario Mushroom wall hanging. Well...(get ready for the shameless plug)....

My friend Matt is doing a charity video game marathon for the charity Child's Play. Child's Play is a charity that provides video games and other entertainment to children that are in Children's Hospitals across the country. To raise money he is auctioning off video game themed crafts. I decided this would be simple enough and I was pretty much right. This came together in just about a month and I even have a week to spare. Anyways if you are interested in donating to Child's Play, watching the madness unfold during the marathon, or want a chance to win that beauty go over here on May 6th-9th.



Oh and also...I bought this....

Yeah that's nearly ten pounds of fabric.....maybe you'll be seeing more from me on here soon.

Long time no....

...yeah yeah no nothing. How is it that I turned around for a minute and two months passed? I'm not going to apologize for not writing, by now if you read this blog you know that I am not that type of person. Life happened, plain and simple, and this blog doesn't own my life. I hate it when people sit there and apologize for 5 paragraphs saying things like "Sorry, Susie had the flu, Hubby flew to {some place far away}, and I had to do X, Y, and Z in 2 days!" or "Sorry, guys, I just finished popping out child # {enter # > 0} and it got a little busy, but don't worry 2 days after putting my body through major trauma plus now having a life form that needs me for everything in order to live, I'm right back too it! Hope my absence hasn't caused any of you to go into panic attacks!"

Really?! Nope, I made a promise to myself that I would never do that. Real life takes priority and this blog is only a journal of progress, projects and other miscellaneous stuff should I feel the need to write out my deepest darkest on the internet (not happening).

So what have I been up to? Work, lots of work. I work a schedule that requires I come in every other Saturday. When I do have a weekend to myself or any free time (in exchange for Saturdays I get every other Tuesday off) I do either 1. nothing 2. sleep 3. errands 4. clean.  Ok, Ok, only 1-3, 4 may or may not get done this weekend. Depends how busy I am with 1-3.

I have made 0 progress on any WIPs, but on the bright side I haven't started new projects I can't hope to finish either. Part of the problem is lack of doing #4 on the list stated above. My sewing area is under a pile of clothes and other miscellaneous crap at the moment. The other reason, space. No not outer space with all the pretty stars and planets and wonderful peace and quiet. Nope the teeny tiny corner my sewing has been relegated to in our bedroom in our one bedroom apartment. It has worked in the past, not well mind you, but it has served its purpose. Now I feel too claustrophobic to create and can't concentrate well when I do try to sit down and work on things.I'm hoping when we finally get out of this place in November then I can at least get more than 5 sq feet of room. Maybe a whole room. I can dream right? Then I would feel obligated to sew, right? Right?!

Ok, enough whinning. I'm done for now, that should cover me for another 2 months. See ya when I see ya.

Summer Table Runner

So as you may or may not remember back in April I got these pretty fabrics for my birthday...

 

Well it took me awhile because I didn't know what I wanted to do with the fat quarters beyond that I wanted to make a table runner or possibly some mug rugs. I finally sat down and sketched what I thought would look good.

Then I got to cutting and sewing and well lets just say that the end result is very different than what I had planned.

This is what I came up with. Happy with the design and the diagonal straight line quilting however disappointed with the end result. When I went to wash it it became very distorted in the wash. I am blaming this partially on the fact I didn't prewash and used flannel for the batting and for the fact my quilting wasn't exactly lining up right. I was really hoping for something really modern and clean lines.....yeah not happening.

I will leave it on the table but I might retry with mug rugs since I have enough fabric leftover.

Little Goofs:
Distortion...whomp whomp :/ Oh well live and learn....

8 hour baby quilt

This past weekend I made this really quick and totally adorable and comfy baby quilt. It is for Peter's boss who is having a baby girl in October. Since I will be beginning work next week and wasn't doing anything else this weekend I decided to go for it. The one requirement I had for this was that it had to be easy since if I got fancy or anything it likely would not get done.

So I decided to take some scraps I had from the last baby quilt I made and cut them into five inch squares and sew them directly onto a one yard piece of kona white fabric that was basted to a white flannel batting layer and pink flannel back. This gave it a simple rag quilt appearance that I think looks really sweet.

To finish it up I quilted some daisy chains around the edges and large daisies down the middle and green polka dots for the binding.

The binding I did by machine which I am glad I did, there were a few skips on the back but it was pretty simple to fix and I think that this will last much longer than anything that I could do by hand. Plus it was much much quicker. Overall I counted up the hours I spent on this and total with washing I think I spent about 8 hours on it which is pretty amazing for me. Overall very happy with it.

Little Goofs:
There were some skips when I did the machine binding but it was minimal and easily fixed. The only other issue is that some of the daisies look a little special but it gives it that homemade quality....right?

Cat Bed

As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided to make Fancy a cat bed since she so loves each quilt I make.

 Well I think see likes it, she went on it and stayed on it even before I stuffed it.

 I decided to go completely modern with it. I think it turned out really well for my fist modern/improvised piece.

 For the quilting I just did a stipple free motion even though I was considering something a little more complex. I stuffed it with polyfill in plastic grocery bags. All the cats I have had seem to like the crinkle of the plastic bags including Fancy so I decided to add that. It is always something that I can change later since I made it with an envelope back. That was an important design choice because as with babies, cats have a tendency to throw up on things and I wanted to be able to clean it without much problem.

Now I would make one for Goofy too but I really highly doubt he would use it.

Little Goofs:
Actually pretty happy with this and can't think of anything I really messed up. I would change the pink polka dot border on the log cabin center to make it wider but that is the only thing.

Next Up:
Summer table runner
Finishing up Fall Quilt

This next month is going to be a push to finish my summer goals because......I GOT A JOB! Yep! I start on July 24th. So that gives me a few days short of a month to really work on WIPs and other projects I have been itching to do.

Wall Hanging and Other Things

At the beginning of the year I made a few goals for myself as far as quilting goes if you recall...

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)

This wall hanging took on #2 which is to conquer my fear of triangles. This also was part of the small things quilt-along hosted by crazy mom quilts where I made the goal of making a wall hanging for a wall in my living room which was begging for a quilt.

Now this is pretty basic pinwheel type of pattern with half square triangles but I think it turned out pretty well. I did straight line quilting so as not to majorly detract from the pattern.

I love the pattern of the border fabric, it fits perfectly with the color scheme going on in the living room and it's so me.

I also made a label using the alphabet stitch function on my new machine.

Little Goofs:

1. The binding is much better on this quilt and I think that is because I followed the tutorial on crazy mom quilts which I am now calling the no tears binding tutorial. I still had issues with the mittered corners getting too much bulk there making them a little on the pointy side but nothing that I am really upset over.

2. This is actually the second version of this quilt. The first version had many more triangles and somehow ended up being crooked and not really what I had in mind. So that was scrapped and this one rose from the ashes.

3. The small things quilt along was over before I even started this but I am gonna keep on with it because a lot of the things on the list I really want to do and soon because I  keep putting them off.

Now this is the first quilt that I have made completely with the new machine. It was going pretty well until the actual quilting and then something weird was happening with the thread jumping off the guides. I don't know if this is a machine thing that is just now happening or if it is the thread. Hopefully it gets better or better yet goes away completely because this machine cost way too much (at least to me) for this to be happening a month after I got it.

In other news I have graduated and now looking for a job. Anyone know any lab jobs in the VA area?

But since I don't have a job or school I have all this extra time on my hands. I used that time to make bread...

It was amazingly simple: combine flour, yeast and salt, add water and let rise. Then you can either refrigerate and bake it later it or bake it right away. I have already experimented with different things you can do with it since it is simple by itself. The one I like the best so far is rosemary and roasted garlic.

Up next is a small project that I didn't know I wanted to do this summer which is to make a cat bed for my cat. She loves the quilts I make so much. Every time I go to hand sew binding on a quilt she has to be on top of it which makes it extremely difficult. Anyways I have some bright pink plaid fabric that is perfect for this. That should be started tomorrow and I am hoping to make it more modern.

 Long post I know but like I said.....lots of free time.

New Machine!!

So for graduation I got a lot of gift cards and such and was finally able to upgrade my machine. Prior to getting this new one, which I will talk about in a minute, I was using a basic bottom of the line Brother that my mother got me for Christmas a few years ago. Now don't get me wrong, it was a great little machine to learn on, it just couldn't handle the quilting I wanted to do with it.

For the past few months I have been looking, comparing and yes drooling on quiet a few machines online. I thought the one I really wanted was a Brother quilting machine and then I saw this one....

 At half the price and with better reviews this Singer Quantum Stylist was the perfect bet.

It has over 600 stitches and it came with that extension table for quilting.

It also came with all of these accessories which alone if I had gone and bought all of them would have cost well over $100. (Not in this picture is also a walking foot that came with it, that is on the machine right now).

To top it all of it even came with this cover/case. Totally awesome and totally worth it.

As I mentioned before I did half the piecing and all the quilting on the Sophia quilt with this new machine. The piecing went a lot smoother and quicker and the quilting didn't have nearly as many problems. I did have a problem right at the end of quilting where the bobbin thread got jammed and then when I rethreaded it was causing that loopy rats nest problem on the back. After a 1/2 hour I got it figured out. I won't blame that on the machine quiet yet since I am still learning everything with it.

Oh and did I forget to mention that it has the really cool autopilot function where all you press is this start/stop button and it just goes automatically, so cool.

Anyways I'll stop now because I'm in the honeymoon stage with it right now and thus could go on and on!