Paws 'n Tails Quilts

What I've Done This Past Week

2012-01-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

Scott and I flew back from ND on the 30th. Since then, I've bought this to accommodate my new expanding family:

I've sold this:

I drove to Tucson to select and buy this:

And we spent a day in Sedona meeting with the minister and selecting this area for our wedding site. We will get married in June on this little beach right along Oak Creek.

Further up the creek and closer to Cathedral Rock:

And then I took a nap all day yesterday. Not really, but I wish I had because I'm exhausted! I certainly haven't been quilting, but I did wash all the new fabric I had acquired over the last month or so and did manage to get unpacked from the trip by the time I had been home for 4 days.

Look Ma, No Fingers!

2011-12-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, that's probably not a very good title for a post, but I bet it got your attention, didn't it lol? I find that many times in the winter time, my hands are cold but the rest of me is fine. I've always thought I should get some fingerless gloves, but never got around to actually doing it. When I was in Hobby Lobby a month or so ago, I found a free pattern for some really cute crocheted fingerless gloves. Score! I've seen patterns before, but they were always knitting patterns. Since I don't know how to knit, this posed a problem.

I pulled out the pattern last week along with some cool twisted yarn that I had found at the Humane Society thrift store many moons ago. It looked like it would work perfectly and I was right. After a test run and making some modifications to the pattern to accommodate the yarn weight, I was on my way and had the first glove done pretty quickly. The second went even faster since I wasn't trying to modify and adjust as I went along like I was with the first one. The pattern called for cuffs, but I left those off because I liked them just the way they were without the cuffs.

So here are my new fingerless gloves, which I am actually wearing as I type this. I have two more colors of the twisted yarn left, so I think I'm going to make a couple more pairs. As a side note, I found it very difficult to try and take a picture of my hand while holding the camera with the other hand!

And of course the felines are still around and keeping me entertained. I got a couple of pictures this past week. After two years of watching the other two go up on the plant shelves, Echo finally figured it out a month or so ago and now it is favorite past time. So here are the boys up on a perch overseeing us girls down below. I have vaulted ceilings, so they are about 8 or 9 feet up.

And Sassy looked so cute sleeping on the bed yesterday that I had to take a picture. The first picture is the first picture I took and the second is after she covered her eyes and begged me to stop taking her picture cause she needed her beauty sleep lol.

Hope everyone is keeping their stress to a minimum as they get ready for Christmas. I am flying north on Sunday for about ten days. I am all packed except for toiletries so way ahead of schedule. Half the stuff packed is either Christmas gifts or extra towels I'm transporting since we are hosting Christmas and are a bit short in that department. I had a set of brand new ones down here, so it seemed silly to buy more up there if I could just bring these. Thanks to space saver bags, I was able to fit them in. I put Scott's quilt in one of the bags too, so that is also in my suitcase, along with my hand mixer, some food items I am taking, a pinking shears, and some large pocket knives that Scott bought at Cabala's while he was here for Thanksgiving. I would love to see what TSA does with all of that! I hope they don't mess up my stuff too much. It is perfectly packed right now so everything fits.

As I was previewing this post, I heard the birds scatter outside and looked out to see this guy on the wall. Guess he wanted breakfast too.

Cutting Corners...

2011-12-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

No, not as in short cutting. But rather as adding the final piece to each of the cute little batik string blocks I have been making. As part of my batik stash, I have stack of 5 inch charm squares that I have purchased over the years. They aren't die cut so they need to be trimmed in some manner prior to using them. Which makes them perfect for my project.

When I got to the final corner pieces for my string blocks, if the corner was too large to use one of my short strings, I found a coordinating charm square and whacked a triangle off the corner. And soon I had a pile that looked like this:

Shortly thereafter, I had 28 more finished blocks. Only a bazillion more to go lol.

And a closeup:

Batiks and strings are two of my favorite things, so I am love, love, loving working on these blocks!

New Project!

2011-12-09T05:00:00.007-07:00

I have had a bag of bright batik strings saved for quite some time to use to make 5 inch string blocks. I had fifteen foundations cut and ready to go, so I finally pulled out the strings to get started. Unfortunately, they had been in the bag so long that they all needed to be pressed before I could even start with the sewing. Sassy helped with the pressing lol.

Finally the sewing commenced and it didn't take long before I had fifteen cute little blocks pieced and trimmed.

And below are the trimmings from those blocks. Which I didn't save for pet bed stuffing, or for any other reason. Go me! I didn't even pull out the "big" pieces that would have been perfect for crumb blocks lol. Maybe I have finally been reformed from trying to use every little piece and can now throw away trimmings like these with no guilt. I'm thinking the prospect of moving in less than six months is probably helping in that regard lol.

After making these blocks, I decided that a bed sized quilt made with these little blocks would look fabulous, so now I only need about 273 more blocks by my calculations lol. I've cut more foundations and strings, all from my batik stash, so I'm ready to go as soon as I can get back to my sewing machine.

Scott's Quilt is Done!

2011-12-08T05:00:00.008-07:00

Scott's quilt is done and awaiting only the label, so well ahead of schedule for Christmas. My quilter did a great job with the quilting and I am thrilled with how it turned out.

Before our weather suddenly turned cold, we had a few days that were in the high 70's/low 80's. The felines spent some time at the open front door enjoying that weather.

A Good Mail Day!

2011-12-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

Last week when I noticed that Connecting Threads had put their Essentials thread sets on sale for 40% off, I ordered two of the neutral sets, as well as the black/gray set. While I was shopping, I also found a book that looked fabulous based on the preview pictures and the price was right at less than $13. All that put me 5 cents shy of $50 for free shipping. Yes, 5 CENTS. So I ordered a half yard of a batik as I've heard great things about Connecting Threads fabrics, but had never tried them.

Today my box arrived. The threads are wonderful, the batik fabric is awesome, and the book is even better than expected. A few weeks back I also bought Carrie Nelson's second Schnibbles book when I was placing an order off of Amazon so I threw that into the picture too. Oh, and my issue of the latest American Patchwork and Quilting finally arrived today. I was getting antsy after seeing it on several other blogs. It is a good issue, but I only found a couple of quilts that I'd like to make. I did enjoy reading the contribution by Thelma of Cupcakes 'n Daisies blog fame and her quilt is amazing!

Thanksgiving Engagement!

2011-12-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. Scott (previously known as "S" lol) came down to spend Thanksgiving with me and he proposed on Thanksgiving Day. It was perfect and of course I said yes. I spent enough years in a wrong relationship to know when I am in the right one. He was here through Monday and it was just the greatest Thanksgiving weekend I've ever had. We had to tell the kids over the phone and they are thrilled, as are our families who thought we should have never broken up in the first place lol.

We are planning a June 2012 wedding in Sedona when he and the kids come down to help me move back to ND. It sounds like all of our immediate family will also be coming down to attend, so that will be nice. Small and intimate is what we are going for.

Here is a picture of us at Zoolights at the Phoenix Zoo on Thanksgiving night.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone has a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving! S flew in on Tuesday and we are enjoying what will likely be my last warm Thanksgiving. For awhile at least. I am keeping my Phoenix house so it would be a possibility to come down, but I can't imagine that I would skip Thanksgiving with family just to be in warmer climate.

A Flurry of Finishes!

2011-11-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

I have had a very productive weekend and managed to finish up a few projects that have been hanging around for awhile. The first finish was this Friendship Star wall hanging, which was one of the quilts that I made in my beginning quilting class in, ahem, 2001.

And the back. If you enlarge the picture, you can see the quilting outline of the stars on the front.

This afternoon I finished up this ornament while I was watching the Bears game. S and two of his sons are huge Bears fans and I don't get to see many games down here since I pretty much only have the main network stations, but today's game was on Fox, so I was able to watch. Our AZ Cardinals pulled out a come from behind win over the Eagles too, so good job to them. Please excuse the wrinkles in the ornament. I didn't take time to iron it before taking a picture.

The other thing I finished during the game was this cat mat for the shelter that was started on one of my airplane rides this summer.

I actually have some feline pictures to post as well. First I have Tyrone testing out S's quilt. I got the binding attached by machine this weekend, and also did the same for Chocolate Covered Cherries, so now I can work on the hand stitching as I am watching Christmas movies.

Sassy was sleeping yesterday all curled into a tight little ball. If you look closely, you can see her little foot tucked behind her shoulder. Cats are so flexible!

And finally, here is Echo being his usual dorky self. I have been going through the contents of some of the drawers in my rolling sewing cart and Echo took advantage of finding one empty and decided to take a nap in it. As you can see, he's a little too big, but that didn't seem to bother him lol.

And I had to add this final pic. What are the chances? No, not of having your bobbin run out, but having it run out when you are exactly at the end of attaching a long binding to a quilt. That is what happened to me yesterday when I attached the binding to Chocolate Covered Cherries. I hit the thread cutter, pulled the quilt out, saw the empty bobbin, and thought oh, no, I have been sewing without bobbin thread for who knows how long. But lo and behold, the binding was attached all the way to the end. Amazing.

Back From the Quilter and Echo Approved!

2011-11-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

I was back in ND the last couple weeks of October working on the house some more and seeing family. It was a great trip and I have been accumulating pictures for some blog posts with before and after photos of what we have done so far with the house. Guess I should probably finally post those for my bedroom down here too since I completely forgot about that. A sneak peek of the bed and one of the lamps is in the picture below.

When I got back from my trip, S's quilt was ready for pickup from my long arm quilter, so here it is, all quality control tested by Echo and ready for trimming and binding. I am hoping to get the trimming done yet today and the binding attached by machine. The binding is made, so I should be able to get that done. I want to start sewing it down while I watch the new Christmas movie on the Hallmark channel tonight. I just love that channel during the holidays. It seems to have the best movies. In my opinion anyway :-).

Happy Birthday to Me!

2011-10-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is my birthday today...43 years old. I have a thing about the number 3, I hate it, so I told S that I may just tell people that I'm 44 for two years and skip 43 lol. As a little birthday gift to myself, I bought these yummy batiks from Jackie during her sale last weekend.

Of course I had help with them when I started getting them ready to wash.

Echo simply moved to the pile once I pulled the pieces out from under him that he was laying on in the above picture.

On an unrelated feline note, I have an orange and white cat that has started coming around, usually in the back yard. He drinks out of the pool and hangs out a bit from time to time. This morning I was laying in bed when I heard the most awful sound. It was cool outside so the windows were open and apparently Echo and Tyrone were looking out the front window when the orange and white cat showed up outside the window. To say that Tyrone wasn't happy to see him would be an understatement!

Panels, Books, Patterns & one Kit for Sale

2011-10-09T17:25:00.005-07:00

The paring down begins, even if it is only a tiny baby step. I figure if I start now, I might be about 50% ready to move by the time the move date arrives next June. I thought I'd put these things on my blog for a bit first before heading over to Ebay or Etsy.

So here's what I've got for this round. I have a number of panels, a number of books, a few patterns and one kit. Prices do not include shipping. All items are new, in excellent condition, except for one small exception noted below, and they are from a smoke free home. You already know this isn't a pet free home, but none of these items were harmed in any way by the felines that live here lol.

Please email me at pawsntailsquilts@gmail.com if interested in any of the items. Thanks for looking!

Monster Machines Panel from Northcott - $5.00 (SOLD)

Jungle Animals Panel - $5.00 (SOLD)

Whimsical Workshop Panel by Heidi Pridemore - $4.00 - note, the upper left hand wrench has a small cut in it

Fabriholics Forever Panel from Moda - $5.00 (SOLD)

With All my Heart panel for Marcus Brothers - $5.00

True Friends by Nancy Halvorsen - $10.00

Shadow Quilts - $10.00

In The Studio With Judy Murrah - $5.00

Quick Cozy Flannel Quilts - $5.00

Garden Club Quilts - $10.00

Scrap Happy Quick-Pieced Scrap Quilts by Sally Schneider - $10.00

Easy Applique by BH&G - $5.00

From the Heart quilts to cherish - $10.00

Turtle Party - includes 2 patterns - $4.00

Candy Hearts pattern - $4.00

Tulips kit - $20.00

Checkerboard Chickens - $4.00

Sassy Strikes Again!

2011-09-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, Sassy has managed to break something else. This time it was my ancient blender with a real glass container, not the plastic ones you get now days. You can about guess what kind of mess that made when it met up with the ceramic tile. She managed to get the thing, which probably weighed as much as she does, all the way from the back of the counter to the front and off the edge. Here is what part of the floor looked like (you can't see the pile of crushed glass under the counter) and what the pitcher looks like now.

It's a good thing she's so cute or she would be looking for a new home! Just kidding. Really :-).

Hot Off The Sewing Machine!

2011-09-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Lest you think I have been sitting around eating bon bons since my last post on, ahem, August 19th, I assure you that is not the case. I have actually been sewing! Yes, it's true lol. And I took lots of pictures during the process that I intended to post, but obviously that didn't happen. But I am posting the finished quilt top, so surely that should count for something.

This quilt is S's Christmas present, and he knows about it, so no worries about spoiling the surprise. In fact, I was furiously sewing blocks into rows and then rows together when he was here last weekend. Last night I attached the borders and here is the finished top, which apparently meets Sassy's approval lol.

The pattern is Radio Flyer by Carrie Nelson and the fabrics are a mix of the Moda Java and Bistro lines by Deb Strain combined with creams and tans from my stash. More backing fabric is on the way, after I realized I didn't have enough, so next up is piecing the backing when that gets here so I can get the quilt to my longarm quilter by October 6th and the bound and finished by Christmas!

In addition to working on this quilt and preparing tax returns for the tax deadline that was yesterday, did I mention that S and I bought a house while I was in ND in July and that it closed escrow on the 8th of this month? No kidding. So we've had a bit going on with that and now that he has taken possession this week, next up are flooring changes and painting. Lots and lots of painting. I will be heading up there to help in the near future and on my to do's for today is a trip to Lumber Liquidators to look at the laminate in person that we picked out together online last night. If it's a go, then he will get it ordered so it is ready for us to install during my October trip.

This weekend is the big move for him so he can get his house on the market ASAP. My big move will come early next summer. Since our real estate market is so poor down here, we figure the best move is to rent my house for now. Anyone looking to rent in Phoenix starting next summer?

So that is what has been going on in my neck of the woods. Oh, and killing scorpions. I'm getting kind of sick of that, but hopefully scorpion season will be over soon. I will spare you the pictures of those. Suffice it to say that in the last week I have not only seen the smallest scorpion I have ever seen in my house, but also the largest. Yuck. And I have a new pet. Stuart. As in Stuart Little. Yes, it is a mouse. He lives in my garage and I did buy a trap with which to humanely kill and dispose of him, but then I read online that mice eat scorpions. He seems to be a bachelor mouse, so as long as that is the case, he gets to stay, provided he eats the scorpions, which I think he does since the dead ones I leave in the garage seem to disappear by morning. That seems like a win/win to me.

Pets on Quilts Show

2011-08-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Pets on Quilts Show is underway and hosted by Sewcalgal. I have not entered the show in the past, but decided to this year since I have plenty of both pets and quilts lol. So here is my entry.

I am currently owned by three fun, feisty felines that love to "assist" with my quilting. All three were rescued from shelters here in Phoenix. Echo and Sassy came home with me on the same day in October 2009 from the Arizona Humane Society and Tyrone was adopted in November 2005 from Sun Valley Animal Shelter.

Echo is by far my most reliable helper and can be counted on to be around nearly every time there is some quilting activity going on.

He has a rather unhealthy obsession with cardboard boxes, so he is generally the first to show up to inspect a new box of fabric that has come in the mail.

He also loves to supervise the cutting and pinning of blocks.

He helps squish the fabric down so the lid fits on the container.

He rearranges blocks when the layout is not to his liking.

He makes sure that the quilting is "just right".

He checks finished tops to make sure they are soft and cuddly.

He supervises the basting, although he can't be left unattended with the pins as he has an unhealthy obsession with those too *sigh*.

And finally, he checks the finished quilts to make sure they are all ready to go.

Sassy is also a pretty good helper, although she is more selective about the activities in which she participates.

One of her obsessions is the iron and she will get as close as she possibly can without getting burned. She will often lay on one end of the ironing board while I am pressing on the other. Goofy cat.

She also really likes to help me prewash and dry fabric.

Then she checks it again once it's dry to make sure it will be acceptable for our quilts.

On occasion, she will also supervise the actual sewing.

And sometimes she is just too exhausted to be any help at all!

Tyrone is my oldest assistant and now that there are younger workers available, he tends to take it easy and generally doesn't show up for work most days lol. But here is in his glory days helping me to attach the binding to a king size quilt.

He also helped sew on a label one time.

As I said, Tyrone is pretty much retired these days from his quilting helping, at the ripe old age of 6! What a life! But no worries, as you can see, I've got two other helpers that are more than willing to pick up his slack lol.

Still Here...

2011-08-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

This summer has just flown by! I have so many things I planned to blog about but got so busy doing them that I didn't get time to write about them.

I was back in North Dakota for two weeks in July and had a great time with S and his kids. We got to take a little vacation to dig for fossils in Montana and I also got to see my dad, my sister, his parents and one sister, as well as an old friend while I was up there. All in all it was a great trip. There was one big unplanned thing that happened towards the end of the trip, but I will save that story for another post as I'm short on time right now. Surprise, surprise lol.

After I got back and got caught up a bit with the house stuff, I started working on S's quilt that I am making him for Christmas. I'm using Carrie Nelson's Radio Flyer pattern. Lots and lots of cutting and piecing, but I'm having a blast with it and it is going fast. I have been putting in a lot of sewing time and have a lot to show for it, but again, pictures and details will have to wait for another post.

Oh, and I sold the Texas ranch property and that sale closed this week. I will miss it, but it is time to move on. And further north as S's sister said lol.

Until next time, keep on quilting!

And The Storm Rolled In...

2011-07-06T07:57:00.001-07:00

Phoenix was hit by a massive dust storm last night. My side of the Valley didn't get hit as bad as other parts, but I still had some cleanup to do this morning for the pool. I don't think the sides are supposed to be brown lol. The solar blanket was also covered in dirt so that needed to be hosed off too. The good news is that the temperatures dropped quite a bit due to the storm so that is a welcome relief, although it is a humid out - 73% humidity according to accuweather.com. That's pretty high for us. Hope we get some of that rain they are predicting for later in the day. We sure could use it.

In Limbo

2011-07-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of months I have felt like I have been living a double life. I have made two separate ten day trips to North Dakota in the past 60 days and am going to be making another two week trip this month. That is more traveling than I normally do in a year and it's not done yet. I have another trip in September and yet another in October. While I'm there I try to keep up with work via remote access, but stuff related to the house has to wait and I usually come home to nice surprises, like crunchy brown grass because the pet sitter didn't happen to notice that it was changing from green to brown because the irrigation system died while I was gone.

You are probably wondering why I am doing so much traveling right now, other than the fact that it gets me out of the searing Arizona heat, which is great. Anyway, the answer is that I have become involved with someone that lives in North Dakota, so we are currently enjoying a very long distance relationship. Your next question is probably how I managed to get involved with someone so far away. It's actually quite an interesting story, which I am happy to tell if you've got a few spare minutes. Or twenty lol.

Way back in 1984, at the young age of 15, I met this great guy whom I will refer to as "S". Mainly because his first name starts with S lol. We started dating, long distance even then I might add, because he was away at college while I was still in high school. My parents must have really liked him to allow me to date someone that much older than me. We dated pretty seriously for over two years until I ended it during my senior year of high school. It was an amicable split so we stayed friends and kept in touch. We even kept in touch after I moved to AZ. That is until he got married and his new wife made him cut off all contact with me. That was in 1994.

Fast forward to 2009 when I joined Facebook. He was on there too so I sent him a friend request. He accepted and we renewed our friendship and emailed from time to time. He was divorced by then, but in a relationship. By the time my divorce was final, the relationship that S had been in had also ended so we were both single for the first time in almost 20 years. Long story short, we started having actual conversations via internet chat or the phone and realized that it felt like it had been a day since we'd last really talked instead of almost twenty years. At that point we thought it would be worth it to see each other in person and see how it went. So S flew down a few months ago and we basically just picked up where we had left off.

It is nice to be in a real relationship for the first time in many years, but I have to say, it has really cut into my quilting time! I had boatloads of time to quilt when I was married to someone who didn't want to spend any time with me. So I'm not sure when I will be able to get back to quilting like I was, between being gone a lot and also looking at the likely prospect of a cross country move some time in the next twelve months. Oh, and S has three great sons who I have been having a blast getting to know, both in person and chatting via Skype. Definitely time well spent getting to know them.

So that's where I'm at right now. Between the relationship, work, and keeping up the house and yard, I don't have time to even think about quilting, let alone do it. After this next trip I am home for a couple of months and S will be coming my direction instead, so I'm hoping that means a bit more quilting time. We'll see I guess lol.

Sunday Morning Sewing

2011-06-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up early this morning, as in 3:30 a.m. early. That is early even for me. I laid there for about another hour before I finally gave up and got up. I was in the mood to sew and really wanted to do some piecing. I wanted something fairly easy as I had a headache and was tired from waking up so darn early.

I remembered that I had some cute little courthouse steps blocks that were sent to me quite some time ago by a blogging friend, who I think prefers to remain nameless, so I won't share who made these little cuties. But trust me, the piecing is perfect. And the pieces finish at 1/2 inch for a finished block size of 6 inches. And these blocks weren't paper pieced. Like I said, this friend is a quite a precise piecer.

I was just hoping that I could at least sew them together adequately so I didn't do the blocks a disservice. I thought I did ok until I got all of the rows pieced together and stood back to take a look. Aaack! I didn't pay attention when I laid everything out and some of my "courthouses" don't line up. Oh well. Instead of a humility block, I will have an entire little humility quilt lol. I refused to unsew the rows so it is what it is at this point.

I debated about leaving the little quilt border free when it looked like this:

I wasn't sure I was completely happy with that look so I pulled some border candidates from my stash and consulted my trusty quilt advisor (i.e. Dawn). I texted her a couple of pictures and the border fabric we settled on was this one:

A quick press, a few passes with the rotary cutter and I had the borders cut and ready to attach. Shortly thereafter I had this:

Not bad for a few hours work. Thank you to my generous blogging friend that sent me these blocks! She also sent her leftover blue star fabric and that is what I will use for the backing. Dawn and I have a quilting day this coming Saturday so I'm hoping to get the basting done and get started on the quilting. Who knows, maybe I can even have the entire quilt ready for display for the 4th of July, but don't hold your breath on that one lol.

A closeup of the blocks so you can see just how great the piecing is.

I am also happy to report that Echo has performed the quality control test on Chocolate Covered Cherries and has deemed it acceptable lol.

Sassy was enjoying the sunshine the other day, probably while plotting her next way to get in trouble.

She knocked a picture off the wall below the plant shelf one night last week and I stepped in the shards of plastic on my way to the kitchen the next morning. Thankfully it was plastic and not glass. When asked about the incident, her reply was that the evidence against her was circumstantial and therefore she could not be judged guilty of the crime. Typical.

Quilted, Trimmed and Ready to Bind!

2011-06-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a quilting day at Dawn's yesterday, I was able to finish the quilting on Chocolate Covered Cherries today. This was the first time that I individually quilted blocks and I have to say, between the repetitive pattern and the same fabrics in each block, I got pretty bored. I have the attention span of a gnat anyway, so the fact that I got all of the blocks quilted this weekend is pretty amazing.

The quilting is a combination of ditch quilting and my wavy line quilting, all done with my walking foot. Wrestling the quilt through the machine was a challenge at times, but I chickened out on trying the block quilting with my free motion foot, so I was stuck twisting and turning the quilt quite a lot. Now I just need to find where I stashed the binding strips to keep them away from curious felines and I will be all set to get the binding sewn on.

The front of the finished quilt:

Closeup of the quilting on the front:

The full back of the quilt:

And the quilting detail of one block on the back of the quilt:

Help for Joplin

2011-05-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

Judy at Patchwork Times has come up with a wonderful idea for helping the residents of Joplin. See this post on her blog if you are interested.

Fruit Cocktail is finished!

2011-05-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

After the novel I wrote the other day, this will be a short post. I finished sewing down the binding on Fruit Cocktail while I was at Dawn's on Saturday and started on the hand sewing for the Friendship Star quilt. I used King Tut #901 for the top quilting and a green variegated Coats & Clark in the bobbin.

We also hit the 25% off anniversary sale at one of our local shops and we picked up a few Kaffe Fasset fabrics at good prices so that was fun too, although I really didn't need any new fabric lol.

And here is the progress on my needlepoint picture. It is called Sawtooth Sampler by Laura J. Perin and it is from her quilt pattern series.

Where to Begin?

2011-05-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since I last posted that I don't even know where to begin. The good news is that I survived tax season and immediately reopened the quilt studio and have been quite productive! I had planned to do many posts over the past couple of weeks with progress reports of what I have been working on, but somehow I never got around to actually writing the posts *sigh*. I did, however, get around to taking pictures of the quilts projects as I worked on them. That's progress from my last post!

As soon as the tax deadline was over I started my own personal quilting retreat and did basically nothing but quilt for about 5 days. Oh, and take care of Maya since she decided to blow out her good knee on April 13th. More about that in a bit. First I want to talk about the quilting I have been doing. Echo found the pile of quilts on my sewing table today and decided they were there for him to lay on. What is it about cats and quilts???

So anyway, as soon as the tax deadline was over, I got busy in my sewing room. Oh, and I washed the mountain of fabric that I had purchased during the past few months. But I digress. The first order of business after April 18th was to get Chocolate Covered Cherries basted and ready for quilting. I have all of the ditch quilting done and have started the quilting of the blocks.

Next I basted Fruit Cocktail. Twice. I forgot that the backing was just the right size and left the usual margin on the one side only to discover a drastic shortage on the other side when I went to baste that part. So I undid all of the basting and redid it with the backing properly centered. This quilt was made during my beginning quilting class in, ahem, 2001. Yes, it has been sitting here unquilted for nearly 10 years. But now it is not only basted and quilted, but I have the binding half sewn down. Speaking of the binding, I have had that made and stored with the quilt for literally years. As I'm sewing it on by machine, I realize that it is about half as long as it needs to be. I think I had another quilt with the same binding and probably switched them. As luck would have it, I found another binding the same width in my drawer of leftover bindings that matched well and was just the length I needed so I added it to the other one and finished up the machine sewing. For the quilting, I did straight line quilting in the blocks and my wavy line quilting in the border.

The quilted top:

A closeup of the block quilting:

And the back. It's kind of hard to see the quilting on the back since the fabric is so busy.

Then I quilted this little orphan bargello block. It had been basted since last fall. Took all of 15 minutes to quilt so I don't know why I let it sit so long *sigh*.

And finally, I quilted this little Friendship Star quilt. It is also from my beginning quilting class which hopefully explains some of the whacked off points on the stars. Thankfully my piecing has improved! The binding is attached and ready for the hand sewing, which I'm hoping to work on tomorrow at Dawn's. I ran out of the top thread with about 4 inches left to go on the quilting. I found a similar purple thread in my stash and finished it with that. Done is better than perfect!

And the back:

Amidst all of the quilting I also got bit HARD by the needlepoint bug. I have had some charts forever, as well as threads, but just never got around to trying canvas work. That has all changed. I went to a local shop a few days after tax season ended and came home with the canvas and chart for a new project. I already had the threads in my cross stitching stash. Shocking I know lol. For about two days, the quilting sat untouched as I stitched away on my new project. I have made quite a bit of progress and plan to work on it more tomorrow, so I will save the pictures, etc. for a separate post.

And then there is the real life stuff that has been going on. As I mentioned above, Miss Maya decided to tear her ACL (her knee) on April 13th. She had surgery on her other knee in August 2007 when she tore that ACL, but the surgery was hard on her and at her current age, surgery is not an option. There was quite a bit of drama for a few days as the ex and I came to terms with her situation. We thought we were going to have to put her down since surgery wasn't an option. Thankfully the vet said she could heal on her own. Funny how everyone said differently when she tore out the first knee. At that time we were told that her knee could only heal with surgery costing in excess of $2000. So of course we did the surgery. That was pretty annoying to find out that we wouldn't have had to put her through that, or spend all that money, but at least we didn't have to put her down.

The other complicating factor was that my ex had arranged for a pet transport service to pick up Maya, Koda and Sammy the cat on April 30th to take them from Phoenix to his new place in Ohio. He thought for sure that they wouldn't take Maya while her leg was healing, but he was wrong, thankfully, and they all were picked up on the 30th and arrived in Ohio this past Wednesday safe and sound. So in the last week I have reduced my pet population by half, which has taken a huge load off. No more barking dogs day and night and no more getting up 50 times a day to let someone out or bring someone in. Could be why my blood pressure was down to 102/76 at my physical on Wednesday!

So that is what has been happening in my corner of the world for the last month or so!

So to recap...

2011-03-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

This is what I have been doing since I last posted:

Working.

Working some more.

Doing a little more work.

Letting the dogs in and out 60 times a day.

Working.

More working.

Spending an evening at Urgent Care to get super duty drugs for the sinus infection that came raging back.

Working some more.

And then more as I started feeling better again.

Hmmm, what else? Oh yeah, eating and sleeping, although the sleep has been hard to come by at times. And I've scooped litter boxes multiple times a day. And dog poop on the weekend.

What I haven't been doing:

Sewing. Not one stitch.

I did take yesterday off for a quilting day at Dawn's, but did I quilt? No I did not. I was too mentally brain dead to even attempt it. Even the simplest quilting task seemed too difficult. So we went to the quilt store instead. I found a few fabric bargains, a great pattern and we both got a new marking tool for quilting using our 40% off coupons.

Did I take pictures of any of the stuff I bought? No I did not. Because that would involve more effort than I've got energy for right now. Just know that the fabrics are brights, some with dots, and they are right up my alley lol.

Oh, I did do a bit of mindless crocheting on a cat mat for the shelter while at Dawn's yesterday and after I got home, using some yarn I recycled from a thrift store afghan. Do I have a picture of my progress so far? Again, no. But I'll tell that so far I've used bright purple yarn, yellow yarn, and green yarn. It's very colorful.

So that's what I've been doing. And now my 15 minute break from work is over, so have to get back to it. We are in the final push to April 15th and I am counting the days!!

Happy Days!

2011-03-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, the days are very happy around here lately. In spite of the tremendous amount of stress on a daily basis from the dogs and work, my days are definitely much, much happier than they were a year ago, so it's all good.

I have found some time to work on the blocks for my dot quilt nearly every day. Some days more than others, but even little bits of time add up. The fabrics in the blocks are so happy that I'm thinking that Happy Days might be the appropriate name for this quilt, particularly given how happy I am feeling while I am making it. What do you think? Or maybe Happy Days Are Here Again would be better? That was the first name that came to mind, but it seemed a bit long. Maybe not.

I plan on making 90 blocks at a finished size of 8 inches. I have been working on the first 30. Here they are so far. I will keep adding strips to each until I can trim them to 8 1/2 inches.

And here's a closeup of a few of the blocks.

A Good Week in the Sewing Room and Look What Arrived!

2011-03-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

I had a very productive week in the sewing room, but don't have anything really exciting to show for it. I got the backing made for Chocolate Covered Cherries and also got the batting cut so that quilt is now ready for basting. The rest of the time I spent pressing my new dot fabrics that I purchased back in November and cutting a strip from each for my dot quilt. I am now ready to start sewing on the dot quilt, so I should have some actual progress pics to show soon. During the pressing process, I also finally admitted that my iron is indeed going, so I ordered another one off Amazon that will hopefully arrive soon.

Speaking of Amazon, this arrived this week:

Woo hoo! I tried so hard to win a copy during the blog tour, but alas, I didn't win. This new book by Kim is everything that everyone has said about it and more. Awesome, awesome quilts in this book! I had thought I knew which one I was going to make first, but when the book actually arrived, I changed my mind and I think I am going to make the cover quilt, Picnic, using the Kaffe Fasset fabrics that I started collecting last summer. So add that to the "must do soon" list, along with the zillion other projects that are already on that list lol.

I needed a bit more in my order to qualify for free shipping, and forgetting all about the power cord I need for my new postage scale, I ordered this:

I truly loved the music that was popular when I was in high school, so as they come out with CDs of some of this older music, I have been picking them up when I need something extra on Amazon to get free shipping. I have been listening to this CD since it arrived and it is great! As a side note, I forgot about the power cord AGAIN when I ordered the iron and ordered a book to get free shipping. For the exact same price as the power cord I might add LOL.

Burgundy Buttons also got the Max & Whiskers yardage in, so I ordered the background piece that I needed for my applique project as well as a few extra cuts of the bone prints that will work with some of the other pet fabrics I've collected for a different pet quilt.

This weekend will be filled with lots of tax work as well as some yard work, but I'm hoping I can squeeze in some time to start sewing on the dot quilt.

The Mother Lode of Fabric Arrived Yesterday!

2011-02-25T06:26:00.002-07:00

I have gone on a bit of a buying spree lately, to ahem, put it mildly. One of the shipments was delayed, so everything showed up yesterday. I almost had to make two trips from the mail box because the stack of priority boxes was so big! The unusual thing about these purchases is that I have a plan for everything. Normally I am either just stash building, or collecting fabrics of some type for a future quilt. Not this time. All that means is that I need to get using this stuff right away. No pressure or anything LOL.

The first order I had placed that got delayed was for these two cute little fat eighth bundles from Moda. I think it was genius when they came up with these bundles. Fat quarter bundles are just too much for so many of us, and a fat eighth bundle is more usable than two layer cakes. Oh, and I got both of these from Judi & Clint at Green Fairy Quilts. This was my first order from them, and I will definitely order again. After my budget recovers from these latest purchases!

The first one is Max & Whiskers by Basic Grey. Did you know that this fabric line is also available as scrapbook paper, which Basic Grey also designs? In fact, I think they started out designing scrapbook paper and then extended that into fabric. In any event, here is my little bundle of Max & Whiskers. I plan to make an applique quilt with it, already have the layout, etc. pictured in my mind, but will leave you wondering until I actually get around to making it.

The second fat eighth bundle I got is Lovely by Sandy Gervais. Sandy is one of my favorite fabric designers, but usually I'm drawn to her autumn and dot fabrics. For some reason, I was really drawn to the color palate of this line even though floral prints are not something I work with a lot and there are quite a few in this line. My plan for this bundle is a Schnibbles Times 2 quilt by Carrie Nelson, pattern still to be selected.

And now to the really big purchases. I am not a coffee drinker, except for occasional coffee shop splurges, but that doesn't stop me from loving coffee themed fabrics. Especially those by Deb Strain for Moda. Last summer I found some of her Bistro line on sale, so picked up some pieces in the blue/tan colorway. On Saturday while ~~avoiding~~ on a break from work, I was poking around the Burgundy Buttons site just for fun. Note to self...if you stop just "poking around" you will probably stop making so many purchases! Anyway, I found the Java fabric line by Deb Strain on sale. Within 30 minutes I had selected a pattern, another Carrie Nelson pattern, Radio Flyer, figured out that the FQ bundle had the perfect amount of fabric for it, found border and binding fabrics from the line also on sale, and placed my order.

And then I realized that A) I really didn't like the two major colorways of the line all mixed together, which meant I didn't have enough fabric for the quilt, and B) I couldn't figure out where the orange and green really fit in with the rest and wondered why they were even in the line, particularly the orange. To me, that is really out of place. So now I was stuck with a pattern I wanted to make and not enough fabric and remembering why I make scrap quilts and not quilts from specific fabric lines!

I thought about it for a bit and then started wondering what my chances were of getting more of the Bistro fabric line, even though it came out in October 2008. When I am looking for older items like this my first stop is Ebay and once again, Ebay came through. What are the chances of finding an entire FQ bundle of Bistro on Ebay, just when I needed it, on sale and with free shipping? I figured it was meant to be and bought it immediately. Both orders arrived yesterday and here are the fabrics in all of their loveliness. I actually like the Bistro line better overall, but there are also some great fabrics in the Java line that I can't wait to use. Java is on the left and Bistro is on the right.

The current plan is still to make Radio Flyer with the Red/Black/Brown colorway and use the red yardage you see for the outer border and the brown fabric below it for the inner border and binding. Then I want to make a second quilt with the Blue/Tan/Cream colorway, with possibly some of the green from Bistro thrown in. The green and orange in the Java line are definitely out at this point. The oranges will fit in perfectly with my autumn fabric stash and the greens can just go in the general stash. The blues are different, with the Java blue having sort of a teal tint to it, but I think they can work together when mixed with the tans and creams. So that is what arrived in the mail yesterday and my plans for it.

If you want a better look at both lines, here are links to them on the Moda site:

http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_java.pdf

http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_bistro.pdf

I've also still been plugging away on getting fabrics ready for the dot quilt, so I'll have a progress update on that soon. As well as the pictures of my finished bedroom. I got so busy, I forgot that I had never done that post and I got a reminder about it last week. Soon, I promise.

A Sneak Peek

2011-02-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

Even though I still haven't sewn the backing for Chocolate Covered Cherries, I have technically started on my next project. What can I say...I have a very short attention span! But the backing will get sewn. And soon.

Here is a sneak peek at the next project:

It all started with this, a pile of dot fabrics that Wanda sent me awhile back. She saw my post about all of the new dot fabrics I had purchased and asked if I wanted her leftovers from her dot quilt. Duh, of course I wanted them! I love playing with other people's scraps. Even better than playing with my own lol. And now I have a plan for them and am almost ready to get started. I need to go through some more fabric and then I should be ready to go.

It's been awhile since I've posted any pictures of the feline members of the household. That is because I've hardly taken any! Shocking I know. But I did get a few of Sassy helping with dinner on Sunday.

Hmmm, what's this thing that has cool water droplets on the top and smells good?

Maybe I should get a closer look...

And how about a view from the other side?

Maybe touching it will help me figure out what this is...

She was totally fascinated with the crock pot for about 10 minutes and then finally gave up and left. Oh, and she's also trained me to run water for her in the front bathroom sink so she can drink it while it's running *sigh*. I don't know why I do those things for that cat. It's not like it keeps her out of trouble LOL.

Chocolate Covered Cherries Top is Done!

2011-02-20T08:13:00.001-07:00

This will be another short post as it's a work day (no day is without work at this point in tax season), as well as yard work day if the weather cooperates later. Anyway, I finished sewing the borders on Chocolate Covered Cherries last night, so the top is officially done! Woo hoo! I had to wait until this morning to get pictures as the lighting in my sewing room is not very good at night. I hope to remedy that once tax season is over.

Here is the finished top:

I also pulled out the backing fabric that I purchased some time ago. All it needs is pressing, the yardage cut in half, salvages trimmed off, and a quick seam lengthwise to sew the two pieces together. I'd like to get that done today, but we'll see. Here's the backing fabric laying with the top. The binding will be the same pink as in the top and it is already cut, but not sewn together and pressed.

And here's a bigger picture of the backing fabric. It will run lengthwise as shown on the back of the quilt.

It has been a very productive week both work-wise and in the sewing room for sure. I finally have some decent energy to get things done. I started giving Maya a benedryl before bed each night, so she is finally mostly sleeping through the night again, which means I am too. Thank goodness. And I also broke down on Monday and called for antibiotics for a suspected sinus infection after trying natural remedies to kick it. After a couple of days on the antibiotics I started feeling much, much better. Just in time to start putting in those 11 and 12 hour days for work LOL.

Chocolate Covered Cherries Progress

2011-02-19T13:30:00.003-07:00

This post will be short and sweet as I have to get back to work, but I wanted to show you my progress on Chocolate Covered Cherries. After working 11 hours on Thursday and 12 hours yesterday, I decided to reward myself with some sewing time today. All of the rows are now sewn together and I got two of the inner borders on. Six more border seams and I should have a finished quilt top!

Edit #2: The picture warning problem is fixed! I tried Wanda's suggestion that she left in the comments and it worked, so if any of you fellow bloggers are having the same problem, try editing the post, removing the picture, and adding it again. Thanks Wanda!

Edit: It seems that if you click on the picture to make it larger, you will get a message that this site is unsafe. I got the same message while viewing a few other blogs this morning, so I suspect it is a blogger problem. I went ahead and sent something to Microsoft anyway, but it will probably take awhile before the warning goes away.

All laid out and ready to assemble!

2011-02-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

I started work extra early today in hopes that I could squeeze in some quilting time to get the rest of the Chocolate Covered Cherries units ready for assembly. I managed to find time to do that this morning so here is the quilt center all ready to sew together. With borders, the quilt should finish about 60 x 72, so a nice lap size.

Yesterday I discovered that my feline friends were apparently very pleased that I had raked up the leaves from under the Ficus trees. They were out in force pecking around. I particularly like the quail. I buy a special block of food just for quail to keep them coming around and then throw out regular bird food too, which the other birds seem to like. This picture of the birds in the yard was taken through the patio door and I think it turned out pretty good even through the glass.

Earlier in the day there were four quail out pecking around. I tried to sneak out the door to get some pictures of them, but they got spooked and flew up on the wall. I got a nice picture of one of them and another picture of most of the group. If you look closely, there are three quail on the wall in the second picture. The fourth one went into the tree.

And now it is back to work for me! It is tax season after all lol.

I finally sewed!!!

2011-02-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. I finally sat down at my sewing machine last night for the first time in two months. After I spent an hour finding where I'd put everything else that I needed to actually sew lol. Then I had to find a project that my tax season strapped brain could handle, and one that was ready to sew. I finally remembered that I had Chocolate Covered Cherries all cut out and waiting patiently in my project box. Perfect!

This is an ideal project for fairly mindless power sewing. With only two fabrics, and a simple block, Bento Box, it is pretty easy to keep the pieces straight, although I did have to unsew one unit last night. Other than that, it has gone very smoothly. Between an hour of sewing last night and a few more hours today, I've got all of the block segments sewn with about a third pressed and ready to sew into blocks.

Here is my pile of organized block components just waiting to be sewn together.

I matched all of the pieces up for each step and then chain sewed them all before moving on to the next piece. Here's the pile of units from one of those sessions. This made the whole process go really fast. Match, sew, press, repeat.

And finally, here are the block units that I have done and laid out. Four units combine to make one block and my quilt will be 4 blocks by 5 blocks, plus borders.

And a closeup of the fabrics in one block. Dots, batiks, and brights. What's not to love for me in this quilt!

A Little Crocheting

2011-01-30T18:16:00.000-07:00

I actually took the time this week so sit down and watch Criminal Minds on Wednesday night. I generally can't stand to sit there doing nothing while watching tv, so I pulled out the crocheted rug I've been working on for quite awhile. It needs one more block. Between the hour on Wednesday night and the hour between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Thursday night when I couldn't sleep, I got the block nearly finished. It's the one in the lower left that has all the untrimmed yarn ends still showing.

Here are all six blocks laid out. I may move them around to balance the colors, but plan to alternate the direction of each block as shown in the picture. I don't plan on backing the rug as I think I'm going to use it in a carpeted area, but I'm thinking I will have to at least block it. I've never made a crocheted rug before, so if anyone has any suggestions, please share them! This one is made using recycled afghan yarn, so a rug was really the only option as the yarn is not in good enough shape for much else. I am also considering donating it to the animal shelter, but I think it would still need some blocking so it didn't curl in the corners.

Hey, I THOUGHT About Quilting...It's a Start!

2011-01-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true! I actually thought about quilting last week. Didn't do any, but I thought about it LOL. Mainly when these gorgeous fabrics arrived from Jackie. She had a great sale on batiks and I couldn't resist. I had seen a lot of these in a local store awhile back, but at $10.59/yd, I just couldn't justify getting them. But at $7.25 a yard, including lightening fast shipping, I had to get some. Love, love, love them! Now to get them washed and into the stash so they can be used. Whenever that is *sigh*.

Echo also enjoyed the quilt on my table yesterday.

And Sassy was up there too, until I came by, and then she had to roll on the floor and talk to me. No idea what she was saying, but she seemed pretty happy lol.

And speaking of happy, in response to the comments on my last post, yes, I am very happy right now. A bit stressed and overwhelmed at times, but very happy :-).

Much to Say and No Time to Say It!

2011-01-17T05:00:00.001-07:00

It has been a zoo around here! The divorce was final on January 3rd and the hearing went off without a hitch. And then the flurry of paperwork began to make changes to accounts, beneficiaries, etc. The Texas house closed escrow this past week, which involved a trip to the bank to get documents notarized and then a trip to Fed Ex to send the documents back.

Tax season officially began on January 5th when the tax returns started rolling in so work has been super busy too.

The animals are all still living with me and they have been a bit stressed with all of the changes and have not been on their best behavior, which is an understatement in some cases. Now that the Texas house has closed escrow, once T has the funds from the closing, he can start house shopping in Ohio and hopefully be back to get the dogs and his cat by the end of tax season. Hopefully I can make it until then! They are keeping me hopping and driving me a bit batty as well lol.

I also got my bedroom/quilting studio furnished. The bed and tables are exactly what I wanted and match better than I could have ever hoped. Dawn's daughter had a table virtually identical to my sewing table that left with T and she also had a bookcase that fit perfectly with the rest of the room. That left the lamps. Oh, the lamps. The process of finding and actually purchasing the lamps ended up becoming such a comedy of errors that I had almost given up when things finally fell into place. I did take pictures today of the furnished room, but don't have time to load them all right now. I will hopefully have time to do that this week and will tell you the story of the lamps at the same time.

I would like to say that there has been some quilting going on around here, but that is not the case. Nada, zip, nothing. Not one stitch or cut or anything remotely resembling quilting, other than putting quilts on the new tables and bed in the bedroom. I have been so busy that I haven't even had time to think about quilting let alone actually do it.

So that's what has been happening around here for the past two weeks. In a nutshell, it has been organized chaos lol.

2011 Goals

2011-01-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year!

As each year comes to a close, I start to think of my goals for the coming year. Mostly I put together needlework goals, but usually come up with some financial and household goals as well. So for the past couple of days I've been trying to think of my goals for the coming year and I keep coming back to the same conclusion. And that conclusion is that I really only have one goal for 2011...to enjoy and make the most of each day.

I am starting the year happier than I have been for many years and truly excited about what the future holds. To that end, I want to be open to anything that comes my way. I am a Type A Planner by nature, so just going with the flow and seeing what happens is way outside the norm for me. But oddly enough, it feels totally comfortable and like the right thing to do right now. So that's what I'm going to do.

On a quilty note, I want to continue to make progress on my UFO list, so to that end, yesterday I pulled out all of the quilt tops awaiting quilting and cut and washed batting for all of them. Some still need the batting to be pieced, but at least they are all one step closer to becoming finished quilts.

And of course I had help during this process. Well, I'm not sure how helpful they were, but you had to know that Sassy and Echo were right there with me while I was trying to get things done.

Yesterday morning we had this backyard visitor:

And this morning, we had this one:

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

2010-12-31T13:28:00.001-07:00

At the end of each year, I like to revisit and summarize the projects I've completed for the year and to work on my goals for the next year. While I didn't come close to achieving all of my 2010 goals, I did reduce my UFOs from 75 to 58. I also completed all quilts that I started except for one, so I'm pleased with how the year turned out, particularly since I had some major life changes occurring at the same time.

Keeping track of my finishes on my blog was motivating and also made it easy to do my yearend summary.

In 2010, I completed the following:

1 bag - my first!
6 medium to large quilts
18 small quilts
6 pet quilts
3 cross stitch projects
12 cat mats
37 dishcloths

Next up is to work on my goals for 2011. I'll do that over the next week or so, as well as my annual fabric inventory.

All Ready for the Furniture!

2010-12-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

Well, almost. I still need to paint the baseboards and do a few touch ups, but that won't take long at all. For the most part, my bedroom/quilting studio is ready for my new furniture, which I ordered on Monday and which will be delivered on January 5th. All I have left to pick out are lamps and possibly something to display some quilts, but the essentials are ordered - bed, mattress, and bedside tables.

So here is the tour of the finished room. For purple lovers like me, it's perfect and I love it.

Entrance to the room showing the two colors of paint pretty well:

Future design wall and quilt display area:

Sewing table space with view of the backyard:

Wall where the bed and tables will go:

Entrance to the master bath - how convenient to be so accessible to the quilting area!

And back to the entrance:

And if you think the felines haven't been up to their usual activities, you would be mistaken. Things may look innocent in this first picture, but looks can be deceiving.

About 30 seconds later, this is what the top of the end table looked like, which by the way, is not normally sitting in the hallway. It was moved for the carpet cleaning and had not yet been put back. Actually, it's not even an end table. Those left with T, along with the matching coffee table, so until I can replace those items, I am using the nightstands that previously lived in the bedroom. It's kind of like going back to college living with a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture, but I hope to remedy that soon.

So anyway, back to the next picture in the story. Any guesses what they are looking at? See anything missing in the picture?

Oh look, now we can play with the plant on the floor too! Yeah, I don't think so. And just so you know, the poinsettias are fake, so no animals were harmed in the taking of these pictures lol. Real poinsettias are toxic to cats, so I never have them. Actually, I don't even know if real pink poinsettias exist. These were on sale at Joann's after Thanksgiving, so I picked them up.

Indian Summer Bound and Ready to Hang!

2010-12-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

I finished sewing down the binding yesterday on Indian Summer, so now I just need to find a curtain rod that I like and get it hung in my new bedroom. I finished the painting on Christmas Day, but will wait to take final pictures until after the carpets are cleaned tomorrow and before I move everything back in. I also ordered my bed, mattress, and bedside tables today, to be delivered on January 5th, so the room is coming together nicely. The only things remaining on my shopping list are lamps and possibly a cabinet for displaying quilts. I will wait on the cabinet until the bed and tables are in place so I can see how much room I have left and how things are laid out.

So here is Indian Summer all finished. I really love this quilt and can't wait to have it up on the wall.

Merry Christmas from Our House to Yours

2010-12-25T06:01:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas everyone from myself and all of the furry members of the household. Tyrone got in the spirit of Christmas this year by putting a little spot of glitter on his nose. Can you see it? Look closely and you will lol.

Echo decided to see if he could squeeze into this basket, which he obviously did:

And Sassy was once again very helpful with the laundry this week:

This morning we, well me anyway, will be enjoying the Christmas morning tradition of cinnamon rolls for breakfast. They are in the oven as I type this. It's supposed to be a gorgeous day here...probably about 70, so I will be enjoying the weather for sure and will see what else the day brings. I'm sure it will be another great one. They have all been great lately :-).

Purple, Anyone?

2010-12-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me, knows that my favorite color is purple. So once I decided that the master bedroom space would also be used as my quilting studio, purple was the logical choice for paint color. Well, to me it was anyway lol.

Day 1 of the painting project was covered in yesterday's post, which also includes all of the before pictures. Today I got an early start and made great progress. I'm thinking one more decent day of work and I should be done. The two large walls both have two coats of paint, except for the obvious open spaces on the wall with the lights. Those spaces are open because that's where I finished up with the first gallon of paint. Had I still been on speaking terms with the extension ladder at that point, I may have been inclined to open the second gallon, but since I wasn't, I moved on to the next phase of the project which did not require the extension ladder.

Speaking of ladders, I have a beautiful set of matching bruises on the backside of both calves from leaning on the step ladder, along with misc other bruises on the front of my legs and on my arm. Good thing it's not shorts weather, or someone would probably think I'd taken a beating.

So today I got at least one coat on all of the remaining areas except the bay window. Now that I have the rest of the room painted, I think I'm going to switch how I do the bay window and put the lighter color on the outside wall and the darker color in the bay portion.

Here are the pictures of today's work. It was a perfect day for painting. The temperature outside got up to 70, so I was able to open the window for most of the day, which was great.

The next two photos of the entry to the master bath really show the contrast between the two paint colors which isn't apparent in the photo above. I am really pleased with how the room is turning out.

And now I'm off to eat my dinner, have a glass of wine, and probably do nothing else productive for the rest of the evening!

Painting Day 1

2010-12-18T19:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the first major change I am making to what is now my house (wow, do I love saying that!), is to paint the master bedroom. It has never been painted since we moved in almost 14 years ago, mainly because the water bed couldn't be moved without draining it and I didn't want to paint all of the walls but one. The original paint is builders grade flat in eggshell white, so to say that it is showing it's age would be an understatement. Now that T is gone, the master bedroom furniture is as well, so before I move back in, I wanted to get the room painted and the carpets cleaned.

The room is so large that I've decided to make it my quilting studio as well. The bay window has the best view in the house and is perfect for my sewing table and one of the huge walls will be great for using as a design wall, which I've not had the luxury of having up to this point.

Here are the before pictures. They start with the wall as you walk into the room and go all the way around and back to the door. The large wall just inside the door is the wall I plan to use for my design wall. You can see that I sampled 4 different colors of purple paint. The dark ended up being too dark and the lightest ended up being too light, but I thought the middle two shades were just right so that's what I went with. They are the top two of the three shown in the picture of the bay window.

The plan is to put the lighter shade on the large wall just inside the door, as well as in the inside of the bay window and the wall below the plant shelf which leads to the master bath. The darker shade will go on the wall above the plant shelf, the wall surrounding the bay window and the large wall with the window, which is where the bed will go as well. I think I will also be replacing the wall lamps, but I've left them for now because they are the only lights in the room at the moment.

Today I started with the large wall just inside the door. One gallon of paint, one near fall off the ladder, and about 4 hours of total time later, this is what that wall looks like now. Oh, and it's really not two toned at the top and the side. Those were the last parts I did, so the paint was still drying. And this picture is after the first coat only. I forgot to take a picture after the second coat.

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow!

The Last Christmas Gift is Done!

2010-12-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

I played hooky from work today in order to finish the bag I am making my aunt for Christmas. As I mentioned in a previous post, this was my first bag and I found it easier to make than I anticipated. The only part I had left to do today was to cut the cardboard to go in the bottom and cover it with fabric. There were no instructions as to how to best cover the cardboard, so I did it in the same manner as I would wrap a gift using double sided tape to hold it in place and then blind stitching the loose edges. I did press all of the sides under about a half an inch before wrapping the cardboard. That approach seemed to work well and resulted in a nice finished look, although it was a bit time consuming to do the hand stitching.

Now I just need to get it wrapped and in the mail. I should still be able to get it there by Christmas. Fortunately, I have the perfect box on hand so I will wrap it up this afternoon and run it down to the post office. Fingers crossed that I will be able to use the self service kiosk and avoid all the lines.

Getting with the Times...Finally!

2010-12-16T19:33:00.000-07:00

Up until this week, I have resisted not only getting a smart phone, or anything resembling a smart phone, but also didn't even have a texting plan for my phone. I used it for making and receiving phone calls. That's it.

I suddenly decided on Tuesday that I would like to try texting. I've had a couple of friends telling me that if I tried it, I wouldn't know how I lived without it. I was sure that wouldn't be the case, but I figured for $5 more a month, it would be worth a try. So I added texting to my plan.

The first thing I learned was that texting on a regular phone is not only highly inefficient, but also quite troublesome when you have no punctuation available, nor can you capitalize anything other than the very first letter of the text. But I muddled through anyway.

Then, as luck would have it, yesterday morning I received an email from Best Buy that included a "Hot Deal" on smart phones. No kidding. They were free. As in no cost to me. All I had to do was extend my contract for two years. No problem as I've had my carrier for 10 years, am extremely happy with them, and have no intention of changing.

So I placed my order, requested store pickup, and by mid afternoon, I had this baby in my hot little hands. It's an HTC Droid Incredible. I have a friend that has a Droid also, so he helped me with some set up things last night, but for the most part I found it quite easy and intuitive.

And yes, for those of you that were wondering, I can't imagine how I ever lived without texting LOL. I suspect I'm going to have to up my texting plan or I will be going over my limit which will cost me big bucks. Actually, for only $5 more per month I can get unlimited texting to anyone in network, which just happens to include everyone that I've currently been texting, so that seems like a worthwhile cost.

I was also able to order the same phone for free for the soon-to-be ex, who also finally got with the times and added texting to his phone too. He was more adamant than I was about having just a basic phone, but once he realized he could check email and surf the net on this phone, he was all in. Go figure.

Productive Quilting Day

2010-12-13T05:00:00.003-07:00

I spent the day at Dawn's yesterday and pretty much finished the last of the Christmas gifts I am making. Here is my aunt's bag that she requested when I saw her this summer. All I have left is to cover a piece of cardboard for the bottom. The bottom is folded up in the picture. The bag is actually quite a bit longer than it appears. This is the first bag I've made. I was apprehensive about it, but it turned out to be much easier than I expected.

After I was done with the bag, I started the quilting on Collage Applique. I am doing a small stipple in the white areas using Rainbows thread in Jester. This is my progress so far:

On a non quilting note, the moving truck departed on Tuesday at 4 a.m. I was a bit out of sorts for the rest of the day, but the rest of the week and weekend have been great, in spite of having to evict a snake from the house on Friday night. After I convinced Echo to give it up that is. When I tried to get it away from him, he hissed at me and took off streaking through the house with it and finally dropped in the master bedroom. Oy vey. I did take pictures; however, I will spare you so that no one is freaked out. The snake was a young Desert Nightsnake, so if anyone wants to see what it looked like, just do a google search. I did release the snake into the backyard, completely unharmed. I suspect that he was in the garage and somehow made it into the house during the commotion of the move.

Christmas Gifts Done!

2010-12-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

I finished sewing down the last binding on my sister's three Christmas quilts this past week. I love sewing down binding, so this was an enjoyable process for me. I used Connecting Threads Essentials thread in various colors for all of the quilting.

The finished Christmas table mat. I used my walking foot to do the quilting around the flower in the center. I couldn't get a good picture of the center quilting, but I'm hoping if you zoom in on the second picture that you can see it. I really like how this quilt turned out. I hope my sister does too!

The Halloween Octagon. I really like the striped binding on this one.

And the Autumn Octagon.

Crazy for Dots & Stripes!

2010-12-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile know that I have a thing for dots. I have quite a collection of dot fabrics, but am always on the lookout for more. When my sister bought me a gift certificate for Fat Quarter Shop for Christmas, I was pretty sure that I was going to use it for dot fabrics since FQS has a great selection. I've had the GC since July and have been waiting patiently for a good sale. That day arrived on Black Friday when FQS offered twenty percent off everything. Perfect! That was just what I was waiting for and I didn't hesitate to place my order LOL. I have also gotten really interested in stripes lately after I used one for binding one of my sister's Christmas quilts, so I ordered quite a few stripe prints as well.

The GC was for $200 (purchased for only $160 during the special sale in July), which qualified my order for free shipping. When all was said and done, I owed $25. Not bad at all, especially when you see how much I got, which I bet is what you are waiting for. So without further adieu, here is my loot from the FQS. Of course it was beautifully packaged. I didn't take the fabrics out of the individual bags yet because they are easier to store as they are right now. You'll have to trust me that the bags with stripes are full of great stripe fabrics. I got 51 different cuts of fabric ranging from 1/2 yd to 1 yd each.

But that's not all. You had to know that, didn't you? Dawn and I hit a local quilt shop on Friday as well and I picked up a nice stripe fabric at 25% off and a couple of dot fat quarters. That filled up my punch card, giving me $25 in store credit, so I went back the next day and between using a 40% off coupon and my credit, I picked up 5 yards of this gorgeous batik for less than $8, including almost $3 of sales tax, so basically 5 bucks. The other fabrics are the ones I got on Friday, plus a couple of Kaffe Fasset fabrics that Dawn had added to her order for me.

And of course the cats have been up to their usual activities. Sassy recently learned how to get to the top of the entertainment center and she somehow does it very quietly so you can't catch her before she gets up there *sigh*. Once she's up there, she stays towards the back where she knows you can't reach her. Here she is just an hour or so ago hanging out with her kitty friend that lives on top of the entertainment center.

And here she is standing on her house, desperately trying to reach the curtains, which thankfully she can't or I'd probably find her hanging from them.

Echo has also spent time on the house since I moved it in front of this window.

Tyrone helped me changed the furnace filter this week by testing the ladder for me before I used it. He is quite adept at climbing ladders.

Echo was helpful too...he closely supervised the quilting of my sister's Christmas quilts.

And Sassy tested them for softness afterwards.

And here she is apparently using her back leg as a pillow. She has the weirdest sleeping positions of any cat I've ever owned.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends in blogland! I have many things to be thankful for this year, and the friends I've made since I started my blog last December are near the top of the list.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

Had a Productive Quilting Weekend

2010-11-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

As I had hoped would be the case, I had a pretty productive quilting weekend. I spent yesterday at Dawn's and first up, I basted the two table mats that I had made for my sister's Christmas gifts that I posted about here. I also got the autumn octagon mat cut out and partially assembled. I finished the assembly today and also got it basted, so now all three are ready for quilting. I'm hoping to tackle that next weekend.

Here is the basted autumn octagon (same pattern as the Halloween one) and the backing. I didn't get a very good picture of the backing, but it's from the Gobble Gobble line by Sandy Gervais. I love, love, love this fabric and am happy to have a decent size scrap of it left.

And the basted Halloween octagon and Christmas table mat as well as the backings. I really love the backings on these too!

Stash Enhancement!

2010-11-12T05:00:00.003-07:00

Ok, so after I did my previous post about not getting anything quilty done recently, I remembered that I have spent some time buying fabric over the past couple of weeks. How could I forget that??? The first purchase was from Hancocks of Paducah. No special reason...just had the urge to buy fabric, so I ordered some Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs fabrics. Some were back ordered, but I've received most of them.

Shortly after I received my package from Hancocks, Jackie had a great post market sale with 25% off everything in her store. Well, who could resist that? Certainly not me LOL. So I ordered a bunch of small cuts of mostly Kaffe and Jacobs fabrics, with some batiks thrown in for good measure. Here's my haul from the last couple of weeks, minus the fabrics from Hancocks that haven't arrived yet. Oh, and yesterday I ordered a couple of Moda Saltbox Harvest layer cakes from Fat Quarter Shop at 50% off. I love that fabric line, so was waiting for a sale to pick some up. Fifty percent off certainly met that criteria!

Dark Kaffe & Jacobs fabrics:

Medium Kaffe & Jacobs fabrics:

Light Kaffe & Jacobs fabrics:

And all of the batiks:

No Quilting Going on Around Here

2010-11-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Since my marathon quilting session the weekend before last, I've done nothing on the quilting front, nada. Work has been busy, which is unusual for this time of year, and of course there's the divorce and move stuff for T going on. I got the divorce decree all prepared this past weekend, so it's ready to file the first couple of days of January. T's move day is now just 4 weeks away. We are making good progress with the to do list and should be ready once it's time to actually pack up the truck.

I did spend time picking out paint colors for the rooms I'm going to paint and I went and got paint samples from Lowe's. This coming weekend we are getting rid of most of the master bedroom furniture as it's old and neither of us wants it, so once that room is fairly empty I'll test out the colors I picked. If they look ok, then that room will be the first one I paint. Also this coming weekend, I have a quilting day at Dawn's, so I should actually have some quilty related stuff to post about soon!

Oh, on the pet front, Sassy and Echo both went for exams and their three year booster shots this week. Both did great and were in excellent health. I also discovered that Sassy can actually meow when she wants, and quite strongly I might add LOL. She normally just trills and squeaks, but on the ride to the vet in her carrier, she made it quite clear that she was not happy to be confined!

For those looking for a feline fix, here is a picture of the boys sleeping on my bed this week and also a picture of Sassy where she isn't supposed to be...on top of the armoire in my room *sigh*.

Indian Summer is Quilted!

2010-11-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend I ditched pretty much everything else that needed to be done and spent the weekend having my own personal quilting retreat. It was fabulous! I was raring to go on Saturday morning, so after my coffee, I got out the backing fabric for Indian Summer and got the back made. I had already prewashed the batting the day before, so next up was layering and basting so I could get started on the quilting, which was what I really wanted to do. I had the basting all done by late afternoon. I took a trip to my personal thread shop and selected King Tut #933 for the top and Essentials #20882 for the back.

I quilted and quilted and quilted and by late Sunday afternoon I was done. I thought I was done earlier than that, but decided that the quilt needed some more quilting, so back to the machine I went. So here is Indian Summer all quilted and ready for trimming and binding:

A couple closeups of the quilting on the front:

And the back, with a closeup of the quilting there as well:

And you had to know that I probably had some help with the process over the weekend. I had help in the sewing room and Echo also helped while I was basting the quilt.

I also learned the hard way on Saturday night that I can never, ever leave thread on the sewing machine unattended when Echo is around. I came back to find the King Tut thread chewed in half and a piece sticking out of Echo's mouth. When I pulled on it, about 2 feet of thread came out. YIKES. And please note, you are never supposed to pull things like that out in case it's already ingested and wrapped in their intestines, but I just reacted. Thankfully he hadn't swallowed it, but I didn't know if he had eaten more thread, so he got a couple of syringes of peroxide (it makes cats vomit). Within five minutes the peroxide worked and thankfully no more thread. But lesson learned. Echo has now eaten yarn and thread, and seems obsessed with both, so I will have to be extra careful so he doesn't get into something that could kill him, which both of those things can do if a cat ingests them.

Strings from Stash is Done!!

2010-10-31T06:42:00.000-07:00

I put the last stitches in the binding of Strings from Stash on Friday night. Woo hoo! I love, love, love this quilt. It was so much fun to make from start to finish. The story of this quilt is this post and this post. The second post also includes a tutorial on how to make string blocks if anyone is interested in making a quilt like this themselves. It's really quite easy.

Here is the finished quilt:

And here's the back:

So far this weekend I have been like a quilter possessed working on Indian Summer. I made the backing yesterday morning, got the quilt layered and basted and I am half done with the quilting. I'm hoping to finish up the quilting today.

Oh, and as a side note, Echo has received no less then 2 more baths from Maya since I posted about the first one on Thursday. He seems to like it, so whatever floats his boat I guess LOL.

Recycled Afghan Project in Progress

2010-10-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I posted about recycling the yarn from various afghans. The first one I started with was one that I had made quite a few years ago. This is the afghan before I took it apart:

When I needed something mindless to work on over the last few months, I pulled out the balls of yarn from this afghan and have been making these 11 x 11 inch squares. My tentative plan is to sew them together into a rug. The crocheting is very tight so the squares are pretty sturdy and I think could hold up fairly well as a decorative rug.

Here are the five squares I've completed so far along with the current balls of yarn I'm working with. I believe I got about 14 large balls from the afghan:

And here is a closeup of a couple of the blocks. I just weave in the next color when I run out of the previous one and then trim the ends once the block is done. I'm using different balls of yarn at the same time to make sure I have enough variety of color in each block. I'm not real pleased with the one that ended up with so much white, but I'm hoping that if I put it between blocks with only a small amount of white, that it will balance out.

I've been lax lately about taking pictures of the felines, but I did get a couple recently. Here's miss princess (Sassy) surveying her kingdom from atop the plant shelf.

And poor Echo. Maya decided that he needed a bath again yesterday *sigh*. She is very thorough and he is very tolerant except if she tries to wash his private parts LOL. Yesterday she just licked and licked and licked for about five minutes before he got tired of it and walked away. She just followed him and started up again LOL.

Indian Summer Top is Complete!

2010-10-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

Dawn and I both purchased this kit by Judy Niemeyer during a Memorial Day sale in 2009. The kit included all batik fabrics, but they were random colors rather than autumn colors, so not quite as much of an Indian Summer look like on the pattern cover, but pretty nevertheless. We both worked on the quilts last summer and I got as far as the quilt center before I got burned out on paper piecing. Never one to leave a project unfinished for any length of time, Dawn soldiered on and completed the flying geese pieced border using the foundations provided in the kit and ultimately had her quilt top complete by the end of the summer. Mine has been sitting in the closet since then.

Last weekend when I was at her house, she had gotten her quilt basted and was starting on the quilting. Well, that prompted me to drag mine out for our quilting day yesterday. In the spirit of actually getting it done, I went with plain borders rather than the flying geese, although I did use the same fabric that I had planned to use with the pieced border. I also cut the binding strips, which will be the same burgundy fabric as in the inner border. Dawn used the same fabric for her inner border and for her binding as we bought it at the same time, but my outer border came from my stash, as did all of the fabrics that I am using for the back. Gotta love that stash! Here is my finished top:

And here is Dawn's with the flying geese border:

I find it interesting that even though we started out with identical fabrics in our kits, our quilts still ended up looking different due to the different fabric combinations that we used in each block. Her top is also slightly larger than mine as she used the piecing lines for flannel so that her blocks would end up a bit larger. I used the regular lines for mine.

Getting those borders cut and sewed on, and the binding strips cut, was the only thing I got done yesterday! It was a heavy talking day, we took a long lunch, and we both got multiple phone calls during the day, so I suppose it's not bad considering the amount of time that we actually spent quilting was not that long. I'm hoping to get the back made soon so I can get going on the quilting. Now that I've got the top done, I'm anxious to get this quilt completely done. I'm thinking I may hang it on what will soon be one of MY walls. I'm really looking forward to making this place mine. It should be fun!

Progress on Christmas Gifts and a Little Stash Enhancement

2010-10-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday at Dawn's and actually did some sewing! The last time I did any sewing was also at Dawn's house. It seems when I'm home lately I'm either working on work or working in the garage lol. But yesterday I got started on my sister's Christmas gifts. I got two of her table mats cut out and pieced. Both of them are made from patterns, something that is rare for me, and I followed the directions exactly, which is even rarer for me LOL. Usually I design my own quilts or at the very least, rewrite the instructions for somebody else's design to make it more "me friendly". But not this time. I followed the instructions for both patterns to the letter.

Here's the first one. The fabrics were kitted up with the pattern at the quilt shop in Devils Lake, ND, and I thought they did a fabulous job with the fabric choices.

This quilts is from this pattern by G.E. Designs. It's designed as a Quilt As You Go pattern, but I wanted to be a bit more creative with the quilting, so I just pieced the top as instructed and will baste it and quilt it the traditional way. My sister wants one more topper in this pattern, with different fabrics, so you will be seeing this design again, probably soon.

I also pieced this little table topper. It is from this pattern by Atkinson Designs. This is a great pattern that is pretty easy to piece if you are careful with the bias edges and follow the instructions exactly. As a bonus, it comes in 3 sizes. I made the smallest size.

You will also be seeing this pattern again as my sister picked out one more set of fabrics that she wants made up in this design.

And here are the new batiks I got last week that I mentioned in my last post. All southwest designs, of which I don't really have many in batiks, so they will be a nice addition to my stash.

And the cat backing I got for 40% off and a random dot fat quarter that I found in the $1.25 bin. The dot fabric is a Michael Miller fabric and the cat fabric is from a new line by Red Rooster.

Fall Quilt Parade

2010-10-14T17:42:00.000-07:00

Fall is my favorite season and it is finally starting to arrive in Phoenix. Well sort of. It's cooling down at night and only in the 90's during the day. That is cool compared to 105 plus temperatures that we were experiencing previously with low's in the 80's overnight. We have actually been able to shut the A/C off a couple of nights and open the windows.

I think part of why I love fall is that I'm a fall baby. In fact, today is my birthday and it has been a great day! I had some final tax work to finish for the deadline tomorrow, but it only took a few hours. Then this afternoon Dawn had to run to the quilt shop for some thread, so I went along since I was done with my work. We both found some great batiks, on sale for 20% off, and then I also found a really cute cat fabric that I bought for a backing using a 40% off coupon. I don't think I would have bought anything had I not gotten a discount...the regular price per yard on all of the fabrics I got was $10.59. Ouch. I knew prices were going up, but to see even regular cotton fabrics priced at over $10/yard was hard to swallow. I can understand the batiks somewhat, but they were the same price as the regular fabrics. Go figure. Seeing those prices really makes me appreciate my stash even more.

It has been busy, busy, busy around here between work and divorce stuff. We got everything hammered out last week and filed the papers on Wednesday. Now we just wait until January when everything can be finalized. AZ has a mandatory 60 day waiting period and since that puts us into December we decided to just wait until January to finalize everything and file taxes jointly for 2010, which will save quite a bit in tax. Why pay more just to have everything finalized a few weeks earlier. We bought a ticket for T's father to fly in on 12/5. They will pick up the moving truck on the 6th, load it up and be on their way to Ohio with a stop in Texas to pack up the stuff in that house. In the meantime, we have been spending many hours going through things to split them up, getting rid of what neither of us wants, and then packing what T will be taking with him. We started with the garage and have made a lot of progress, but there is still lots more to go.

So on to the Fall Quilt Parade that I mentioned in the title to my post. Having been busy lately with so many other things, I've done virtually nothing on the quilting front. I have put some stitches in the binding of Strings from Stash, but that's about it, and I haven't even done that for over a week. Since I have nothing current to show, I've decided to share a few of the fall quilts I've made over the years.

The quilt below is one of the very first quilts I pieced when I started quilting in 2001 and I still love it to this day. I call it Moda Bear Paw because all of the fabric for the blocks was from Moda and the block is the Bear Paw block. I am so creative with my quilt names, aren't I? LOL

I've also made a few fall items for my sister - two small table quilts and a set of placemats.

And this last quilt was made from the rejected 4 patch units from a queen size quilt I made for my soon to be ex MIL. The orange didn't play nicely with the rest of the fabrics in that quilt, but it was perfect with the batik I had in my stash that I used for the border.

My How Time Flies (Warning - Heavy on Pet Pics)

2010-10-04T05:00:00.006-07:00

It's hard to believe that it's been a year since we went to the shelter to look at Echo and came home with both of these cuties:

We had lost our 19 1/2 year old cat two days previously and he was the second cat we lost in 2009, so I was already scoping out the shelters by the afternoon of his passing. I finally found Echo on the Arizona Humane Society site and decided to go down and look at him. Sassy ended up being in the cage right next to him, so the next thing you know we are coming home with both of them. We had started the year with four cats, so it wasn't really a stretch to consider going back to being a four cat household.

Both Sassy and Echo had to be in quarantine for two weeks due to kitty colds. We set up a dog crate in my office and Echo stayed in there at night and had the run of the office during the day, while Sassy took up residence in the guest bathroom, which didn't make her very happy at all. We used the two weeks to introduce them to the dogs since they weren't contagious to them, just the other cats.

Here's Sassy in her temporary room, showing off her bald little belly. She had been just been spayed a few days before we adopted her.

Sassy didn't care for the dogs too much at first, but Echo took to them right away. Here's him meeting Koda. Is that not too cute how he put his little paw on Koda's? He does that to me when he lays on my desk while I'm working...rests his little paw on my hand. I think it's to make sure that I don't forget he's there. Like I could miss him laying across my desk LOL.

He was equally friendly with Maya:

Once she was free from the bathroom, Sassy pretty much took over the place and apparently no longer had any concerns about the dogs:

Sassy hard at work on the laptop:

And a few more random Sassy pictures from her first month with us:

Here is what Echo's head looked like after his first unsupervised play date with Koda. Don't worry, he was fine!

And more random Echo photos from his first month with us:

And finally, this is why we didn't put up a Christmas tree last year. We did a test run with it up for a couple of days with no decorations. In previous years, the top of the tree was not bent at a 90 degree angle, nor did it include a cat as a topper, so down it came after we found this one day. The tree is 8 feet tall, so Echo was about 6 feet up. We thought taking it down was the best move for everyone's sanity at that point, but mainly ours.

Progress!

2010-10-03T08:01:00.001-07:00

Progress seemed like an appropriate title to this post since I did make a lot of progress on things these week. Except for work. I'm way behind with that, so it could get crazy this coming week with the 10/15 tax deadline coming up. I find it adds to the suspense and excitement of a deadline to not receive the information until the very last minute. And then there's the returns for which I haven't even received the information yet. That's even more exciting. I'm not sure what the strategy is there on the part of the client. I mean, do you really want me to have to scramble to finish your return, and barely have enough time to input the information, or would you rather give me a little more time so I could actually look at things and perhaps ask follow up questions that might save you some money? Personally I'd like the latter approach, but apparently some people do not. I guess they just like to live on the edge. To each their own.

But I digress. As I said, I did make progress on some other things this week. Most of the week was spent hammering out the asset division and other aspects of the divorce and preparing the Petition for filing. With any luck, I will be able to file tomorrow, or at the very least, in the next few days, so that is great news. And I think we are both as satisfied as we can be at this point, so that is good too.

Thankfully after a week of dealing with divorce stuff, I had a quilting day scheduled yesterday at Dawn's. As usual, it was a great day and we both got a lot done. Dawn worked on quilting this great cat quilt she is making for her MIL for Christmas and I assembled the quilt center for this quilt. It really doesn't look much different than the picture in the previous post except Laura was kind enough to email me and tell me that I had a block turned the wrong way so I did remedy that. With no seams to match up, this top was a piece of cake to assemble.

I'm not sure what I'm doing yet for the borders. I'm thinking that a pieced border might be nice, particularly if I could use up the partial strip sets that I didn't use for the blocks. We'll see. I'll have to think on that for awhile. I also started stitching a cross stitch ornament this week, but the part that's done is really nothing to see at this point, so I'll wait to show that until I'm further along.

I didn't take any decent cat pictures this week, but I did catch Maya looking pretty in the living room a couple of days ago. The dogs will be going with T eventually, so I will enjoy them while they are still here. I will miss them, well mostly Maya because Koda is a pain most of the time, but I just can't realistically handle all six animals and the house on my own.

Long Time, No Blog

2010-09-26T18:11:00.001-07:00

It seems like forever since I've done a blog post. I think this is the longest I've gone without posting. It's been a busy few weeks and I haven't done much on the quilting front other then to finish ironing the mountain of washed fabric and getting it put away. It's official now...I am definitely over capacity. My once neat storage system in the closet is now messy looking because there is too much fabric in there and I had to resort to putting a lot of it on the floor in front of the wire storage units.

Before I fell off the blogging grid, I mentioned having some major personal issues going on right now. I hadn't intended to discuss them on my blog, and I still won't in detail, but I decided that since this is a journal for me first and foremost, it probably warrants at least a mention. It will also explain any blogging absences that may occur over the next few months. In a nutshell, my husband and I are getting divorced after 17 years of marriage. It is my idea, so it obviously isn't a surprise for me, but there are a lot of things to be discussed and worked out, as well as paperwork to be prepared and filed, all while keeping up with my job. T arrived back in town yesterday afternoon, so today we started on documenting some things that need to be valued for the asset division, as well as organizing important paperwork that will need to be divided or copied (i.e. tax returns, etc.). We are trying to do everything without lawyers, so while T was back with his family, I prepared preliminary drafts of the various divorce documents for discussion and negotiation. The final preparation of the initial filing will happen as soon as we have all of the asset and property division issues nailed down. Once the paperwork is in motion, we can start working on getting him moved to wherever he decides to go - the house in Texas or back to Ohio where his family is. Either way, it will be a long distance move that will also take time to coordinate and execute. With luck, we will be able to finalize the divorce very early in 2011 so life can return to normal, or a new normal as the case may be!

Since I haven't been getting any actual quilting done lately, I thought I'd just do a "pets on parade" feature for the rest of this post.

First up we have Maya. As I mentioned in a post about her back in July, she has a stick obsession. Whenever there is a pile of yard trimming waiting for disposal, she always roots around to find the perfect stick. This time she hit the mother lode and found a nice thick tree limb. She laid with it until Koda came and took it away from her LOL.

Tyrone has been sleeping at the end of the couch recently. I'm not sure if he decided to get up the other day and then changed his mind, but here's how I found him.

Sassy demonstrating one of her unusual sleeping positions, which is not unusual for her at all!

And what is up with cats' obsession with laying on fabric? Over half the bed was available to them, but no, Tyrone and Echo had to lay ON the fabric that I had pressed and folded to be put away. And yes, Tyrone is on a stack of fabric. If you look closely you can see a bit of it under his chin. And Echo managed to spread his DNA on to multiple stacks of fabric. Thank goodness for lint rollers.

I've mentioned in the past that Echo isn't the brightest bulb in the pack. Here's where I found him the other night. I was hand washing my swimming suit in the sink and Echo was laying on the vanity with his tail half submerged in the water. He seemed to be completely oblivious to that fact. It was so wet that I had to wring it out!

And finally, I almost added another pet to the menagerie this week, but instead opted to release him. This baby lizard lived in my bathroom for about 24 hours before I decided that he stood a better chance outside than in my bathroom with the cats around. I was THIS close to going and buying an aquarium, but figured that I didn't need any extra creatures to feed and care for right now. He sure was cute though!

Christmas Gift #2 is Done!

2010-09-09T16:50:00.000-07:00

I finished the second flannel baby quilt I wrote about here just in time to send it home with T so I didn't have to ship it later. This one will be a Christmas gift for our nephew's daughter born last November.

Here is the front of the finished quilt - so soft and sweet looking - perfect for a little girl I think.

A closeup:

And the back:

And the front and back together. I thought they coordinated very nicely and everything was from my stash, including the quilting thread!

I was also washing some fabric this week and look who had to "help" with that process. Yes, that would be Sassy in the dryer once again :-). And yes, I already failed at my "don't buy anything until the end of the year" pledge and I purchased some more Kaffe Fasset fabrics. But they were so worth it, and basically free since I used some of the money from my recent Ebay sales to buy them. So if they were free, that doesn't really count, does it? LOL

Just What The Doctor Ordered

2010-09-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

After dropping T at the airport on Saturday morning, I have spent the last three days in blissful solitude. The headaches and sinus problems I've been having lately have all but disappeared. Just goes to show how damaging stress can be. I took the entire weekend off from work too, for which I will probably pay the price this week, but it will have been worth it. I continued with my power sewing and also got some sorting done in the garage, paid the bills, got the house cleaned and did a load of laundry. Oh, and I spent quite a few hours yakking on the phone with family and friends, which was great.

So back to the power sewing. I'm sure you are anxious to see how the project I spoke about on Friday has progressed. With the help of my QC team, I was able to accomplish quite a bit.

Echo supervised the fabric selection:

And Sassy helped with the pressing:

When all was said and done, I ended up with this quilt top I laid out yesterday. After all that sewing, I wasn't in the mood to sew it together, but the rows are labeled and ready to assemble. I will worry about the border selection once the quilt center is put together. I'm sure I will have something in my stash that will work. I also went way overboard sewing the light strip sets, so I've got a good start on a second quilt that will use these blocks.

A closer look at the blocks. Totally scrappy, which you know I love.

Echo tested the blocks out too and gave his approval.

After I finished laying out the blocks yesterday, I did a load of laundry. As I came back to get more clothes to hang up, look what I found in the dryer:

When I came back the second time, Tyrone had apparently decided that Sassy must be on to something with the dryer, so now he was in it checking it out. Goofy cats.

Power Sewing

2010-09-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

I have some major stuff going on in my personal life right now that I don't intend to blog about, but suffice it to say that it's wearing on me mentally and I found myself unable to put two thoughts together for work today. So what's a quilter to do when that happens? Mindless power sewing, that's what!

I pulled out my 1 1/2 and 2 inch strip containers and came up with a basic plan. I started with the light 2 inch strips and the dark 1 1/2 inch strips. You can see that the containers are pretty full, so some of these strips needed to be used up.

One of my goals for 2010 was to make a quilt from my 1 1/2", 2", and 2 1/2" strip bins. Of course I originally intended to make one quilt from each bin, but seeing as it's September already, I'm willing to fudge a bit and get a two for one by combining the different sizes into one quilt.

I sewed strip sets together today starting with a 2 inch light strip, adding a 1 1/2 inch dark strip, another 2 inch light, another 1 1/2 inch dark and finally another 2 inch light strip. I plan to do the same process alternating 2 inch dark strips with 1 1/2 inch light strips, but didn't get that far today. The strip sets finish at 7 inches wide, or they should anyway. Not all of mine did, but they were close enough.

I cut 7 x 7 squares and then cut the rest of the strip set into whatever size I could get out of it. The 7 x 7 squares will be used for the basic quilt I originally thought of and the leftover units will be set aside for now. I think I have an idea for those too, but for now I'll focus on using the large units.

Here's what I have to show for the afternoon:

I've got 14 of the large units made, but will need a lot more. No worries though as I'm sure I will need many more mindless sewing days over the next number of months and now I've got a project to work on during that time. I got quite a lot of smaller units too, so those will be a nice start to the other quilt I have in mind.

And of course I have to include the requisite cat picture. Today Tyrone is the featured feline. He usually doesn't get too much publicity as Sassy is usually hogging the spotlight LOL. But as you can see, she still managed to get her time in as she is in the background of the picture. Tyrone and Sassy were both supervising my sewing today and Tyrone was multi tasking by also doing the preliminary quality control work on some quilts waiting for basting. I thought it was cute how he propped his leg up on the bed while he was sleeping.

Basting, Quilting, and Basting some more...

2010-08-31T06:27:00.000-07:00

I spent Saturday at Dawn's and got quite a bit done on the quilting front, in spite of a stash enhancement trip for Dawn, leaving to pick up lunch, and a tremendous amount of yakking going on.

The first order of the day was to baste and quilt the flannel baby quilt I posted about here. T is taking off on Saturday for a three week visit to see his family, so if I can get this quilt done before he leaves, he can take both of the baby quilts with and I won't have to ship them at Christmas time. His mother will take care of the wrapping for me.

For the quilting, I just did my wavy line grid pattern using King Tut in the Tiny Tuts color on both the front the back. I really like how it turned out. Here is the quilted, but untrimmed quilt:

A close-up of the quilting:

And the back:

Close-up of the quilting on the back:

The box from my sister didn't arrive until yesterday, so I couldn't do anything with the binding on Saturday, but the good news is that there was a half yard of the lavender fabric in the box, so plenty for the binding. I got it pressed last night and will hopefully make and attach the binding today.

After I got the baby quilt quilted, I spent the rest of the day basting some other small quilts. First up was this piece, which wasn't even supposed to become a quilt. I made up this piece just to test out and practice the buttonhole stitch on my machine, but I ended up liking it so well that I found a border fabric in my stash and added it to make this little quilt top. The binding will be the same fuchsia fabric as the inner border.

This next piece isn't really a quilt, more like a trivet. I had an orphan block from that bargello quilt I posted about awhile back. I added some borders and here's what I've got now:

And finally, I also got this small quilt basted and ready for quilting. This quilt is from my beginning quilting class in, ahem, 2001. Nothing like procrastinating a bit! The piecing leaves something to be desired, but I love it anyway, mainly because of the color combination. Purple and yellow rock, in my opinion. LOL

Family

2010-08-27T05:00:00.067-07:00

I tried to come up with a catchy title for this post, but in the end, I decided to just go with something simple. Really, the post is about seeing family while on vacation, and pictures from those trips, but seeing as even the most recent vacation to see family was almost two months ago, I felt it would be misleading to put "vacation" anywhere in the post title. I had planned to share these photos shortly after returning from my North Dakota trip back in July, but time has gotten away from me once again. I still wanted to document the trip for my own purposes, so I decided to go ahead and do a post now even though it's way after the fact. I also figured that I could use this as an opportunity to introduce you all to my family.

I'll state right up front that this post will actually contain pictures from my last two trips home, in 2008 and 2010. I wasn't blogging in 2008, but we got some excellent family photos during that trip whereas this trip we either didn't get great photos or we didn't get a photo at all.

Case in point. Me and my dad. Somehow we never got a picture of just the two of us during this trip, or even a picture of me, my sister, and him. During my trip in 2008, well, at the airport the day I flew back home, we got this picture. My dad is actually smiling in it, which is a small miracle! I liked it so much that Jen, my sister, had it enlarged to an 8 x 10 and I have it framed and hanging on my wall.

Also at the airport (nothing like waiting until the last minute), we got this picture of me, Jen, and Dad. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should probably point out that my sister is the natural blond in the family and I am the brunette. You certainly wouldn't know it by this picture, would you? LOL

Jen and I managed to get a picture of just the two of us this year during the Fourth of July gathering at Dad's house. Note to self - take pictures BEFORE standing out in the wind all afternoon and for sure before standing over a hot grill for an hour or two. Dad and I teamed up on the grill and everyone said we did a great job, excluding the two hot dogs that rolled off, so the wilted hair and melted makeup were worth it for the memories.

Dad and Jen. And another smile from Dad!

My dad had 13 kids in his family, of which 9 are still living. All but one of those 9 live in North Dakota and 7 of them were present for the Fourth of July gathering. It took some near threats of violence (not really, but it did take some convincing) to get them to pose together for a picture, but we did it. Here are my dad and his siblings. You might notice that the not smiling for pictures is somewhat of a family trait *sigh*.

Here are me, Jen, Gloria (Dad's significant other), and Dad. Not as good as the picture from 2008, but we'll take it.

When I was home in 2008, one of my Dad's brothers stopped by and we managed to get this picture of them. I hadn't seen my uncle in years, but used to spend a lot of time at his farm when I was growing up, so it was great to see him and also great to get this picture of he and my dad. They are ten years apart in age, with my dad being the younger one. And look, they are both smiling!

My mom also came from a large family - 10 girls. My poor grandfather. What he must have had to put up with! They are all still living except for my mom. We lost her to cancer in 1992. A bunch of my aunts and us got together both during my trip in 2008 as well as this year. In 2008 we were only able to meet for dinner together at a restaurant, but we got some nice pictures from that gathering.

Here are the five aunts that got together with us for dinner. The one on the far left is my godmother and two of the other four both lost their husbands in the last year, so it's been a rough year for my mom's side of the family.

The whole group of us:

I loved this picture that Jen took of me and my aunt Judy. We spent many a vacation at her house when I was young since she lived on a lake and her kids were roughly the same ages as Jen and I. I see her a bit more than the rest of the family because she comes down here for vacation sometimes and usually we can at least get together for dinner. And she has email, so it's easier to keep in touch.

And finally, a picture of a few of us cousins and another aunt (that would be number six for those of you keeping count), from this year's get together, which was held at the home of one of my aunts. My aunt is in the front left, next to her is my cousin Michael, his wife Patti, me, Jen, and my cousin Barb. The gathering this year was at Barb's mom's house. For those of you who have been reading my blog since February, it was Barb's dad that I posted about losing to cancer in early February and the day we got together was the day after what would have been my uncle's birthday, so it was nice for Barb and her mom to have a lot of family around that weekend. Barb and I were pretty close growing up and Michael is the son of my godmother so we spent a lot of time at their place too. I hadn't seen either Barb or Michael for over 10 years, so it was great to spend some time with them.

What I've Been Up To

2010-08-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

It was a busy week last week with lots of personal and work stuff going on, but I did manage to get some quilting time in. I spent Sunday at Dawn's and cut and layed out the second flannel baby quilt I am making for a Christmas gift. I used fabric samples from my stash along with a new dot flannel that I bought in North Dakota and just cut squares and put them together. Easy peasy. Here's the finished top. I'm not going to add a border as I think it works just like it is.

A closeup of some of the fabrics:

And the backing and binding. The backing is the plaid on the left. It is a brushed cotton fabric that I had in my stash. The binding is also from my stash, and hopefully some of my sister's stash. I don't have enough of the lavender fabric left in my own stash, but when I was back home my sister wanted to get rid of her fabric so I picked out a box full to be shipped to me with some other stuff she's sending. I'm pretty sure that she had some of the same lavender fabric and that I added it to my box. I hope so. Otherwise I have to go shopping for something. Either way, I'll find out soon enough as the box is en route to me as we speak.

Most importantly, I'm happy to report that the quilt top has been inspected for quality control and Echo tells me that it has passed. As a point of reference as to how big Echo is, the quilt top is 32 inches wide.

Of course I also have a couple of pictures of Sassy to share. She looks pretty cute in this first one.

Unfortunately, you can probably tell that she's in the pantry *sigh*. If she's nearby she comes running when you open the door and leaps in unless you can catch her first. We've given up trying to coax her out and instead just shut the door and leave her in there. With the intention of checking in a couple of minutes, of course. Let's just say that she's able to survive in there for longer than a couple of minutes. Or thirty.

Here's another picture where she looks quite comfortable in a place she shouldn't be. On top of the china cabinet. She was watching me work out. At least she was just watching and not offering any suggestions.

Ten Secrets to Living a Happy Life, in Pictures

2010-08-13T05:00:00.011-07:00

Everything you need to know about having a happy life can be learned from watching animals. Here are ten ways to make your life a happy one.

1. You should always be yourself, even if everyone else thinks you are a dork:

2. Practice yoga to reduce stress:

3. Don't try to fit where you don't:

4. Smile as often as possible.

5. Relax and just enjoy life:

6. Tolerate others that are different than you:

7. Make friends wherever you go:

8. Share with others:

9. Stay healthy by eating good food like lettuce:

And finally, number 10 - get plenty of rest:

My regular readers will recognize Sassy, Tyrone, and Echo in these pictures as they are regular contributors to the blog, and the dog picture was in a post just recently, but I wanted to identify the other two cats I showed. Kati is the cat in picture #1. I got Kati as a kitten when I lived in Grand Forks, North Dakota and she moved with me to Arizona in 1990. I lost her in 2005 to kidney failure at the age of 16.

The cat in the picture for #4 is Baby whom we lost in July 2009 at the age of 18 due to kidney failure. She was a stray that we tamed and she was a petite little thing her entire life, never topping 6 pounds. She was truly one of the best cats we ever had.

Flannel Baby Quilt is Done!

2010-08-12T07:11:00.000-07:00

Christmas gift #1 is done! And it's only August. Woo hoo! I made the binding for the flannel baby quilt on Sunday, attached it, and finished hand sewing it down on Monday. I was really liking the binding through flannel. The needle was sliding through like butter. I make so many batik quilts that I'm used to binding those and this was a refreshing change to say the least.

I've decided that this quilt will probably be the gift for our other nephew's baby that was born last November. She is a cousin to the new baby just born in July. I gave the parents a fuchsia and yellow afghan I'd made for her for Christmas last year and they said the colors matched her room, so I thought that this quilt would go as well. Plus, it's on the bigger side, so it may work better for her than a 6 month old. I've pulled all of my other flannel, which isn't a lot, to see what I can put together for the new baby for Christmas.

So here's the finished flannel baby quilt that I originally posted about here.

On a feline note, poor Echo is getting goop put in his eye again. When we first got him from the shelter last fall, he had a bad kitty cold and his one eye was really messed up. Back in May, his other eye started acting up and the vet said the kitty cold virus will probably recur for his entire life. So he got goop put in his right eye for a number of weeks because it didn't clear up as quickly as it should have. He's been fine until this week when now the other eye is watering and inflamed. So now he's getting goop put in that eye for 10 days. Poor guy. At least it doesn't make him feel bad and he's his usual self other than looking like a pirate half the time because he's holding his one eye closed.

Summer Zipper Done

2010-08-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post today to show you my stitched piece I finished recently - Bent Creek Summer Zipper. I started stitching this piece in early July while on vacation and signed my name to it on July 31st. It must be some sort of record for me to actually start and finish a stitched piece in the same month. Usually it's not in the same year! And, I am diligent about "signing" my stitched pieces, even though I am still completely lax on getting my quilts labeled. The stitched pieces are so much easier to sign than doing a quilt label, but that's no excuse.

Here's the stitched piece.

The reason it's named Summer Zipper is because these kits come in cute little zipper bags and there was one for each season. So far I've stitched Autumn and Summer. The bags are great! They are super sturdy. This designer had another Zipper series where the bags were long and skinny like pencil cases and I've been using one of those bags forever as my take along sewing kit with needles, scissors, seam ripper, etc. It's perfect and is still holding up all these years.

I posted about one of the other Zipper pieces back in December in one of my first blog posts. Since most of you weren't around then, here is that piece again. It was called Scared Crow Zipper and it was super fun to stitch.

And here's your Sassy fix for the day. She looks innocent in this picture, but what she's really doing is waiting for us to leave so she can pull the clothes down that are hanging on the drying rack. We now either need to lock her up or lock the clothes up while they are drying. Little holes from kitty nails in clothes are not a good thing.

Halloween Cat Quilt is Finally Done

2010-08-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

I put the final stitches in the binding of this little quilt last week. This is one of my oldest UFO's. I pieced this top when I'd only been quilting for about 6 months way back in 2001. Not having a clue or the skills to quilt it, it sat for all these years. I finally felt comfortable with my FMQ skills earlier this summer to give it a go on quilting this quilt. I just did a simple loop-de-loop in the cat blocks and then did my wavy line thing in the sashing and borders. I am pleased with how it turned out and now I can display it for Halloween. If I remember. I am not the best about decorating for holidays, especially one that I'm not too thrilled about. Don't get me wrong, I love the whole color scheme of Halloween, and love making Halloween quilts and stitched pieces. I just don't like the actual holiday itself.

So here is the finished Halloween Cat quilt:

A couple of close-up pictures of the blocks and the quilting. I used Sulky Rayon thread in purple and orange for the quilting - purple in the blocks and orange in the sashing and border.

A peek at the back:

And finally, a picture of our own Halloween cat, Mr. Echo, lounging in the sun:

Lots of Cat Mats Done!

2010-08-08T14:44:00.000-07:00

When I took my trip to North Dakota recently, I took a lot of yarn with for crocheting cat mats on the plane and when visiting. It was definitely worth the luggage space it took up. I even bought two more skeins of yarn while I was there since I was quickly using up what I had brought with me.

I got six done while I was back home. This picture only has five mats in it because the sixth one was completed in the car on the day I left and I didn't get a picture. All of these mats were left with my sister to mail to me along with some other things of hers that she is passing on to me. These weighed just enough to put me over the weight limit for my checked bag. They also couldn't be put in my carry on because that was jam packed with all of the fabric I had purchased, which weighed far more than the cat mats. So, they had to stay behind.

I've gotten a few more in this style completed since I've gotten home. Actually, the colorful one in the picture below was mostly completed on the plane ride home.

I had some other yarn I wanted to use up, a melon color and some black, but rather than alternate the two to make the type of cat mat in the above pictures, I used a J hook and crocheted with two strands at a time, one of each color. I've never done that before and it was surprisingly easy and didn't take long at all to whip up the mat below. I will definitely use that technique again, maybe for a scrappy rug for the house. The colors in the picture look more orange and black, but the reddish yarn was really a melon color. This style is really thick and sturdy.

Flannel Baby Quilt - Quilting is Done

2010-08-07T05:00:00.003-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, my original gift idea for our nephew's new baby was a flannel baby quilt using a large piece of flannel that I had in my stash. I subsequently found a lightweight crocheted afghan at the thrift store in new condition and sent that instead. The flannel quilt will probably end up being the baby's Christmas gift.

This was definitely a quick and dirty quilt. The flannel piece was just large enough that if I cut it exactly in half I would end up with a quilt about 3 feet by 5 feet, plenty big to lay in the crib or on the floor. A few weeks ago Dawn and I had a quilting day and I spent the day basting and quilting this quilt. The quilting was simple too as I just quilted on the wavy lines in the flannel, alternating every other line so it wasn't too dense. The binding will be a blue moda marble from my stash.

Here is the full quilt. Not the greatest picture, but I didn't want to take the time to vacuumn up the dog hair from the shedding dogs in order to lay it on the floor. You can't tell how bright the fabric really is in this picture. Click on the close-up picture below this one and you will see the true colors of the fabric. It's really quite bright and Dawn said that all the activity on the print will provide visual stimulation for the baby. Who knew? I just bought the fabric because it was cute and on sale :-).

Confessions of a Fabriholic

2010-08-06T05:00:00.017-07:00

I figured before I show you all of the fabric I bought before and during vacation, I better fess up to some other stash enhancing that I've done this year that I never posted about. I just finished washing all of the fabric I've bought so far this year and let me assure you, it's ALOT. We are already in a drought and I don't think I have helped the situation one bit.

Given that I have gone a bit overboard with the buying this year, I have challenged myself to a "no-buy" goal from now until the end of the year, when I will use the GC my sister got me from the Fat Quarter Shop when they had GCs for 20% off over the 4th of July holiday. Given that I already have the GC in my hot little hands, and have had it since I arrived home on July 9th, I'd say I'm doing pretty good so far having not even been tempted to use it. Have I mentioned that the GC is for $200???? But it only cost $160. Great deal, huh? I kicked in $10 and the rest came from my sister. I am making her more table runners so the GC is what I got in exchange.

Are you ready? Here goes. This is everything else I've bought this year that I haven't already posted about. You might want to grab a cup of your favorite beverage and maybe take a bathroom break too as this is going to get a bit long. What can I say? Some people can't resist shoes while I can't resist fabric *sigh*.

During tax season I finally broke down and bought one of the Fat Quarter Shop's grab bag boxes that I'd been eyeing for quite some time. These boxes contain 12 pounds of fabric. That's alot of fabric in case you were wondering. They were on sale for 58.49, so a pretty good deal for that much fabric. FYI, they are REALLY cheap right now for anyone that is interested - $41.99, plus $10 shipping. I removed some fabrics from the box for my post tax season giveaway and this is what I had left. As you can see, most of what was in the box are good size pieces of fabric.

The darks:

The mediums:

And the lights:

I'm not sure when I bought these batiks, but it was on one of mine and Dawn's quilting days when we stopped by the shop near our houses. I think she needed something and I was supposed to just be along for moral support, but of course I had to get these, because I'm weak I tell ya.

Then along came a sale at Burgundy Buttons, which is a great on-line shop. I found them through Ebay, but you can buy directly as well. Anyway, this older Moda bundle was on sale for $60. It's Soiree by Lila Tueller. It fit right in with my new infatuation with "modern" fabrics. It's the first and only fat quarter bundle I have ever bought. So far *grin*.

And then there was the quick stop at the Quilted Apple in Phoenix while I was across town for a chiropractor appointment. These lovely items came home with me. A couple of yards of black dot fabric for a potential border, a batik, and two rolls of 6 inch strips. They sell the rolls of strips for $5.00 and there are 12 different fabrics cut 6 inches by WOF. Great for a scrap quilter like me.

Hmmm, what else. Oh yes. The pre-cut sale at Fabric World right before Easter - 25% off all pre-cuts. I have also developed a fascination for Layer Cakes, so off I went. I was really weak at this point as Easter weekend this year was right before the end of tax season, so I really needed something fun. I got two Layer Cakes and two Charm Packs of Butterfly Garden:

And two Layer Cakes and one Charm Pack of Blush. The charm pack was used almost immediately, so it did not make it into this picture.

Finally, I loved the Blush line so much that I decided that I had to get some coordinating yardage of my favorite pieces so I could make a decent size quilt or two from this line. I know, a scrap quilter wanting to limit themselves to just one line of fabric in a quilt. I couldn't believe it either. Here is the yardage I purchased from Fabric Shack, my favorite on-line shop.

I think that's it. Congratulations if you made it this far in the post! Soon I will post the sequel to my fabriholic confessions when I show you all of the fabric I bought before, during, and unfortunately after vacation, although the after vacation fabric wasn't much and most of it was the backing for the kit I won from Carrie.

Cross Stitch Pieces Framed & Ready to Hang

2010-08-05T05:00:00.010-07:00

One of my goals for this year was to get these two cross stitch pieces professionally framed. I finished the stitching on both of these pieces in 2009, so for once I wasn't dilly dallying too much to get them framed and on the wall. We won't discuss the year in which the stitching was started. I waited patiently until Joann ETC had a 60% off your entire framing order coupon, which happened to be in June, and then took both pieces in to have them framed. They were ready for pickup when I returned from my trip to North Dakota. Can you believe that the framing for both of these pieces with custom frames and museum quality glass was only $120? Plus tax, of course.

I've found that the key to getting pieces framed at places like Joann's is to find a good framer there that understands how to properly frame needlework using silk pins and stretching and then make sure you ask for them to do the work. I know how to do it, and Joann's will let you do the stretching and pinning part yourself, but I find it's more cost effective to just pay the pros to do it if I'm buying a custom frame, etc. If I am using a frame I have on hand, then I do everything myself. Don't even get me started on what Michael's did to some of my pieces. Never again will they touch any of my stitched pieces.

The first piece is by Shepherd's Bush, whom you cross stitchers out there will probably recognize since they've been around so long. I love their pieces. This one was a kit called Old Glory. It's stitched on linen with silk thread. Interesting lesson learned with this piece. I have always washed my silk pieces before framing, even though they say not to, and I've never had a problem. Until this piece. I used the Orvis soap for needlework like I've always done, but this time, one of the green silks used in the flower sections completely lost all of it's color. Everything else was fine, but I had to take all of that stitching out and re-do it.

The second piece I had framed is "B" by M Designs. I've met Mary, the designer behind this lovely piece, and for a time we talked frequently via email and on the phone. She's a great lady! Anyway, she charted an entire alphabet using this letter styling. The letter "B" is the only one I've stitched so far and it represents our last name. I stitched this piece on hand-dyed linen with Silk 'n Colors thread in Amethyst.

And for the kitty fans, here's Sassy helping me with some of the fabric I washed last week. As a side note, that dot fabric is one that I picked up in North Dakota. Isn't is great?

Testing the pile:

She also made sure that the drying rack was ready for the laundry I was doing:

She's so helpful!

Scorpions!

2010-08-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in a previous post that scorpion season is upon us here in the desert. Well, we have just had something happen that has never happened in the previous 13 summers that we have been in this house. I was working away in my office and DH was in the kitchen when we suddenly heard hissing and what we thought was a cat getting beaten up by one of the others.

Not so much.

DH went to investigate, as did Koda. He got there in time to see Echo take off running. When he caught up with him he realized that he had a scorpion in his mouth, as evidenced by the tail hanging out. Thankfully, Echo chose to drop the very much alive, adult scorpion at that point and DH stomped it. Oy vey. We've caught both Maya and various cats batting at scorpions or following them as they walk across the floor, but NEVER have we caught any with one actually in their mouths.

Echo seems to be fine and in fact has been hunting the same area hoping for more new toys to play with. I think I would have stroked out seeing that tail hanging out of his mouth. This after he ate some yarn yesterday and thankfully threw it right back up before it could do any damage. I know how dangerous stuff like that is for cats, so I'm normally very careful with the yarn, especially around Echo who I know likes to chew on stuff like that, but he got into some anyway.

Afghan for Nephew's New Baby

2010-08-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

One of our nephew's on DH's side of the family had a new baby on July 10th. Ok, he didn't have the baby, his significant other did, but you probably already figured that out. By the time I found out when the baby was due, I didn't have much time to come up with a gift. The first plan I came up with involved using a large piece of children's flannel from my stash, cutting it exactly in half and using half for the front and half for the back. By doing do, the quilt ended up just the right size for a baby and I had an easy to make gift.

After I got the quilting done on the quilt, I ran across this afghan at the thrift store. I had a coupon for 30% off, which made the price about $1.50. Can you believe it? $1.50!!! It is in perfect condition and much more appropriate right now for a summer baby. So I snapped it up and both Dawn and I thoroughly examined it to make sure it was indeed gift worthy. I ran it through the wash and it's been wrapped and mailed and is on the way to it's recipients.

Here is the full afghan:

And here's a close-up of the pattern and yarn. It's really pretty in person.

It is kind of depressing to see items like this end up in a thrift store after someone put so much work into it, but I'm glad I was able to rescue it and hopefully give it to a good home, provided the parents like it and will use it.

Oh, and I had an unplanned break to my work the other day.

Why, you ask?

Well, it could have been this that did it:

You could never accuse Echo of not getting comfortable wherever he's at. I know sooner snapped the picture when he suddenly rolled into the cup full of pens, etc., behind him, which of course tipped over hitting all of the other junk around it on my desk (yes, my desk is very messy right now), and startling him into full awakeness, which of course knocked more things over and off the desk. He's such a dork sometimes :-).

Mail from The One Who Isn't Rosie (aka Carrie Nelson)

2010-07-31T05:00:00.017-07:00

I had a really good week this past week. It started out with us getting DH's health insurance premium from Aetna - $366/mo with no pre-existing conditions excluded. Much more affordable than the portability policy through BCBS so we were very happy about that. Having our health insurance lined up has taken a huge load of stress off.

On Tuesday I found out that I was the runner-up winner of this lovely giveaway on the Fat Quarter Shop blog, courtesy of Miss Rosie's owner, Carrie Nelson. You know it's a good prize when Carrie's involved! Carrie is a fast shipper and seeing that we live in the same city, the box made it to me yesterday.

First I found a lovely handwritten note from Carrie. That lady has the most perfect handwriting. I'm so jealous. Anyway, in the note she mentions delivering my next parcel in person, but what she doesn't know is that if I win another giveaway from her, I want to come pick it up so I can see the "Magic Closet" full of Moda fabrics that Darlene mentioned over on her Quilting Daze blog awhile back. That seems like great fun.

Oh, and speaking of fun, I've had stuff leaving the house all week for ebay sales so it's been great to be getting rid of stuff I don't need and making some extra cash in the process.

What's that? You want to see what I got from Carrie? Oh yeah, that was the title of the post, wasn't it? Sorry, I have a short attention span and can get distracted faster than the wind blows. So here you go. The giveaway included this beautifully packaged Lumiere de Noel fabric, enough for the entire quilt top, plus a signed Schnibbles book, and this great Schnibbles project bag. Oh, and this cute little drawstring bag from French General.

But that wasn't all. Carrie being Carrie and the generous person she is, also included this extra little prize - two Wiscasset layer cakes! Woo hoo! This fabric, as well as the fabric in the kit, is gorgeous! Thanks Carrie!!!

If that wasn't enough good stuff for the week, this morning I was sorting the mountain of fabric needing to be washed, and there nestled between the bottom two pieces in the stack, was my 1 carat diamond solitaire ring that had been missing since the day after we returned from Texas in June. I knew exactly what had happened. I had taken the ring off in my sewing room to put lotion on and forgotten to put it back on. Well of course Sassy the thief has to take everything she can find that is loose and portable so I knew she had taken it, but just couldn't find where she'd put it. The fabric was stacked on the floor near the nightstand where I had left the lotion and I searched everywhere in that area, except in the fabric stack obviously, and could not find the ring, but I was convinced it was in the room somewhere.

About the same time the ring went missing I also found that the large eraser from my desk was MIA (Sassy again) as was the insurance policy I knew I had received for our Texas house. All three items were still missing when I left for ND, although I had ordered another copy of the policy by that time. One of the first things I noticed upon my return was that the eraser was back on my desk. DH said he had found it while I was gone, but couldn't remember where. Then I was going through my stack of paperwork to do's and there was that darn policy. I KNOW I looked through that stack multiple times before I ordered another copy. At that point, I was 2 for 3 and was really hoping that it meant the ring would show up soon too and today was finally that day. It is back on my finger and I will never leave it laying again! I swear!