365 Quilty Group

I have joined a group on FB and the challenge is to do one circle block a day for 365 days to make a quilt. It's been one month and everyone seems to be staying on track. SS is making square rounds and the initials of her loved ones, HB has started adding yoyo's to her grouping. CS has added fishes of the sea, JS is doing black and white, and SG is using a red background. I am using white on white, white on cream and tans as my backgrounds. I just started doing reverse applique this month. It's definitely different. I think I am really going to enjoy doing this as there will be a group of us keeping each other on track. You should be able to see my progress in my Flickr album. https://www.flickr.com/photos/sewripandsewagain/

Still Ripping!

Oh my GOSH! I am still ripping. I got the quilt sewn back together and what I felt was squared up to the best of my ability. I worked very hard to make sure that all the layers were nice and flat, no wrinkles. Then pin pin pin. Marked the center quilting area in a diagonal pattern with a yard stick, ruler and chalk. Quilting that went really well and fairly easy. Surprise!

Ugh, then I started on sewing around the borders. I "thought " I had done a pretty good job until I started doing the FM stars and loops on the larger outer boarder. My border started to lump. Take it out of the machine and look at the back. I couldn't believe what I saw. Wrinkles and lumps everywhere from sewing around the borders. So I ripped and ripped. Put it back on the board and stretched it as best as I could. This time I used spray glue. I love this stuff. I used it on Tyler's quilt with no pins whatsoever. I had minimum wrinkles to adjust while quilting it.

Using the spray glue for basting worked. I got around the borders with minimum wrinkling underneath. So I am now ready to get back to FM on the large border. So...what do you think?  I space out the stars with a ruler, then freehand them with chalk.  Do the swirls and loops up  to the star and very carefully do the star, come back the beginning and work my loops over to the other side of the star and on to the next star. I actually think it worked out pretty good, so far.

Rip, Rip, Sew, Rip

Rip, Rip, Sew, Rip. That's what I've been doing for days now. After deciding to remove the outside border of the "Buckaroo Stars" quilt and measuring it, I found that I needed to remove all the borders surrounding the main part of the quilt. I measured everything that I could possibly be measure so when I got ready to start adding the borders back on it would all match and be even.

Rhea's quilt in pieces. If she saw this she would probably call me nuts.

I did remember when I had originally made this quilt I had made it unusually long for a queen size quilt. I took off two rows of blocks. In doing so I ended up removing two of the stars. I had to remove two squares in different places to put the two stars back in the quilt.  My original goal when starting this quilt was to have fifty stars representing all 50 states in the quilt which meant I had to add about 30 more stars to the original pattern. While the quilt is in pieces, I noticed that I had accidentally put some of the same squares right next to each other. Something I hadn't notice before. I have taken the time to remove those pieces and replace them with other squares. It is slowly coming back together and looking like a quilt should.

While visiting another quilter's website http://lalaslovelys.blogspot.ca/  I saw the back of Lala's Lovely quilt back. It looked so neat and pretty I thought at first it was the front of the quilt.  I looked at mine and decided that I had better do some trimming of some threads and press it.  OK a lot of the threads. Not as good as hers but it does look better than it did.

Decluttering My House and My Life

I saw this website a couple of weeks ago that said "40 days 40 bags". It was an older post about a woman decluttering her house during Lent. Well, I know this isn't Lent, but it is the Holiday Season with Thanksgiving just a few days away and  Christmas just around the corner. Now I'm not nearly as enthusiastic as that woman was, but I am eager to get rid of a bunch of stuff that is cluttering up my house, my closets and my life.

I love crafts and doing them. I love to knit, crochet, sew and paint. I just love doing fun stuff. But I have found that I seem to have yarn, paint, fabric and scrap booking stuff all over the house stuffed in a closet, foot stool, cedar chest or storage boxes. I have sewing patterns that are over 20 years old and now to small for me or my daughters who have grown up. I have magazines that are almost as old and books that I never use anymore.

A couple of years ago I went through some of my craft and quilt magazines and gave some of them to my DIL and my niece. A couple of months ago when my DIL and son were here I gave her one big box of fabric and a small one with Threads magazines in it and I still don't know what to do with the ZigZag magazines and Sew Beautiful. I still have my school stuff from taking facial and nail classes. Plus I have a year or two worth of Nails magazines.

Today I cleaned out the cedar chest of all my yarn, various loose pieces and a couple of UFO's that I have had for twenty some odd years and never finished. This stuff is in my trunk to be donated to charity tomorrow.  I did however keep all my knitting needles and crochet hooks. That's a small investment over time and I might still want to work on a project or two now and again.

My main problem is I enjoy doing all this stuff and just don't seem to have enough hours in the day to be able to do all them. So I end up with projects half started or not quite finished and have lost all interest in finishing it like this really pretty purple afghan that I started 6 years ago. It's just shy the size of being lap size, but my dog Sadie has found she likes it.

Two years ago I wanted to make doll clothes and sell them. I have bunches of patterns, the dolls to fit them to, the fabric but inclination to do it. I am gradually selling off the dolls and keeping a few to give to granddaughters. They aren't really old enough yet to want to keep the clothes on the dolls. So I will keep the patterns for now and in a couple of years I can make clothes for their dolls. I remember my grandmother making me Barbie doll dresses out of the scraps from her ball gowns.

I have all kind of zippers, buttons, snaps, ribbon. A very good collection from 30 or more years of sewing and crafting. Wow, I am getting way off track tonight.  I still have closets and dressers to go through to clean out clothes I can't or won't wear anymore. I don't have a big shoe collection anymore. I got rid of most of those when I stopped working and having to be dressed up all the time. I know it's going to take me awhile to "Cleanse" my house, but it will be well worth it. I have found that I really liked making the couple of quilts I have made. I plan on just concentrating on doing those and maybe some small quilts to hang up or place mats.

Then maybe I will have some small control over the chaos that has taken over my house.

Tylers Quilt

It's finished! I was beginning to think I wasn't going to have it done in time for Christmas. I have worked really hard on this. I should have taken a better picture of the border and binding. I added my own special touch to the binding. Originally when the binding was cut it was also cut from the same fabric as the border and therefore wouldn't would show up very well. I just happen to have some extra fabric leftover from the backing so I cut it up and used it kind of like putting piping on but without the cording. I hand stitched the binding.

I had quite a bit of extra fabric and squares leftover that I decided to make two pillow case covers to match the quilt.

If I have to say so myself, I do believe I did a pretty good job for my first big quilt.

I have other projects in the works. Time to get them finished in time to send out for Christmas. I also got a new toy that I will blog about next time.

Busy Busy Busy

I've been really busy the last few days working on Tyler's quilt and getting ready for Christmas. I have actually finished quilting the quilt and the borders. I decided to stipple the borders. Now all I have to do is trim the quilt and put the border on. I am thinking of doing a dual colored binding. I saw it on a board in pinterest and I think it will solve my dilemma of the border and the binding being the same fabric.  I have enough of the backing left to put between the border and the binding, kind of like an edge or flat piping.

This is a close up of the stippling on the front

You can see the stippling better here on the back

I dont think I did half bad quilting.  I'm really excited about getting the binding put on and sending this off to my grandson. Since I will have it ready in time it will be a Christmas present for him.

These really werent that hard to make

I am in the process of making Christmas presents for both of my granddaughters. I also saw these Fabric Alphabet Letters on pinterest and went to Etsy to see about buying some. After looking at the price that some people are charging I decided just to make them myself. It only took me a little over a half a day to make the first set.  I think the girls will like them.

Quilting the Quilt

This is the corner with the border sewn on

It's been over a week since logging on here. I have had some family issues to deal with. Now that that is over I am back to sewing on Tyler's quilt. I finally finished putting all the blocks together and put the borders on. I really like the border, but I'm not a real big fan of the fabric texture. It's a little more of an open weave than should be for a quilt, but I think it will work well as the borders.

It should be noted that this is my first time quilting a "quilt". I know I just finished the Princess quilt as you go quilt. But for some reason I just dont consider that being a "real quilt" at least by my standards. My husband reminded me that I have quilted before and I reminded him that those were baby blankets. I guess I just never thought of them as small quilts, but I suppose they were. I have never quilted on a project this large before. I looked at alot of sites trying to decide what type of design to do. I finally decided to do something really simple, just follow the lines of the blocks and do stippling in the border.

This picture shows a closeup of the lines so far

I still have about 3/4's of the quilt left to quilt. I should note that I laid this out on my queen size bed and spray basted it together. It was somewhat difficult to do, but I dont have any floor space in my house large enough to tape a quilt down. Plus my floors are all carpeted and I didnt want to chance getting glue on the carpet. I can wash it out of the bedspread. I did find a site about a lady who used skirt hangers and taped the quilt to her wall, but here again all my walls have something in or on them or not quite big enough to tape a quilt.

Pie Crust Pile-Up / Tyler's Quilt

I have decided to try my hand again at making another quilt. I think I will eventually try to make one for each of my four grandchildren, then one for each of my three children if they want one.

I went to my local fabric store here in town and bought a quilt book with patterns and one pattern. I have decided to try the pattern "Pie Crust Pile-Up" Thick Crust in the twin bed size. I am currently making a conscious effort to stick with making squares for now. As I found out while making Rhea's quilt top just keeping lines going straight and having the rows come out even was a task. Of course that was a queen size top rather large I think for someone to tackle their first time out making a quilt top, which she now has in her  possession and won't let me have back.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I went to JoAnn's on Friday to pick out fabric. I spent about an hour looking through, mixing and matching reds, and blues. The background is white. Just as I was about to leave the fabric department I saw the "bundles". Perfect. There they were three bundles of red, white and blue fabrics. After all that time hunting for the right colors and there they were all along. Next time I shop for a project I will hit the "bundles" first as I am not the best at mixing and matching colors.  I still have to purchase the fabric for the borders, binding and backing. With this being Columbus Day weekend I plan on going back to JoAnn's tomorrow and seeing what I can find and use my coupons. I used JoAnn's coupons on the fabric below and saved a pretty good bit. So with any luck I'll save good tomorrow too.

The Pics

Ok , so here is the link to where all the pictures are going to be posted so I dont have to post every picture and take up so much space. http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/583404561GLfOoX  This is in webshots. If this doesnt work, will figure something else out.

I got a notice that webshots is changing their name and moving, so the above link may not continue to work. So here are two pictures of the finished quilt top I made for Rhea.

Here are two views of Rhea's quilt top.

My Sewing/Bedroom Redone

Wow, I should have been blogging all this time. I just simply forgot to blog about my experience in redoing my sewing/craft/bedroom. It took me several weeks to accomplish such a feat. This is what it looked like before I started.  It was an absolute disaster and very dull indeed.

I now have it all clean and painted white which is what is needed when sewing. To be able to match colors and see everything clearly. The accents are very light aqua shelves painted with bright colors. This is my new room.

See my ironing board to the left?

This is the view from the bedroom door. The valance and ties are made from tablecloth fabric that I had. It goes very well with the bright colors on the shelves

Don't ya just love the new colors in my room? The room is so bright and cheerful now.

My old table looks new again with this aqua
colored paint and all the pretty decals on it.

Buckaroo Stars

Last night I took some pictures of the pattern book and the fabric that Rhea and I chose for her Star quilt. The name of the book is called "Buckaroo" pattern book by http://www.adornit.com/. It has a number of western oriented projects.

This is the pattern book

and this is the pattern it doesn't look to complicated

 We spent more than an hour looking at fabrics and trying to decide what would be some good choices of prints and colors. http://www.thesewingbasket.com/ This is the adorable store where we got our fabric. The ladies there are very nice, friendly and very good at helping select fabrics that coordinate.

These are the main fabric choices for the squares. The long blue fabric has words on it. It will be where the dark blue fabric is in the pattern.

These are the alternate fabric choices for the squares along with the beige fabric and blue star fabric for the appliques.

I have to add the picture of Sadie laying next to the fabric. She felt she had to be in the picture. I thought it was so cute that I have made it my background pic for now

I am really excited about starting this quilt. I will doing my best to keep this blog upto date on my progress with it. I also have several other projects going on too, on which I will write about later... My paper doll quilt squares that I have finished need to be put together and quilted, also I am doing a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt which is done in hexagons and all hand sewn together.

Starting a Quilt

I visited my daughter in Texas recently. We went shopping in a couple of small towns around where she lives. I wanted to go by a little fabric shop in the town of Salado that I had visited 4years ago while there for her wedding.

While there, my daughter asked me to make her a quilt. Sooooo, we picked out a pattern and fabric to get the project started. I want her to be able to follow along with me and help keep me motivated to finish her quilt.

In the near future I will be adding photos of the fabric and book that will be used and if I can find it, maybe a link to the little fabric shop.