WIP Wednesday

Im participating in the WIP Wednesday! I love wednesday because there is always so much eye candy over at freshly pieced!!! I like seeing the process!

I had alot of time to play in my studio this past weekend. I went on a denim kick. Sorry about the pics today, i was in a hurry... life has been so busy lately!

I made this bag ...

Recycled Jeans Bag

its from legs of old jeans and the inside is a vintage sheet i picked up the other day. Its ok, but its not big enough to be a big bag and not small enough to be a purse type bag... im going to work on the design of that and maybe make a few of these for christmas presents. this one i am using for my laptop, wish i would have padded it but... i will have to make a laptop sleeve now, wont i!

Well, making the bag, gave me an idea... i triple stitched the bag and the seams were so nice and flat afterwards... i thought hmmm.... I have 800 6 in squares cut out for 6 denim rag quilts, i have made one but you know what, those rag quilts are a pain in the patootie. so... i started sewing them together like this....

Denim Quilt

Im staggering the bricks and double seaming them to reduce the bulk... im really digging it and i think i will make 6 like this instead! I had planned on making a texas star on the back of the rag quilts and i have enough red, white and blue fabric, i can just piece it! These will be for the hampton sons and son in laws (travis, jess, buck, coleman, chris and jonathan)

Speaking of Jess, Ralph's oldest son, he has been diagnosed with spinal cancer. We dont know anything else other than that. So please keep him in your prayers, he is only 34 years old. He lives in Alaska and I think he will be coming home to live with us through this.

But back to WIP's... I worked on the other Kisses from Paw Paw Quilt for landon or trevor. I have one flimsy done, im putting together the other...

Hugs from Paw Paw Quilt

I figured out on the first one, i could put these 6 pieces together and do it two rows at a time instead of one.... so its ready, i just need to start making the rows.

Here is a better pic of the one i have finished:

Hugs from Paw Paw Quilt

Landon is 5 and Trevor is 4. Landon started pre-K this year and yesterday as we were leaving for work in the afternoon the school bus dropped him off... I cried... he looked so grown up!!! Travis' family lives on the ranch in the spot where ralph raised his 6 kids, we live in the ranch house that his mom and dad built in the late 60's. Its nice having them so close by!

Other than that, my pile of flimsies is growing. I did start quilting sharons pastel stripe saturday... but ohhh i have a puppy in some trouble, he chewed the batting from between the layers on one side while i was taking a break. Fixing that of course has overwhelmed me and im not sure what to do! I have a hole that is 6X12" I cut a piece of batting to fill the hole but im not sure if i should sew the two pieces of batting together or just quilt it making sure they stay together... any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Others:
You can see all of my on the WIP tab above...

The only one that made any other progress was Adrianna's HST Diamonds. I started putting rows together yesterday morning and should have more of it done by next wednesday!

hope yall have a beautiful wednesday... cant wait till the weekend so i can sew some more. This is a busy week for me with alot of stress and bills due... ugh... i cant wait to escape to my projects.

another flimsy and a plan

I worked this weekend on this:

Kisses from Paw Paw

I am making a matching twins for Landon and Trevor. Since they have a bunk bed. I'm making them slightly small for a twin, i always hated making the bunk beds with all that extra comforter.  They are 3 1/2 inch squares. Mostly it is plaid shirts but i threw in some 30's retro prints, gingham and some shirts that weren't plaid as well. This is the first quilt ive made "on point" and it was easier than i expected, i had been really intimidated by that.

It took me a while on this one to figure out the quickest way to put this together, but about half way through i figured it out.  you put the three pieces together, add one of the other points between two whites to make a 2X3 block. Then you connect these with the point from the next row combined with a white. The trick is, other than the three next to each other, you should never be sewing a print to a print, its always print to white. hmmm... might have to actually show that in pictures, it sounds more complicated than it is. I am about half way through piecing the 2nd one. I think they are going to have solid blue borders and i have a few blue and green sheets that will make the backing.

I also mentioned that i was collecting scrubs for my neices' quilt. I am going to use solids with white points.

Making Rounds

Ive decided the name is going to be "making rounds" instead of nurses running in circles. I can make pretty drawings now, I bought a box of crayons when walmart had their school supply sale. I love my crayons!! I had a box of colored pencils but it was a small box and i couldn't get darks dark with them... lol im a kid at heart and i like crayons.

I'm not sure how big I'm going to make the solid pieces, it depends on how big the pieces are that i have to work with when i start cutting into the scrubs. Id like big blocks 10" or so but if I'm going to get more mileage from smaller squares 6" or so... i will have to do that.

Yesterday i fixed a wrinkle in the pin basting of the striped quilt that is ready for quilting. It is much much cooler now (i had to go put on socks this morning cuz my toes were cold!!) and i can begin quilting that the next time i have a few hours to work on it.

All of my finishes and flimsys are in a stack. i cant wait to see the pile when they are done. I'm really looking forward to Christmas and having a huge stack of quilts that i get to give out! ho ho ho i will feel like Santa!

Goal Progress week 1

7 finishes in 8 weeks... im on my way, end of week 1.

By today i wanted to have finished:

1. Cut, press and sew Waylons Binding for finish #1  DONE!

I made this binding smaller than my previous quilts and i really like the smaller binding on the baby quilt!

Plaid Puzzle Quilt

2. Cut and sew wesleys borders and prepare backing

This one was tricky, i had to make the green border based on the amount of fabric i had, not the size of the border i wanted, lol. But... it worked and it matches his brothers baby quilt.

Plaid Puzzle Quilt

3. cut and sew bridgettes borders. DONE! 

This has been ready for borders for a while, but i was having a problem with it because obviously my 1/4 in seams were not right! I have gotten better with the 1/4 in but i had to do something with this one... i decided to just finish it, perfect or not!

Postage Stamp Quilt

4. Start Quilting Sharons

I have started, im not half way through like i had wanted. I had pinned it at the store and i kept forgetting to bring it home! OK... so i have procrastinated some on it, here is the real problem with this one, we are going thru a heat wave so mornings are still in the 90's (normally they are in the 70's and 80's here) and my sewing room doesn't have AC... usually i go in there early before it heats up, but it isn't cooling down and pushing that big ole quilt around without AC... thats a sweaty workout! so i have procrastinated some, this heat had better let up!!!

5. Figure out what i need to finish Caty

Total suprise on this one, ive actually made TOO MANY little 9 patch blocks! woo hoo... im still contemplating the borders. I think i want simple, not to detract from the wonderful little 9 patches!

soooo... what was i doing while procrastinating on the quilting.... i worked on another quilt (other than the 7 i want to finish!!) I had an ahh haa momment and had to see it and make sure its what i wanted! so far this is my favorite layout for the red and blue quilt.

Red and Blue Diamond Quilt

  lol... and another that will be for adrianna....

i did work ahead and cut the white squares for trevor and landon!!! I will update more next week, hopefully this heat wave will end!

Inspiration

Ralphs closet doesn't have doors on it... another unfinished remodeling project we will get to someday... but at night as im going to sleep... im looking at the wonderfully colored plaid shirts that he wears everyday... reds, greens, blues, yellows... i love them! I want to make a quilt out of them... and he is now afraid im going to start raiding his closet. I was trying to get a picture of them the other day... but he was being a goof so just for him being a goof... heres a hilarious shot of him in his dramatic pose where he is protecting the content of his closet from me while wearing one of the wonderful shirts im talking about.


anyways... i cant cut up all his shirts... because he looks good in them! (there are two that do need to be retired that i plan on stealing but shhh dont tell him) But my other find at the yardsale yesterday and i only spent 50 cents on all of it! The blue and yellow one is actually a homemade curtain valance... but its in that pretty plaid that im looking for!


Im in the finding fabric stage on this project... lol... i cant start them until after i finish all of the christmas presents i have started now!!!


Today i have been attempting to cut up the jeans i found... Sammy is insisting on helping though... i think im going to go watch a movie with ralph, work on some of my little squares and then come back to the cutting process.


Ralph went horseshoeing today, it had been a long time since i went with him but since Buck didn't get up to go with him, i did. We had a good morning, the work went quick and we went out to breakfast... then to hemphill where the hardware store was having an anniversary sale... FREE 5 gallon buckets and if you have horses... you know how great that is!! We each got a bucket and bought some stuff that we needed at 20% off.

the cool thing is we picked out a color of paint for the kitchen. There is alot of history of picking out paint in this house and he has refused to even look at paint, so today i made a deal "one minute, we will look and if we dont find anything we like we will walk away" I was looking in the greens and he pulled out this pretty robin egg blue/teal color and said i want this... i loved it... so yep... were going to paint our kitchen that color!

i hope yall have a great weekend! Its my day off and im going to relax some before i get to work on the radio station thing.