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!

quilts in progress

the heat wave has broke!! woo hoo it stayed in the 70's and 80's today. We are getting a ton of rain from tropical storm Lee and it is SO badly needed here. This is the dryest it has ever been in recorded history! I am hoping to get back to the quilting tomorrow!

I have been doing a little organizing...

Fabric for Recycling

Ok, so i have been buying alot of shirts, we went yardsaling today... i now have almost a full closet of shirts for quilts and i have a plan for each and every one of them. See those oranges, i bought another today and as soon as i have 12 or so... it will be this:

I am now using pintrest, i found this from sometimescrafter

i dont know what it is about orange right now but it calling "make me into something beautiful" In the mornings i sit there with my coffee and stare at my fabric stash (a closet full of shirts i have bought) and those oranges keep smiling at me. I get up, rearrange the shirts to put green or blue or brown or grey with them... and yeah i like it... but the oranges dont seem to smile as much... so i saw this and there it is!!! that is what i want to do with my beautiful orange shirts. They need to be alone and smiling.

I have also been buying scrubs. I have a neice who is a nurse so next year she is getting a quilt out of scrubs.

Of course when i need red and blue plaid shirts to finish dallas' quilt, those are the ones i cant find. I am still looking for some red ones.

I have finished the irene flimsy and hope to quilt it and bind it tomorrow... although it may become a lee quilt if it doesn't quit raining in south lousiana which is closer to home. (however it can keep raining here in east texas, please!!!)

Irish Chain Quilt

I am working on adriana's quilt. I have a stack of these:

HST Quilt

and im not sure what to do with them now. I had planned on doing this:

HST Diamonds Quilt

But when i was playing with them trying to decide, ralph really liked this:

Pinwheels Quilt

I will play some more tomorrow maybe matching up the fabrics on the 2nd one.

one of my "leader/ender" projects (thats what im going to call it at least, its really its a "i really love to play with 1 1/2 in squares"

Lovely Little Windows

I have about 30 with 2 sides sewn on and i am LOVING it. But... im getting ahead of myself because this was going to be for NEXT christmas and i need to finish THIS christmas, AND it was going to be for the neice who is now getting the scrub quilt. hmmm this one might actually be for ME!!!

The other "leader/ender" project is an ocean waves quilt, i have been making these and when i have a shoe box full, i will count and see how many more i need! lol.

Ocean Waves Quilt

Its going to be incredibly scrappy and im using every bit of ugly fabric i can find.

I think thats a  pretty good run down of whats perculating in the studio!!

Its another grandbaby! This is Allysa Ann Madison and she is 2 days old. She has the thickest black hair i have ever seen on a baby.. i swear she already needs a haircut! She weighed a whopin 9 lbs 2 oz and i am so proud of her mamma, she was a trooper! She belongs to Caty and Jonathan... Caty is my manager at zippys and ally is the reason im working so many hours!! Ally, like her cousin Tristin born in June, has a mad face looks just like ralph... so she has a paw paw look too!  Ally is grandbaby #12 and #13 is already on its way (Buck and Sharon are expecting)

speaking of 12 grandbabies... oh my its already september... ralph and i had the "christmas is coming and we should start buying presents now" talk today... which always translates into christmas eve a mad dash to the stores to fight the crowds. Ralphs previous wife was my best friend and i miss christmas eve shopping with her. That woman could SHOP!!! She could find incredible deals and the cutest clothes, for teenagers... who can really shop for a teenager? I tell you that woman could do it. I am not lydia however and a christmas eve dash to the store without her equals really lame presents.

I think actually last year we decided to not buy the kids something, just the grandkids and we both woke up on christmas morning looked at each other and said, it dont feel right... LOL we then went to the only stores open within a 30 mile radius (gas stations) and we actually found gifts for all 6 kids! So yeah... the last christmas was pretty lame and this year id like to do better!!!

So im trying... I want to buy cool gifts too!!! I will in no way be as good of a shopper as lydia... but in my own way, id like to get them things they want, need, treasure... you know i have that "perfect christmas" syndrome thing in my head that i know i will never live up to... but i would like to do a little better than i have in the past.

On the treasured gift part, I am making everyone a quilt (omg its september and i have a ways to go) Id like to make the girls all something for their kitchen too... not sure what yet... some project that i can make 6 in a day would be good! The other gifts... i have no idea. Our budget isn't huge and there are so many to buy for (he has 6 kids, 5 daughter/son-inlaws, 12 grandchildren) 

Anyways... my progress on christmas presents

Tristin - done and he is using it already

Ally - done and she has it already

Trinity - done

destiny - done

waylon - done

ralph - done

sharon - quilting

bridgette - flimsy done

wesley - flimsy done

caty - needs borders

dallas - piecing

adrianna - piecing

faith - piecing

harley - cut out

landon - cut out

trevor - cut out

leah - fabric purchased

buck, travis, jonathan, chris, jess and coleman - im making denim rag quilts, one is finished, the others i have the denim cut, i just need more flannel to finish them.

phew... i think thats all of them...

anyways, i took some pics the other day of some of my recent work and inspiration. I sat down to blog about that but i got sidetracked and its now time to pack up and go home... so tomorrow i will post about my quilt progress i promise!

A Quilt for Irene

Having survived hurricane Rita in 2005, and i really feel it was "survival," I know that there is going to be someone from irene who is without a house, or all their belongings and who a quilt will bring comfort, so instead of sitting powerless and i do whenever there is a natural disaster, i started putting together some squares i had started and they are now my quilt for irene. Im sure there will be a drive for quilts eventually and i will send it.

Hurricane rita was the hurricane that came thru east texas about a week or two after katrina hit new orleans. We thought we might get a little rain, we live 165 miles inland! but it did alot more than that. Rita didn't get alot of covereage because new orleans was such a mess, but it did affect my life. We were out of power for 2 and a half weeks, during the storm the roof was blowing off the house i was in, we spent hours collecting buckets of water that was just pouring into the house, i remember feeling the rumble of the cement floor it was a tornado that ripped through forest down the road. The wind was amazing, for 10 hours straight we listened to 100 mile an hour winds rip through the trees, we had a pen of weanlings who were just bawling the whole storm... talk about heartbreaking, there was nothing we could do for them, no shelter we could offer. ugh... i hate thinking about it and i know that lives will be changed, homes lost, dreams broken because of irene and i know that i can make someone feel a little less vulnerable and devistated with a quilt... so im making mine.

Its a modified irish chain out of 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 inch scraps, ive been making the 9 patches for a while now and i have almost enough to put together a full size top, so im going to finish it the next couple days.

Irish Chain Quilt

I have had alot of good quality time in my sewing room this past week, i have loved it (My house is a wreck, but there is always tomorrow)... i think im going to start calling it my quilt studio, i like the sound better and i can retreat to my studio and be an obsessive artist and everyone will say, "ah yes, you know how she is when shes in her studio, nothing else exists!."

Know whats funny, i am enjoying the scrapiness of the irish chain and another one im working on, i find mismatched blocks comforting, the last few things ive worked on, the stripes, the red and blues that im making now... lol they are scrappy but too matchy matchy for me. To me, this irish chain is a scrap quilt and it makes me happy.

Here are a couple other shots i took this morning.

Recycled Fabric for Striped Quilts

some more stripes... im loving stripes!

Ive decided the best way to organize my odd quilting fabric is to leave them as shirts until im ready to use them. So... i now have a closet of shirts, this is my "pastel stripe" collection.

striped quilt

and whats this... a little box of stripes???

once ive cut up a shirt and used part it... to keep it organized im cutting the rest of it into 6 1/2, 3 1/2, 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 squares and some strings as well of course. All the other squares im throwing in bins for that size but my stripes are special and they have their own little box.

wow... im sounding really weird about these stripes... ill stop now. My prayers are going out to the east coast. Hunker down and hold tight, you will get thru this!!

my new sauna

I have a new sauna, my sewing room. I had the morning off yesterday and i worked sewing and cutting, i had sweat rolling down my face, at one point as cutting i dripped on the fabric. It was a nice sauna experience. I kept taking breaks to the rooms that are air conditioned... I went outside at one point and because there was a breeze (blowing from the direction i don't have windows) it felt cooler outside than inside... and it was 105 outside!

It is over 100 again today and its forecasted to be over 100 degrees for the next 10 days. We still have not gotten any rain, in fact a pretty big storm system is headed our way right now but when you look at the next 6 hours forecast map, it breaks up right before it gets to my house. literally right before. This drought and heat wave is getting scary. We have decided to give away all of the horses we can (we have 30) but i doubt we will get rid of many, if i can reduce it any, it will make feeding them this year a little easier. Right now I'm looking for hay because our pastures are dust. we don't normally start looking for hay till December. In the past our horses would be in butt high grass munching away....  hay in the past has been 25 a big round roll and we will be lucky to find it for 75 or under.... at that price, they are not going to get as much hay as we like them to have and we will be feeding more feed.

Just to give you an idea how mind blowing this is, we have had 100 degrees or hotter for 42 days in a row, 10 more forecasted. On average, we get 7 days a YEAR in the triple digits! We are breaking every drought and heat record there is!

anyways, enough about weather... I'm so tired of the weather i could spit.

quilting!!!! I started this:

Striped Stars Quilt

i have smaller pieces from the striped shirt quilt, i think I'm going to use them this way with some different centers on the stars. I also have a solid lavender vintage sheet that I'm thinking i will use for sashing. I just loved the pastel stripes so much!!!

I have also hit thrift stores for more vintage sheets. I found these three for only 4.50 today!

Vintage Sheets

OK, sorry for the bad pics, i took this one in the back seat of the truck since i really don't want Ralph to know that while he was suffering alone at Zippy's, i went to a thrift store!!! but... pretty pretty pretty!

does anyone else do this?

When i get an idea for a quilt, I cant just write an idea for a quilt down, i HAVE to make a block or two of it. I have blocks all over my sewing room of ideas, some are now quilts in progress... others, well they are random blocks, in various places that have no home. I guess im going to save them because someday they may be worked into a quilt or maybe a quilt back. But... do yall do this or are you content with seeing an idea on paper?

Mostly what ive worked on this week is trying to get control of the piles of fabric in my sewing room. Of course i keep getting sidetracked. This is how the process goes. I am sorthing through the pile (i am up to 3 big bins of fabric that needs to be put somewhere so that it is usable. none of it is yardage, its all scraps from fat quarter size to strings. I find a peice of thin muslin that i was going to use for foundation material. I look at it, i look at the nice neat pile of strings that i have been ironing and putting in their proper home... i cut a peice off of the foundation fabric and i sew a couple strips on, ohhh how pretty, im loving it.... well i then DIG in the nice neat box of strips... undoing the work ive done, and i sew some more strips on... now i have a pile of wrinkled messy strips (at least they are still in their proper bin) and string thingy started when i know i dont have enough strings and i know i have 11 other quilts to finish before christmas.... but... i did find out that i do love the way it looks. Im going to keep it until after the 11 others are done and finish a stringy kaliedescope quilt.

I went to goodwill again yesterday looking for more red shirts. I bought 10 shirts for 10 bucks, only 3 of them red. I need about 4 more red plaid shirts!  5 of the shirts i bought were pastel stripes. YEP... i am up to 8, i figure i want about 15 before i can do a striped shabby quilt for myself. I of course have a different design in my head so im sure in the next week or so, i will be cutting into them and making a block or two of the plan... even though it will be months before i can make this for myself.  (ok.. i also went to the quilt store and to walmarts and made purchases at both of them too. I spent 30 bucks on fabric yesterday!!)

Alot of the scraps, im just cutting into squares. 3 1/2, 2 1/2 and 1 1/2. Of course all these pretty little squares call me... i found a bunch of white 2 1/2 squares that i had cut for another project im no longer making... so what do i do... i sit down and start sewing 9 patches, for an irish chain quilt... again... NOT one of the 11 i need to finish by christmas but oh its so pretty and i like making 9 patches! I figure i will make one everytime i find enough white squares for a patch. I have alot of white scraps in my bins that need to be cut into something, might as well be 2 1/2 in squares.

So... i am still not on the plan... i am trying to organize the mess and im creating more projects instead... lol. The heat looks like it will be around for a week or so more... i cant wait till its over!

its to hot!!! and another grandbaby!

I haven't done ANY of my goals for this week because it is still WAY too hot!! We have been hitting over 100 the entire month of august and i am WAY over this heat wave drought thing! It really is too hot to be wrestling the quilt and all of my goals this week seem to have involved wrestling quilts.... so i have been working on... surprise surprise... three different quilts that weren't on the list to finish!

One of them is just a leader/ender project. I am going to make an ocean waves with 2 1/2 in squares made into half square triangles... yeah... i know... this one will take forever!! But i have about 40 of the oh... 888 or so squares i need.

One is the red and blue that i showed last week, ive been making some progress, but i need more red fabric! All of a sudden i cant find red plaid shirts anywhere I spent another 15 or so on yard sales again (more vintage sheets for 50 cents and a bunch of shirts, but only one of them was red! OHHH but i got some cute fabric in some of these shirts... just wait!!!)

The other which i am loving is a hst in a diamond pattern, it is reds, blues, greens and yellows with white.

As far as pictures, i am searching for the battery charger for my camera and CAN NOT find it anywhere! I cant take a picture till i do so i am going to look tomorrow.

the grandbaby.... we found out this week that Buck and Sharon are pregnant again. They are the couple that had waylon a little over a year ago. That will make #12!! We are still waiting the arrival of Ally, #11 which should happen in the next week or so. Caty is getting SO big, i swear she is going to have a 10 lb baby! She is no longer working at zippys... so we have about 8 more weeks without her and then i hope she decides to come back. I really miss working with her!