Bloggers Quilt Festival - Spring 2011

I have decided to participate in the Bloggers Quilt Festival - Spring 2011. I am a new quilter (well, a new quilter in the respect that I have just started finishing what i start!) What a cool thing to include my work with hundreds of other quilters. Sometimes it seems like I'm the only one in the world that quilts because I never get to spend face time with people who quilt. (There is a quilting group here but they meet during the day when i work) I'm thankful for the blog quilting community so that i can learn and grow as a quilter, and not feel so alone!

I am sharing the quilts that took me 5 years to finish. I started them because i was applying to be a foster parent and they were going to be the quilts in my "girls" room. That plan never happened because the state of Texas never got around to approving me (although i passed all of my classes and home study.) Eventually, the quilts sat in a box and kinda felt like broken dreams. I cant have kids, and i really felt that foster parenting was God's plan for me. Well... 4 years later, I have found out that he had a different plan. I now am about to marry someone with 9 grandchildren and 2 more on the way! I get to be Mimi to a whole mess of children, and although they wont be a part of me, they will be "mine" to cherish!

I am making quilts for all of them. The two quilts i started years ago I have now finished and they are going to the twin granddaughters. The fronts are almost identical, the backs are different and I quilted them differently. I used fabric I had on hand, scraps of shirts, fabric I bought at a yard sale or were given to me... they are truly scrap quilts in that respect. A few of the blocks are from one of their great grand mothers shirts, that they never got to meet.

They are the 2nd and 3rd quilts that have finished. I machine quilted them and I think that is what I learned most from making them, the process of sandwiching and pin basting, then machine quilting. By the end of the 2nd quilt, I think I can do a half way respectable job! They were also part of a "finishing" trend. I used to get to a point that i wasn't that confident at and stop, meaning I have several starts to quilts that I may someday revisit. On these I was able to push through the lack of confidence and finish them, I am sure I will continue to do that!

Be sure to visit all of the other quilts in the Bloggers Quilt Festival!



akk... life has been busy!

It has been tax time... combine that with i bought a "real" scanner... you see it on tv and it helps you organize your receipts.... i have not been sewing, i have been scanning receipts for the past year instead! yep... shoe box after shoe box of receipts. I even had to file an extension on our taxes because i have 3 months left to scan!

But... the scanner is super cool and if you own your own business... man... i love the thing! It is so much easier to file paper electronically than physically. That is why i have shoe box after shoe box is i never never physically file a piece of paper. I think that is part of my perfectionism... what if i decide later that i need that piece of paper, am i really going to find it when i need it... hmm... let me think on it... let me just put these papers in a box, and put it in the closet because i cant decide how to perfectly set up a filing system. But with this scanner thing, i put it thru the scanner, put the piece of paper in a pile (i can shred the pile!!!)  and i electronically file the scanned document. does my perfectionism kick in electronically filing it? nope... because there is a search thing on the program and say i need it and its not where i thought i put it... i can just search for it! Other benefits is as im filing it im tagging it for certain line items on the tax forms so doing my taxes this year should be super easy (and cost alot less because im not taking her 6 shoeboxes of paper to sort!)

anyways thats what ive been doing, i have scanned everything this year to date and i have all but 3 months of last year done. I have also found a big box of 08 receipts that were in our storage unit that we couldn't find when it was tax time and we may even have her refile 08 because we still are paying on those taxes and hey... a few thousand more of deductions could possibly put us in  a lower tax bracket and well lets just say that would be sweet! But before i finish scanning all these past receipts, i plan on scanning all of 08 and having our new accountant look at it.

where was i before i abruptly stopped quilting... i have most of the tops done for sharon and bridgettes quilts. I have them hanging on the walls in my new sewing room (which doesn't have curtains) when im walking across the backyard each day checking the horse waters, i can see them thru the window... calling me... wanting my attention. I have promised i would be back in may... i promise!

Birthday 2 and 3 DONE!

I finished them last night and im going to mail them tomorrow! woo hoo!

I started these two in 2005. At the time i was applying to be a foster parent and they were going to be for my "girls" room. Well... lets not go into the state of texas and how messed up that system is, it took them 2 years to approve me and by that point, i had a job that the hours just wouldn't have worked.... so... fast forward to now. I finished them for Ralph's twin grand daughters.

The white is actually unbleached muslin (i had a whole bunch of it that i had bought in a yard sale, ive made curtains and more curtains and now these quilts from it) and the pastels are scraps. Two of them are special, one was a shirt of their grandmothers and one from their great grandmother, both who have passed.

I also used different backing on them. The colors are not that great, because i have to mail them tomorrow im taking them on an overcast day. I love the lime green polkadots and I guess the rebel in me loves that im sending the one with peace symbols on it to an air force base.

i am thrilled with how they turned out!

whats coming up???

there is this for lea:

and remember the fabrics that i won in the giveaway???? i have decided on what im doing with them and added a few things from my stash for caty.

quilting finished and I Won something! wow!

Quilting in one direction was a pain in the patutie! (i have no idea how to spell that) the other direction was a breeze and i finished quilting the first twin quilt today. I am not sure what im binding either with, i may have to buy something... for now im going to finish piecing the top for the 2nd one so i can start quilting it tomorrow night!

but... till they are both finished... here is a sneak peak.

and the little cutie on the right (i think... its hard to tell them apart in this picture) will be getting it!

but... the other cool thing is i actually won a giveaway! I dont enter many of them... i actually had time that day and I won. Linda from Stray Stitches sent me a lovely package of fabric (i would take a picture but the weather has been so ugly here... i cant get a good one so here is a picture from her blog)

You can find her blog at: Stray Stitches

Thank you linda! I love it! Im planning on something for Caty with it... ive got a couple ideas in mind

changed my mind... again

It seems my quilts never really look like i planned them to look when i started. I have been working on the postage stamp quilt for bridgette... and maybe its because im bored with just sewing little 2 1/2 in squares together... or maybe its because i have been drawn to pinwheels lately, even made a couple today with no purpose in mind that will probably end up being potholders or something... but I was reading blogs and came across this... and thought!! THATS IT! so... my postage stamp is changing.

I really like mary's blog but im not sure how to follow it since shes not on blogger.... hmmm...

postage stamp

wow... its a  lot of little squares! I keep cutting squares out of my stash because i think i have enough 2 1/2 inch little buggers and then wow... i dont have very many again! lol... i am the only quilter alive that doesn't have enough scraps!

But i am between 1/3 and 1/2 done... here is a preview... the picture is actually sideways, and i had to take them here at zippys on a cloudy day... but you get the idea.

I can tell as i go along, my skills are improving and my seams are more uniform and are matching up... i guess its what i needed to sew straight!

I still haven't finished the twins quilt... but here is the fabric i bought for the back of one of them.



The hold up on finishing these is buying the batting to do it! It seems like everytime we have the money to go to town to get it, we cant because we are then rushing home to feed horses before it gets dark, (and once were home... were staying put.. and the few times we could go to center to buy what i need, we have had cash flow problems and there wasn't the money to do it right then!

oh well... i will get them done and even if they are late, i will send them!

another start??

Trevor and Landon are 4 year old (yes they are both 4) step brother grandbabies that share a room so i want to make them matching quilts. One birthday is in May the other isn't until september.... so i was going to do them both in may. I also knew i wanted to do something with the red and blue plaid shirts... trevor was the first BOY grandbaby of ralphs and i wanted to make his out the plaid shirts... so last night, an ad in a magazine caught my eye... not even sure what it was an ad for... but this is what im making the boys

cute plaid X's with 3 1/2" squares! This is the third "test" i have done with ideas... i think this one is it!! Im going to call it "paw paw sugars" little X's (kisses) from their paw paw.

ralph must have liked the idea because this morning he gave me two more of his old shirts (one has stains and one has a collar he hates) to use for it...

Phew... it took me 2 days to post a blog entry. I only have internet at work these days and we have been really busy slinging pizza! (thats a good thing, the holidays are always slow!) The other problem is i am ALWAYS working right now. We had two employees that we should have fired and replaced weeks ago... but for some reason we hate letting them go. We finally fired them both the other day, means were short staffed and im working 6 shifts instead of 5... but at least now i KNOW when im going to have to be here and i can plan. i swear every day i had off where i looked forward to sewing, one of them would call in sick and i had to work. it got to where ralph and i were pulling doubles constantly AND working on our day off. It was driving me insane. Tomorrow will be my first day off in what seems like weeks!