Hanging with Ann, Sylvia and Jane

Hey kids - I figured that I should make a blog post before another month ends.  Who knows, I might be able to squeeze in another one before the end of the month.  Although that's probably a lofty idea with the way I've been blogging lately.

I've been furiously working on one thing and another, and not a lot of results in any of them.  I'm still mired in the over-one land of Ann Smith.  Oh, how I love this sampler, but oh, how I hate me those over ones!!!  Well, I guess I don't really hate them as I love the results, I just hate that it takes so much time to do and leaves me each evening with eyes that don't want to focus for a hour or so.

Adam and Eve are finally in!  What a relief!  After that point, things went downhill quickly as far as stitching time.  I only stitch at night and had my son home for a week on his Spring break, so things were a little hectic.  Add to that the fact that frogs visited a couple nights to reek havoc in the Garden, and I didn't get too much further:

I've had a bit of  trouble with the leaves on the right-hand tree.  So much so that a couple nights were lost as far as stitching goes - lots of frogging.  And I kept making mistakes, wised up and just fudged the whole thing.  I want this over one section done so that I can move forward.  Stitching over two is going to feel like I'm stitching on 14 count Aida after all this over one stuff!  But the end is in sight - maybe another week?

When not hanging with Ann, I've been hanging with Sylvia and Jane.  Those two girls have a few tricks up their sleeves also.

Now when you look at these Sylvia blocks, please don't look close (of course, with me saying that you're all going to clicking away like crazy to get the picture to enlarge, so please ignore threads).  Whether you enlarge the picture or not, put your hand over the one on the bottom right.  That block was like some kind of unruly kid and it's going to be done over.  It involved a lot of Y-seams which I'm not knowledgeable about at all.  I did use Y-seams on the flower basket block next to it without too much of a hitch, but what happened with that one on the right is only one's guess.  Could help if I went out into the land of YouTube before I tried to put the block together.  Okay, that would be too easy and so I just went for it.    That was a mistake and I ended up going into YouTube after and then it all became crystal clear.  Still doesn't explain why the flower block came out fine (whatever!!).  I guess I'm like a guy whose lost that won't ask directions sometimes.  Or I get a smart-assed attitude and think that I can do it, and prove myself really wrong!  LOL

Then because I love to give myself headaches (not really) we decided to have a visit with Jane.  She's another ornery one too:

Four blocks and two rectangles.  Some blocks I'm just sewing, others I'm using foundation paper for them.  Or actually tracing paper.  Makes it so much easier to see your guidelines through the back side of the paper.  Those rectangles practically left me with a bald spot on the side of my head!  Fiddly little things, but I'm bound and determined to make this quilt.  I've only been sitting on the fabrics for this quilt for ten years.  It was a BOM and each month I have five blocks and one or two border triangles to do.  As much as it gives me long moments of pause trying to figure out what I'm doing and then making sure that I'm doing it right (or wrong and it still looks good - I'm not picky here), I am really excited to be working on this quilt.  I still have another block to do, but it's applique and I haven't sat down with it to sew it together.  One thing that I found with some of these fabrics -  there are fabrics out on the current market that are just like these fabrics that I received 10+ years ago only in different colors.  I was kind of stunned by that, but I guess that what they about everything that goes around, comes around is true - at least in this case.

After that I decided that I needed a break and just make something easy and fun.  I spied these kits at a quilt store not long ago and picked them up.  I sit on a pillow when I stitch and I thought that these would make the perfect covers for the pillow:

While the kits came with instructions, I found it much easier to do them following a video that I discovered on Pinterest (yep, finally got the clue about the benefits of videos).  I think it took an hour to knock out both of these!!

And last, but not least, I don't do the TUSAL, but the threads were piling up in the ORT basket, so it was time to dump them again.

That's a lot of thread.  But just in time for Spring.  I like to put this out on one of our bushes and let the birds make their nests out of them (no metallics in this pile).  Of course, that is if the birds start making their nests.  We're still in a deep freeze here in Michigan with no end in sight.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it warms up soon!!

So that's it for me!!  Thanks for stopping and paying me a visit.  I love receiving your comments!!  Hope that it's warmer in your part of the world and that you get lots of stitching time in!!

A Finish and Other Whatnots

Hi everyone!!  I hope that you all had a great weekend!  And that you're staying warm!  We've been colder than anything around here lately.  I'm hoping that the groundhog is right this year and Spring comes early.  In my book, it can't come early enough.  I'm sick of all this cold!!

I finally tamed the beast in the form of the mitered borders on the Cotton Club and it's finished.  After months of putting the thing together and then another month (or two... or three) of stressing over the darned mitered border, I finally took myself by the arm, forced myself into the sewing chair and decided it was time to get it off the quilting WIP list once and for all.  So thanks to those wonderful videos on YouTube, here it is:

Ahem...Bailey, do you think that you could move?

Hello?  Bailey?  Do you hear me?  Hmmm, not listening, are you???  Darned dog!!  No surprise there - just like my kids when they were little (well, they're still that way - who am I kidding?).  Oh well, the lighting isn't good for a photo op anyway.  So a couple hours later the lighting got better and I convinced Bailey to go outside (I told him that there was a kitty cat in his yard), and here is my finish:

The Cotton Club

(mitered borders and all)

I don't know what my big fear was with mitering those borders - it turned out to be so easy (although you'll notice the fabric tails at the corners that I can't bring myself to cut off until the quilt has its final pressing just in case).  I'm so happy that it's finally done!!

In stitching news, Ann Smith is coming along although not as quickly as I had hoped.  A few nights where stitching time was a big fat zero.  But this is where I was last time I posted:

And this is where I was a couple days ago - Dear Son came home for a visit along with four friends from college this weekend and they camped out in our basement.  Can you say Dorm party?  Lots of cooking and washing (DS couldn't let an opportunity pass by without having mom do his wash) and laughing because of all the funny college stories they told and yes, there were a couple that I had to plug my ears - kind of - LOL):

The over one lettering and the sky just below that were the real time killers.  That took so long!!  But I'm loving her with her bright colors.  Although by my next post I may be hating her.  After this section, I have a whole section of over one.  If you hear some screaming and a car furiously gunning its engine and the squealing of tires (that is if our roads aren't all iced over as they have been here for a while, otherwise you can envision me furiously doing donuts in the street), you can rest assured that it will be me trying to run it over!!

After finishing up the Cotton Club I decided to start on one of the quilting projects I picked for this year.  Well, I lied.  I actually started two projects.  I started on Sylvia's Bridal quilt and got the first four blocks done.   Dear Jane will wait a little bit as I think that I'm learning a lot with these blocks that will serve me well when it comes time for Jane.  These are persnickety blocks - a little more detailed than the Farmer's Wife blocks.  Or maybe not - I think that with these blocks I'm given less fabric to work with than with previous Block of the Month programs, so I have to really take my time in cutting out the pieces.  The blocks will be a finished size of 6 inches.

Sylvia's Bridal Quilt BOM

I decided that since these blocks were rather time consuming I would also work on another quilt.  One that doesn't require a lot of brain power and can go together easily.  This was a kit from a local quilt store that I picked up during the summer and because of the fabrics - Blackbird Designs Antique Fair, I just had to have it.  I only have three blocks together at this point:

Easy peasy blocks that I can practically do blindfolded....well, maybe not.

So there you have it.  A little bit about what I've been up to since my last post.

And I have an apology too.  One of my plans (not a resolution, but a plan) was to post more and also comment more in 2013.  I have seriously lagged in the commenting department and I'm sorry for that.  It seems that I've needed a slight break from commenting because of things that have been going on around here  - nothing bad at all, just the kind of thing where you need to put attention to other things for a while.  Seems that once I got through my craft room, I proceeded to go through the house with reckless abandon cleaning out things.  I don't know about other people, but I get a huge sense of "Ahhhh" when I get things cleaned out.  I'm happy, the Salvation Army is happy, but it hasn't left me with much time to comment - and when I've had time, I put it into sewing as a reward for cleaning things out.  We're also gearing up to do some inside home improvements which means I'm driving around in my car looking for paint colors, bathroom vanities, etc.  BTW, did I mention that I hate looking for paint colors!!

So, I'm sorry and hopefully I'll be back to commenting more soon.  I think that my husband is getting a little worried that I'm going to empty out the entire house and buy all new things!  Well, it's been a thought!  Not really - maybe some new stash - but definitely not a whole house of goods.

Have a wonderful week and thank you so much for your comments!!  They truly mean a lot to me!!

Just a Quickie Post

Hi everyone.  I hope that everyone's New Year's has gotten off to a great start!!  I did not make Resolutions this year, but I had a Plan (those are easily changed) to try to blog more frequently.  Well, we're looking at January 21st today, so that makes it three weeks.  I was going to try for two weeks - that was the Plan.   Obviously I didn't stick to that very well.

One of my plans though was to join Nicola's Scarlett Letter Challenge this year.  I felt that it was a great reason to finally stitch one or two of the samplers that I had hidden in stash.  I've done them before (like Ann Medd), but seemed to pass Scarlett Letter pieces over for other things.  This time I'm glad I didn't because I'm in love with this sampler.  This was my New Year's start (pics are clickable).  I'm a little further than this, but the camera is dead and I didn't feel like fooling around with the phone camera:

Ann Smith

The Scarlett Letter

AVAS and 35 count Magnolia linen

I love the bright happy colors of her.  What I don't like is all the over one.  I usually avoid over one like the plague, but finally broke out the magnifier and I'm so happy that I did.  The magnifier and I have become good friends.  The letters are full cross over one and the sky below that is tent stitch over one.

The Cotton Club isn't finished yet.  Just the borders now and it will be a wrap.  My 'plan' was to have it finished last week, but then I had forgotten that my daughter only had half days for most of the week due to semester finals, so that cut into my sewing machine time.  And I also got into a huge stash room clean out.  But while thinking about the end of the Cotton Club, I went back and forth about what to start next and it came down to two quilts.  In going through my stash, I decided to work on one old stash piece and one new piece.  And yes, I should have my head examined because in addition to trying to make progress on my basket blocks with Siobhan, I'm going to work on these two:

I have had this quilt in my stash for about 10 years.  Just about the time I stopped quilting for a while when I became busy with PTA activities  at my children's school, this BOM starting showing up in the mailbox.  I just filed them away and didn't look at them again until last year.  This one will be a challenge, but for some reason working on those baskets with Siobhan and actually appliquing has given me the courage to work on this.  There will no fast results with this one - it's going to be slow going as a lot of it is not only appliqueing, but also paper piecing and I'm not the quickest nor best paper piecer in the world.  I'm planning for two blocks a month - not a lot, but we'll see how it goes.  Maybe a block a week....maybe!!

The other quilt will be more straightforward, but another one that I've loved for a long time:

I don't know what my obsession is with quilts like this - it's very reminiscent of the Farmer's Wife, but I'm really looking forward to working on this one.  The colors are different than the Farmer's Wife and I think that is what I like about it - different blocks and different colors.  The BOM has 10 blocks each month so between the two of these quilts I've got my work cut out for me.  And besides these two, I want to get working on Phebe - I actually have a couple pieces ready to go, just have to applique them down.  So it looks like I'm going to have my quilting work cut out for me (well, no, I'll do the cutting - LOL) for the next year or so.

New Year's started off on a really great note for me.  I won a couple of giveaways and wanted to post  to thank each of the girls that sponsored them.  Before the New Year even started I won a giveaway from Lisa from a Southern Bell Misplaced in Michigan.  I found out that Lisa lives not all that far from me and hope that I'll be able to meet with her soon:

The red fabrics immediately went into the pile of reds for my baskets and you can't see them, but there were two stitching wallets - one plastic and one mesh that I'm already using.  And the pillow (a favorite of mine) is backed with a Fleur de Lis charm.  UGH, I can't find the picture I took and the camera battery is dead.  But it was so sweet and thank you so much Lisa.  I hope that we can meet up soon.

Right after the New Year I won another giveaway from Shelly of the Arizona Stitcher:

The box was full of so many goodies, the Little House Needleworks chart and the linen, ribbon trims, a stitcher's mug, some wonderful Christmas far quarters, chenille trims, a needle minder, note cards, tissues, a christmas towel, prickly pear jelly (yum) and chocolate!  Thank you so much Shelly.

The next giveaway I won was from was Becky.  She held a stitching challenge last year and I won!  The prize is a $100 dollar gift certificate to the LNS of her choice.  I can't wait to get that in my hot little hands and have some fun spending it.

Which means that I will acquire more stash.  But quite frankly I need to get rid of some stash.   Right after the New Year, I got on some kind of cleaning tear and really went at my craft room.  The closet is so clean and organized right now:

Everything in it's place (well almost, I just noticed the green top of the thread keeper system laying not where it should be) and things labeled, but.........this isn't the only closet that my stash is in.  It's also in two other closets, three cupboards and quite a few Rubbermaid bins in the workroom.  You can accumulate a lot of stash when you stitch, quilt and knit.  I think that I could easily be shown on an episode of The Hoarders.  My husband definitely thinks so and you probably would too if you saw pictures of the complete mess.   So I'm thinking of posting some of my stash on this blog or another one.  I actually thought of doing this a year or so ago, but hesitated thinking that people wouldn't want half of the things that I would get rid of.  And they might not, but I thought it was worth a try seeing what people would want and the rest I could possibly donate.  So stay tuned.  I hope to get a new camera battery tomorrow and have things put together by the next time I post.

So that's it in my part of the woods!!  It's cold and snowy here today - a great day to hunker down sew and put a pot of soup on the stove.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!!