Catch up from February and March 2015

This year has been a busy one and a rough one. Personal issues, a really bad school year for my kindergartner, family life in general, and lots of extra curricular responsibilities have overwhelmed my ability to write and post anything significant. Perhaps the coming months will be different. I am going to make an effort to make them so.

As I have said in recent posts, Instagram, Facebook and a little bit of Twitter and Flickr have been where my sharing has happened.

So once again the next few posts will be summary posts of the last few months as far as my crafting goes.

Papercrafts:
I have thoroughly enjoyed having access to my rather large rubber stamp collection and have made a handful of cards for various occasions and people. Almost all of them are "cased" cards, meaning I copied a layout or color combo or both to create them.

I also made these for the ladies I visit teach for St. Patrick's Day



Sewing
This first one was a test bag for Schlosser Designs. You can find the pattern for purchase here: Chopsticks Tote (link no longer valid.)

I made this and then filled it with crochet hooks, yarn and instruction books for our Young Women's Camp fundraiser silent auction.

 

 I spent a day playing with my Hex n More ruler from Jaybird Quilts and this beautiful fabric I won a while back. I only got as far as cutting a few blocks worth.

 I also made some more Personal Progress book folders for the incoming 12-year-olds.

I worked on quilting the robot quilt, trying to get it finished up before the baby turned 2.  I quilted the pink and yellow using some of the decorative stitches on my Brother machine.

 

Photo Friday

Cute little HSTs!

This was delivered to my house today by a talented and kind friend. I was surprised and delighted!

 

Another hobby

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with my BFF and she asked me if I had any hand made cards in my stash that I could send her. I did not, as I had, a couple of months ago, donated them to a card drive at church for veterans and nursing home residents. The conversation moved on to other things but the cards lingered in the back of my mind until yesterday when I just had to make some. It was a task that was going to be more than just sitting down and stamping merrily away. 95% of my stamping gear is packed in boxes that are stacked about 8 high and 2 deep in our garage. So I spent about 20 minutes moving boxes around trying to find enough supplies to make a bunch of cards. I had some success, although I had to use my scraps since I could not find the box with the whole sheets of paper. This restricted my color combos since I could only use colors that had a piece large enough to make a whole card. But I was still able to get some good mixes.

I also let Littlest Miss stamp with me. She loved it and even though the table now has some ink stains, it was worth it.



Also, late last night my oldest asked me if I could make a cover for her required school planner. They have to have it on their person at all times. It acts as a hall pass among other things. She was tired of having it in a binder adding to her already heavy backpack (they don't have lockers here). I made her one with some yardage I was hoarding but unfortunately it ended up about 1/2 inch too small. So frustrating! So now I need to find something that will fit in it. :)






I have not worked on my Quilt Along blocks at all this last week and I don't know if I will make the Wednesday deadline. We shall see. Maybe I can work on them today during naptime.

Other stuff

I have been busy sewing like mad this week. My daughter gave me her birthday wish list and with budget being what it is, a handmade (from the stash) gift seemed a good way to go. The only thing on her list that I could make was a knitting needle case. I found a good tutorial (here) and late Monday night I got sewing. It took about 4 hours to make this. I changed the pattern by doubling the cut size of the pockets and folding them in half, then doing a topstitch across the top. I did this first, because I was not using canvas and second, because I did not have any bias binding. Everything else was according to the directions of the tutorial.

I used leftover fabric from my daughter's cowgirl quilt (free from MIL), batting (free from a friend) and ribbon from my collection and thread of course. I added a ruffle, but I don't actually like it. I think it took it to a "country" look that I don't care for, but it was too late to change it.My top stitching leaves much to be desired.   I also forgot to stay stitch the ruffle so it is going to fray to the death. :) I really should not sew so late into the night. It shows. :P

Tuesday was spent applying binding to the Sherbet quilt, that I shared yesterday on WIP Wednesday.
I am so glad to have that long-time UFO finished. That was my very first "real" quilt.

TP#200 - "Take 5" found at http://www.the-teachers-pet.com/tpindex.html

Then Tuesday night I got a wild hair and decided my daughter's awesome teacher, who mentored her for the county spelling bee, needed an end of year thank you gift. Wednesday was the last day of school, so it was do or die time. Her teacher has a running joke that she is the queen, (at the very least queen of spelling) so something with a crown seemed appropriate. After some searching online, I found a block that I could make look like a crown and got to work. Until 1:30am. CRAZY! I started around 9pm. Did I say CRAZY??!!
The crown really needed some more something but I did not have it in me to figure out what that something was at midnight. So, it is simple and hopefully recognizable as a crown. I think I would leave off the bottom yellow strip if I made it again. I think it looks a little too tall. Or maybe widen the strips.
It's a cheater quilt, with no binding required, by just quilting the top to the batting and then sewing the back to the front right sides together, then turning it.
I intended it to be a small wall hanging but after I finished and was getting ready to topstitch it, the project told me it was not a wall hanging but a pillow. I tried to rebel but in the end it became a pillow.
I forgot to label it (tired!) and writing directly on the back was not an option since the back is black.

 

Happy Birthday to me and mini quilt show for you!

My birthday has stretched out over a week and it hasn't even actually arrived yet!
Last weekend my sister and her husband brought their family and my mom to California for vacation and we spent 2 days hanging out with them. The kids got Easter baskets on Saturday and then we went to Fat Quarters Shop in Vista where I got a bit of fabric (a few fats of a walk in the woods and a couple of other things.) After that we went to lunch and Rubios and then to the beach for a few hours. After that, we picked citrus fruit at a friend's house and then went home for pizza and movie night. (War Horse - it was good but I was glad I read the book ahead of time.)
Sunday we went to church, then went to my husbands work to play with the robots. Then it was home for Ham dinner and some Star Wars movies.

Then this Saturday, I did in fact make it to Sewing Machines Plus to get my new spool pin and got some needles to boot. The shop sent me a $10.00 credit via email to use in their shop for my birthday! How cool is that!
Also for my birthday, my darling husband consented to escort me to the El Camino quilt guild's quilt show in San Marcos. It was wonderful! Here are some highlights.

Navy aand White 2 color quilt

Funny signs

A mini quilt collection created by the guild

For my pal Christine.I saw this and immediately thought of her.

 WOW, That is a lot of appliqued circles!

One of my favorites. Love the colors, love the visual effect.

Another favorite. This photo doesn't even come close to the beauty in person.

VERY cool Harley Davidson t-shirt quilt. The t-shirt pieces  are all cut out uniquely and appliqued onto the flame fabric.

I liked how the themed farbric was framed.

Soft subtle beauty.

This quilt had many dimensional elements. It was stunning.

A nod to my new neck of the woods.

I really liked this quilt made with repro fabrics. The lady who made it was hospitalized and this was her therapy. Oh yes, and that is me. ;)

A dimensional appliqued humming bird.

 There were many more that I loved, but I figure that is enough photos for one post.

Then, today I went to lunch with my buddies and received hugs and chocolate and brownies and girl talk and this:

 Yep. I'm from Utah and I love my fry sauce. Barry's in my home town and Arctic Circle have the best (IMO).
My sweet friend was in Utah a couple of weeks ago and thought of me and brought me a full size sampler set of fry sauce to enjoy! Pretty awesome birthday surprise!

Tonight my husband took my kids Target where they chose a new puzzle and a roll-up puzzle mat for me so I don't have to use my cutting mat anymore. Still not my birthday yet, but the kids could not wait. :)

If you made it this far, hooray for you! You rock! Have a good one!