So, I did a thing…

A quick Sammie update before I get started – she’s doing just fine and was back to her old self in no time!!! Thank you all for your well wishes! She gets her stitches out tomorrow so I’m sure that won’t make her happy. The Vet called last week to let me know the outcome of the pathology of the suspicious spot. It was Melanoma but she said it’s different in dogs, it can be benign and Sammie’s is benign!! Yay!! I’m so grateful ❤

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“So, I did a thing”…that saying has been popping up all over social media lately so I thought I’d join the fun. I’ve been wanting to get an Accuquilt cutter machine for many, many months now to help with all the fabric cutting I do making quilts. It’s very expensive (imho) so I’ve had it on my favorites list waiting for a sale, which doesn’t happen often.

Well, lo and behold, I’m reading Katy’s blog last week and she drops a little line near the end that Accuquilt is having a sale (sorry, the sale is over now 😦 ) and she provided a link…of course I clicked through. To my pleasant surprise, the sale was $50 off regular price!!!! Woo hoo! Of course, I snatched it right up!! It comes with a starter cutting die kit too!

Since I was saving so much money I looked at the other cutting dies, which were also on sale, and found one in the size I usually cut most of my scraps (2.5×4.5). Oh my, this is going to save me SO.MUCH.TIME!

As I mentioned in my last post, we were going to Myrtle Beach this weekend and wouldn’t you know it – I got the shipment notice on my new cutter and it was scheduled for Saturday 😮 I asked a neighbor if they would watch for the delivery and take it in for me so it didn’t sit on our front porch until we got back. But then to my surprise, Fedex shows up Friday afternoon with the delivery!! Yay! You get one guess what I did Friday night 😉 lol

I pulled out the scrap bin specifically set aside for the 2.5×4.5 rectangles and blew through them in no time – wow!! Now I just need to make sure I don’t get tennis elbow from all the cranking…hahaha!

This bin already had some hand cut pieces in it…but I doubled that amount Friday night with my new cutter!

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We got up Saturday morning to leave for Myrtle Beach but both me & my husband just didn’t feel up to it, so we pulled the plug on the trip. There was no specific reason we had to go, just wanted to see the progress on the house with our own eyes instead of through pictures from our friends…but there’s always next weekend!

Since I had the weekend free and I received all the fabric I needed to work on my niece’s baby blankets, I made one of the receiving blankets she requested and I basted the crib quilt. I’m going to do echo quilting along the seams so the fabric will stay nice and fluffy. I also made progress on the Clemson tshirt quilt, only one more section to piece and then I can put the whole top together.

Receiving blanket – Pink & White Chevron Flannel with Gray Minky Dot

lower right section still to be trimmed and pieced

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I’ve stopped doing Yoga everyday…my wrists were really starting to bother me and the only new thing I was doing was Yoga. Hmmm, I’ll have to see if this is a known issue – I really liked how I was feeling otherwise so it’s a shame I had to stop 😦

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That’s all for now…I’m headed back to the sewing room to start quilting on that baby quilt…ttfn!

 

 

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Sammie surgery

My little mini-schnauzer girl had to have surgery last week. She’s 9 years old and never had her teeth cleaned, the vet said it was time. She also suggested that while she was under  we take off some of the larger skin tags that had cropped up over the last couple of years, a total of 6, so we did that too. Sammie came through with flying colors but this Momma was a nervous wreck! The vet called while Sammie was still under to say that two of her lower front teeth were loose and she recommended taking them out, so I agreed.

I picked her up around 3pm, she was still a bit groggy and out of it but I got her home and made her something to eat and she gobbled it right up – that’s always a good sign! We got a prescription for pain meds and she only needed them for two days before she was back to her old self again…yay! Here’s a picture of two of the spots where skin tags were removed.

and here’s a closeup of her missing teeth…LOL

I took off Friday to take care of Sammie but she slept most of the day so I worked in my sewing room. I finished up the Pumpkin table runner and started on my next commission tshirt quilt (yep, the first girl finally brought her shirts over!!)

This is not the final layout for this project, I just wanted to get an idea of size. I have lots of tshirt pieces left over so I may do a border with those, not sure yet.

I also put together a baby quilt top for my niece. They picked out the pink & gray fabrics (they’re having a girl!!) and gave me a few Pinterest shots they liked, thankfully it was pretty easy! I want to use a gray chevron flannel for the backing but wouldn’t you know it, none of my local stores had it in stock … so off to Fabric.com I went. I know, I know, I shouldn’t buy online but when it’s not available local there’s really not much I can do. My niece also asked if I could make a few receiving blankets so I got a couple extra yards of flannel and minky for that too. I need to have all this finished by the time I go up to Md for the baby shower on Aug 27…no problem!

A little closer look at the fabrics.

And while they were on Pinterest they stumbled across this adorable Tag Toy and asked if I could make it…um, I guess I could try…Ha! this should be fun!

So that was my week. The house in Myrtle Beach is coming along and we’ll be going down for a visit next weekend so I’ll have more pictures for my next post – which will probably be late 😉

ttfn

 

Still in t-shirt quilt limbo

I haven’t started any big projects lately because I’ve been waiting on a customer who wants a t-shirt quilt and unfortunately all I keep getting are excuses…so, I moved on to the next person who also asked for a tshirt quilt and wouldn’t you know it, now she has excuses. Geez, if you’ve changed your mind it’s OK, just tell me that! Whatever. I’ve been keeping busy with some UFO’s so it’s a win for me either way 😉

I pulled out a Halloween quilt that I had basted last fall (!) and started FMQ my go-to meander. Actually I’m really glad I did a simple quilt design because I chose a bright orange thread and now I think a more elaborate design might have overwhelmed the fabric.

In progress:

All done… the center fabric is a panel I got as part of a fabric giveaway I won last year. I made another quilt with the fat quarters and put this together using the panel and left over pieces.

I posted this for sale on my FB page and within 2 hours it was SOLD! Wow, that’s so cool!! 😀

I think that quilt put me in a fall mood because the next project I pulled out was fabric that had been sitting in a bag for 1 1/2 years. A friend had asked me to make a pumpkin table runner and she had picked out a few fabrics but said not to start because she wanted to buy more…so it’s been sitting in my sewing room all that time! Yesterday I finally decided to pull some coordinating fabrics from my stash and get started.

This first picture is my table runner from 2015 I used as a template:

I’ve got the pumpkins pieced and basted…time to pick out backing and start quilting each block

Up close

Other than that I’ve been tidying up my sewing room and working in the rest of the house to get rid of unnecessary junk in preparation for our move later this year…ugh, what a chore!!

Here’s an updated shot of the new house in Myrtle Beach…roof is almost complete

I’ve been doing pretty good following Yoga with Adriene’s 31 day Revolution series…I fell a few days behind so I’m only on Day 12 instead of Day 14, but I’m still happy with my progress. Wow, those standing positions proved to be quite challenging but I hung in there as best I could 😉

That’s about it for me this week…I hope you’ve had a good one!!

ttfn…

 

 

Picture heavy post!

I finished my Learning Quilt last week and I have tons of pictures to share. This quilt started about 3 years ago when I picked up the quilting habit 😉  At that time I was still testing out knitting and one of the knitters I followed online was trying her hand a making quilt blocks so I jumped on the band wagon. Oh my, the name of this quilt is so appropriate because I learned a ton while making these blocks…so many mistakes!! I won’t recount them all here; let’s just suffice it to say I laughed heartily while finally putting all these blocks together into a quilt.

Without further ado…here is a shot of the whole quilt and then close ups of each block:

I apologize for some of the wonky picture angles…this was hanging on my design wall and I don’t have a whole lot of space to back up for straight on pictures. I hope you can make out some of the quilting – I FMQ each block in whatever design hit me as I got to it and I used a loopy circle in the sashing and borders. Although this is not one of my finest quilts it is still very special to me because it shows me just how far I’ve come in the last three years 😀

Another exciting thing this week, I got a picture of one of my quilts being given to it’s new owners…the happy parents-to-be! It makes me SO HAPPY to get these kinds of pictures and I hope the baby loves that blanket for many years to come…

I’ve been trying to work on some of my WIPs and this week I pulled out my Sugar Block Club blocks from last year and decided on a layout. I was trolling the hashtag #sugarblockclub2016 on Instagram and I found this completed top by @stitchymomma and instantly knew that’s what I wanted to do.

I wanted my SBC blocks to be the focal point so I pulled out a bunch of low volume print fat quarters and cut 12.5″ blocks

I let this simmer on the wall for a day or two and decided “nope, I’m just not feeling it” so I raided my solids stash and tried something different – WOW! I love it. I’m calling it Sugar Block Skittles!

I’ll be spending the afternoon sewing it all together. I think I’m going to use Angela Walters’ quilting design, Paisley Feather, for the solid blocks and I’ll probably echo quilt designs in the pieced blocks.

Ok, just one last picture…we’re building a house in Myrtle Beach and will make the permanent move there when our house is finished so I thought I’d share an in-progress shot. Still a long way to go but the builder says once the roof is completed things will move along pretty fast.

Oh and I almost forgot…I’ve been following along with Yoga by Adriene all this week. I started her Revolution 31 day series and I’m on Day 7. It’s hard but it feels good!

Have a super-fan-tab-ulous day!!

Yoga & Quilting

I’m still in a holding pattern waiting for my next tshirt quilt project so I started working on a few things that have been languishing.

I pulled all my Honey Pot Bee blocks out and put them up on the wall to see if they played nicely together…yep, I’m still liking my fabric choice – Blueberry Park by Karen Lewis.

Once they were all up there I decided to make another block – the alternate for July. Each month two different patterns are offered and I’ve usually just made one of them but I really liked both this month.

I then went on a cleaning binge – not too crazy or anything, more like just tidying up and organizing…no pictures of that!

Yesterday while watching the Ladies final at Wimbledon I got my Learning Quilt back under the needle and made great progress. I quilted each block differently, sometimes playing with the piecing pattern and other times just winging it with a design I had never tried before – hey, it’s a ‘learning quilt’ so why not!

I finished quilting the sashing and borders today while watching the Gentleman’s final at Wimbledon (Yay, Roger!). All that’s left is the binding – I’ve chosen two shades of solid green because I see a lot of green in the blocks and there is a touch of green in the backing. Hopefully I can get that on tonight!

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On the exercise front, I haven’t been doing much cardio but I have been doing Yoga almost every day. It’s a lot harder than it looks and I can really feel it in my legs, abs and back (clearly my posture is lacking!). I’ve found a 30 day series on YouTube from “Yoga with Adriene“, she’s really great at describing how you should be moving and positioning your body…and she’s pretty funny too!

That’s it for me…what are you working on these days?

 

T-shirt quilt done!

I finished up the commissioned Tshirt quilt – it’s washed and delivered!!

I’m waiting to hear back from my next customer so in the mean time a girls gotta stay busy…and I realized I didn’t have a table topper for the July 4th holiday (I sold the one I made last year) so…this happened:

When that was completed I dug out an old WIP and finished putting the blocks together to make a full top. This pattern was is from the Honey Pot Bee as a wild card before it all started in January…it’s called Modern Christmas Tree but as you can clearly see I did not use Christmas fabrics. I have no idea what I’m gonna do with this but at least the top is done! I may use traditional Christmas fabric for the backing…I’ll have to think about that 😉

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Once again I had a rather washout week for exercise…unless you count Yoga. I completed a couple of different YT videos over the last 4 days. I can feel it in my muscles so it must be making an impact. I also logged my food every day last week using My Fitness Pal website. I’m hoping by logging what I eat I’ll begin to make better choices…food and portion wise!

That’s all for now…Have a great week ahead 😀

 

 

Weekly update

Workout wise, last week was another wash out…I created a new exercise tracker in my BuJo in hopes it might motivate me to do something so I could fill it in but that didn’t seem to work! I started out with short run on Monday and did a 30 min Yoga video on Wed and then…nothing.

I’m not giving up! If I keep trying eventually I’ll find a plan I will stick to…all suggestions are welcome!!

As for sewing & quilting I got a bit more accomplished this week. I basted the commissioned tshirt quilt (any UVA fans out there?)

And I started quilting on it yesterday using my go-to ‘all over meander’…I’m about 1/2 way done with it now.

Friday night I made a mad dash to finish the Honey Pot Bee June block…haha, nothing like waiting until the last minute 😉 I still love these Blueberry Park fabrics…I hope they never stop making this line!

I also took a break from FMQ yesterday to make another Traveler’s Notebook. The first one I made isn’t big enough to hold my Bullet Journal and the little notebooks and I wanted to keep them all together. I picked up a cheap plastic placemat at Walmart to use as a stabilizer and gathered up a few other necessary supplies: two fat quarters of fabric, elastic cord and some batting.

 

You can’t see the fabric in this pic – it’s wrong side out under the placemat

I measured the circumference of two journals to make sure the width would be sufficient and cut the fabric 9.5 x 14.5. From there it went pretty quick putting it all together.

I used the awl to punch holes for the elastic and that large needle to feed it through

A real close up shot to see the top stitching

There are two more small notebooks underneath my Bujo…

I’m so tickled with this one!! The added batting between the fabric and the placemat gives it a soft-to-the-touch feel but it’s still very sturdy with the plastic insert.

That’s about it for me today…I’ll be finishing up that tshirt quilt today and I now have two more people waiting in the line – I’m becoming a tshirt quilt queen…LOL!

A belated Happy Canada Day to our neighbors up north and an early Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans!!

How are things in your part of the world today?