Projects

Woohoo! I finished putting together the commissioned t-shirt quilt top

I asked the client what she wanted for the backing fabric but she’s a little distracted as her father just had triple bypass surgery last week – thankfully, he’s doing well. I started looking around online and found a collegiate fabric for UVA and sent her the link. I told her No Rush, I just wanted to send it to her while I was thinking of it…she loved the idea so I ordered it yesterday.

With that project on the back burner I decided to work on another…while in Myrtle Beach a few weeks ago I visited a local quilting/fabric store with my friend. She had seen the Busy Bags I made last month for charity and wondered if I could make her one with a golf theme…I said sure! She found some fabrics she liked and I brought them home. Since I had a break from the t-shirt quilt I figured it was a great time to work on her bag. I cut all the fabric and fusible fleece one evening and put it together the next…voila’…done!

I can’t say I love the fabrics…but hey, it’s not mine so that really doesn’t matter!! 😉

I was itching to start something new so I pulled out a FQ bundle and started looking up patterns. I really liked the look of Afternoon Tango and thought my fabrics would work well, but now I’m not so sure…ugh!

The pattern calls for 9 FQ and this bundle only had 8 so I added a coordinating fabric from my stash…however once I added it to the mix I didn’t like it at. all. so I pulled them out, hence the missing strips. Now I’m not sure whether to keep going or scrap this idea and turn the strips into something else…argh!

I’d love to hear your thoughts…Thanks!

 

 

 

 

Charity sewing

I’ve been doing more charity sewing this week. First up I finished two Busy Bags for the sew-along…now I just need to get them mailed out! This sew along is going on the whole month of May so there’s still time to join in for a good cause.

Bag #1

I found these fabrics in my stash and thought they’d make a cute bag for a little boy.

A look inside…

Bag #2

I found these two fabrics on the clearance rack and scooped them up just for this purpose. The lining fabric is from my stash.

Inside…

Next up is my first finish for the Hands2Help challenge that is finishing up next week – talk about getting in under the wire! I quilted this with large ‘l-shaped’ loops in each rectangle and carried that same motif to the border. This was a lot harder to do on the machine than it was in my head!

This picture shows off the quilting…

And here are a few shots after I put on the binding…

I used a bunch of random fat quarters to make a scrappy back

I still have 2 more quilts I want to finish for this event so I’ve actually taken a few days off from my ‘day job’ next week to hunker down and get ‘er done!

In other news…I finished the commissioned t-shirt/memories quilt. I’m really happy with how this turned out and the backing fabric is perfect for a little girl 🙂 Her mother will be giving it to her later this year on her 10th birthday.

And in case you haven’t heard, there’s a new rage out over the Instant Pot – it’s basically an electric pressure cooker. I have several of the old-style that are used on the stove top but since we have a glass top range we haven’t used them anymore. I waited and waited to buy one until I knew enough people that owned one and still used it…and then I jumped in, thanks Amazon!

I haven’t actually cooked anything yet – lol – I need to get to the store and buy a roast or two.

Lastly, I took a break from my current projects and pulled together all the Cookbook SAL blocks I’d made. I had enough for a lap size quilt so I’m calling this one ‘done’. The SAL is supposed to go on all year but I’ve lost my steam, so I put these up on the design wall and this layout just kind of came to me organically. I had plenty of Kona Snow for the background and before I knew it I had a top! It’s going to need to wait in line to be quilted behind the H2H quilts as they have a deadline!

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No running this week, which is a shame because the 5k I committed to is next Saturday – ugh!! Hey, I guess I can walk it if I have to :-p

That’s all from here…what’s going on in your neck of the woods?

More progress

I put the finishing touches on the Monochromatic Granny Square quilt this week. I had forgotten how much I loved this design! I will admit there are a few issues with my piecing on this as it was done during my early days as a quilter…I sure have learned a lot! The black fabric on the border is one of my favorites and I used it for the back as well.

The lighting in the next picture is pretty bad…but I’ve done something about that which I talk about below.

Up close…

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So excited I finished quilting the tshirt/memories quilt. I pulled a few fabrics to audition for binding and sent pictures to the client. She wasn’t too thrilled with either and reminded me her daughter’s favorite color (right now anyway!) is Mint green. I checked my stash and nope, nothing in mint green…

So it was off to the fabric store! She apologized for making me have to run out for more fabric…after I stopped laughing, I told her it would NEVER be a problem for me to run to the fabric store 😉  Once I was there, I headed to the green section and got a little concerned because there just wasn’t anything in a mint shade – but I kept browsing and finally found a gorgeous mint dot…

I’ll be finishing this up today because I just got another t-shirt quilt job! I’ve been posting progress pictures of this quilt and one of my neighbor’s messaged me about pricing. She has baby/child clothes she wants made into a ‘sofa size’ quilt (that’s what I call a 60×70 quilt), larger than a lap but not quite twin. That size appears to be my sweet spot, lol. She’s running the clothes through the wash since they’ve been in storage for so long and I asked her to use no fabric softeners or dryer sheets as that can interfere with bonding to the stabilizer.

I signed up for some more charity sewing with the Busy Bag Sew Along. It’s not too late to join in, here’s a excerpt from the website:

During the entire month of May, we will partner with Sadie’s Dream to sew Busy Bags (simple tote bags) that will be filled with crayons and art supplies and small toys for children with life threatening illnesses.  Sadie’s Dream is an incredible organization, founded by Jessica and her mother, in honor of Jessica’s beautiful child named Sadie, who was diagnosed with cancer at 6 months of age.

How could I resist! I’ve signed up to make 2 bags, I’ve got the fabric all picked out for the first bag and the free labels I ordered on their website arrived in the mail yesterday. I spent last evening cutting out all the pieces and attaching the fusible fleece. I hope to finish the first bag today. The instructions don’t have the pieces organized by letter but I added them so I could keep it all straight in my head…and my Alphabitties work perfectly!

I mentioned lighting earlier – I was rather frustrated with the light in my sewing room so I went searching for options. A friend had mentioned they switched all of their bulbs to LED and they’re really happy with them AND they last a really long time. So, as I usually do, I went to Amazon and started searching. I found LED bulbs that offer “Daylight” instead of soft white and I was curious if that would be the answer. Now, LED bulbs are pretty expensive – I guess since they last up to 10 years they’re worth it, but it’s still kind of sticker shock when you first see it.

I finally decided to jump in and buy the Philips 462036 100W Equivalent Daylight A19 LED Light Bulb, 6-Pack (this is not an affiliate link although I should become one since I always talk about Amazon :-p )

They look like a regular incandescent bulb and I like that they fit into a regular socket and lamp shade (those swirly halogen bulbs don’t). I went with Daylight equivalent to 100W. When they came in I replaced all the bulbs in my sewing room and WOW-WEE what a difference!! The lighting actually looks like Daylight! I’ve already taken a few pictures (the Busy Bag pieces above was the first one) and without using any photo editing features on my phone the picture looks great!

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In other news: I actually went for a run yesterday…I won’t repeat all the details since I already posted about it here.

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That’s all from here…ttfn