The Quilted Village

I was asked if I would make this quilt for a store. It has been a year and a half since the store that I was working at closed and that long since I have done a store display. I was just a wee bit excited to finally get the chance to show off my talents again. The fabric is called Grace, designed by 3 Sisters, made by Moda and it is their free pattern for this line of fabric. It was kinda fun to make. The house blocks didn't take to long, however the others, took a while. It took me probably a good 20 hours to make this, not counting ironing the fabric before cutting and cutting time. Sigh.......scrappy-ish type of quilts just take a while. My quilter friend (Kaylene Parry) did me a really huge favor to quilt this up lickity split. Now I just have to bind it then it will be on display at Broadbents in Lehi. woohoo!! Sure hope that they like it. (I always worry.)

Blessings

My cute neighbor was expecting her 4th child, but 1st with her new husband. It's his first child. It turned out to be a girl! It's her first one, the previous ones are boys. (Here's your sign!) Well CN (cute neighbor) wanted to make her babies blessing dress - did I happen to mention that she doesn't sew hardly at all! Well she had an idea in her head and couldn't find what she wanted in any of the already made clothing stores, or if she did it was extremely over priced. She decides, what the heck, I will just make it. Off to the fabric store she goes. Does she find a pattern that is exactly like what she envisions? That would be a NO. She thinks to herself, "I'm creative, I'll just get this one and alter it how I want". She purchases all she thinks that she will need and is one happy camper!

THEN she asks for opinions and talks to me. dadadunnn......
Not so happy any more. Sorry. :(

I offer to help her out in any way. We have a powwow meeting, she tells me her ideas and I inform her of options and if they can be done. She decides what she wants and gets to cutting and sewing. Then she would come over to see if it was right.

After a trip or four, back and forth across the street, I say "Here let me help you with that." Long story short-ish, I ended up sewing the dress for her, while she sat in the semicomfy chair keeping me company. It was a fun couple of evenings. She talked and I sewed. I just hope that she wasn't to bored or thought that I am to controlling. Oh well, it's done and looks BEEUTIFUL! What else can I say? I remembered for the most part, how to sew clothing. It's been a while.

I can't wait for cute little Macadoodle to be in it and have a picture.

January Back UP!

In January we took a little vaca down to St. George. Wayne had a softball tournee that he was playing in and we decided to take the kids and go! Krystal came with us also. The big boys, however, didn't want to -- their loss! We had a really good time, UNTIL.......





Meet Mutt and Jeff aka AJ and Oakley-ma-dokely. These two are inseparable during games.

If we lived close, it would be all the time.

I took one of my more favorite quilts down and had a friend take pictures of it for me. I wanted to use a picture of my quilt on my business cards. Since moving down there, she has gotten into photography quite a bit. We played hookey from the games for a little while and went and took pictures. There is not a one that I didn't like. It was really hard to choose.

When games were done with on Saturday, Kylee got really sick. I almost took her into an instacare. She had a really high fever. The two of us stayed in the motel room the rest of night while the others went out. I know that she feels bad about it, but it really is ok. On that note, we didn't dilly dally around the next day to come home. She was feeling alot better, but not up to par.

Where to Start?

School has come and gone! AJ graduated Kindergarten and will be moving on to first grade. Kylee passed all of her classes and will be a freshman next school year. Wow! Where has the time gone?







We started off the year UNhealthy, but seem to be doing better finally, to a degree. I still have ringing and pressure in my ears from my sinus infection since September. One of these days I will finally break down and go to specialist. AJ has had another seizure and breathing issues/sinus infection/strep throat. Kylee has gotten "curvier". We are just waiting for her to grow. Her specialist happened to be on the news a while back explaining scoliosis and what he has done to improve the procedure and that he has kids come from all over. In the meantime, she has had pneumonia and a recurring low grade warmness. Wayne had issues with his shoulder, back and neck. He then got into an accident in his big truck and whatever happened fixed whatever was wrong. He doesn't hurt in those areas any more. Hopefully we will finish off the last half of the year alot healthier.


In the meantime, because of the lack of energy from the above mentioned, I haven't done a whole lot of sewing. I think that I will need actual therapy instead of my own therapy.


I did get my dads quilt top made and showed the family the top at our family gathering in December. Then it was a matter of getting the back made and sent off to my quilter. It took a while to do the back. I decided to do it scrappy and use the fabric that I had originally bought but didn't use on the front. It's fun! Trust me. Now I can't wait for it to get quilted. Can you say ANXIOUS!

I have since done some clothes sewing for a couple of different friends and a bunch of quilt sewing for my designer friend. Stories to come at a latter time.


Now for summer! We really didn't have a spring here. It went from snowing to raining and back and forth. Today it may be decent, I may have to try to sneak outside and get some yard work done.

Sneak Peak

This is how I have decided to put great grams quilt blocks together. If you can picture it, the empty spaces will be a plain, solid fabric, actually the same fabric that is around each block. I am hoping it will all look totally awesome when all is said and done. I know dad will love whatever I choose, I on the other hand am my own worst critic!

Now for the long part of the process, sewing a quilt on point like this,

TAKES F O R E V E R !!!!

Enough whining, time to get sewing!

Happy Stitchin

Better Late then Never

I finally have all the the blocks framed. Now to trim. What size??? Well mom would like it to be a queen size quilt or as close to it as possible. Well, hmmmm... What layout am I to use? Sashing? or no sashing?? Here is where MATH comes into play with a large piece of scrap paper and of course a calculator! After a little bit of consulting, some time away from the project and A LOT of MATH, I finally decided on how I am going to lay it out and what size I am going to cut my blocks! YEAH ME!! but am I sure? do I really want to do it that way? will it be to much of the background??? the doubts are creaping in. Not a good thing.

So I had a little conversation with myself, nothing to be alarmed over, it happens. "Self, get over yourself! Just do it already!!!!" Well whats a person supposed to do? GET OVER IT! So off to trimming I went!

And here is the pile of the trimmings. There is probably a good yard of WASTE fabric there -- give or take. And yes it A L L went into the garbage!! I know shocker! Right?!?!?!? (Dad would be so proud of me for doing this. However, he would add, Now that I am on a roll, get rid of MORE!) Gotta love him!

And wahlah! here is the pile of all the blocks framed and trimmed to all the same size. Now to cut the fabric so that I can lay it out and get to sewing.

Happy times!

Not so Surprise!

Long story short -- These blocks were made by my great grandmother and after all was said and done, I ended up with them to make them into a quilt -- for my dad. and yes he knows --hence the Not so surprised.

It has taken me a long while to figure out what to do with them. I have consulted many different quilters and read many different articles and was still confused. Why? Well you see, they are all just a smidgen off of being all the same size, some have been washed while others weren't, the fabric on the edges were so frayed that I would need to trim so much off to get to good usable fabric that I would cut off points UGG and they are 1/8th inch seams. sigh............

So here is what I have decided to do. Trim them all to where there is good usable fabric. Border them all so that I can then trim them all to the same size! And yes I will use 1/4" seams which will mean, NO points to any of the blocks - which really bothers the professional seamstress in me. In this case, I would rather be safe than sorry. So here goes..... Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pics before all this started, so here we are -- its like starting a movie a half hour into it and missing some vital info. oh well.

I absolutely LOVE this block! It's the only one hand pieced! Ya! Not in MY life time!


I love how she has used whatever to make the piece so that it fits -- two different greens

In this one, the 2 blues and then the one corner triangle is different from the rest

Check out all of the little pieces in the pink

Here she almost matched up perfectly the lines in the plaid - AWESOME! Did you happen to notice the teeny tiny triangle in the very corner. This won't even be seen when all is said and done.

The green stripe must have been an old shirt, I am assuming, because it looks like she has sewn up the holes? I could totally be wrong, but that's my thinking and I'm sticking to it.

There are 4 different fabrics in this one.

I love the fact that this one has a stain on it -- center blue square.

This one just tickles my fancy! That one corner square that's so different!

Backside of one of the blocks with the teeny tiny seams.

And here we are in the process of getting "framed".

And the sewing continues!