You Know You've...

... been bitten by the Quilting Bug when you look down your street

and of course think how lucky you are to see such natural beauty. 

Then immediately think --- WOW those colors would be GREAT in a quilt!  Wonder if I have time before Christmas to whip something up.

the answer to that is NO, not with what we've got going on around our house!

Now for my sewing updates ---

CHRISTMAS QUILT - ready for binding!!!

I chose an all over squiggle pattern for free motion quilting.  I honestly do not enjoy free motion quilting.  I wish I did.  I think a few factors play in to why I don't:

1.  I'm using a small sewing machine to quilt a 55"x55" quilt

2.  the surface of my quilting table only goes about 12" behind my machine, so I'm constantly fighting friction and gravity when my quilt hangs over the edges

3.  I suffer from arthritis and my hands just aren't as strong as they need to work a free motion design - I do much better with straight lines or stitch in the ditch.  I use gloves and drop the feed dogs... but it's still a battle between me, weight, friction, gravity, and the sewing gods.

4.  I'm definitely left brained... I like the symmetric, predictable, straight line paths made by stitching in the ditch...

HOWEVER, it is MUCH MUCH MUCH quicker to free motion quilt an all over random squiggle, then stitch in the ditch. 

Hope to have hand-sewn the binding down on this one by the end of Turkey week.

CRISS CROSS QUILT - also ready for the binding to be hand sewn down.

I L O V E  this quilt so much!  I really don't want to give it to my aunt... but alas, I've already made a promise.  I just love the colors, the pattern, every thing.  And I stitched in the ditch on this one.

BEAN BAG - finished!

YAY!  I think it turned out pretty funky and cool... perfect for my funky and cool little cousin!

I use this super easy pattern found on this page.

Of course my munchkin had to do some quality assurance testing on it...

Pounce test... check

Wiggle test... check

Comfy test... check

Yep, she says it's good to go!

TRAVELING QUILT - one more block done

This thing is going to take me forever!  But I do find the hand-sewing relaxing... plus it's nice to have a project where I don't have to stand at the ironing board pressing seams.

Although I think I've found a solution for that

My little helper... helping along!

*DISCLAIMER*  - the iron is NOT plugged in

Hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving!

~* ♥ *~

"May the colors of your life be bright and the threads in your life be very strong."

Author Unknown

~* ♥ *~ 

Scrappy Projects Update

This week I only managed to get a few projects worked on, but definitely enjoyed our mini vacation in Las Vegas!

2011 SCRAPPY QUILT

I sewed 4 blocks together thinking it would be the top row of this quilt, until I measured it... 75" long!  This is going to be one HUGE quilt.  So now my row has become my column... I'm going to make it a 3 x 4 block quilt... which *should* measure about 56" x 75" (in theory)

 TRAVELING QUILT - new project!!!!

Back story about this project.  I saw this idea of a traveling quilt on the blog, Life Under Quilts, here in this post and I just knew I was going to HAND SEW this quilt.  Basically the idea is to use these 1.5" diamond quilt pattis (plastic templates) and baste the diamond shapes together using a few backstitches, then arrange them so they become a star.  Simple.  Easy.  Goes whereever you go.

Here is a great video tutorial of how this lady stitches her diamonds/stars together.  I've only watched it about a MILLION times!



So when we decided to take a road trip to Las Vegas, I immediately dug through my stash and started cutting up diamond shapes to make on the 3.5 hr drive.  And being the left brained nerd that I am, separated them according to where they go in the color wheel.  :D

Here's a nice picture of my nerdiness.

And here is my very first star for my traveling quilt!  I'm hoping to use bright colors and keep a very fun feel to the entire quilt, however, my scraps will pretty much determine the overall color scheme.

Neatest thing about the above photo ↑ is the pin cushion.  It belonged to my Gramma Kocher.  I bet she never thought her pin cushion would make it to Las Vegas!  She died some time ago, long before I ever got interested in sewing.  But I have a feeling she's keeping an eye on things from up there.

Whilst in Vegas, I managed to finish 2 stars!!!  I wrote on them Las Vegas, Nov 2011.  Hoping to turn this into an heirloom for Emma of all the fun places we went.  I plan on taking this traveling quilt with me next fall when Brian and I go to Germany to visit my brother. It will be interesting to see where I was when I finished a block over there!  Such a FUN project!

BABY BURPIES

These are so fun and easy to make!

BEAN BAG

My cousin Kyle LOVES dinosaurs and informed me when he was out here this summer that I could make him a bean bag for Christmas!  :D  He just turned 6.  So cute!  So I hunted around and found this adorable line from Timeless Treasures and got started on a bean bag chair for him.

CRISS CROSS QUILT - on the machine being quilted.  Hope to have it finished before the week is up!

CHRISTMAS QUILT -  is next to be quilted.

Well that's all for this week!  Hope you all had a great weekend!

~ * ♥ * ~

"Every quilt tells a story."

Author Unknown

~ * ♥ * ~