Monday, January 21, 2008

One-a-week

Flirtations is a wonderful new line of fabric by Sandy Gervais. I just love her style! I just had to make something with it so Sharon and I both are making table runners. Here's mine:



I think it is so fun! I'd like to do placemats, and a wall hanging, and a quilt for the living room etc out of this line! Sigh... so much fabric, sew little time!

A week ago Friday I purchased fabric for a quilt. Took it home and promptly began cutting it up. On Tuesday, I called Mary and managed to get ahold of her and told her that I needed this quilt done this week. She said she could do it if she had it by Wed morning. So that night I got the backing ready for it and I was able to get Paul to bring it over to her Wednesday at 9 am when she opened. I was so shocked though, when she called me on my cell phone that afternoon to tell me that it was done! Since I only had "check-in" for labs this past week, they didn't take the full 4 hours and I was finished earlier than usual and could leave to arrive in Sherman before 5 to pick it up! That just left binding! The quilt was finished on Thursday-a week after I started it. My family has decided that it is a record for me! Of course, I did have help with the machine quilting part.

The reason that I needed it in a week is it is a gift, of course, for some friends who are moving down near San Antonio. I am actually going to give it to them on Wednesday evening. Here are some photos of it.




It uses the "Take Five" quilt pattern which is why it was so fast and easy. Plus it wasn't too large to get finished either. There are 5 main fabrics in the body of the quilt: music, water, marbles, blue kaleidoscope, & fireworks. I chose the fabrics not only to "go together" but also because they have some special meaning for the family for whom the quilt was made. Music: both of them were involved in the choir and special music in our church. He was also our accompanist. Water: last summer, she was in charge of "splashdown" a free water carnival our church sponsors for the community. Marbles: this past year, they were given a foster son. Blue kaleidoscope fabric: reminded me of stained glass and they helped with putting the "stained glass look" on our sanctuary windows and the colors were similar to them also. Fireworks: they are alot of fun! And at choir sometimes they shoot zingers at each other. Well, I hope they enjoy it! It was fun finding all of those fabrics!

Gosh, and if I could keep doing one quilt a week for the rest of the year, how many quilts would I have done by Dec 31st? It boggles the mind!

Happy Calculating!
Wasie

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Be Warm!

This week, one of my friends, Sharon, and I drove down to The Quilt Asylum and picked up our first installment in our 12 month BOM — Nancy Halvorsen's Be Attitudes. I worked on my block starting yesterday and finished it up today. It is "be warm". Each one of the months is "be .... something."

This was the first time that I had blanket stitched on my sewing machine around little pieces with curves and corners that were tight and angles etc. I made up a little practice piece using scrap fabric with an "m" and 2 mittens — thought maybe I could get some use out of that... And I diddled around with the length and width of my stitch. Well, I thought I was doing okay on the lil' practice piece, so off I went on the snowman! Aargh! I did not like it! The scarf, in particular, looked terrible. I ended up finishing stitching the entire block, then pulling out the stitching on the entire scarf and redoing the whole scarf. I used a slightly narrower stitch this time on the scarf and that seemed to help plus my experience from doing the rest of the picture and all of those letters probably helped too. Also, see that strategically placed green button...it's my favorite. I loved that it was a wide button — hides all kinds of things... There are also little cream shiny buttons that go on the ends of the snowflake arms, but I was afraid that I would just have to take them off later for quilting, etc. I will probably have to take off the carrot nose and the green button, but I just couldn't resist putting them on!

Well, if you're tempted to join me, the website for the BOM is The Quilt Asylum. They will ship them to you mail order each month if you can't get to the shop to pick them up!

Be Warm,
Wasie
;o)

Tote Bag, Tote Bag, Everywhere a Tote Bag...

I have truly been the tote bag queen lately. And every time I make one, my daughters go, "Oh, I want one like that!" Using the Charm Party Tote pattern by Quilts Illustrated, I ended up making 6 different tote bags. I truly think I have the pattern memorized now! Three of them were for the church bazaar; then 2 more were ordered from that and I finally was able to make 1 for a gift to give from us! Here's picks of some of them.


These three were the first 3 for the church bazaar.


This one is a gift for Grandma Pat.

Then I made a little purse for Peng from a pattern by This n That. And a Jelly Roll tote for my sister-in-law Linda for Christmas. I can't seem to locate a photo of Peng's purse right now, but here's Linda's jelly roll tote.

The jelly roll was a fabric collection called shangri la. I have enough strips left to make one more bag, and now that I know what I'm doing it should go faster!

Happy Toting,
Wasie

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Hey! Where'd November go?

The pics of the November Happy Blocks never got posted!
Here they are. The theme was Christmas.


Ho, ho, ho. Merrrrry Christmas.

Oh, and a Happy New Year everybody!!!
Wasie