Just for Leslee

Okay, my sweet Leslee, here is the picture. For the rest of my readers---- this is what I have done on my Fourth of July quilt so far. I am debating as if I should leave the quilt square or make it rectangular. I would appreciate any suggestions.

Leslee, I look forward to your e-mail. Love Mom.

P.S. Leslee, your name comes up on spell check as if it is spelled wrong. What was your Mom thinking when she spelled your name?

Fourth block

Well here is the first block. I got this idea from one of the blogs that I read but for the life of me I can not find that post now. I would love to give credit where credit is due but I can't right now. Could someone please lead me to the right person so I can thank her and allow others to know where this idea came from.

I plan to make more of the blocks and put them together in a quilt somehow. The completed block is 23.5 so it will be 23 completed. That is a big square. I will have to think about what I am going to do.

Well, I am going to go back to sewing before I start making dinner. Good evening to all.

Ready to Post

Well almost ready to post. I have to put the year and sew one of my labels on the the corner and this quilt will be in the mail on its way to my niece. I certainly hope she will like it. The completed size is 54 wide by 60m length. I think this is a good size for a college dorm.

I have been busy working on a quilt, the one I posted the fabric choices a few posts back, but I don't want to show a picture of it yet. The quilt is changing as I am working on it. What I mean by this is, as I am sewing the blocks I am changing my mind on the design. I don't really know what the finished top will be as I am making it up as I go along. It has been a slow process because I have been working a lot lately. I have been working 5 days a week, having to do housework and all that fun stuff on the weekends. I even had to miss a motorcycle run last week-end so I could get caught up on house hold chores. I wasn't happy with that choice but sometimes you just have to make those hard decisions.

I am debating in my mind if I want to keep working on the current quilt or take a little break to make a fourth of July quilt. I am leaning towards the fourth quilt, I think I need a little break from the present project. The fourth project is just a small wall style quilt I spotted on a blog. I am sorry I can't remember whose blog it was at this time. I will research it and give credit where credit is due when and if I make the quilt. I certainly don't want to take credit for a project I copied from someone else.

The reason for two pictures. I realized after I started writing this blog I uploaded the wrong picture so I went back and uploaded the right one. I don't know if I can figure out how to delete the wrong one. I will try but if not successful you will be two for the price of one. The one on the bottom is the top unquilted, on the top: quilted and bound, ready for postage.

Cards all Spent

Well today I spent the last of my birthday gift cards. I do believe I spent the money well. I forgot to add a nice piece of brown floral to the picture. This is what I got. I shopped and bought only on sale. I purchased the blue/multicolor for 1.00 a yard. I do believe that is a good buy. Unfortunately they only had 2 yards of it left. I am going to try it in a stack and wack. I have never made one and want to try it. Another quilt in my long list of want to do's.The fall leaf fabric was 50% off so I got 6 yards for the price of 3. I purchased 11 yards of white on white for 1.79 a yard. The orange next to the leaf fabric is what I used on my nine patch snowball, which was 3.00 a yard. The rest are various rems discounted at 20% then 50% off that price. I love a bargain and even better when purchased with a gift card. I really like the June Taylor ruler I purchased. One of the ladies in the Saturday sewing group I attend had one so I knew that would be one of my purchases. It is so convenient when cutting multiple strips. You have to be very careful to cut in the right slot though. I have not made the mistake yet, yes I say yet because I know the day will come. I just wanted to share my bounty with the rest of you out there in blog land. Have a great week-end.

I am playing

I should be quilting a few quilts I need to get done, but over the week-end, after I finished the USC quilt, I came up with an idea. I just had to work on it. I am hoping it turns out as my minds eye sees the finished quilt. Time will tell. Here is a picture of what I am up to. These are the color combinations. I have a few of the blocks partially completed but I don't want to post them. I will use a neutral as the back ground. Most likely different shades of ecru neutrals, as I don't want to buy any new fabric and I think it will add interest to the quilt. I hope to have it completed in the week or maybe next, as it won't be a very big quilt. Most likely a lap quilt.

Well I have to get off to work. Have a great day.

Dog Beds

I am in the process of making new dog beds for our two dogs. I am sick of the old one we have. I have washed it numerous times and it just doesn't look clean and it is ratty. Things do wear out over time. I am using some samples of fabric one of the ladies brought to our quilting group earlier this month. They are deco fabrics from who knows where.

I sew six of them together. trim so all is even. The piece in the middle of this picture is going to go on the back. I use a large piece of fabric on the back. Sew together

add two worn out pillows that I have stitched together. This is what I end up with....................

A new dog bed. Jo-Jo was using it earlier today and seemed to love it. I am working on one for Bo now. He is a bit jealous that he doesn't have a new bed.

I must get back to work now. Have a great day.

Finished

Well here is the finished top. I like the way it turned out and certainly hope my niece Anna will like it also. One thing I do think the red is a bit to maroon for USC color but it is what I had and want to use up what I have without purchasing more so it will do. If I make another it certainly will be a different red and a brighter yellow. All in all very happy with the finished quilt. I will quilt it sometime in the next week or two. I have one in front of it that needs to be done. I am going to quilt a quilt our sewing group is doing for a fundraiser. It is a really nice double Irish Chain. I will post a picture after it is quilted.

There were two partially correct answers. Libby, from A Simple Girl, blog was correct on the college represented. Richelle, from Seams Like Me, blog was somewhat correct on the pattern. Her guess was some sort of snowball, which I will say is close enough. I do think the ninepatch/snowball is becoming one of my favorites. It looks nice and is very easy to put together.

My decision on the goodies for guessing. I will split the booty. Libby and Richelle, if you would e-mail me with your addresses I will get a little goodie off to you for participating in my fun little game.

I best be getting to bed. It is almost 11:00p.m. Good evening or should I say night to all.

A new start

Well as I mentioned before I did complete the nine patch variation. I started a new quilt. I have a niece graduating from high school, or I should say already has graduated, and will be attending college next fall. I am late on getting this quilt started and it will be late getting to her but she will have it before school starts in the fall. I cut the pieces last night and sewed this morning before work and again this evening after work. I have all the sewing done for this part now I have to do the cutting then I can start sewing the blocks together.

If you leave me a comment and let me know what pattern you think I am putting together and the college it will represent, I will send a nice little gift to one person with the correct answer. If there is more than one person with the correct answer I will draw a name from a dish. Good luck. I will draw when the top is completed and I post a picture of the finished top.

Belated gift

One of co-workers informed me at my birthday lunch that the gift she had for me would arrive late but it would be well worth the wait. Well today I received that gift and was she ever right. She gave me an Aerosmith guitar pick. She knows that I have been learning how to play the guitar and that Aerosmith is my favorite band so she got me this gift. I must admit I LOVE IT!!!!!

I will post quilt pictures later in the week, if I don't work on Friday.

I should be done by now but..........

I should be done with this top now but I keep sewing it wrong. I don't know what the problem is but I keep sewing the back out instead of the right way. I give up for the night. I am tired of ripping out to resew what I had just sewn. In some instances I would rip it out just to sew it wrong again. I have decided I need to stop for the night. I will embroider on my embroidery machine. In this case all I have to do is change the thread color. I don't even know how well I will do that, last night I kept breaking the needle while I was embroidering. I guess some days or should I say week-ends are just like that.

I will try again tomorrow on the quilt top. I will say I am happy with it so far. I do think the back ground fabric toned the down the orange a lot, maybe a bit more than I wanted or expected

but sometimes you don't know this until you are way into the quilt. I think I would have made the nine patches cut at 2.5 instead of 2 like the pattern called for. I thought about this but didn't know if I had enough background fabric and then that would make the setting squares larger which I don't think I would want. I will think about it for the next time, I know I will try this pattern again and maybe just set in differently. I already have an idea in my mind, but this idea will be put way on the back burner, as I have many other quilt ideas to do before that happens.

Embroidery machine calls.

New Project(s)

I started a new quilt. I actually started it yesterday but did not of the sewing today. It will be a variation on nine patch snowball. If you remember I bought the orange flower fabric last fall. I love the fabric but didn't know what to use it in. Well, with some of my birthday gift card money. (It is folded inside out so not a bold as right side). I am using the wrong side of the lighter fabric for the right side of the quilt. I just felt for the affect I wanted the shinny side was to much. So far I am liking what I am seeing. That is one of the quirks of quilting, you can guess how things will go together but they don't always look the way the minds eye sees them.

Here is my little pile of snowballs and beginning of nine patches. I am surprised how quickly this is going together. I love it!!!!!!

Oh, yeah! Another project that took up a lot of my time today. We finally got my embroidery reader to work with my new computer. It is so old, I bought it used and it is a first generation. That is one of the reasons I wanted to stay with XP instead of upgrading to Vista. I know if I went to Vista it wouldn't work at all because I have to jerry rig it now to get it to work with XP.

Well anyway this is a free pattern I found and it works just great. I plan to embroider out enough of these to make a quilt. I thought would make a really neat quilt for a young girl.

So you can see I have been busy. I gave the dog a bath and a bit of a hair cut today also.

Two more done

Well I have completed two more of my unquilted tops. I feels soooo good to have only one left to quilt. It is the blue flying geese, I posted the picture back in April, on the 13th, you can go to the archives to see a picture of it if you want. This is a cousin of DNA, which is posted in May. I made this quilt and DNA from poorly cut 2.5 inch squares I purchased at an estate sale many many moons ago. It took forever for me to figure out what to do with them and then just decided I needed to get rid of them so this is what has become of those squares. I have about twenty left that are now residing in my odds and ends for some sort of scrap quilt in the far far future.

Here is the final picture of Jacobs Ladder. I am really happy with the outcome. I definitely will make another, bigger, probably queen. I already have the fabric in mind. You will see when I start.

Well, I best start on my day. I was on call this morning with the temp service and have been playing, just in case I got a call. No call, so that means I will get on with my regularly scheduled day. I hope all have a great day and great week-end.

Plugging along

I started this quilt about 3 years ago. I cut out all the pieces, which took a long time. I made the templates, drew on the fabric and cut and cut and cut. I made piece A out of a different fabrics, not duplicating on this piece. All B's are white. (This is the second one I am making of this pattern)


I am to the point of sewing the pieces together now. This is a long tedious process, but well worth the effort. As you can see there are many many curves that must be sewn. It curtainly is a good quilt for practice on sewing curves. I slowing plug along on this while I am trying to figure out what I want to do next. Just like my Grandma's Flower Garden, this quilt probably won't be done this year but it will get done.

The reason I am making this a second time. This one is for me. The first quilt was to small for my queen bed so I am making it bigger. I gave my first one to my nephew. When I find a picture of it I will post the picture. Well I am going to go to get some sewing in before I must get ready for work.

Good Day to all.

Found an Opps

While quilting the Ladder quilt I came across this opps. Why does this happen to me. I don't find my mistakes until I am in the quilting process and much to late to fix. Does this happen to anyone else?

I finished the binding on the other quilt. I will get a picture during the week and post. I hope to have this completed to sew the binding while I watch the hockey game. The Senators best win, I don't really want the Ducks to win the Stanley Cup.

Working and moving forward

I have been working on getting my tops quilted. I finished three of them so far, I posted the pictures of two of them a few posts ago. I am sewing the binding down on # 3 and quilting this one, Jacobs Ladder, #4.

I have decided to sew the binding down by hand, the last two, Candy Corn and DNA, I sewed the binding by machine and I just don't like the way it looks. The binding just doesn't seem to lie as nicely as I would like. It is okay for utility quilts, which mine are, but I still don't like the look so I will sew them by hand. I am liking the way this is coming out, I think I am going to make a queen size of this pattern. This is the first time I have made a Jacobs ladder, it is a good pattern.

We are having beautiful weather here and I need to work outside today. I have not done any yard work yet this year and must get out there and clean up the flower beds. I have an area where we took out one of the ponds, I would like to take out the other one but hubby says no, so it will stay. I am going to make a patio area by the remaining pond, I have been filling the hole with dirt but now I need to get it leveled and the stones placed. I think it will be nice when completed but the work will be hard. Oh well, most things in life worth doing are hard.

Have a good day, enjoy the week-end, and I look forward to reading new postings on blogs.