December 2013 – Kelly's Kwilts

Goodbye 2013!

I’m sitting on the couch relaxing, or should I say recuperating from my glucose test today. Man did I have a sugar crash!!! Yet another thing I have to worry about being pregnant! So far everything is going well, baby feels like she turned, she is now kicking me much higher! Hope to hear by the end of the week if I passed the test or if I need to do the 3 hour test. Here’s hoping I passed!

I’m listening to Alex and the hubby playing upstairs with trains and airplanes. How I love hearing Alex squeal with laughter while he plays with his daddy! He’s been calling me mommy a lot lately, not sure why it changed from mama, but how I love hearing it!

On to the crafting side! I finished the thousand pyramid top the other day, I was hoping to find batting and backing and get it sandwiched before the end of the year. Obviously that didn’t happen! The boys might be going out to play in the snow tomorrow morning, maybe I can get that done and out of the way. I’m planning on just doing straight line quilting, it is going to be used in the car as a lap quilt for Alex. He has one in my car now, but that will move to daddy’s truck and the new one will be used in my car. He’s been asking for a blankie in the car since it’s been so cold lately!

So I mentioned last week that I am teaching myself to knit so I can make a blanket for baby. I’ve been practicing with some of the stitches I know I’ll need to use in the blanket and didn’t think I was doing it right. I found a group on Facebook that sounded good and they all say that it looks fine I just need to keep going. So I will practice a bit longer before I actually start working on the blanket. Alex and I stopped at Joann’s and I got 4 skeins of yarn to make her blanket. I found this on Ravelry and loved it. It seems to be pretty easy, we’ll see just how easy it is!

I got an Amazon gift card for Xmas from my BIL and decided to buy a yarn winder. I had started crocheting an afghan awhile back and decided to change to a different pattern. I never unraveled it because I hate winding yarn by hand! Didn’t take too long this afternoon to unravel that sucker and get it into a nice yarn ball. I also had a small piece left from a skein and some sock yarn that I had been experimenting with on a loom that needed to be fixed up. All taken care of in no time!

I hope everyone has a fun and safe New Year’s Eve, we are staying home as usual and I can’t drink so have one for me! 🙂

Boxing Day sewing!

Wow what a Christmas! Had a wonderful holiday with family and was very happy that Alex loved his gift from Santa and mommy and daddy. He has spent most of the last 2 days playing with his new train table. I will do another post later with details on presents made and received, but I wanted to mention that hubby got me the learn to knit kit that I asked for. I have spent part of my day today learning how to knit and purl in order to be able to start working on a blanket for the baby. I relearned to crochet and made a blanket before Alex was born, so now it’s time to learn to knit and make one for little girl. 🙂

I had some time this afternoon to participate in some BDSI (Boxing Day Sew In) sewing. I finished putting the center of my pyramid top together and just need to even off the sides and add a border. I’m thinking about using a solid black border so as to not draw anything away from the awesome colors of the center. I ended up with only 2 of the 100 squares not being used from the charm pack. I should be able to finish the top tomorrow, as long as Alex takes a nap!

Going to log off for now, need to practice working on my purl stitch!!

Design Wall Monday – December 23

I did it! I finally got the 2 borders on scrappy 9-patch! Glad to have another quilt off my in process list, especially since Good Night Irene SAL starts in just over a week! Of course I sat the other day and cut out pieces from a charm pack to make a thousand pyramid quilt. I had bought this 100 piece charm pack during a guild meeting when a vendor had come for our program. It’s a Benartex sampler of Fossil Fern (link is NOT where I bought it just the first link I found, but that is a GOOD price!) – which I LOVE! I had been planning to make a thousand pyramid quilt for awhile, so I bought the equilateral triangle to use on my studio, but it is a Go die. I think I can make this big enough to use as a lap quilt, we’ll see how long it takes to put this together. We are heading back to the MIL’s tonight, so I can’t work the rest of the day on this, BUT I can get some done before we have to get ready to leave. Plus I have most of the day tomorrow, the only thing I need to do for Christmas is make the ribbon jello!

I was just designing my thousand pyramid quilt in EQ in order to decide how many rows to make and how many pieces in each row and I have to say that I don’t like how they determine the counts for each row. For example, looking at the triangles, it counts them by one of the patches, not the top and bottom of the row. This gives you a skewed count of the number of patches needed to complete the row. So using the example to the right, it’s set for 2 horizontal and 2 vertical – yet really uses 3 triangles per row (not including those half patches at the end of rows). I’d rather it count and tell me exactly how many full patches I need to complete the row, instead of needing to count them up and make sure I have the number of pieces I need. *sigh* Maybe some day they’ll fix the way these work.

Better get working before Alex gets up from his nap and we need to head out!

Linking up to patchworktimes – Design Wall Monday.

Hexagon Diamonds Update

I think I mentioned recently that I was going to try and work to finish my hexie diamonds quilt top so I can get it quilted to use next year camping. Well, I just finished another row and I only have 2 rows and black fill-in hexies to go! I really do love how it looks, but I might need to put a black border on it to finish the edges off before binding. I’ll have to think about this a little more.

We’ve been pretty busy lately getting ready for the holiday and having fun with the extended family. My brother-in-law and his kids came up for the holiday, so the last 3 days have been spent at the MIL’s with them. It’s been really nice seeing Alex play with his cousins again. He doesn’t want them to leave, and I wish they lived closer too!!!!

Oh well, off the computer and headed to work on my crochet. I’ve asked for a how-to knitting kit for Xmas and I’m pretty sure the hubby got it for me. I’ve always wanted to learn to knit, and now seems the right time. Besides I retaught myself how to crochet before Alex was born so I could make him a blanket. Now I can teach myself how to knit and make baby girl a blanket!

Guild Block Exchange – Xmas

Well I finally did it and finished the quilt top for the guild block exchange! I only had to put the border on, and had originally intended on putting 2 borders – a thin one using the background fabric and then the thicker one using the focus fabric. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough of the background fabric to do a border, and not enough time to order more. So I just took that border out and put the thicker one on with the focus fabric. I do like how it looks, and I have NO clue how I’ll even quilt it. Now that it’s done I’ve folded it and hung it in the closet with the other tops needing quilted. I’m trying to get people interested in next years exchange, but I don’t have a single person that has signed up yet. I’ll keep trying, if I don’t get any takers I’ll order the fabric and make myself a quilt instead!

Last year I had found a pattern online and made a hexie wreath for the tree with a jingle bell in the center. I had pulled the 2.5″ squares to make 3 more but never finished them. I found them while looking for something else and decided that I needed to finish them this year. Didn’t take me long, when I was awake enough to work on them, they are now all hanging on the tree!

I did make a few items for Christmas gifts this year, however I will not be posting any information about them until after they have been received. Right now the embroidery machine is humming along stitching out some free-standing lace gingerbread men ornaments. I found the design on Embroidery Library – my favorite site for embroidery designs. I love doing lace designs, they turn out so cute and there’s really nothing I need to do for them. Put the same color in the bobbin and on the top and let it go. This design stitches out in under 20 minutes, so I can work on lots of other things while it runs.

I spent a little time working on cleaning things up in my office, things have gotten WAY too dusty and unorganized in here. Since I’m now done with pretty much all my Xmas gifts and just have to finish decorating and get a few items ready for folks the hubby works with I can spend some time working on items for myself. I’m hoping to finish Scrappy 9-patch this week and since they announced at our guild meeting last week that the next quilt show is going to be in October 2014, I’m planning on seeing if I can get hexie diamonds finished for the show. Of course I’d really rather it be ready for the 2014 camping season, but we’ll see what happens.

We have just barely started getting the baby’s room ready, which means my mini-pinni frame needs to come down. I asked hubby to leave it in the room for now, I have a few quilts I’d like to put on it to pin before we take it apart. The basement isn’t finished yet and I don’t want it setup in the basement until it’s cleaned and looking better down there! I think I’ll be able to easily quilt some of the scrappy quilts and get them finished before the baby is born.

I think I’m going to go play with a few of my Go dies and plan a few more quilts – I think baby girl needs something made by mommy!

Design Wall Monday – December 2

Well I’ve been very busy working on the applique blocks this last week. Finished up the last sets yesterday while Alex was napping. I’m about halfway done with this quilt already! I’m putting it aside for awhile so I can finish putting together the guild challenge quilt for the next meeting (Dec 12th) and so I can put the borders on the scrappy 9-patch quilt. I have the borders cut out/put together, just need to attach them to the 9-patch quilt. Not sure when I’ll get around to quilting it, I don’t think I even have a backing for it! But at least I know I made a quilt 100% from my stash of fabrics. Not 1 piece was bought for it!

I keep forgetting to mention that I’ve been asked to teach EQ classes for another guild in my area. Classes will be once a month for 2 hours starting in January. Obviously I’ll need to take a few months off once the baby is born, but they are aware of it and maybe I can do some lessons they can work on independently while I get the house back in order here. We’ll see what happens. Now I need to get started on lessons!!!

Hope to be back with an update this afternoon on the scrappy 9-patch, it shouldn’t be too hard to get it finished while Alex naps this afternoon.

Linking up to Patchworktimes.