Kelly

Design Wall Monday – May 4, 2015

I finally have some work to show! I decided to start putting the border together on Hexie Insanity, I like how it looks, but I’m realizing how long this is going to take! That’s ok though I knew it would be a slow project when I started it! I have 9 more flowers that go in this border, and a bunch of white that needs to be filled in. The Cavs are in the playoffs this year, so I have plenty of time to work on it!

Recently, a good friend asked me if I’d make 2 signature quilts for her, one is a wedding gift and the other is a baby gift. The wedding quilt is due the beginning of June, and since I have a lot going on this month I needed to get to work on it right away. Yesterday during nap time I got all the pieces cut out for the blocks of both quilts, and this morning I got all the blocks stitched together and trimmed for the wedding quilt. This afternoon I managed to get the center all put together, I just need to cut and put the borders on to have the top completed. I’m just going to do simple quilting, since it’s a signature quilt I have to leave the white sections free. I’m hoping to get that done tomorrow during naptime, I might be able to do it in the morning while Alex is at school and Cassie naps.

I teach this week so I need to get lessons done this week and get the trailer ready for our weekend trip AND make 2 trips to school for Mother’s Day Tea – 2 since he’s in preschool and day care. Linking up to Patchwork Times.

I’m back!

UGH! I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted! SO much has been going on around here and I really haven’t had time to work on projects. Cassie turned one in March and yes, mommy made her onesie! I found the design on etsy and stitched it out twice – because the first one I cut the applique wrong and the satin stitch didn’t cover the edges. It was a wonderful party and she looked beautiful!

I started working on the end of school year gifts for Alex’s teachers, both teachers are getting alphabet/number magnets out of felt that are done in the hoop on my embroidery machine. These are pretty quick to do, just need time to work on them! I’ll take pictures when they are done.

In the last 2 months I also created a shop on etsy. I used to have my own website with a shopping cart and never got any hits/business. So I did some thinking and decided that since anything I make on the embroidery machine is custom, and there’s no shortage of items that are decorative that I can do in bulk that I’d create a shop and start filling in items. The listing fee is pretty cheap and are good for like 4 months. Please visit my shop! 🙂 I need to come up with a logo, but I’ve needed that for a long time!

Earlier in the month at guild we had a speaker from a semi-local quilt shop and I bought a pattern for a Mondo Bag by QuiltSmart. I had previously made some Lone Star quilts using their interfacing panels and I really wanted something different for a diaper bag. I wish I had realized how BIG this bag would turn out! It wasn’t too hard once I figured out the instructions, and I do like how it looks. I’m planning on using it as a diaper bag until I can see what size the Midi bags turn out to be. I’m going to get some of those panels once hubby gets paid.

I’m still slowing working on my knitting and my hexies, I’ll have to do some update posts of those soon!

Friday Night with Friends

I was reading one of the many blogs in my feeds and found that the first Friday of the month is Friday Night with Friends over at Gone Stitchin’. So I signed up for this month. I spent a little time knitting (see yesterdays post) and then I switched to hexagons. I finished up one I had started and then kept going! I now have 40 of the 158 diamonds finished. Thank goodness this is a long term project! I still can’t decide if I want to work on some white hexies and start putting it together or wait until I have all 158 of them done. I like the idea of doing a rainbow effect, but random appeals to me too. I don’t know why I’m so indecisive!! Oh well, off to see if I can finish Alex’s quilt while the kids are napping.

On the Needles – February 6, 2015

Wow, it’s been a few weeks since I posted my knitting project! I’ve completed 3 full repeats and started my fourth. It’s slow going because there are so many stitches in a row and I am slow! It also seems that the only time I can knit is at night after the kids are in bed, and by then I’m so tired I mess up so much that I put it away! I managed to get a couple of rows done this morning while Cassie napped and Alex watched a movie, and another couple this evening while the hubby played with the kids. I’m so tired today (up 3 times with the baby last night) that I just can’t work on it anymore tonight. I mess up when I knit tired! I guess I’ll work on hexies for the rest of the night – if I can stay awake!

Linking up with Patchwork Times – check out what everyone else has on their needles!

Project Update

I’ve gotten a few more hexagon diamonds completed, I’m now up to 36 diamonds completed and 18 flowers. I’m still trying to decide if I want to put a corner together now or wait until I have all the diamonds completed. I’m actually now thinking of waiting so I can decide how I want the diamonds laid out in the design. I could do a rainbow effect, or just randomly place them. Still plenty of time to decide since I still need 122 more diamonds!

I managed to finish the border block pieces for Good Night Irene, I now have all the pieces ready to put together. However, this will now be set aside for a bit because I got the rest of the fabric I need in order to finish Alex’s quilt. I bought the 4 yards (maybe too much) so I can do the piano key border and probably also a scrappy binding. Now that I have the kids in bed for naps (Alex is STILL sick!) I can get to work!

Slow Stitching Sunday

I spent the week working on basting the stack of hexagons I pulled and prepped. Took all week, but now there are 17 ready for stitching and 2 I completed last night and this morning. I am hoping to get some white hexies basted this week and maybe put a corner together to see how I like it. I created a spreadsheet for this quilt so I can keep track of how many of each color I complete – I’m such a geek! Linking up with Kathy’s Quilts – Slow Stitching Sunday.

I was hoping to get some sewing done yesterday and today, but Alex was sick with a fever yesterday and now today the baby has one. Still not sure what bug they picked up, but Alex is on the upswing and hopefully Cassie will be right behind him.

Daisy (Very Lazy Daisy podcast) posted some of her Dear Jane blocks on twitter this week and is trying to get me into working on mine again. I’m actually debating it! I know I have a few prepped, and if it’s something I can do by hand that would work even better. I’ll have to see what I have and what I can work on while the kids play.

Super Bowl is tonight, we don’t care much about the game, just the commercials! Hope your team wins!

Design Wall Monday – January 26, 2015

First up is my design wall/floor. I finished all the 16 patch blocks for Good Night Irene and cut the 44 4.5″ blocks I need to finish the pieced border. I just need to sit and sew the triangles on one corner of 40 of the newly cut blocks and then I can start putting it all together. Glad to see this finally coming together, it was a sew along from last year that just didn’t happen.

So Saturday when I was sewing and Alex had gotten up from “quiet time” he said he wanted to sew like me. Made my heart melt that he was interested in something I was doing! I told him we could make a blanket for his Glomer (glow-worm) that he takes EVERYWHERE! So yesterday he picked out 6 4.5″ squares and we sewed them together. I just put the backing on the top and sewed around it, flipped it inside out and then sewed around it to close the hole up. He helped with almost all of it, started to get bored by the time we got to sewing the last go around. But he’s proud of it and has been carrying it around with Glomer since we finished it.

So I meant to actually post this yesterday, and link to Kathy’s Slow Stitching Sunday post, but never got around to actually opening my laptop and doing a post. Just went to the page and it’s still open for posts! Yesterday was spent working on Hexie Insanity while we watched the Cavs beat Oklahoma City Thunder. I really am loving the peace that comes over me when I work on hexies. There’s no rush, no deadline, just time to work and relax. Not a lot of time for relaxing with 2 kids under 5, but we make do! Hopefully I’ll have some more progress to show with this quilt soon. Today I cut some white 2.5″ squares down to 2″ and some scrap white from the Good Night Irene project so I could start prepping some white hexies. I also signed up for white on white fat quarters in our guild exchange so I will have some nice variety coming all going to this project.

Linking up to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times, check and see what others are up to!

2015 Challenge

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m a bookworm. There I said it. I have been a reading machine all my life. Today I was listening to Very Lazy Daisy’s latest podcast and she mentioned a reading challenge that she was going to do from a list on The Dusty Bookshelves blog. I looked at it and thought, that shouldn’t be too hard for me. But then I got on GoodReads because they have a 2015 Reading Challenge too (Daisy mentioned this too). You decide how many books you want to read in the year. Most people are doing 1 a month, 2 a month, some are doing 50 for the year. Me? I’m insane or something because I choose to put 100 books for this year! Now I’ve already read like 6 books this year, but since I can’t remember exactly which ones were actually started and finished this month, I’m going to start with the one I finished this morning – Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich. I have a widget in the side bar that will be updated when I update GoodReads – and I just added their app to my phone so I can update whenever I have time. Lucky for me, this book meets both challenges!! Eventually I will put up a chart for the Dusty Bookshelves Challenge, it just won’t be today!

On a Roll!

Oh my am I on a roll this week!! I have the center of Alex’s quilt completed, I just need to add a thin black border and then a piano key border after that. Unfortunately I need more fabric for that so it will have to wait until hubby’s payday. I put it on his bed the other night so I could decide whether the borders were needed or not, and I just want to put the piano key border on the sides and bottom, it’s not needed on the top at all.

I’ve been using my Good Night Irene blocks as leader enders while working on Alex’s quilt, and I’m flying on getting them done! I have 8 more of the 16 patch blocks to do and then start working on the pieced blocks that make up the first border. I need to cut out the white squares before I can put those together though. Maybe by the end of the weekend I can have it all put together and figure out something for the final border from the stash.

Plan on working on some hexies later today, going to take my car for a major wash inside and out, so I’ll be working on them while I wait.

Design Wall Monday – January 19, 2015

Well I’m FINALLY working on Alex’s quilt again! I got all the blocks put together last week and ironed on Friday. After my sister cleaned on Saturday I laid everything out on the floor in the living room – this thing is a lot bigger than I thought! I like the way it looks with all the different colored strips on the blocks, hopefully he likes it too! I have the top half of the quilt webbed together so I don’t lose any blocks or turn them the wrong way. I’m using my Good Night Irene quilt blocks as leader/enders so that I can get some work done on that one too. I’m glad to finally be sewing again, I need it these days for stress relief! Hope to have these blocks put together by the end of the day – depends on if the kids nap this afternoon. I think I’ll be doing a thin black border and then I was thinking of doing a piano key border with the 4 solid colors from the blocks, but I might need to get some more!

Linking up with Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday.