Cassie – Page 4 – Kelly's Kwilts

Odds and Ends

Well since I finished the baby’s blanket this week I’ve been working on hexies! Don’t have any pictures of them yet, I’ll probably wait until I have all the diamonds for the row completed.

Alex spent the night at my parents last night so I pulled some pink fat quarters and set to work cutting everything out for baby girl’s signature quilt. This morning I managed to complete 22 of the 36 blocks I need for the top. I need to make a run to Joann’s so I can get more Kona white for the rest of the blocks. I thought I had more than I did! Hopefully I can buy a whole bolt and be set for awhile, I do have a 40% off coupon to use. If I do go to Joann’s (which I probably will), I’m planning on getting the yarn to start another blanket for Kimmie’s friend. I think I’ll be able to work on that while I take care of everyone else – it might just be my sanity check!

I also managed to finally iron and put together the first 2 blocks in the Good Night Irene sew along. I’m SO far behind on this SAL! It doesn’t really matter, I know I can catch up pretty quickly since I already have all the pieces cut out, I just need time (and energy) to sit at the machine to work on it. I’m hoping I’ll find some time once I can sit at the machine better – there’s no a whole lot of room between the table and my stomach right now!

We’ve now completed 3 EQ sessions with the other quilt guild in my area. I’m loving teaching again, even though I am now taking a month or so off for the baby. Everyone says they are learning a lot on how to use the software, which is wonderful! Can’t wait to see what they do with the assignment I gave them for April while I’m on “maternity leave”.

Gotta run, need to get 2 months worth of newsletters posted for our guild!

Off the Needles!

I finished it!!!! I actually finished on Monday (3/3), but just got around to taking pictures today. I kept forgetting to take the good camera upstairs with me and I only go up twice a day anymore. It took me 2 months (almost exactly) of work and I did leave 2 of the repeats out because I didn’t think it needed to be any longer and because she’ll be here soon! Of course I finished it before my c-section was scheduled, but we found out yesterday that it is planned for 3/21, that’s only 2 weeks from tomorrow!!!! I can’t wait to wrap her in this blanket totally made with mommies love! Now I can work on hexies until I get more yarn so I can start a blanket for Kimmie’s friend who is due in July. Gotta keep practicing!

Before Alex was born I made a signature quilt and had everyone at the shower sign it. Well we aren’t having a shower for little girl so I couldn’t do the same thing. However I have decided that I will make signature blocks and anyone that comes to visit at the hospital or here at home needs to sign them. Then eventually I’ll put it all together into a quilt and it can hang in her room like Alex’s does. I’ve already designed the quilt and I’ve pulled some pink fat quarters out of the stash. Need to check one more place to see if there are any more pinks, might get a few more at the new Joann’s that’s opening tomorrow. Alex will be staying at my parents Saturday night, so hopefully Sunday I can cut everything out on the Studio and start sewing. Alex likes to help me push the pedal on the sewing machine, so maybe he can help me next week too!

Off to rest my back, teaching EQ tonight and my back hurts after sitting at the computer too long!

Linked up with Patchwork Times.

On the Needles – February 14, 2014

Happy Valentine’s Day!!! We don’t really do much to celebrate, we really just get each other cards. We are going out to dinner tonight with Alex, and I guess we are taking him to Amazone, so he can play with other kids and we can sit and enjoy him having fun.

I have been working VERY hard on the blanket for little girl and I’m happy to say I’m almost halfway done. I just finished the third repeat of the pattern and have 3 to go, plus a half repeat, plus the border. I might decide to make it a little smaller and skip a few of the repeats, I’m not sure yet. We’ll see how big it looks when I get the next repeat completed. I only have 6 weeks until she’s born, and it’s already taken me 6 weeks to get this far! I’m really liking the pattern and it has gotten LOTS easier as I go. I had a problem last week where I was missing a stitch and had done 2 rows, thank goodness I only had to take out 1 row and a little bit of the second row to pick up the dropped stitch. Unfortunately I didn’t see where the dropped stitch was until after I got that first row out. I’m still working on getting my stitches to be uniform in tightness, but it’s really difficult for me.

I still haven’t worked on any quilting in the last few weeks, I’ve just been too busy trying to get this done. I really miss my hexagons and I have a new design I want to do with either 1/2″ or 3/4″ hexies – the pattern calls for 1/2″, but that might be too small for me I need to do some testing first!

Gotta run, time for lunch and get Alex to bed for his nap, or we’ll never be able to go out tonight!

Linking up with Patchwork Times.

On the Needles – January 24, 2014

I totally forgot to post last week!! I haven’t done ANY quilting lately, I’ve been devoting all of my free time to working on the blanket for the baby. I’m making lots of progress, I can get a row done in about 20 minutes now instead of 30. I’ve had some issues along the way with doing wrong stitches and then not being able to work backwards to take them out. I have an entire row that should have been taken out, but the stitches were SO tight that I just decided to leave them in. It was a lot less stressful for me! I’m ok with some flaws in the blanket, I’d rather it be done than be 100% perfect and it’s still something special that I’m making for my baby girl! I added a second skein of yarn the other day, that was WAY easier than I thought it would be. I found this on YouTube and it was quite easy AND you cannot see the knot in the knitting. Since I ran out in the middle of the row, I thought this would be the best way to join the new yarn in. I know there’s a lot more ways to do it, but this was the best for me at this time. I’m proud of how much I’ve finished considering I’ve only been working on it for 3 weeks! I know I’m not going to be doing the whole pattern, this 2nd skein might be enough to make it big enough, we’ll see as I get more repeats completed.

I was at Walmart this week and saw some real cute Caron yarns. I couldn’t help myself and bought them. Have no idea what to do with them, but I bought them! Each of them were under $5 so it’s not like I broke the bank for them!

Linking up with Patchwork Times.

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!!

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 – November 4th

I managed to get a lot done yesterday on my scrappy 9 patch quilt. Got all of the 4 patch blocks for the border pressed and ready to be put together, pulled all the black squares I have cut out and matched up to the scrap squares. 7 9-patch blocks are put together, 6 more are almost put together. I think I’ll be cutting out more black squares this afternoon and hope to put more blocks together. I also have a bag full of fabrics that my mom gave me when she was cleaning out her stash, some of them are small pieces that are going to get cut up into 2.5″ squares. Unfortunately I have laundry to do too and that has to be done before I can get back to work. *sigh* The things a mommy has to do! 🙂

Had a check-up today with my OB and everything is going great! Baby’s heartbeat was 164 and is growing like she should. I’ve started to feel her moving around the last week or so and it’ll get better as she gets bigger. Other than fatigue I feel great!

Back soon with updates!

Where have I been – Part 2

Ok, lunch is over and the laptop is plugged in charging. I said I’d explain why Alex and I stayed home from the CA trip right? We’ve been trying for awhile to get pregnant, we really didn’t want Alex to be an only child. Since we had so many issues getting pregnant with him, and after a few months of trying ourselves and doing IUI’s, we started the IVF process again. With a failed cycle in December and another failed attempt in the spring, we were finally lucky enough for it to work in July. The IVF transfer was the day before the hubby left for his trip and we didn’t want me to attempt flying after all of that. So Alex and I stayed home, I had to do all of my shots myself instead of hubby helping me. Let me tell you, progesterone shots in the thigh are not pleasant, but it’s better than not doing it at all and losing the baby. I have a genetic clotting disorder called MTHFR that requires me to take extra folic acid pills in addition to my prenatal vitamin. I also take a low dose baby aspirin and do twice daily heparin shots to prevent my blood from clotting.

So needless to say it’s been a rough couple of months with morning sickness, not in the morning as you’d expect but at night right before bed. And not once in awhile like it was with Alex, but every night! Lots of doctor appointments with the specialists and various OBs (due to my age and clotting disorder I’m considered high risk so I have to see a specialist because of that!). We’ve had lots of ultrasounds which gives me lots of chances to see that everything is ok. I’m a paranoid person when it comes to this since we’ve had LOTS of problems in the past. We have a doppler that allows us to hear the baby’s heartbeat and I ask the hubby if we can hear it every couple of nights or so.

Due to my high risk issues, we had a blood test done called NISP that checks for Downs syndrome and other chromosomal issues. Not that we’d terminate if the results were bad, but if we knew we could do research to find out what special things we’d need to get. The other benefit to the test is that since they are testing fetal DNA in my blood, they can tell the gender. So the doctors office called one Friday afternoon close to 5 o’clock. The nurse tells me that the test was negative so we didn’t have to worry about any disorders. Then she asks if we know the gender and if we want to know. Of course I say yes, but that I’m afraid to know the answer! She says “They found no Y chromosomes”, and I’m sitting there for about 30 seconds trying to remember what that means! She must have realized I couldn’t think so she says “It’s a girl” after which I immediately start crying because that’s what I wanted! As soon as I got off the phone with her I called the hubby and told him. He was just as excited! Hubby posted this picture on his Facebook page with no comments and we don’t think many people got it.

So come March 2014 we’ll have a new face in our house and a daughter in our hearts. I am hoping to start sewing again soon, now that things are calming down and I’m getting my energy back. I have a few scrap projects in mind and can’t wait to work on. Also hoping to work on cross stitch again at night while we watch tv, it’ll keep me from going to sleep too soon! If I can start working on projects, you’ll be seeing posts!