Where have I been???

Wow, it’s been a LONG time since I posted anything!  I was trying hard this summer to get my hexie diamonds quilt finished for our quilt show, until they posted that quilts had to be completed by the end of September.  AHHHHH!  I’d never make it since I had 3 rows to finish, plus the black fill in spots at the top and bottom, PLUS quilting it?  Yeah, I decided to just put it aside and work on it slow and just have it ready for the next show.  Then I realized I needed to start working on a cross stitch piece for a wedding gift.  Now of course it’s still not done and the wedding is next weekend!  The bride works with the hubby and asked Alex to be the ring bearer!  He’s going to look so cute in a tux, I just don’t know if he’s going to do what he’s asked or not!

2013-08-23 16.23.06

In July the hubby went to California to see his dad for his 70th birthday.  Alex and I stayed home since I don’t really want to take him on an airplane yet! (There’s another reason why we didn’t go that I’ll explain in another post.)  Turns out it was a good thing we didn’t go as Alex got sick that weekend and had a 100 degree fever – only for about 24 hours though!  Anyway, I found out there was a new quilt shop (The Quilt Loft) that opened within walking distance of his dad’s house.  We’ve always had this deal that if one of us went out of town, the other would bring back a “prize”.  So I told him where he could get my prize!  So he went and picked out a jelly roll of Icicle Kisses by Kansas Troubles Quilters.  I have no idea what I’ll do with it yet, but I will come up with something!

2013-08-23 16.22.51I was playing around with one of my Accuquilt Go dies and made this little table runner.  I’ve had it pinned for awhile, just haven’t gotten around to sitting down at the machine to quilt it!  This was a charm pack that I ran through on the triangle die (don’t remember which one off hand since we are camping while I write this post!) and just put them together into 2 rows.  Haven’t decided if I will square it off once quilted or bind it with the angled corners.  Once we get home from camping I will look at which die I used and also get the information for which line this was from.

Spent some time working on blocks for our Guild block exchange using the 2013 Hoffman Challenge fabric.  All blocks have been exchanged and now it’s time to put it all together into a quilt.  We want to have all the quilt tops completed by the December meeting so we can hopefully get more people to participate next year!  I’ll do another post with those once we get home, I haven’t taken pictures of all the blocks yet!

I received an email yesterday from Accuquilt that the Studio cutter is on sale again for $399, the lowest price I’ve seen all year.  I’ve been debating it for a long time, mainly because there are a few dies I’d love to have that are only made for the Studio. Plus I’ve been thinking about adding die cuts to my business, since at some point I need to get that going again.  I currently only have 2 customers for embroidery work and I need to start making things I can put on etsy.  Die cuts might be a good thing, quick and I could even cut customer fabrics! Plus right now is triple reward points and that will be nice, since it will give me a good way to buy more dies at limited cost to me! 🙂

Time to charge the laptop and make some lunch, I’ll be back later with more of where I’ve been!

Hexie Diamonds Update

2013-07-08 16.51.002013-07-15 08.16.08It’s been busy around here lately, but I have managed to get all the half and full diamonds completed for the next row.  I’ve started to sew them to the main piece and hope to have it done before the weekend, I don’t want to take this big thing camping!  I was going to work on it last night after Alex went to bed, but my fingers got slammed in the car door and now 3 finger tips are bruised and hurt.  Hoping to work on it soon! I have the next row all prepped and plan on taking them with me, I should be able to work on it at night when Alex is asleep. I’m determined to finish this quilt so I can enter it in the Guild quilt show in October, but that means I have to have it completed (together and quilted) by the end of September.  If I can finish it soon, it’ll be just over a year since I started it.  I posted about designing it here, and that was last June.  I had a lot of start and stops last fall though since I was working on presents for people, and that was all cross stitch.  I’ll probably only work on cross stitch and hand quilting when this quilt is finished, I need a break from hexagons!  But if I had to guess, the break won’t last long!

Four rows to go!

2013-07-02 23.01.54 2013-06-29 18.18.35I managed to get the 5 diamonds finished for the next row pretty quickly.  Only took about 10 days to get the 5 diamonds put together. I love the colors in this row!  I think my favorite is the rainbow stripes. The picture of the full quilt isn’t the best, we took it at night and the hubby wasn’t holding it right.  I’m working on the next row and hope to have it done pretty quickly.  I HAVE to have the top completed and quilted before the end of September, so I can enter it into the guild quilt show.  I have 2 others I’m entering, but they are ones that have been completed for years.  Hubby will be out of town next weekend, so I’ll have PLENTY of time to work on it! 🙂

Design Wall Monday

2013-06-21 08.25.53 2013-06-23 15.19.31Well I was able to get 2 diamonds finished this week. I have my baggies ready for the next 3, and need to get working on basting them and putting the diamond together.  I was going to work on hand quilting my first hexagon quilt so I could put it in the guild quilt show, but with everything going on this summer, I know I just don’t have the time.  I’d rather concentrate on finishing hexagon diamonds and get it quilted for the show.  I took a break yesterday though and decided to do something different.  I pulled out my Cleveland Cavaliers cross stitch piece and worked on it for awhile.  I haven’t worked on it since January, but it was quite easy to pick it back up and work on it.  There’s a total of 15 pages and I had finished 1 in January.  So I started working on page 7, there’s a lot of solid color so I figured it’d be easy!  So when I need a break from the hexagons, I’ll work on my cross stitch.  Hope to have more diamonds finished this week so I can put it all together this weekend.2013-06-23 22.49.54
Linking up to Design Wall Monday at PatchworkTimes

Hexie Diamonds

2013-06-18 16.11.32I managed to get the 4 diamonds attached today while Alex was napping. There are now 5 rows left to add before this is completed.  I am really liking how this is turning out, even though there are a few fabrics I don’t like.  But since they are such small pieces of them, it doesn’t matter too much!  I’m going to sort through the rest of my baggies tonight and figure out which diamonds are going in rows together.  It’s also a way to make sure I have everything I need to finish this quilt.  I have a LOT of black hexies to make to fill in the top and bottom, not sure if I’ll leave those for the end or do them before I finish the rest of these rows.  I’ll decide later!  Time to watch the Heat beat the Spurs (Game 6 of the NBA Finals) and sort through the hexie baggies.

Hexie Diamonds Update

2013-06-17 23.12.432013-06-03 12.28.33Oh my goodness does my arm hurt!  I wasn’t feeling well this weekend and decided to take it easy today.  So while Alex played (and napped) I spent the day working on my hexie diamonds.  I got all 4 put together that I need for the next row. I’d start working on attaching it all to the main piece tonight, but I think my right arm needs a rest – too much repetitive motion!!  Hopefully tomorrow I can start putting it together.  I have 5 rows after this one and then the filling in of the top and bottom with black.  Then I’ll be able to baste it and quilt it.  I had intended this to be done before we went camping the first time, but now my goal is to have it done and ready for the guild quilt show in October.  The colors aren’t too good in this picture, I took it in the family room and it’s a little late at night for good pictures!  I like almost all of the colors in this row, except for the money fabric.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought that fat quarter, but at least I’m figuring out a way to use them!

Linking up to Design Wall Monday at PatchworkTimes and HeLP for Hexies at Sarah Did It.

Design Wall Monday – May 13, 2013

2013-05-13 11.41.48Well I managed to get 2 more diamonds completed the last few days.  I finished the blue one during the guild meeting Tuesday and the pink one last night after we got home from camping.  Two more diamonds and I can put the next row together.  Unfortunately I need to put this aside for a little while so I can finish a cross stitch piece that is a present.  I had started 2 pieces for my cousins twin for Christmas and just ran out of time to complete them.  I have 1 more part to finish on the second piece and then I can put them both together.

I passed out the challenge fabric for the block exchange at our guild meeting last week, and now I need to figure out what my 2 blocks are going to be.  I can’t get additional fabrics until I pick my blocks though.  I also need to go shopping to get some fat quarters for the fat quarter exchange.  They are due at our June meeting, so I need to get busy!

I am planning on going to Joann’s tomorrow to get some batting so I can finish some quilts.  I’d like to work on the red, white and blue quilt for donation at guild.  I also want to get my first hexagon quilt ready to be hand quilted.  I’ve committed to putting it in our quilt show in October, so I need to get started working on it!  I’ll finish the test piece once the hexagon one is done.

We had a speaker at guild last week that owns a quilt shop, Quilts & Sew Forth.  Of course they brought products to sell.  I don’t usually find anything that I want to buy, but I saw that they had a charm pack of Fossil Fern.  100 charms for $27!!  I could not pass up that deal!!!  Don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet, but it’s sitting here and ready to use for something!

Hexagon Diamonds Update

Hexagon Diamonds 4-21-13Well, I FINALLY got the 6th row added onto the main piece last night.  Waited until today to get the picture just because it was so late when I got the last piece added.  There’s only 7 more rows to add on to this and I’ve already pulled the baggies for the next row.  Of course while I was trying to get a picture this morning, Alex wanted to lay on it so I got a picture of him posing.  He was crawling all over it finding all the blue pieces of fabric – that’s 1 of 2 colors he can say.  He understands what the colors are, he just only says blue and black (this is new in the last week or so).
Hexagon Diamonds 4-21-13 - Alex
Hubby and I have been working to get our macs setup the way we want them (he got a new Macbook Pro last week).  We’ve been buying things we need for the machines or our network at home so I decided to buy a few things for myself too!  I ordered 2 dies for my Accuquilt Go, a 3″ finished half-square triangle and a 2″ finished half-square triangle.  The 3″ die is going to be used with my signature die, and the 2″ die is going to work quite nicely with my 2″ finished squares.  I have so many designs in my head I’d love to do and having the 2″ finished triangles and squares will take care of MOST of them!  I have 2 dies I’d love to have custom made, but they are each just under $100.  I wish I could get them done cheaper somewhere else, I just haven’t bothered looking yet to see if that is possible.  It’s on my large to-do list!

I fixed the row that was messed up on Wiggly Whimsy, but then realized I had another row that was messed up.  I took the stitching out of that row this morning and was hoping to sew it this afternoon, instead I’ve been working on my computer all day.  I hope to get it pinned tonight and I’ll probably sew it tomorrow.  Once Alex gets up from his nap, my sewing time is gone and he should be getting up in the next 45 minutes or so.

Can’t decide if I want to work on hexagons tonight or hand quilting.  Maybe I’ll do both!  We were at Home Depot last week and I wanted to see if they had 1/4″ blue painters tape and forgot to look.  I’m going to Target this week, maybe I’ll see if I can get some there.  Then I wouldn’t have to mark the hand quilting lines when I’m doing 1/4″ in a block.  Looks like Alex is up, and I haven’t pinned the pieces togther for Wiggly Whimsy, guess that’s on the list for tomorrow’s nap time!

Design Wall Monday 030413

I haven’t had an update in awhile.  I’ve been busy working on putting the next row of diamond hexagons together and finally finished the fifth one yesterday.  Here’s my excuse 🙂  hubby decided we needed to reorganize all the hard drives on our network (including buying 2 new ones!).  So I spent quite a few days moving files and renaming things. Then I was sick over the weekend – as in I was so cold that a blanket AND a fire didn’t help!  Feeling much better now, but not much got done while I was sick.  Oh yeah, I did read Jennifer Chiaverini’s The Giving Quilt that came out last fall.  I liked it, but would have like more story around the main Elm Creek Quilter’s.  Hopefully the next book will have that!

Hexagon Diamonds 030413

So I did get 2 of the diamonds attached last night, the other 3 are just in place and I hope to get attached tonight.  I had originally planned on getting this done by the end of March.  I am finally realizing that I was WAY too ambitious.    Since we still not sure when the RV will be ready I guess it doesn’t matter.  Besides, we don’t have the first camping trip planned yet!  So I will keep working and see what I can get finished.

2013-03-04 17.34.23I was looking for something the other day (can’t for the life of me remember what it is now) and found a ziploc baggie with yo-yo makers and some fabric scraps.  Red, white and blue of course!  I’ll need to get these ironed up and run them through the Go, just need to decide which die to use.  2.5″ squares, chisels, drunkard’s path….so many choices!  They really aren’t big enough to do anything else with, I’d rather make them into a size I can use.

2013-03-04 17.34.33I spent some time on ebay recently and found some really cute Valentine’s Day 2.5″ squares – 200 of them and for less than $10!!  Of course I had to get them!  Haven’t decided if I am using them as squares or if I will turn them into hexagons and them make something out of them.  I’ll decide eventually, too many other projects in line before them!  I have something else coming that I finally won, I’ll talk about that once it gets here!

Design Wall Monday – 2/18/13

Hexagon Diamonds 2-18-13Manged to get another row completed in the last week.  I’m really liking how this looks.  I’ve picked the next 5 diamonds for the next row and will be starting them this evening. I was wondering how I was going to be able to get a decent picture since this is getting so big.  Usually I stand on a chair and hold the camera (or phone) as high as I can to take the picture.  Lucky me, hubby decided that I could get a new phone and we picked up iPhone 5’s yesterday.  The new panorama feature on the camera is so cool!  Took me a few tries to get a good picture, only because Alex wanted to play on the quilt since it was on the floor.  Hoping to get the next row completed in a week just because I want to get this done so badly.  I want to see the whole thing done and quilt it.  I know exactly how I’ll quilt it on the machine.

Hand Quilted 2-18-13In between working on the diamonds and sewing in my office I’ve been working on my hand quilting.  I now have the entire center of this completed and I need to move the hoop to work on another section.  It’s not a big quilt and I’ll use it as a table topper somewhere when it’s completed.  I am thinking about doing another test piece before I start working on the first hexagon quilt, just so I can work on the rocking motion some more.  I have a table runner using my favorite equinox fabrics I made back in 2008 that I still haven’t quilted.  So I’m thinking of hand quilting it and doing cables or something in the ribbons.  I have some time to figure out exactly what I’ll do, but I have pulled the runner out of the closet so I can start thinking about it.  I think I even have some equinox sitting here I can use for the back!

Back soon with more finishes!  This is linked to Design Wall Monday at patchworktimes.com