Family

Is such a blessing. I jumped on a plane last Thursday because my dad had an aneurysm. He is in the hospital and being well taken care of by a wonderful medical team. During this I was able to see my two big brothers who I love dearly. It was great to ae them and have them here. Tomorrow I go home and will pray for the best.

Not much to show for the weekend

Other than some good naps and really nice dinner out with the hubs and some friends.

I did try my hand at one of the Bird Brain Designs this weekend. It's their logo but they offered it as a freebie last week, so I gave it a try using Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solv to apply the designs to my fabric and it worked wonderfully! Super easy to use.

Fun Quilty Day

Today I went to Road 2 California with my friend Karen and we had some fun.  Not only where there some beautiful quilts on display, but all the fun booths to shop in too.

Here are some of the quilts on display:









Here are some of the treasures that found their way home with me.






The fat quarter bundle;


and one last tiny pattern for a mini quilt

After Christmas Sew Along

Over at Karen's blog Sew Much 2 Love, she's been hosting this after Christmas Sew Along.  It time for those of us who sew for others at Christmas to do a little sewing for ourselves.  I believe this is the last week and here is my last entry.

I made a microwavable rice heating pad - I did the neck size - so my jaw can get some nice soothing relief.  I used this pattern from Sew 4 Home.

I love the colors if I do say so myself.

I read somewhere

that in 2012, one of the quilting trends is going to be scrappy quilts! Who knew I was a trend setter?

Here is my scrap bin quilt (all the squares came from scrap pieces I sorted, ironed, cut and sewed up). The row closest to you is sewn - hence it's short stature.



Here is my scrap bin quilt being wrecked by a rabid wire-haired dachshund.  Good thing she is so dang cute.

The ugly truth about quilting

is that it requires hours of ironing that no one ever tells you about. No where do I  read in patterns or tutorials the time commitment to ironing.  Not that I mind the ironing, as I usually iron while watching a movie.  But when I see all these great blogs of quilts, all I can wonder is how do they do that?  I work a fairly demanding job, I do not have children, my husband is a little high-maintenance, I have a house cleaner and I still can't find the time to do what these other quilters do.  What is the secret to this?






When the ironed stack gets taller than the to-be-ironed stack I get almost giddy.





Then comes the trimming of the dog ears.  Yes, that's my beer.




So how do they do it? Make all those quilts in days when it takes me weeks if not months.

My theory on bobbins

they tell you when you should stop.  Many times I've not listened and reloaded a bobbin and kept on sewing...only to be up to the wee hours fighting with some mundane mistake...Yes, just me, a bunched up wad of thread on the back of piece of fabric - picking away with my seam ripper.

So tonight, I started sewing up my triangles to make squares for the quilt in the book I showed you last week...I got exactly 12 blocks sewn when I ran out of bobbin thread.I see only 1 is out of alignment but it will have to wait until I've slept to resown.

Tonight I'm going to listen and go to bed.

Here they are all lined up and pretended they've been pressed and trimmed of their dog ears.

New Year!

This is what I worked on during the first day of the new year!

From the scrap sorting - I was able to get these:



Which then got turned into these:



And I was able to stitch together the top of this table runner for Mike's roll top desk.  It's from the Prairie Women's Quilts that I got from Homestead Hearth last year (I've only sewn one of the 6)









I need to fix one of the points on it still, but I can do that some other time.