Blogger Quilt Festival Fall-2011

First off I want to wish everyone who celebrates a Happy Halloween. We plan on taking the kids scavenging for candy trick or treating tonight so tomorrow I will do more of a Halloween post.



I am hooking up with the bloggers quilt festival over at  Amy's Creative Side check out her page for more information.

The quilt I am linking up with is the very first quilt I ever made.

 I'm sorry I don't have more pictures of it.  Every time I visit my parents I say I will take more and then get caught up in visiting and don't think about it until I return home.

I made this 'lap quilt' while I was in college.  I didn't have a lot of quilting tools at the time. Okay, I had a 12" ruler, a pencil and a pair of scissors. Yes, you can make a quilt without all the fancy gadgets that make quilting so much easier today.

My apartment in college was very small, I didn't even have room for kitchen table. My meals were eaten sitting on the couch or on the floor, but that tiny place holds a lot of memories for me.

Back to the quilt,  I worked at Jo-Ann Fabrics while in college, so I was able to make the quilt for not much money.  I sat on the floor and cut out my pieces.  I cut very long 2.5" strips for my lattice work on the quilt, and carefully sewed everything together while sitting on the floor.

Knowing what I know today, that quilt would have gone together so much faster if I had just framed each of the squares, but being a newbie to the quilting world I pictured in my head what I wanted and went with it.

My mom still gets this quilt out every year at Christmas and through it isn't perfect and only tied instead of nice quilting I am still proud of it.

The bloggers quilt festival runs through Nov. 4th.  If you are a quilter, I hope you find something and hook up. Check out Amy's Page for the details.

Rock Star vest

Today is the last day of spirit week at school for my son  (thank goodness) and it is rock star day.   I ended up making him a vest.  He was excited to wear something I made him.  He doesn't get much so he appreciates what he does get.

I asked him to stand by the door so I could get his picture, and he sat on the step and gave me 'the look' which made for a better picture in my opinion.    I hope he has a great day at school today.

Hexi update

While I'm still looking for my groove, I realized I haven't updated on my hexi charm quilt in a while.   I'm still making hexi's but I'm up to 804 completed, so that means I only have 369 to go.  YAY!

My husband has even weighed in on the project because I was thinking of making some sort of design as I put them together, but he said that he thinks it would look better just random.  I'm fine with random, will make putting it together even easier. :)


This is what 804 hexi's looks like in my house.   Sorry for the not so great pictures it is very dreary and cold outside today.

Today's mission is to make somerhing 'rocker/rockerstar'  for my son.  He is having spirit week at school this week and tomorrow they are supposed to dress like a rock star.

On hold for now are:

Memory quilts for hubbys mom and aunt.

My Terrain quilt.

My Pay it forward surprises, I have not forgotten you.

and a few others that I can't think of but I know will start calling my name while I am working on something else.

I will leave you with a couple more pictures from my vacation.  These to me seem like they should be on a post card or something.   Who knew I could take a decent picture?

getting my groove back

With only a few short weeks until Christmas, I really hope to find my groove soon.  I have 2 T-shirt memory quilts to do and a couple of other small commissioned projects.

I am going to have to put several things to the side until I can gain control of my sewing room again.

I hope everyone has a great week, happy sewing.

Debbe

I'm Back

Vacation was nice. We arrived back home Wednesday afternoon, and we are almost over our jet lag. Who knew 3 hours would be such an adjustment.

I did visit a couple of quilt shops while we were in Las Vegas.  My wonderful hubby took me to Quiltique, and the Christmas Goose.   Both are nice shops with a large selection of fabric.

I haven't done a lot of sewing the past 2 weeks so I will share some of the beautiful sights from our trip with you.


The first 2 are from Spring Mountain, yes, there is snow on the peaks of those mountains and of you look closely in the first picture you will see the moon setting in the 'valley' on the right side of the picture.

 Hoover Dam

The first picture was taken from this bridge.

Stats for the bridge.

 Indy Cars on the Las Vegas Strip!  They shut down 4 blocks of the strip and the cars paraded for about 15 min.  It was quite a sight!

 The Indy Car drivers plus Mario Andretti.

 Largest trailer park, in the middle of the desert.  Between Las Vegas and Kingman AZ.

 Zion National Park-Utah the views say it all.

 Some of the wild life at Zion National Park in Utah.

Taranchula in the wild, no I did not step on him nor pick him up.

 Gecko

 Red Rock Canyon

More Red Rock canyon, According to the little sign this 'dry lake' used to be ocean at one time.

Me at the Grand Canyon on my 35th birthday. It is just a big hole and you can see for over 60 miles!  

Las Vegas Motor Speedway.  A beautiful day with a tragic ending.

 Dan Weldon during driver introductions.  We were fortunate enough to be on track for the introductions, and in the garage area looking at turn 4 when everything went wrong.

 The scoring tower after the announcement was made.

 5 lap tribute for Dan.

 R.I.P Danny Boy, you left an impact on everyone you met and will be missed.


 That is my vacation in a nutshell, I can't wait to do some digital scrapping of my trip.  I hope to get back to sewing soon.

Taking a few days off

I'm going to be taking a few days off from sewing and bloggy land.  My husband and I are leaving on Wednesday for our first real vacation since our honeymoon 7 years ago.  We are heading to Las Vegas for 8 blissful days.   We do have lots planned and none of it involves hitting up a casino.

There are tons of things going on out there this weekend. On Thursday, the Indy Car Series is taking over part of the strip and they will be running their cars up and down the strip for a few hours as a promotion for the race on Sunday.  On Saturday night Super Cross will be running at Sam Boyd Stadium.  My 35th birthday will be celebrated next Tuesday and I plan on hitting up the quilt shops that are out there and getting a few things to bring back just for me.  I can't get too much, because it will have to fit in my suitcase or carry on bag.   So until I get back from our excursion, I hope everyone has great sewing, crafting and cooking adventures with their families.

Fabulous Fall Friday

It is rather late in the day for me to be posting, but what the heck, better late than never, right?

Carla over at Lolly quiltz inspired me with her picture of the turning leaves.  While where she is at the leaves aren't as far along in the changing process as they are here in southern Indiana I still felt the urge to go take a couple of pictures.  You can watch the tree in her back yard go through the changing process every Friday on her blog.

The leaves here where I live are getting close to their peak colors for fall, and I'm loving it.   I have waited 11 months for this. The only thing missing is the cool fall weather, it is 80 degrees out today.

Out my front door,

Out the back door, I can also see these from my bedroom and sewing room windows.  Can't complain about my view, that is for sure.  Even in the winter with snow they are pretty and I'm not a fan of snow.

The afternoon sun is really bleaching out the colors I took the 2 pictures within a minute of each other. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend, God Bless!

WIP Thursday

I didn't make it for WIP Wednesday yesterday.  I went on my sons class field trip, and was way too tired to even think about sewing when I got home.  

I have high expectations for today.  I want to get caught up on the Quilt-Uber-Fest blocks that I'm several days behind on.  If you are interested in doing the blocks yourself, there are going to be 16 blocks 12.5" blocks.  A new block is being posted each day.  The first one was on October the 1st.   I only have 2 done so far so I'm 4 blocks behind right now and I will be going on vacation starting Wednesday of next week so I will have at least 5 blocks to do when I get back home.  

So far the theme of the quilt has been Flying Geese meet Log cabin.  The blocks are pretty simple to assemble and would be great for scraps.   I am going to cross mine with the BOM blocks that are only 8.5" and make one big quilt  instead of having 2 smaller quilts.  I've also been wondering "what was I thinking" as I'm trying to do the math for both quilts but I think it will be a fun contrast when finished.

There you have it, I'm off to sewing land for a bit.  Have a great day everyone.

So many projects, so little time...

With the cooler fall temps I have been spending a lot of time outdoors.  Yesterday was a trip down to the lake since I was entertaining my MIL.  The trees are turning and it is so beautiful.

It has been quite a while since I finished a quilting project.  No I don't have a finish today and don't see any in the near future.

I keep seeing wonderful projects that I want to make but don't know when I will ever find the time to do them.

Currently I have in the works.

a hexagon quilt of 1" paper hexes.

the block of the month quilt along

2 memory quilts that need to be done before December 17th.

My dresden quilt still needs to be quilted.

winter/christmas placemats that still need binding

But of course the wonderful world of bloggy land has shown me more great projects like, this wonderful fun looking Hex quilt from Love Affair with my Brother.  Quiltstory is Sharing the tutorial for it today.



And have you ever wanted to to make an Argyle quilt?  From the blue chair is doing a Argyle quilt along.  I really really want to make one of them as well.

Then there is Quilt-Uber-Fest with Blue Nickle Studios that is on their 3rd week, somehow I missed the first 2 blocks, but I will find them....

So, if you are like me and don't have anything to do...Join up with some quilting fun.

And one last thing, my friend Kiera over at It's so Kiki is having a giveaway from the fat quarter shop.