After Easter

We had snow on Easter Sunday. I shouldn't be surprised, but I felt a little bad for the little kids that had to hunt eggs in their heavy coats!

On a quilty note, I have just been doing some hand quilting the round robin. Haven't had much motivation to do anything else right now, but I have to get motivated to make a baby quilt for the April 6th shower!

I know part of my funk right now is because my son is giving me fits (again). Anyone who says 17 year old boys are easy to deal with is pulling your leg! argh!

I did pick up a couple men's shirts on my last visit to the thrift shop. One was green, the other neutral with a light green strip through it. I pressed and cut them into 2-1/2 inch strips. I sewed the strips together over the weekend, but that's as far as I have gotten. I need to sew the pairs of strips together to make 4 strips sewn together. Then I can cut them apart and sew into 16 patch blocks.

Part of my slow down is due to my daughter needing some modifications to her scrub tops for her job. She is working as a CNA in a nursing home. She wears an extra small, so that makes it difficult to find off the rack. She has bought larger sizes, then I take them in. But, the last one I picked up for her was a small and I mistakenly took it in too much, so that was shot. Luckily it was a real cheap one, only $4.50 from Rural King!

Rainy Days

We have had rain for two solid days. It’s been a good time to stay in and sew! I didn’t have anything to work on by hand, so last night I dug around in my sewing room and found a top about four feet square that was a round robin. It’s bright colors, pinks, purples, even some yellow. I was thinking of using it as a baby quilt, but the center has material in it with spools of thread in the pattern. So I’m not sure if it’s going to be a baby quilt or a lap quilt. .

I had some pink material that was about six inches too short for the back, so I added some purple to it. It’s just one strip of purple, but since it’s the same print as the pink, it blends nicely. I also did something different to help with the hand quilting. I saw on Simply Quilts the suggestion to sew a strip of scrap material all around the border of the quilt when hand quilting so the border edges don’t get stretched out. I did that, so hopefully it will work.

I drew a grid in the center of diagonal lines, an inch apart, going both directions to make a cross hatching pattern. I may continue it throughout the entire quilt, or may change it for the outer borders.

I’m thinking of going over to the thrift store during my lunch hour today and picking up some men’s shirts in green and neutrals to make some more 16 patch blocks. I have about half of what I need in the green blocks for another quilt like the 16 patch done in red shirtings. I was thinking of starting my own design quilt using the four inch squares of muslin and the solid squares, but that task seems so monumental that it’s difficult to get myself motivated just to cut the squares! I think need almost 600 squares of just the muslin for the size quilt I want to make out of it! What I should do is cut maybe a hundred squares at a time. Eventually it will get started…

Guitar Quilt Finished!

It’s finally finished! Nick’s guitar quilt is done and has pride of place on his bed. He was one happy camper to finally get his quilt. I had been working on it for a couple years now. The guitars are hand appliquéd. It is all hand quilted. There are musical symbols all over it, and Nick’s favorite band names are sewn into the sashing strips. The wording on the label was sewn by machine, then the label was hand attached.

My uncle in California called Monday night. He finally received his quilt! He was happy to get it.

I don't have anything to work on by hand right now. I really logged a lot of hours when I had hand work to do. I'm thinking of putting one of the baby quilt tops in the hoop and hand quilting them. There is a baby shower sneaking up on me the first week of April. Going to have to get something done for that!

So Close to the Finish Line

Last night I worked on Nick's guitar quilt for three and a half hours to finish all the hand quilting. Today I'm going to pick up some material for the binding and hopefully get it cut and put on over the weekend. I'll probably not get it all completely hand sewn, but if I can at least get the machine part of the binding done, I'll be on the home stretch to finishing it completely! And I have to put a label on it, of course.

Got a call from my uncle in California last night. He has not yet received the quilts that were sent 10 days ago. I'm not too worried about them being lost, yet. If he doesn't get them after two weeks, I will start to get a little nervous.

Time Well Spent

Since the beginning of January I have been keeping track of the hours I spend sewing. I have to say my totals have shocked me. In January, I sewed a total of 33.75 hours. This was made up of five weeks, two of which I only sewed for 2.5 and 3 hours each. In February I sewed a total of 42.75 hours, with one week having only 3.75 hours in it. In those two months, there were 22 days I did NOT sew.

I seem to go in spurts with the sewing. One day I may sew like a mad woman, and the next three days not do anything at all. This is just me, and it works for me, so that's really all that counts.

I am pleased, though, that I was able to get that many hours in of sewing. I enjoy it a LOT. I even enjoy the cutting more now that I have that strip cutting tool. Now if there was some way to make ironing more fun....