A look at my kitchen table right now:
I really wanted to have this cute little quilt ready for the boutique tomorrow (BOUTIQUE TOMORROW! Recker/Guadalupe in Gilbert 9-2! Come visit me!), but I had no ambition this morning, so I didn’t have it basted and ready to quilt by naptime. Instead, I basted it and am now blogging during naptime :) Sooo productive of me :)
Fabric: Sweetwater’s Pure and Kona Ivory
Miraculous! Not only that, but this is another completed quilt!
This is the other quilt that I finished just before I got laid up on the couch with my parasite, thus never posted.
I love this quilt!! I am seriously tempted to keep it for the baby, but I think I’m going to make one specifically for her instead. We will see :)
I used my square in square method for the blocks again. I always seem to go back to that when there’s some color combo that I want to play with but not think about too much. A few blocks and a couple borders, this quilt went together really quick. Then I decided to play around with the quilting a bit.
I made myself a pattern template (out of cardstock!) for a flowery looking thing in each of the blocks, then a squiggle through the green border, and the scroll loops in the outer purple border. It was nice to try something new!
Oh yeah, and this was the other quilt that I dragged my quilt holder all around my grandparents for :)
I started out with my two solids and then pulled prints to match. The solid green is Kona Tarragon (I think! It has been too long!!), and the purple is Kona Eggplant. The back is a super cute paisley flower print from Basic Grey’s Eva line, and I used almost every bit I had for the back! the teeny bit that was left, I used for a set of burp cloths to match the quilt:
In fact, there wasn’t a large enough piece for the burp cloth, so I added a strip of solid to that one :)
The quilt finishes at 34” x 42”.
Both the quilt and the burp cloths are up in the shop (for now!!)
Oh, and time for a plug for my upcoming boutique! For any of you locals, I will be at a boutique this Saturday, the 24th, 9am-2pm at Recker and Guadalupe in Gilbert (right next to Highland High School). Come check it out and say hi to me! I’ll be the one with the quilts :)
I finished up that custom order from the last post! And while I am not always drawn to yellow, by the time I was done with this one I was converted! I am very grateful for custom orders that push me a little out of my comfort zone.
My customer wanted a finished size of 35” x 54”, to fit a bed. I believe this is a good size for a toddler bed, especially one with rails, since it wouldn’t have much of a drop. I wanted to try it out on Zoey’s bed, but since who knows what germs are in that cesspool, I didn’t :) She also really liked my Toss Up pattern, so we went with that, though I had to completely refigure the block sizes, which was a PAIN. But totally worth it for the end product!
I quilted a meandering flower pattern, which I think makes the whole thing super cute and feminine. And cute. Did I mention cute? And I didn’t stitch my finger :)
The fabrics were all from stash (yay!), and luckily I had enough of that Oh Cherry Oh yellow flower for the backing. The solids are both Kona; the cream is Bone and I don’t remember what the yellow is, whoops. The almost solid light pink is actually a Basic Grey grunge solid, love it! Oh, and the binding is a yellow pinstripe from American Jane’s Punctuation line.
Now, to explain my post title…so this is the first time I have had to ship internationally, so I had NO idea what I was doing with customs forms and whatnot. So, after standing in the really long line full of old people while my 2 year old shrieked, yelled, danced, and said embarrassing things, I got to the counter. I had done all my forms right(yay!), but then as I went to get my wallet out of my bag, it WASN’T THERE. Seriously. So I couldn’t pay! The lady had already date stamped all my stuff, so I had to go back THAT DAY, too. And it wasn’t the closest post office to my house…it was the one near where I was right then. Anyways, I went and met the hubs for lunch and he pulled me cash and I went back on the way home, but by then, it was 2 hours after naptime and the kid was cranky. Thank goodness there wasn’t a line when I went back!! So, that’s my saga. My wallet was still at home in my bag from the LQS from Saturday…doh! But at least now I will know what to do to ship international next time!
And isn’t that quilt just so cool? :)
I’ve been working on this custom order for the last few days. Just got it basted, and gonna head in to quilt it as soon as the kid is down for her nap! Now, if I can just not run over my finger this time… :)
Oh, and somehow I miscut my backing, so it’s like 1/2” too narrow…luckily the top is just a little bit bigger than it needs to be, so I can trim it down :) But seriously, did I forget how to measure or something? Duh!!
So, I did something really dumb yesterday. I was quilting my garden fence quilt during naptime, and I was able to finish it rather quickly, and since I already had my machine all set up for free motioning, I moved on to the other lap quilt I had ready to quilt (a Christmas one, I haven’t show any sneak peeks yet, sorry!). Started quilting that one, and it was just zipping right along, way faster than I anticipated. I figured the kid would wake up before I could finish it (cuz really, TWO quilts quilted during one naptime? Miraculous!), but she was still quiet! Then I was getting really close to the end, so I was sort of hurrying…
DON’T HURRY WHEN YOU ARE FREE MOTIONING!!!
I have no idea how my finger got in the way, but next thing I know I am reflexively jerking a NEEDLE out of the top of my FINGER. Now, at first I didn’t even really realize what had happened. And then it started to hurt….and bleed….profusely…I ran in to the bathroom and threw it under cold water, and suddenly couldn’t remember if I had seen the TIP of the needle come out of my finger…in fact, I was pretty sure it hadn’t. Oh, yeah, there wasn’t an exit point, just the entry. So I start freaking out because there was still part of the needle in my finger, I had to go to Urgent Care, but I couldn’t drive cuz I felt like I was going to pass out, the kid was still in her room quiet, but she’d been asleep for 3 hours already, my husband wasn’t just down the street at work, he was at work far away yesterday afternoon. I hurriedly grabbed a rag, wrapped my bleeding finger, and called my mom; she should have been just leaving work, and has to drive right by me to get home, so I figured she could pick me up. Yeah, she didn’t answer…so I called my mother in law, who thank goodness didn’t go out of town until today, and she headed over to pick me up. Oh, and funny part of this: Zoey gets up from her nap with her diaper only half on, and as she walks put, it falls the rest of the way off. She got to hang out diaperless until grandma got here, because I apparently cannot put a diaper on one handed!
So, off to Urgent Care. They got me back pretty much as soon as I got in the door; didn’t even have me fill out paperwork or anything first, that was nice! But guess what? They couldn’t XRay me OR give me any painkillers because I’m PREGNANT. BAD TIMES! So, they had to poke and prod at me without any kind of numbing or pain relief…except tylenol. Yeah, I totally almost passed out at one point, so they stopped for a while. Anyways, very long story short, they couldn’t find any metal still in my finger, and recommended finding the needle when I got home to see if the point was still on. Why didn’t I think of that earlier? Oh yeah, because I was bleeding…lol Antibiotic prescription and I was on my way!
We found the needle(and know it’s the right one cuz the tip is still bloody!), and sure enough, it is still totally intact, so I’m not all worried anymore :) So now my finger is all bandaged up, and my husband wouldn’t let me sew any more last night, but I think I will go back in at naptime today!! That quilt is so close…
ps- Yeah, I never used to understand how people ran over their fingers with their machines…and I still don’t know how I did it, but I guess it really can happen to anyone!
I finally have a finished quilt to show off! I started this thing way back here, and I actually finished this quilt the week I found out I was pregnant (in May), and before I could get pictures, I was laid up on the couch. Anyway, I present to you my scrappy rainbow quilt!
I started making some random 5 1/2” blocks when my string scrap bin (a big red vines container. I’m cool like that!) was stuffed so full I couldn’t get anything else into it. I sorted out all the strings by color and went to town with no plan at all! Well, when I hit purple, my last color and least amount of scraps(had to borrow some from my mom!), I decided I needed SOME sort of a plan…so I started playing. I love the gradient look, so I went with it, and found that I only needed a couple more purple blocks and then I would be done!
Thanks to my awesome husband who let me drag him all around my grandparent’s and take pictures of quilts, he’s awesome :)
Now I have a slight rant about the back…I decided that this gray and white Ta Dot (I believe the color is Stone) would be a PERFECT back, and I had a good size piece of it, but not quite enough. So, off I ran to my LQS where I remembered seeing a bolt, got the bit I needed, and ran back home. To my horror, they were DIFFERENT DYE LOTS! Now, I know this is bound to happen, but I was so annoyed…and I couldn’t get any from the original bolt I purchased from, because I bought the end of bolt! Anyways, I worked it out so that all the dots from one piece were on one side of my scrappy back strip and all the dots from the other piece were on the other side, so it’s not very noticeable (except to me!!).
I quilted a continuous swirl that started a little off-center, (not that you can tell from the above picture, it’s just a cool pic), and started the swirl off with a cute daisy. It was fairly easy since this was a small quilt, but I don’t know that I would do it on anything bigger!
And I finished it off with a black and white pinstripe. I love how it sets off the rest of the colors and frames the rainbow! By the way, I thought it was pretty funny that I blogstalked across my quilt’s close twin while I was laying on the couch sick back in May. Rainbow, striped binding, even the quilting! I guess quilters think alike!!
I have listed this quilt up in the shop. Hurray for something new in there! It was starting to get just a little sparse, what with not sewing for 4 months…but I am definitely back in the groove(mostly), and I am still trying to keep up on my blogging! Yay!
Have a fantabulous day!
How was everybody’s weekend? I had a lovely time; I basted THREE quilts, got to go on a real date with my husband, and then went up north for a couple days to get out of the heat! Oh, and while I was at my grandparents(the getaway up north!), I finally got some pictures of the quilts I haven’t posted yet! I will work on editing/sorting out all 100 of those pictures later…
But now on to what this post is REALLY about! As I was sitting eating my cereal and doing my morning blogstalking, I went to my BFF’s blog, The Crafty Cupboard. To my surprise, she has an entire post up about something I made! That is on the FRONT OF A MAGAZINE! Ok, really, I’m sure my name isn’t anywhere on/in that magazine, but my workroom and my lovely employer are!
So, go NOW and look at Melanie’s post so you can see the amazingly huge curved cornice that I sat, knelt, layed on the floor, shot myself in the side with the pneumatic stapler, dropped said stapler on my eye (I had stapler issues that week…), and all around slaved over to make! I feel all special now :)
Have a wonderful day!!
