Slowly but surely

I've been working on quilt tops, slowly but surely. I've got quite a few that are ready to go or just a border away from being ready. I'm hoping to get a bunch ready and then when I have breaks from teaching school I can go home and get them all quilted.

This was a quick and easy one. I got the pattern from Missouri Star Quilt Co. and I also got the jelly roll from them. I used a gift card my friend Nick gave me for Christmas. I think it's a Robert Kaufman line.  I debated between black and white and I'm glad I went with the black. I think it really makes the colors pop. It was so fast, I think I'll probably do another one since I'm trying to do quilts for all the girls on my mom's side. Well, almost all the girls.

Long Arm

My brother is getting married in just over a week.

 I got started early on his quilt, but then struggled to find a long arm machine I could use, since my regular go-to lady is on a mission in Washington D.C. so I decided to buy one. Kind of impulsive and a huge purchase, but I did it. My sister's sister-in-law helped me put the frame together and a couple weeks ago I actually got to test it out.

 Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish quilting Kevin's quilt so it won't be done for his wedding.

Row by Row

Row by row just started again for this year and much to my dismay, out of two years of collecting Row by Row's I've only managed to make one pattern.

Matchy matchy

I made matching quilts for all my siblings. Same pattern, different fabric. The pattern was actually from a baby quilting book so my mom did the math to make it bigger. You can see their quilts here. She didn't quite do it correctly and I ended up with 6 extra blocks in the end. I decided to hang onto them and make baby quilts out of them when my siblings had babies. My sister had a baby 3 weeks ago and here is the quilt I made for her.

One for 2017

I started this one in plenty of time to get it done before this little cutie was born at the end of July, but then life happened and it didn't get done. And then it was going to be done for Christmas and then there was more life and it still didn't happen, but when I planned a trip to visit baby cakes and her family for President's Day, I knew I had to get it done.  I finished it! And it turned out so cute and Katie even remembered the significance of the blueberries. Hopefully there are a few more to follow soon. I've got to get going on one for my brother and soon to be sister-in-law for their wedding in July, as well as one for my baby niece coming at the end of May. Hopefully life will slow down a little at the end of March and give me some good sewing time. I'll keep my fingers crossed but won't hold my breathe.

2016 Update

This year has been a blur. I can't believe November is already a third of the way over. I haven't gotten to do as much quilting as I would like. School has consumed my time as well as dating, which is a new problem for me that I'm still trying to figure out. I have gotten a few projects done though.

 Receiving blankets are the ticket for friends and family who live far away. The top two are for my cousin Emma who is having a baby this month. I would have made her a quilt, but the baby shower caught me off guard and I didn't have time. The four on the bottom were for my cousin, some good friends from my YSA ward who got married and moved to California, a mission friend and one of my best friends from Jr. High.

This one was for my mission friend Pam. She loves Winnie the Pooh so when I saw the fabric I just knew I had to make her something with it.

I've been working on a few other projects. Not sure what I'll actually get done by the end of the year but I'm glad I was able to get these out to friends and family to let them know I love them and their new little additions.

Quilting, quilting

I spent 6 weeks of my life working on this for my sister. I had her pick out the pattern and colors so I could be sure she would actually like it. Even at that, I resigned myself to the fact that she probably wouldn't use it. Hopefully one day it finds its way to someone who will love it. It's definitely the most complex quilt I've ever done.

This one for Denae didn't quite make the baby deadline since my time was monopolized by Julia's quilt. But I got it done in time for his blessing. I think it turned out cute. Just don't look too close and how straight my lines are. :/

I've managed to squeeze in a few receiving blankets as well and I've been working on some other projects. Hopefully I stay on a roll and get some good quilting hours under my belt while staying caught up on book club, work, school and trying to have a social life.

2015

Quilt 7 Mario quilt for my friend Brenda. When I saw the fabric I knew I had to do something for her. I gave it to her a couple days ago and as predicted she loved it. Or she was good at faking.

Quilt 8 I've been roommates with Chelsea for 3 years. That's the longest roommate I've ever had! That's three years of her having to put up with my sewing machine always being on the table and my fabric being everywhere. I thought that merited a quilt of her very own. These little giraffes were just so cute and perfect.

Quilt 9 This was a lap quilt I made for made for my friend Christy. She lives in California and I don't get to see her very often. The pattern is called a friendship braid, so she can always remember her friends from so long ago. :)

I didn't make my goal of 12 quilts this year, but I figured 9 wasn't too bad. I was working two jobs and life is busy. Hopefully I can have another productive year in 2016.

Trunk show

I get emails from about a million quilting sites. And I love it. The other day I got this gem talking about an online quilt trunk show. I LOVE seeing other people's quilts so I thought I'd participate as well.

This one is very dear to me. I turned 30 this year and as my big hurrah I asked my friends and family to send me a fat quarter. Out of the fabric I was given I made this quilt. My mom helped me long ago figure out the measurements for the blocks from a picture I had seen and it went together so quickly. I used a tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Co for the binding and quilted this on my sewing machine. It's so fun to look at all the fabric and think about the people who gave it to me. Love it!!

Take a look at the other quilts in the quilt show at Whimsandfancies.com

Number 5

Finished quilt number 5 for the year. This one has been a long time coming. Last year I had the genius idea to make a quilt for my grandma for Christmas. There are 11 girls on my mom's side (3 sisters, 1 sister in law, and 7 cousins) which would work out great to make a 12 block quilt (easy enough for me to make two blocks to fill that last spot). Well I should have known it wouldn't go together like I planned. It took me forever to do my block and just as long for everyone, except my one cousin, to do theirs. Two people opted not to participate so that also presented the task of creating the extra two blocks. Luckily my cousin Jamee decided it would be fun to come on over to my house and make a couple blocks and her mom also made two blocks. So between the three of us we made the extra three blocks. They were done in time for Christmas so I gave those to grandma and then took them back. I got the top sewn together for Mother's Day. And I stayed up much later than I would have liked last night finishing the quilting on it for her birthday (which was yesterday). So now it's all done! She didn't get it FOR her birthday, but it was finished BY her birthday so I'm counting myself successful. :) Next time I see her she'll get this cheery warm piece of love to always remember us by. :)

Nothing says I love you

I had a mission companion who always got socks in her packages. In her family, they had a saying that "Nothing says I love you like a new pair of socks". My equivalent to that would be "Nothing says I love you like a quilt". And now, a story.

Sometimes you start the second grade and you make a new friend and she becomes one of your best friends and she just happens to live down the street and you just love her. Then in the 8th grade she moves across the state in the pre cell phone, pre email days and you write letters and get special permission from mom to call long distance to see how things are going. Then you get your first email and keep in touch that way and THEN you are finally saved by facebook and texting. 22 years later you are still laughing about Welkerpoo on the nintendo and the ridiculous songs you made up in your "band". Along the way you have marriages and babies and missions and sometimes, you actually fail at being the friend you wish you were. This is where I am going to make a confession. My best friend of 22 years is pregnant with her 4th baby. I'm really good at baby gifts. I LOVE babies and all things cute and little and baby. I give baby gifts to coworkers whose wives just had babies and mission companions I hardly ever talk to and people I've only known for a few years casually at church, but with all that great gift giving, I have NEVER made anything for ANY of my friend Dana's babies. WHAT. THE. HECK!? So this time around I decided to repent and make sure I made this one count. Make sure I got it done in time to actually hand deliver it and not have the excuse that I just never made it to the post office. Because really, nothing says I love you like a quilt, and I really do love her. SO I found the perfect fabric that just screamed Dana to me, found an adorable (and relatively simple) Charm box pattern from fatquartershop.com (LOVE their youtube videos) and went to work.

I was bummed when I looked at the instructions and it said I needed 2 charm packs when I had only bought 1 from missouriquiltco.com and when I went to order another one, they didn't have anymore. :( So I headed to the fabric store to find a couple prints that would work with it and grabbed some great minky that was on sale at the same time. Luckily I found a few fabrics I thought would work okay and got to sewing. It went together SO fast. A couple episodes of Chuck and the top was done!

My visiting teacher came on Sunday and asked me if there was anything I needed. I told her to message me in the middle of the week to see how my quilt was going since I have a tendency to procrastinate when I'm close to finishing, assuming I'll have all the time in the world on (insert day of the week) but then 12 things come up and I regret not working on it when I actually did have time.

But I was on top of it and finished it Tuesday night! It turned out SO good. Probably one of my favorites ever.

Seriously so cute. The minky back was different to work with and made it difficult to slide around when I was quilting it on my machine, but really other than that it was a easy enough. Maybe Dana is lucky I've been such a slacker with her other kids. ;)

I'm definitely lucky that she has been willing to put in the effort required to keep a friendship in contact through the ups and downs and distances of life. It was so great to get together with her this weekend for our annual October Conference ice cream run. Four hours later and we were mostly caught up and only departing because it was so late. She loved the quilt and I LOVE HER!

Nothing says I love you quite like a quilt. 

Did you know?!

Did you know you can have custom fabric made!? I'm working on some ideas for Christmas gifts and I stumbled across spoonflower.com. You can upload your own design to be printed on fabric or use a custom design someone else has submitted. Sure it's crazy expensive, but it's also CRAZY cool!! There are quite a few on there that I like, but I just have these other images floating around in my head that would be SO fabulous. Only problem is, I'm not very artistic when it comes to drawing. Stick figures and crayons are about as fancy as I get, and you might be able to guess what I drew. Maybe.
I have a friend who is an amazing artist, but is crazy busy. I don't think she really understood what I was asking for either. Oh well. I'll figure something out. It might be best that it doesn't work out anyway. Save my pocketbook a little $$$$.
But really, if you know anyone who is super great with drawing and computers and stuff, who thinks it would be cool to see their art printed on a piece of fabric, send them my way. :)

The finished guitar quilt

Took me long enough, but I finally finished the guitar/ukelele quilt. I started this one about 2 years ago. I don't know why it took me so long to finish because it wasn't a difficult quilt, but it's done now and I love it! Inspired by my friend Daniel who makes Ukelele's out of crazy things so they are all different sizes and shapes.

Picture update

Progress!

I finished two quilts yesterday! That takes my total for the year to 3! I'm only 5 months behind. :/ BUT I do have 3 in advanced stages of completion and a baby quilt in the works that looks as though it should go together quickly, if I could only find one more piece of fabric for the sashing. I'll post pictures as soon as I remember to take some.

Row by Row

An update to my row by row quest. My goal was to get one from every state. With just over a week left these are the states I DO have.

1. Idaho
2. Montana
3. Utah
4. Florida
5. Oregon
6. Alaska
7. California
8. Nevada
9. Oklahoma
10. Illinois
11. Nebraska
12. Indiana
13. Maryland
14. Washington
15. Missouri
16. Michigan
17. Minnesota
18. Colorado
19. N. Carolina
20. New York
21. Arizona
22. Kentucky
23. Wisconsin
24. Virginia

Not too bad I'd say. I'm still hopeful on a couple other states. Thanks again to ALL the awesome people who have gotten patterns for me. You make me feel so loved and I LOVE YOU!

Here is a list of participating stores by state

Click HERE for list

Row by Row

First of all, thanks to all my friends who have gotten me patterns so far! Seriously, you are the best EVER!! And I love you. A LOT. I currently have patterns from 24 states. That's pretty sweet.
I have become obsessed with the Row by Row Experience !

I just love the idea of going to all these shops and picking up the patterns myself! I wish I could! I've been looking at all the patterns from the different states and there are some that I am just in love with. I've been going through all my friends trying to find people who live in different states to pick them up for me. They don't quilt so it's still the one pattern per customer. Basically they are just giving me a gift they got for free that I asked them for. That's the best kind of gift in my opinion. :) If only I could find people in these cities

*Lake Orion, MI-"The Village Quilt Shoppe"
*Grand Rapids, MI- "Queen Bee Quilt Shoppe"
Dublin, OH- "Red Rooster"
Butler, MO- "Rocking Chair Quilts"
*Branson West, MO- "The Quilted Cow"
Philomath, OR- "JanniLou Creations"
Nyssa, OR- "Marilynn's Pickets & Patchwork"
Jefferson, OR- "Purple Frog Quilt Shop"
Prairie City, OR- "Quilts and Beyond"
Temple Terrance, FL- "Bernina Sewing Center"
Sanibel, FL- "Three Crafty Ladies"
Palm Coast, FL- "Cut Up And Sew"
*Navarre, FL- "Unlimited Embroidery & Fabric Art"
South Bend, IN- "Stitch N Time Fabrics"
Poulsbo, WA- "B's Fabric Fun & Sewing"
Bellevue, WA- "Quiltworks Northwest"
Merrill, OR- "Tater Patch Quilts"
*San Antonio, TX- "Memories by the Yard" I really really want this one. I've been tempted to ask one of our dealers who is in San Antonio to get it for me, but I can't get past how weird that would be.
Calimesa, CA- "Busy Bee Quilt Shop"
Sunnyvale, CA- "Eddie's Quilting Bee"
Holton, KS- "Quilting on the Square"
Dahlonega, GA- "Magical Threads"
Chatanooga, TN- "Bernina Sew N Quilt"
Sevierville, TN- "The Cherry Pit"
Crossville, TN- "Little Blessings Quilt Shop"
Fly Creek, NY- "Heartworks Quilts & Fabrics"
Johnstown, NY- "At Home Quilting"
Papillion, NE- "Country Sampler"
*Appleton, WI -"Keep Me In Stitches"
Bedford, PA- "Mary’s Quilt Shop"
Litchfield, MN- "DeAnn's Country Village Shoppe"
Mt. Pleasant, IA- "Quilter's Paradise"
New Hampton, IA- "Quilter's Window"
Trenton, OH- "Valley Quilts"
Edgecomb, ME- "On Board Fabrics"

I know, it's a long list, but they are just SO adorable! If only I had the time and money to travel to all these places! The next trick will be to actually use some of them to make a quilt. I'll add it to my ever growing list of quilts to make.

Christmas 2014

So I ended up making 14 pillowcases for Christmas this year. I think they turned out really well.

Football for the boys I use to babysit, Star Wars for my brother, Lightning McQueen for my favorite little "nephew", flowers and hearts, purple and turquoise, blue and green for the roommates.

Boise State for my brother, pink for a girl I used to babysit, brown and turquoise for my good friend, lime for another girl I used to babysit (they're all siblings), and hearts and flowers for my old roommate and good friend.

I finished my dad's present last night. I forgot to take a picture so it will have to wait until Christmas and I still have one more sewing project to finish by tomorrow.

Where did the year go?

Here it is the 18th of December and I'm just wondering where the year went? What did I accomplish? I actually feel like I accomplished a lot but maybe not so much in the sewing department although this month has been very productive with trying to get Christmas gifts done.

I sent this receiving blanket to a sister from my mission who lives in Spain.

This one turned out so much better than I was expecting. Simple is the way to go sometimes. I gave this to an old roommate who had a baby at the beginning of July.

My friend Lucy had her second baby. They live far away in Wisconsin, but it was fun to finish this one off and send it to her.

This is the cause of my little sleep last night. I got home late from work and had to finish this so I can put it in the mail today so it will make it to Florida by Christmas. It turned out well, but you always have problems when you're trying to get something done in a hurry.

I LOVE how this one turned out. Can't go wrong with Ninja Turtles. I sent this to my friend in Chicago for Christmas along with a Book of Mormon. Two great things in one package.

I made aprons for my friend Katie's three girls. It's not the greatest picture, but they turned out well and weren't too difficult. Just taking time as all things do.

This year I had the genius idea for all the girls on my mom's side of the family to make a quilt square and then I would put them all together to make a quilt for Grandma. Maybe if people had actually gotten me their squares by Thanksgiving like I asked and if I didn't have second job right now, that quilt would have actually happened. This is the square that I made (two days after Thanksgiving). It's looking like I'll give her a present of squares and maybe get the quilt done for Mother's Day. I have 6 squares. I think two are in the mail. One said she wasn't making one, the other hasn't ever responded. Maybe since I'll have more time, they can get me their squares.   

I also made a quilt way back in January, but this is about the whole of my crafting this year. I think I'll make the resolution to finish a quilt a month like I did a couple years ago. There are a few in various stages of completion.

June!?

So here it is June and I haven't posted anything in FOREVER. I actually have finished a couple quilts (at least one that I can think of right this second) I just haven't posted any pictures. June has already stressed me out and I'm only a week in. If people would just stop getting married and having babies I'd have 4 seconds to breath.

I made these two for a couple weddings I went to this weekend. Just a simple table runner. They turned out shorter than I would have liked, but they still turned out really cute!! I gave them a cook book as well. I went to another wedding this weekend, but since she lives in Utah she'll get hers later. Prioritizing was my only option to ensure sanity.

My friend Camille had a baby about a month ago so I was also frantically working on this one to get it done in time for me to go to Idaho for the weddings. I LOVE how the back turned out. So bright and colorful.

Hopefully I can get ahead of the game here soon and have these things done and on hand instead of having to get up at 5:30 in the morning to finish them. Also my sewing machine does NOT like size 70 needles. I broke 4 needles in two days. All of them were 70's. I went and bought some new ones, put an 80 on there and haven't had any problems. Knock on wood.