News Thread 11.13 November 13, 2009

Happy Friday the 13th.  Hopefully everyone has safe day.  Pretty sure I’m safe from black cats, but the street feral cat will be sure to cross my path today.  At the very least to torment my dogs.  My new sewing room happens to have the front window that the dogs like to sit and look out.  So all of my projects have to go to a pet friendly person. 

Enough about my animals.  I have been very unproductive in the sewing department this week.  Nothing from last week’s list is checked off.  I plan to spend the weekend cleaning and sewing.  I have gifts that need to be finished to removed from my sewing room.  There are projects of my own to work on and get the room cleaned up.  Instead of spring cleaning, I’m doing a fall cleaning! 

I’ll update again over the weekend.  Someone hold me accountable!!

News Threads 11.5 November 5, 2009

It’s been a week of firsts so far.  I bought my first fabric for my stash this week, the temptation was too great.  I was a good shopper and but some thought into it and waited a couple of days to make the purchase. 

I will put this collection to good use for the Miss Massachusetts charity event in December.  More photos to come on that.  Below is the Floragraphix collection from In the Beginning Fabric designed by Jason Wenter. 

 

 

I love the way that the purple, green and black work so well together. 

The other new collection that has my attention is Color Splash by Hoffman Fabrics.  Orange and pink are the main colors in this collection.  It would be great for any little girl project that you are working on. 

If anyone knows where I can find some great peacock inspired fabric, please let me know.  I have a project in mind and can’t find what I’m looking for yet. 

Projects This Week:

• Finish the quilting on Krista’s wedding quilt.  Hopefully it will only be three months late.
• Labels for Ryan and gma’s quilt. 
• Cut out and sew a great new pattern that I’ll talk about later. 

My other first for the week was getting to play on the longarm at the shop.  I had a quilt done in two hours and it was not very hard.  The hardest part is going on to the next row.  Even better is that you can not see how bad I did.  The thread that I used blends in.  Again, I’ll ask Santa if I can have the big machine for Christmas.

Baby Ryan November 1, 2009

Congrats to Nate and Missy as they welcome their son, Ryan.  I’ve known about his arrival for so long and was super excited to meet him.

Ryan has a great jungle themed nursery and is the “rhino” in his jungle.  Cute huh?  My original thought was something animal for a quilt.  The stuff I was finding was not want I wanted or match the nursery.

After I found what I was going to do I found the Robert Kaufman Animal Party.  The Retro prints would have been perfect.  You can find the kits and other coordinating fabrics at Fat Quarter Shop.  The kits were cute, but expensive for me right now.  Grlfrnd has been trying to use up the stash…not add to it.

During a Fat Tuesday sell at Sew and Quilt, I found some great Florida Gators fabric.  Since Missy has her PhD from Florida and they still live in Gainesville, it is quite fitting.  Little Ry-no will have plenty of Gators stuff, so I wanted to contribute.  I had looked for a Tebow jersey so he could match his mom.

I started with 5 fat quarters and created a disappaearing nine patch.  This has become my go to pattern anymore.  It’s so easy and does give a quilt a great random look without much effort.

Piecing

Piecing

Completed Block

Once the blocks are completed, they were cut down the center both horizontally and vertically.  I then pieced the blocks together trying my best to keep the writing all going the same way.  For the quilting I wanted to keep it simple and not take away from the piecing.  Diagonals were easy and really set off the quilt.  Unlike others the tails were able to be put in the binding keeping them secure.

Diagonal quilting

Quilting

Over the weekend we went to visit Baby Ryan.  He is super cute and snuggly.  No moms, this does want to make us speed up the baby process, we’re still about 3-5 years out.  Ryan sported his Gators onesie and the new quilt during the Florida win over Georgia.  Go Gators!  Too bad our other teams could not deliver yesterday. 

Go Gators!!