Hi Friends!

We're back from Hawaii! 

I did a lot of this

With a bit of this

Ate a ton of these!

Looked at lots of these!

And I bought a little bit of fabric :)

It was tough work!  :)  Just kidding.  When I came home I joined Talk to Me Tuesdays and made this cute video.  It's about joining "12 for 2012 Challenge." If you'd like to check out more crafty videos, go to Talk to Me Tuesdays at livejournal.  It was fun and surprisingly easy to make and I think I'll be making more!



I have an interview tomorrow morning for a promotion at work.  I don't think I'll get it, but cross your fingers for me just in case! School starts on Thursday and this Friday is...

Go to Crafty Vegas Mom to sign up!

FNSI and Giveaway Winner

Good morning! Happy Sunday! I am having a fabulous weekend. I went to a meeting of the Sacramento Modern Quilt Guild. It was fun and I can't wait to hang out more with these girls! My husband and I also looked at houses yesterday and put an offer on one. Cross your fingers for us :)

I had so much fun reading all the embarrassing quilty confessions from my giveaway! If you have some time, read the comments. They will keep you in stitches :) I couldn't respond, but I read every one of them and had a great laugh.

The winner was picked by RNG and is:

Just Pam who said: "I think most of us have been there. My worst was finishing a large quilt that I gave away for a raffle. It was beautiful and I realize that I had one block that totally didn't belong. My quilt club told me no one who doesn't quilt would see it. The first question by the person I gave it to was what is the significance of that one odd ball block!"

Congrats! You won a $20.00 gift certificate to Green Fairy Quilts!

For FNSI I made an oven mitt for my aunt. I pulled her name for the gift exchange this year and thought it would be cute to wrap her spice grater in an oven mitt.

The tutorial was written by Melissa at Happy Quilting (hop over right now to enter her giveaway). It was easy to follow. You can basically make two lengths from this tutorial. I made the smaller one and it's perfect. I forgot to account for the directional print of my fabric. In order to have all the coffee cups facing up instead of tipped over on their sides, I had to make a smaller one. I wish I would have thought to add a loop in there for hanging.

I put her spice grater in the oven mitt and tied a lacy bow and that's how it's wrapped. I'm not using wrapping paper this season.

For more FNSI results, visit here

Have a quilty weekend :)

I've been Charmed

Have you had fun hopping?!  I know I did.  I found a ton of new blogs to follow. My poor Google Reader is going to be so stuffed! 

I haven't sewn in two weeks! Yikes.  I have a Santa bag full of excuses though.  Holidays. Cooking delicious gluten free food.  My last test in Accounting was tonight.  We got approved for a home loan and now just need to house-shop.  Exercise and diet for next month's trip to Hawaii.  Plus the usual work!

That's why I'm signing up for Friday Night Sew In! What a wonderful excuse to get some Me time :)  I want to make Oven Mitts for Christmas presents.  I've been itching to start a new project.  I have so many in progress right now though.

I got this fabulous present from a giveaway hosted by Jeanette at Inchworm Fabrics. I won the book (by Me and My Sister Designs) and a Ruby charm pack. I threw in some extra money and bought two more charm packs. Can't beat that deal! Thanks Jeanette :) This package has been sitting on my cutting table, just mocking me.

Soon! I'll get to you soon!

Have fun at FNSI. Forget everything else and take a night for yourself. Make your husband cook dinner. Make the cats pick up the house. Skip your exercising and park yourself at your sewing machine!

FNSI Results

Did you have a fabulous FNSI? I did! A little bit of wine, some fast food for dinner (Chipotle), and some quality spending time with my sewing machine :)

I have been quilting my Xmas Sampler. No real plan, I just pick a color thread and do whatever I feel like doing. BTW, if some of those rows look crooked and wonky, it's NOT my camera. They actually ARE crooked and wonky and I'm not apologizing. It happens.

My first meander. I'm pretty impressed. It's a bit choppy, so next time I'll work more on smoothing it out. Overall, great try :)

I love how this wreath turned out. I traced a pointsetta in the negative space corners and just did some flowing curves in the center. I outlined the applique with matching thread.

I'm getting better!

Here's just a photo to showcase how much better I am at backtracking. You can't really tell that I had to backtrack on these curves. Amazing how easy it is to improve FMQ skills, if you actually practice :)

This is the only project I've worked on all month so far.

How was your FNSI?

Playing Catch Up

Happy Friday! Today is UFO update day for all UFO Busters!

This has been a super busy week for me. For my husband’s birthday we spent a few days out of town. It was so nice to get away! Unfortunately, that means no quilting. Then I came back home to a big test in school and loads of homework to cram in before its due date. The homework is submitted and the test taken last night, thankfully! No worrying now, either I did good or bad, but at least I’m done studying!

Since my announcement of having to go gluten free, I’ve been going through some health issues too. Off-gluten, then back on, biopsy, blood draws, extreme fatigue, mood swings…the list goes on! Now most of the invasive procedures are done. I’ve officially been diagnosed with celiac disease, and have been off-gluten for a week now. It’s been a roller coaster and my poor body doesn’t know which way is up! These next few weeks I’m looking forward to healing my body, getting to know myself better, and enjoying my release from the grip of fatigue. I’ll be a whole, happy me!

I’ve been quilting on my Xmas Sampler quilt. I’m really pushing to get that done by December 1. No pictures to show (I’m writing this at work (on my break, I swear!)). But I should be finished soon. I'll be working on it tonight during FNSI! Sign up here if you would like to join me!

Here’s a finished flimsy! I did something a bit different with the borders. Do you like them? I do. This flimsy will marinate for a month or two before I get to it. My husband loves it, so I'll do something special for the quilting.

Hope you have a quilty weekend :)

FNSI results and Giveaway Winner

Did you have a productive FNSI? Follow the link to see what other quilters were doing last night, I usually find some great blogs to follow!

Since it's the second half of the month, I worked on my current BOMs. I made a boot for Boot Bash BOM. I like this boot a lot but wish I would have used more blue. Blue outline stitching on the boot would have looked really nice. But I'm not about to change it!

Look at them all together!

I really love this quilt!

Next I cut the pieces and stitched this guy from Jewel in the Crown BOM:

This little bugger did not want to go together correctly. I had to rip stitches and starch the crap out it. Some of the squares have their points cut off, but otherwise, I'm happy!

And this Civil War block came together as a Leader and Ender:

I'm happy with my FNSI!

And now to choose a winner for my 100 followers Giveaway:

Margaret!

From

Check out Margaret's blog. She is having a Giveaway for her followers, too! She's giving away a darling Dresden block Clock. Congrats Margaret!

Thanks for Folllowing and Have a Quilty Weekend!

FNSI Results

How did your FNSI go? Did you ditch the husband and hide from the kids and sew to your heart's content? Did you wear pajamas and drink wine and lose yourself in fabric and seams and quilting lines? Ahh...FNSI, how I love thee.

My plan was to work on my Stay At Home Round Robin. But when I got home I got completely sidetracked by an old UFO. My Twilight quilt was a stack of blocks last night. I made the last block and then got excited and started sashing the blocks together. At midnight I decided that I might as well join the rows since I had already done all this work!

This block was the result of a block swap I participated in a few years ago. The theme was red, black, white, and gray. It was a Twilight theme, so I dubbed this my Twilight quilt. I made a few extra blocks to make it bigger. Cute, huh? Today I might stop by my LQS to find some border fabric.

That will probably be the extent of my sewing this weekend. I have errands, chores, and family stuff for the rest of my days off.

Yesterday I discovered that I was the winner of a giveaway from Lynn of Alamosa Quilter. She was celebrating her 500th post (Wow! That's A LOT!). Congrats Lynn! I won a $20 gift certificate from Intrepid Thread. Fun!

I chose the Fat Quarter Bundle of Heirloom by Joel Dewberry in Sapphire. Isn't it pretty?!

Is it too early to be counting down to Friday night?

This Friday is Friday Night Sew In! I’m so excited. After a week of dealing with a family death and pitching in to help cover the ragged ends, I could really use some sewing time.

My plan this week is to work on my Stay at Home Round Robin that Sunny is hosting on her blog, Quilting Dreams. I still need to finish that center block and add the first border. I am thinking either prairie points or small flying geese!

Here’s a few blocks that I’ve finished:

These are for my Black and White Delight quilt.

I’ve also been quilting some more on my Rehab quilt. My goal is to do 50 feathers on it every month. That quilt is so tiring that I prefer to do the quilting in smaller pieces! It’s coming along though and I’m excited to put it on our bed this winter.

Did you hear about the blackouts in the Southwest last week? Scary stuff. It didn’t affect Sacramento, but it did give me pause to think. Are you prepared for a national emergency? I get most of my emergency preparedness tips from the blog Deals to Meals. Shandra is awesome about teaching us to stock a working pantry and even gives tons of recipes for pantry meals. Not just mac n chz and beans either! LOL, that’s what my husband and I turn to on nights we eat from the pantry. Shandra is hosting a giveaway for an awesome Sun Oven right now that I would just love to win. Check out her blog and then check out her totally cool website, Deals to Meals, for a free trial membership.

Friday, here I come! Go here to sign up for FNSI!

FNSI Results

It was a late Friday Night! After going out for drinks and pool with some co-workers, I didn't leave much time for FNSI.

Instead of quilting, like my original plan, I decided to work on my Jewel in the Crown BOM. This little block took me over an hour to complete, but I love how it's turned out!

I also completed three more Civil War blocks.

This block is a re-make. My first attempt finished too small and stretched out and just looked horrible. This second time around still didn't finish perfect, but it's much better! I don't think this block and I make a good team!

I really like how this one turned out.

And this one I finished a few days ago.

Altogether, not bad! I've got my eye on some quilting tomorrow though!

Thank Goodness it's FNSI!

Wow, August is flying!

I feel like I’m just running this month and not catching up on anything. I feel that way partly because of my massive Quilting To-Do List. The other part is the fact that our apartment lease is set to expire soon. It’s been a few weeks of: Let's buy a house. Let's stay in the apartment. Let's move to Timbuktoo. Let's live in an RV and travel. Let's become wine-making monks. Still going back and forth on that decision, and gathering paperwork, making budgets, and forecasting goals for each scenario is wearing us out.

That’s why I’m so happy that tomorrow is Friday Night Sew In! My husband already knows about this night. He already mentioned how bored he will be all by himself on Friday night. Sorry babe! My plan is to quilt some more feathers on my Rehab quilt. My goal for August is to quilt 50 feathers. So far I’ve done 1.

I haven’t been entirely derelict in my sewing though! I completed a Jewel in the Crown block:

This was really hard. I paper-pieced it. There were a lot of set-in seams that I didn’t think needed to be in the pattern. With a little bit of editing, those set-in seams could have been eliminated. But I was too pressed for time and did them anyway.

The second block this month requires the same. I decided to traditional-piece the second block, which will eliminate the set-in seams. I heard from other people who are doing this Block of the Month that the paper-pieced squares finish a little larger. I was trying to paper-piece the entire project, but I can’t take any more set-in seams this month!

I have more to show, but I’ll save those for later. In the meantime, go sign up for FNSI. We’ll have tons of fun!

Extraneous picture: My husband and I at Lake Tahoe. Isn't he handsome?

BTW, do you ever have to explain what FNSI is to people who don’t live on the internet? Example:

“Want to go to a bar on Friday night, Jen?”

“Can’t. I have plans. It’s FNSI.”

“What’s that?”

“Uh, a whole bunch of people on the internet stay home and sew. We are kind of sewing together but we are at our own homes.”

The next questions are always awkward: Do you know these people? Do you work on the same thing? Do you video chat? What’s the point? You would rather stay home to sew than hang out with me?

Awkward!

Today is FNSI!

I’m so excited. This week I’ve been working on catching up on my Jewel in the Crown BOMs. I did Block 2

And Block 5

I am now officially caught up! Yay! Just in time too, because I think Reeze is going to be releasing two blocks per month pretty soon. I am totally loving this quilt. It’s so much easier to sew when you follow Reeze’s instructions! I am hoping she will post instructions to the setting triangles soon so we can start on those. I need to buy more batiks too, because I am running out!

That means I am caught up on half of my BOM projects. I’m still behind in the Civil War quilt along, although there is no stress. This week coming up I’ll work on catching up on my Boot Bash BOM.

Tonight, though, I will be quilting on my Bliss Quilt. I really love this quilt. I made it to take to work so it fits perfectly on my lap without making it look like I’m sleeping on the job. I have my thread picked out, a rough idea of what I am going to quilt and my quilt sandwich. I brought it to work today so I can let it my quilting plan germinate in my head. Hopefully by tonight it will sprout a fully-grown plan!

So get your comfy shorts on, pour yourself a glass of wine and let’s sew together!