Showing posts with label Quilt Together. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quilt Together. Show all posts

Monday, November 17, 2008

Time to Get Busy


Do you realize that it's a mere 38 days until Christmas?? Oh my! I need to Get Busy!! And try not to panic!
Last week, the store where I buy most of my quilting fabrics was having a 20% Off Sale, so I went and bought the above stack of fabrics. DH even helped me pick these out! We spent at least two hours doing this, which was a marathon for poor DH. I had fun, but I'm not too sure he'll be volunteering to help me do this again anytime soon! These are my projects for Christmas presents. I can't say more than that without giving away the secret. But it does look like I will be busy! Really, I'm looking forward to it. New fabrics to play with! Yummy!

This is Shade. He came into the sewing room to "help" today. He wanted my attention and purposely laid down right in the middle of what I was doing. That made me so happy! You see, we almost lost poor Shade.

My DH was very sweet and brought me flowers about 10 days ago. I was a Bad Cat Mommy and left the flowers out overnight where Shade could get to them. I know better than that. He's always been a plant chewer. I now only have silk plants in the house, because he'll eat the live ones. Every time. Well, these flowers weren't super toxic, but they sure made him a sick kitty. He didn't even eat them, just chewed on them a little bit. No vomiting, just lethargic and he wouldn't eat or drink. He slept a lot, and often would just stare off into space with no response to us. He lost about 2 pounds. (That's on top of the 2 pounds he lost while being boarded during our trip to Nevada last month.) He didn't interact with Dunkel and barely interacted with us. Every night he curled up on our bed, right in between our pillows, and slept there all night. He rarely sleeps all night with us. That told me, as much as anything else, that he was really sick.

He's been better the last 5 days or so, but very fearful of everything. He wouldn't come downstairs if he heard DH down there. He usually only does this when there's people visiting. He's much better the last 2 days, and even came downstairs to see our friend K when she was here last night, and even let her pet him! I was amazed at that! He's usually the world's biggest scaredy cat. Anyway, I'm very happy and relieved that he's better now.

Here is a picture of the flowers that Shade got sick on. They're Alstroemeria or Peruvian Lily.


I hope those of you who have cats will make a note of this, and keep the cats and the flowers separate. I'd hate for anyone else's kitty to get sick. Fortunately, Shade is better now and starting to act like his old self. I sure hope he doesn't have any lasting ill effects from this episode. I'm pretty sure he lost one of his 9 lives on this one!

We had a really busy week last week, galivanting around some days and too much housework on other days. So I didn't have much time for sewing. I did manage to get a few "witch's pantry" jars sewn one day last week and today I got the lids on them.

I'm not real sure about the top on that middle jar. I might take that off and try it again. DH suggested that I lop off some of the point on the bottom of that 'square on point' (lid) before I sew it to the jar. I think I agree - it looks too much like it's floating in space.


These jars have little pieces of paper pinned to them, with the name of the "ingredient" on each of them. I'll be putting permanent labels with a more "witch-y" font on the jars before I'm done. I got the list of ingredients for spells from a Harry Potter web site.


Here's another picture of Shade. Some people have an Alpha cat - I have an Olfa cat! *giggle!*


And here's Shade at his post in the quilt studio. He's back on the job, supervising! All's right with the world.

Monday, October 20, 2008

BOO!

My Boo! quilt is finally finished. It took me 2 years to do it! Of course, there was moving in there too. This is my first one, kind of. And I have another one to finish yet. I made one of these tops (my original) and gave it to Purple Pam as a trade for something. Then I made one for my DD. Then I made one for me - this one. It didn't get finished that year, 2006 I believe it was. It got packed up for the move. Then last fall, I totally forgot that I had started one ('moving brain'), so I started another one! Then I found this one as I was unpacking this year.

Are you confused yet??



This top was already pin basted when I "found" it, so I decided to just quilt it and get it done. I stalled on this for awhile, because I knew that whatever I quilted in the border would really show, as it's solid black. But I decided that finished was better than perfect and just did it. I did a wandering meander and it came out much better than I thought it would! And it only took like 15 minutes to do the entire border. Don't know why I stalled so long on it! I don't think the border quilting really shows up too well in these pictures, so don't know if you can see it.

I did a new-to-me binding technique on this that I learned in one of my guild workshops. You sew an accent strip to the binding fabric, then apply the binding on the back of the quilt. When you turn it to the front, you just machine stitch in the ditch between the binding and the accent fabric and it's all done! The way to do the corners was a little tricky to wrap my brain around, but it worked and I'm happy with the way it turned out.


I just thought this fabric was so cute when I saw it, that I had to get it. Love these jack o'lantern faces!

I made these letters with some stencils that I found at WallyMart. The letters are 3 inches high.


I used a spooky tree fabric that I love on the back, and I used a fusible for the quickie label, and it worked like a charm. I need to do more of these labels!


This wallhanging has gone to live with my granddaughters. I may get the other one done this year, but probably not. It gives me something to look forward to! (riiiight)

I've been working some on my project for Tonya's Quilt Together. Here's what I have so far:


My 1st attempt at free-pieced letters. These were just a test. I think the "H" is too small and the "M" is too big, but not too terrible for my first try. I found it harder than I thought it would be!

I've decided to do a version of a witch's pantry for my project. These are my 1st attempts at making jars. They also are harder than I thought they would be. And not as "wonky" as I wanted, either. But, it's an on-going process and I expect I'll learn a lot as I go through this project. I'm pretty jazzed about doing this!
That's all for now. Happy quilting, everyone!