Sewing Summit!

Hey, have I mentioned that I'm going to Sewing Summit?  Oh, no?  Well, I am.  And I'm very excited.  But I'm not a blogger.  Really, I'm not.  I never seem to make it a priority, so it doesn't ever get done.  I'll be honest, sometimes I don't sew for a whole week too.  You know, when you have three kids, and one of them is 6 months old, it's hard to make time. 
Anyway, one of the things that was offered to participants were Moo mini cards.  Do you think I took advantage of them?  No.  And why not?  Well, what information would I have to put on a business card?  Absolutely nothing.  Because I don't blog, I don't do flikr, I don't tweet...  I have email, and I instagram when I have something interesting to share, but even that doesn't happen a whole lot.  However, now I'm worried that I will be the ONLY participant there who doesn't have a Moo card.  So I'm designing one.  I have no design skills whatsoever, and I still don't have any information to put on it, but I'll have something.  One of the tips was to include your blog, even if you don't update it very often.  So...I shall.  And I figured there ought to be at least one recent blogpost.  So there it is.  Maybe I'll be better...probably not. 

Best Basting Buddy

Since basting, this quilt has been quilted, washed and dried, and bound, and it looks FABULOUS.  But you'll have to take my word for it since I have no photos.  Eventually that will happen.  I absolutely love this quilt.  So far, it's a favorite.  I roughly followed Oh Fransson's quilt along.  I say roughly because I was bound and determined to make this quilt, and that was before she posted the quilt along.  My squares are a different size, but other than that, it's exactly the same.  I even used her quilting tutorial, and though it wasn't my favorite while I was quilting it, I absolutely love the way it washed up.  Oh yeah, and my little helper?  Since he was up at 1 am, we figured there wasn't anything better to do than basting.

Fail!

Some day this will be a super cute sewing kit.  Right now, what should look like an orange, looks like a pumpkin.  There is also supposed to be a needle spot, but since I sewed the hinge on the wrong side, it wasn't going to shut if I added the needle spot.  Oh, and the zipper is upside down (that I'm not going to fix).  After spending this much time, I decided that I'm going to unpick and do it right.  Someday.  For now, those sections sure are cute!
 

 

Gifted!

No, I'm not gifted (although in elementary school I did get to go to the gifted and talented program.  That was a long time ago though).  This quilt has been gifted and is being enjoyed by my newest niece, Joy.  The quilt is much, much, much pinker than I would have chosen, but it was requested as such, and being the easy-going person that I am, I went with it.  It ended up much larger than I meant it to, but sometimes that happens when you're having fun!

I absolutely love the back, I feel like it's a bit more balanced, although still has more pink than I would have chosen...

I love her name on the back!  I'm so glad they gave her a short name with very easy letters (I'm sure that went into their decision to name her)!

I quilted small loop de loops in the negative space, and flowers in the dresden plates.  The quilting was difficult to see in the dresdens because they already had a lot going on in them, but the effect on the back is great!

 

A Clean Floor!

You know what that means...basting!!!  Because is there really any other reason for mopping the floor!?

Made in Cherry

The Made in Cherry top (that was finished when the Made in Cherry Quilt-a-long was going on, and I'm just now getting to it...) is done!  I love this quilt!  The star is made of Secret Garden by Sandi Henderson and the outer portion is Boys at Play (or something like that).  This top was quick and easy, a great instant gratification project.  The only difficult part of the whole thing was the ginormous flying geese that make up the inner point of the star.  I didn't follow the age-old adage to "measure twice, cut once."  Oops!  That meant another run to the fabric store (tough, but somebody's gotta do it) to buy additional fabric.

Here's the back to this lovely quilt.  I had been saving (okay, fine, hoarding) the red on top for absolutely no purpose.  I used some of the larger prints from the Secret Garden collection, some extra Boys at Play and some "borrowed" Verna.  Gotta love those friends that let you shop their stash!
The whole thing is at my uncle's house awaiting a long arm treatment.  I just wasn't up to quilting such a big quilt, call me lazy if you want-I deserve it!

January FMQ Challenge

When I first saw this design, I thought to myself, "When will I EVER use leaves with stems!? That just doesn't seem like something I will use in my quilting." At the end of the video though, Frances Moore shows a tree with the leaf motif quilted into it. The light bulb went on! So, after some practicing on a quilt sandwich...

I took the plunge and quilted my lovely pillow! And I couldn't be happier. I can't think of a better FMQ motif than this for this particular pillow. So, thank you Sew Cal Gal and Frances Moore-what a fantastic first tutorial!