Me Me Me!

That's right folks, I'm finally taking some Me Time.  No seriously, this time it's not even "me time that's really working on a project for someone else".  It's "me time and this time I get to keep the damn quilt". 

In February, I found some VDay fabrics that weren't too horribly Valentinesy, and bought myself a couple yards worth.  I'm finally getting around to doing something with that.  I've been dying to try a disappearing 9-patch, so that's what I'll be doing with it. 

I put together the first block but can't decide how to arrange the pieces:

 I think I like this one best.

I didn't try the traditional way (turning two pieces 180 degrees and leaving the other two alone), but I'll try that tonight and take a picture.  This one doesn't even have my totally absolute favorite of the fabrics in it either, so I'll get pics of that too.

In other "me" news, I'm in another blog!  Natalie has this fantastic weekly thing where she posts definitions of "beautiful", as defined by her readers.  It's really cool to see what others think (a lot has to do with child-rearing, I'm noticing) and has been inspiring for me to come up with how I define beautiful.  Swing on over and check her out!  She's an inspiration to me personally because she is so independent, strong, and convicted in her faith.  She's an LDS woman, and as the prevailing stereotype would lead you to assume, that's not always easy to find.  I'm glad that she's a leader of young women and that she uses her independence for good to inspire other women to be, well, better women!  I've never given much thought to my gender, but reading her blog makes me proud to be a woman on a daily basis.

In any case, back to me.  :-D  I had another finish the other night, but I don't know who reads this so I won't post pics until the person in question gets the finish.  It might be a while.

Another project I want to work on for myself is making grocery bags.  I've found all kinds of cool remnants of upholstery and sturdy apparel fabrics that just scream "make me a tote!" I have a stack in my stash, and I'm hoping to just go to town one of these nights and make a whole bunch.  If you have a nifty (and quick) pattern to try, I'm open to suggestion. 

first BOM

here's my first block of the month for mothertown!

someone stop me...

...please? half of this came in the mail today and half I got on my way home. I paid full price for none of it. that's 4 jelly rolls (ebay, $24), 3 quilts of kids kits (cats, robots/aliens, and pirates), more flannel than I'll ever need, and some girly stuff on the valentine's day rack for 50% off. oh and some remnants. seriously. this has to stop.

Don't Judge...

Here's the stack from the most recent indulgences.  Yikes.  That's a lot more than I realized, but I still spent less than $40 on it.

I reworked my stash closet, which included taking all the stuff I had out of that plastic bin...it isn't as bad as it looks, I promise.  It will be after next weekend though.  I'm eating ramen all week to blow the budget at Joann's.  Please, no one go to the Tynsboro, Natick, or Westford Joann's...I don't want you to point and laugh at the obscene stack in my cart.

Ok, I know I can't be the only (or, hopefully, worst) offender out there.  Does anyone else have a stash this bad?  It's been less than a year that I've even started collecting.  I don't even want to think about the total I've spent on this.  Yikes.  Oh, the background, behind the shoe rack, is all batting.

I don't know if you can see this, but I was sewing along when all of a sudden SNAP!  The needle just broke in half!  Scary!  I'm not exactly sure what happened, but this needle had a really small eye, so the stress from trying to get it threaded might've weakened it enough in just the wrong place, I dunno.  Eep.

In any case, I'm still working on this QFK thing.  I am SO not a fan of the backing they gave me...who uses stripes for backing???  It's just cruel!!  There's simply no way I'm going to be able to make it line up.  I tried my hardest, and I think I got it lined up OK, but...seriously, that's just mean!  More pix to come.

snuggle post

I got me some flannel bolt ends while it's on sale at joann. happy sigh.

Picture Update

Finally, some pictures!  

The weekend's spoils:

This took less time than you'd think to iron and fold.  It's also bigger than it looks in the picture...this heap filled my hamper to the top and then some.  :-)

Now, the I Spy quilt for SAPD c/o Project Linus.

Starting the I Spy quilt:

More I Spy:

More I Spy:

 

The kitty spies (don't worry, I'll be washing this before I send it in...incidentally, if anyone has recommendations for what laundry detergent works best on pet allergens, I'm all ears):

 

The front done:

 I am TOTALLY in love with the blue stuff I used between blocks...it's a batik from the remnants bin.  God, I love the remnants bin!  :-D

With batting and backing:

 The backing is a blue flannel with tugboats and lighthouses.  <3

Also for SAPD, here's the fleece rag blanket:

 The top three rows are sewn together.  The bottom 5 aren't yet. The pink edging is the same stuff I used for my mom's quilt.  :-)

After a 3-day binge of daily Joann's visits (three different stores I might add), my closet looks like this:

And, last but certainly not least, I got these strips in the mail today!  They're different Paddington Bear patterns.  This is about to be one of my favorite projects.  My mom is moving to Austin soon, after living in San Antonio for nearly a decade.  That might not sound like a lot of time to some of you, but we're a military family...this is the first place she's been for more than 4 years since before I was born.  Austin is only a couple of hours away from San Antonio, but it's far enough that she'll be making a whole new life for herself there (with my dad, of course).  My mom, as you can imagine from the description of this blog, is a truly amazing woman...her current concern with moving (aside from getting stuff to point B from point A) is finding a place to devote her time and compassion.  (That's right, she's really that amazing!)  So to help her out a little, I'm going to make a smallish quilt from these strips and give it to her to donate to someplace, so she can use it as a sort of ice-breaker. I haven't decided on a design yet, so I'm open to suggestions.  :-)  Also, in case you're curious, she reads my other "decoy" blog, so I can post this here and she won't know.  :-) 

So that's the wrap up for now. I'm taking a break from doing the binding on the I Spy quilt. I'm about halfway done...this is only the second binding I've done by hand (I did my mom's all by machine...epic fail), and already I feel way more comfortable about it.  I'm hoping I can get it done tonight so I can have something to show tomorrow night (maybe) at my first ever Quilters' Guild meeting...I won't be able to be a member, since membership is limited to 50 and this particular one is already full, but I really want to go make friends. 

Oh!  Speaking of friends, I totally gave advice at Joann's today!  This girl was asking about batting, and she was making her first quilt.  I was so excited for her (she was about my age), I wanted to hug her and tell her to come be my friend lol. 

And on that note, I'm off to finish this binding.  Night all!

Oh Darn...

So I was hoping that my last trip to Joann's (yesterday, Saturday, Friday...you pick) would be my last for a while, but it turns out I don't have a needle big enough to tie quilts.  Oh darn.  Guess I'll have to swing by on my way home from work (it is SO bad that there's one half a mile from my office) and get a needle set...and maybe see what else is on the 50% off red tag rack...and see if they have more of the batting I like...

Good thing stakeholder bonuses will be out soon.  :-P

My goals for tonight are to get the I Spy quilt in hand-stitching shape (i.e., do all the machine binding so I can bring it up to Nick's and do the hand part there) and to get the latest idea going.  Oh right, the latest idea.  So I got 48x6-1/2" blocks of fleece that say "baby" all over them, in pastels...it's kind of a goofy print, but it was ebay and it was cheap.  Anyways, what I'm gonna do with those is make a sort of mock-rag quilt.  I'll stitch the blocks together, cut the raw edges, and bind the outer edges with the same pink material that I used to bind my mom's quilt. 

Slight digression here.  I like that pieces of my mom's quilt have made it into every quilt I've made so far (minus the plaid rag quilt I made for Nick and me).  I have SO much left over from her quilt, it's hard to imagine a time when I won't have anything left, but it's kind of a fun little personal Easter egg to throw into each one.  The I Spy quilt will have the same binding as Levi's quilt (the dark blue cotton material).  I'll try to remember my camera tonight so I can post pictures later. 

I got a lot of red fat quarters this weekend, and once Valentine's Day passes, I'll be sure to stock up on reds on sale...I'm really looking forward to doing more string quilts for HeartStrings. 

binge shopping

So last night, on my way to Nick's, I stopped into Joann's.  Again.  This week they're having 50% off their red tag clearance stuff, and I've found a few fun fabrics there already, so my excuse was that I'd just see what they had and only get stuff red-tagged for $5 or less (so, $2.50/yd or less).  What a glorious mistake that was!  This whole bag (about 7 1/2 yards of cut fabric, 5 remnants, and 20(!) fat quarters) cost me around $22.  $22!!  Remnants are 70% off this week, and the fat quarters were 50 cents a piece!  Insane!  One of the remnants, which was almost a yard of fabric, cost me 30 cents.  Needless to say, I'll probably be peeking into the Natick shop on my way home from work today, just in case.  :-)

My criteria for picking out fabrics right now are this:

• First and foremost, I'm looking for baby fabrics.  I have a lot of blues, so I'm focusing on pinks at the moment. I also need whites, since a lot of my blues are darker, so the whites will offset them in a kinda mod way. 
• Next, I'm looking for flannels.  In particular, youth/kid/infant flannels.  
• Finally, I'm looking for anything that catches my eye as being a fun pattern, a pretty color, or a neat texture.  That only seems vague, but I actually have surprisingly discerning tastes. 

Right now, I'm mostly working on building up a stash.  I figure it's best to buy while stuff is super cheap, then find a project to use the stuff later.  If I wait until I have a project in mind, it'll be way more expensive.  Most of these fabrics I actually have a vague idea of what I want to do with them anyways.  Really.  :-) 

How CUTE is this???

I Spy Quilt Squares

I stumbled on this when I was trying to compare prices for a lot of 4" pre-cut squares of fabric...how adorable is this woman's idea??  She fussy-cuts 100 squares of fabric (also available in 5.5" and 2.5") around images on novelty fabrics...the idea is that you'd use those squares to make a kids' quilt so you can play "I Spy" with them! 

Needless to say, this is going to be inspiration for at least one donation quilt.  :-)