It grew.

I started off this quilt with honest intentions. Just a large lap, maybe twin size quilt so I could get rid of my charm pack lust.

I was happily sewing away, not really caring where the squares went, except to make sure they didn't touch each other.


That was my one goal for the quilt, no squares must sit next to each other.

I put the whole top together, spread it out on the bed... and wow. It looked fantastic.


It was even matching the fleece sheets pretty well, and my dark green couch in the bedroom.

Country and homey feeling. I asked my husband if he liked the quilt, and he said yes. Hmm.


Why not add on two more rows and make the quilt from 16x20 to 18x20 squares? It's almost queen sized!

Toss in a 4" border, and you get a 89"x98" quilt. Perfect!


So, it grew. It grew into a monster!! :P I had delusions of hand sewing down the binding this weekend. Of washing it next Tuesday. Of sleeping under it Tuesday night. Now I hope to get it done by the end of the month.


On the bright side, 6.5 yards have been used up! Just for the squares. There's still the border, binding and backing to cover. No worries, plenty of fabric here. ;)

Leah

Half as charming

I had lust for the 5" charm packs. Big time, and badly so! I was especially drooling over the Wildflower Serenade II pack. They retail around $8 for 40 squares.

Then I began to do the math. If I want to make a quilt that's 16x20 squares, I need 320 squares in all. That's 8 charm packs. Ok, now 8x$8 is $64! Cripes. I don't think I've ever spent that much on one single quilt top's fabric.


And wait a minute, didn't I say I was gonna tackle my stash harder? Then it hit me, 4 years ago I started buying Thimbleberries fabric with no real plan for them. Why not dig those up and cut up my own charms?

It's only half as charming because I found 23 fabrics to work with, not 40. Who cares, it's my quilt! And it's gonna have lots and lots of green. :D

Most importantly, I'm no longer feeling the lust for the charm packs and it didn't cost me any more money to cut up those squares. Make do or do without certainly applies here. :)

Leah

Winter finally came

Oh, happy day! It snowed over night. :) I'm only sad that I didn't get to see the snow actually fall though. I love watching the flakes come down. But it feels like the winter I've been wanting has finally come.


I took a bunch of pictures of the snow at my in-laws house, and their dog was a pretty good object to include in the pictures.

I know... it doesn't really look like snow. It looks like somebody tripped with a bag of powdered sugar. :P Angel wasn't too happy that I was making her sit still - but she kept trying to lick the camera!


I had a lot of fun watching Angel play in the snow. I couldn't believe she was willing to touch it and all, since she hates baths so much.

She also hates the rain and is pretty miserable when the monsoon season comes. But snow? It was her best friend! She ate it, rolled in it, pawed it, rested in it, lovely wonderful snow. :)


I had to give her a good toweling afterwards, so she wouldn't stink up the house too bad.

But I'm really thrilled with the camera my parents gave me, it takes fantastic pictures!!


Probably for my father-in-law's birthday or Christmas I'll print up a bunch of pictures of Angel and the snow. Dare I call them "Snow Angel"? ;)

For Christmas 2007, I gave my FIL a picture of Angel in a frame. A simple gift... but when he opened it, he looked teary-eyed and gave me a hug. (Let's put it this way, nobody else got a hug for their gifts to him!) I know Angel really means a lot to him, but not too many people will show affection towards her.


My husband's happy now too. I can't whine that I'm waiting for winter to come. :D Seriously, it hit 73 last week and I was kinda grumpy about it cuz I had worked up a good sweat. It's a crime to sweat in the winter! :P

Leah

First Finish

Tada! First finished quilt for 2009.

A baby-sized quilt... but no babies in sight. (Sorry Dad!)


I do recall buying the fabric from a closing-down Hancock Fabrics right before my wedding in 2004.

I'm clean out of the stripe fabric now, only a string's worth left.


Hopefully I can get the "finished" ball rolling a little faster now. :)

Leah

Saturday Quilting

I squeaked in some stashbusting today. I quilted a top that I made... oh, I'd guess in 2005 or 2006. I don't think I've blogged about it before.

I think I was on an Irish Chain kick back then. It's a pretty small quilt - haven't measured, but it's like 32x40. I also had fun with the direction of the stripes.


Quilted it with loopies. Shortly after I started, I wished I had picked a meander instead... but hey, it's done! :)

The binding's on, and in my book the quilt is good as done. Bindings seem to magically find their way sewn down and I barely have any recollections of doing it. I think it's because it's pretty portable to sew down a binding. In the bed, on the couch, in the car, at my in-laws.


I'm guessing the whole quilt took away another 2.5 yards from my stash. Huh. I better start quilting faster if I want to have any hopes of knocking down the fabric piles! :P

Leah

Somebody whack me please

Cause you know, it's not like I have enough of my own stash to bust... instead, at today's quilt guild meeting I picked up 2 charity projects. One is a baby quilt that needs to be quilted and bound. The other one is 80 blocks that need to be put together to become a twin top.

But it's kinda nice knowing exactly what needs to be done, instead of mentally drifting from project to project without tackling anything, like I've been doing for the past week.

I blame the antibiotics I had to take for my ear infection. They wiped me out and I was either napping or sleeping in just about every morning. Now that my ear is better and the antibiotics are out of my system, I'm feeling back to myself.

Today I have:

-Biked 4.5 miles to my guild meeting and to check out an apartment. That took all morning.
-Clean up most of the kitchen, which made my husband a lot happier.
-Slow roasted a whole chicken and made brown rice for dinner.
-Caught up on my blog reading!
-Spent some quality time with my sewing machine.
-Didn't sleep in or nap!

Yay for health. :)

Leah

Stash Watch

It's always fun to look at other people's stashes, right? Take a peek at mine. :)

The reason why I'm posting it is because I seriously need to trim it down. It's not just because there's too much fabric or that I don't really have a handle on it... but because my husband and I are considering downgrading to a smaller apartment. We're thinking about living in a one-bedroom or studio apartment, and then renting a storage room if the combined will save us more than $100/month on our current rent.

There's not a lot of good news lately from my husband's job (public school teacher). First it was they're cutting some people from his department. Next they'll be doing a pay cut. The latest is that the whole school district lost about 25% of it's funding, and there will be 100 positions cut out, district-wide. We really have no idea where we stand at the moment. My husband's tenured, but even tenure status can't overcome the "we don't have money" problem.

How am I taking it? Surprisingly well! :) I think it helps that I've been through this ride before, when my dad found it necessary to leave his employment of 22 years. He started up his own company, and for a few years things were slim. No vacations, no eating out, small Christmases and birthdays. My parents persisted and now their company is comfortably successful. With that in mind, I feel like I can face pay cuts, downsizing and potential job loss and be stronger for it afterwards.

Which brings me back to my stash. I need it smaller so I won't need a storage room (and potentially saving us another $60 or so a month), smaller so there's less to move and more quilts to be enjoyed. My plan for February is to clear up the pile in front of the closet.

I would LOVE to be able to get all of my fabric to fit into the 6-cubes by the end of May. Delusional? Maybe. ;)

Leah

Crayon Roll

Today my husband's family is celebrating my husband's brother's stepdaughter's birthday. (Confused yet?) I think the birthday girl is turning 7. Factor in the recent knowledge that my husband will be getting a 2.7% paycut for the next school year, I've been bucking down on creating more homemade gifts.

Today's gift is costing me $1.64 for the Crayon box, bunches of scraps and several hours of my time. :)


I cut strips of 8"x1.5". Later I'll discover I made the strips too tall.

Arranged and sewn in a rainbow of my pleasing.


For the "holder" part, I cut a 5.5" strip and ironed it wrong sides together.

The crayons measured 3.5" tall, so I figured a 2.5 tall after-seam-allowances holder would work out nicely.


Next I layered the backing, too-fluffy batting, rainbow and then the holder strip.

I'd very strongly recommend a much thinner batting! Like warm and natural or the thinnest polyester you have.


Here I'm testing to see how the crayons look in the roll. I sewed up and down each column.

And that's when I realized that my plan of folding the top half of the roll over the crayons just wasn't going to work. It's the batting's fault. ;)


So before I put the binding on, I hacked off 2.5" from the top. I also ironed it so it wouldn't poof so much.

I wanted to fold over the top to prevent the crayons from falling out, but I think they're snug enough.


Here I'm making the ties for the roll. I took a 1.5" strip, ironed wrong sides together to make a crease.

Then I opened it again, ironed the edges to the middle, then ironed the middle crease back in. Finished off with sewing a line down the open side to keep the tie together.


Before hand sewing the binding down, I attached the ties.

I went back and forth over it three times, because I wanna make sure it doesn't come apart! :)


All the crayons properly in their place.

It does bow a little bit because I didn't make any extra fabric room when sewing on the holder.


All rolled up and tied!

I'm not sure if I would make this again. I know it took me 4 hours. Perhaps because of the too thick batting, perhaps because I didn't know exactly what I was doing.


And I knew there was a reason why I don't work with miniature quilts very much. 4 hours of work and using up only half a yard of fabric? Yikes! I have too much fabric to work that slowly. ;)

Leah

Fake snow

That's what the mound of batting looks like, a pile of fake snow. I better enjoy it, cuz it's the closest to the real thing I'm gonna get this year. ;)

My husband's happy, I was able to move the roll of batting from the bedroom couch to my quilting closet. Admittedly... I needed 3 dumbbells totaling 40 pounds to keep the closet door from bulging out. There's no tracks on the bottom, so the doors sway with pressure.

I'm never gonna order that much batting again until I have a house or 50 quilt tops in waiting. :)

Leah

A crayon box!

Yay! I was able to get the top completed today, despite a hiccup of needing to go to the Urgent Care on Friday night for another ear infection... or rather, the one from the holidays never fully healed. But this time I got some good drugs! ;) Stronger dosage of antibiotics and different drops than what I had before. Oh, and strict instructions not to wear my hearing aid for week; it's very likely my hearing aid preventing me from healing as I should.


Anybody wanting to make this quilt can get the instructions from Bonnie's site. I figured I'd just toss in a few photos of my progress. :)

It's really easy, lots of straight sewing. I did press after sewing a piece onto the main body. Sew on one side, press, sew on the other side, press and so on.


Such fun colors! Who could be sad with this fabric?

Not me! Plus, the only time my ear was actually hurting was when the hearing aid was in. With it off, I can't feel any pain and wouldn't know that I have an infection.


Once you get all the pieces cut, this whips up pretty fast. I love how there's no more sub-cutting needed.

My goal was to make sure there were no repeats in one single block.


When I was sewing on the last sides (the 6.5" pieces) I had to lay out the blocks and figure what colors the block didn't have yet.

Kinda looks like a funky artwork quilt. Something that you might see from Melody Johnson perhaps. :)


Ooh, almost finished with the blocks!

I'm just grateful this quilt isn't on-point. On-point sure looks nice, but all the side triangles can be quite maddening.


The top in it's bright glory. ;)

You know how photos help you take a step back and look at things differently? Yeah... I could only see the turned block when I was cropping this picture. Since it's smack dab in the middle, there's no way I'm gonna take it out and redo it! :P And hey, isn't that what a real crayon box is like? A jumbled mess with no sense of order? :)

I actually cut out enough fabric for two 20-block sized quilts. The other half is going to a friend who I've been pushing... I mean, encouraging her to quilt. ;) Both quilt tops will tally up to 7.5 yards outta my stash. I need that space too, for that monster sized batting! :D

Leah

"It's kinda big."

I got my batting yesterday! I was happy, but half way apprehensive because Suzanne warned me it'd take more room that I'd expect. Boy... she wasn't kidding!!


Here's what it looked like when it arrived. Clearly, it was folded in half. I couldn't quite reach my arm span around it... but had no problems lugging it around the room.

But I did feel like I owed my husband a warning. So I sent him an email saying that "it's kinda big", with the picture of me next to it. Just trying to break the news gently!


Then I started unwrapping it. Oh boy...

It's exploding a lot more than my strings ever did. So I send off another email to my husband. "It's really kinda big!"


Then I laid it full out and it had a chance to properly fluff... yikes!

Emailed my husband again, "it's REALLY big! So... would you rather be able to open the door or sit at your computer?" And sent him the last picture and hoped he was in a forgiving mood! :P


Currently it's smooshed into the window nook of our bedroom. I think I can get it in my sewing room as soon as I properly pick up all the fabrics off the floor. I was looking for a specific fabric a few weeks ago and started to dig... kinda like a dog does with a bone.

Here's my advice: if you don't have room for a long arm machine, you don't have room for 96"x55 yards of batting. :)

Leah

Back on track

I'm back on track for the Crayon Box. Just had to cut out a few more pieces before I could begin.

All those yummy colors! And it's going together pretty quickly. At this rate, I expect a quilt top this weekend. :)


Speaking of quilt tops, I'm hoping the solution is well on it's way to me - a GIANT roll of batting! Yeah, I saved up my birthday money from November and finally bought a roll of polyester batting. 55 yards!! I have a feeling I don't know what I'm getting into... but I'll find out on Friday. I think I counted at least 15 tops in view from my seat. Who knows what else is buried! :P

Leah

Ann's NYE 2008

Another quick and easy mystery from Ann Smith. Well, it wasn't much of a mystery to me because I couldn't start on New Year's Eve like most other people. :)

The nice thing about knowing what the mystery is going to look like, you can more confidently select fabrics to compliment the pattern. I'm just so, so, so happy that I didn't need to use one SINGLE pin in the entire quilt top piecing! Oh, how I hate pinning.


Not only did my seams match up beautifully, but my sewing machine gave out lovely tension, no thread or needle problems... don't wake me up from this dream! ;)

Certainly not how I was feeling last March where I finally had to give in and take my sewing machine into the shop. I've noticed the biggest thing in helping me get good tension is doing a full oil clean in the bobbin area every time I go through 2 bobbins of thread.


Do you have any idea how neglected housework gets when you bury yourself into a quilt or two? :P

Leah

Splurged a bit on me

I splurged and got the most expensive iron WalMart had to offer. Wiped me out by $54. ;) It looks very similar to the kind my dad got last summer. I really liked how hot it would get, the constant steam and the nice heft to it. Frankly, I don't expect it to last very long at all. :)

And with such a nice iron... why not iron a bunch of fabric to see how it works? Why not start a new quilt project too?! It's Ann's NYE 2008 Mystery and helped me bust out 5 yards of fabric from my stash. It also happens to have the colors of my wedding. Sunflower themed, with dark green, light green and yellow.

Maybe I should try growing some sunflowers this year. :)

Leah

Quilting on hold

Don't call me Leah, call me Iron Killer. It wasn't even three months ago that I went through this.

My iron stopped heating and began to drip like CRAZY. Yeah, so much that I decided to make my picture look soggy too. The good news is that the receipt is in the box, and I'll be exchanging it tomorrow morning!

The really bad part? I also killed one of my mom's irons at the Christmas holidays. It was such a nice iron too! My dad bought it when I was visiting last summer, and they were using it ever since... till I killed it. :P The good news is that my mom has 2 more irons, but I have issues with both of them. She also has three ironing boards too! I don't seem to kill those, thankfully. :)

Goodnight from the Iron Killer. *sigh*

P.S. Any Battlestar Galactia fans out there? Who's your guess for the 5th Cylon?