Wordless Wednesday

15 Minute Challenge

here's how the week turned out ..

Tuesday - cut out pieces for sewing kits.
Wednesday - nothing
Thursday - started quilting blue elephants
Friday - nothing
Saturday - "organized" stash AGAIN
Sunday - quilted 8 lines of blue elephants
Monday - nothing (received fabric for Katie's make up kits; looked through bag books)

Not a bad week.  I guess I actually only sewed two days.  I now have some bags I need to work on and I also need to practice working on zippers so I'm going to try the triple zip bag first. 

my goals for the rest of this week / weekend are as follows:

1 - READ DIRECTIONS

1.5 - cut out fabric for Katie's bags

2 - READ DIRECTIONS

2.5 - cut out fabric for triple zip

3 - get zippers

4 - make triple zip

5 - make sample of Katie's bags

6 - make sock monkey

The emphasis on reading directions has to do with 1) the crayon rolls where I cut the fabric the wrong width because I didn't read the directions carefully enough and 2) some cookies I made recently .. without flour.

Anyway, check in at Life In Pieces and see how others met the challenge this week.

Favorite Things Friday

How funny Shay should say "rocked your socks" in her post this week because my favorite this week is/are sock monkeys.

When I was in 7th grade we had to make a sock monkey in Home Economics.  (That was the year we did a bunch of different crafty things: knitting, crocheting, cross stitch, sock monkeys - probably other things too, but I don't remember what they were.)  For the sock monkey, we used the traditional brown/white socks and sewed them into the monkey and we cut up old stockings/panty hose for the stuffing (?).  We also had to make clothes for our monkeys.  I made a little green suit for my monkey with a stove pipe (?) hat.  Unfortunately, he disappeared.  :(

I have made two quilts with sock monkey fabric and they are two of my favorites.

I made a sock monkey for my YD's best friend a couple of years ago -- don't know why I don't have a picture of it -- I'll have to have her send me one.  My OD said she wanted one too so I need to make that.  I have the socks .. just need to take the time to do it.

I bought some sock monkey fabric that arrived in the mail yesterday (ordered from Amazon with a gift card I got for Christmas).  I am itching to do something with it.  Obviously a baby quilt but i don't know more than that.  I need to come up with something fun.  I have two more yards in my "stash": one yellow, the other red.

Then there's this book I got last year with patterns to make other sock animals, in case I got sick of sock monkeys and wanted to make a sock elephant instead.

 

And then there are these little cuties.

From here (but they are no longer available :()

Anyway, that's my favorite for this week.  Hop on over to Shay's Quilting in My Pyjamas and check out other favorites (or link up with one of your own)!

Wordless Wednesday (*almost)

*I don't know what this refers to, but my youngest grandson's name is Cooper so I thought it was funny.

Devil Cat - tamed

This post is not for the squeamish. 

Last week, Thursday to be precise, the Devil Cat was nowhere to be found.  After searching the entire house, I delved deeper into my closet only to find him on a pile of clothes behind some coats.  He stayed there all night and the next day too.  I coaxed him out on Saturday with some food and waffled on whether a visit to the vet was in order. I put it off. On Sunday, when he wasn't better, I realized that putting it off was not a good thing. 

Monday morning I called and made him an appointment for that afternoon.  We took him in and they said he had an abscess above his kidney and that we needed to bring him back the next day (today) to have it drained. So, this morning we dropped him off.  I waited all day for a call and finally around 3 p.m. they called to say he was doing fine but that the abscess was large and took a good deal of work to clean.  I picked him up shortly thereafter. They sent me home with antibiotics and painkillers.

He has a cone and is having a very difficult time of everything -- eating, walking, drinking, lying down, getting up, jumping onto the bed, crawling under the bed -- everything.  he is quite pathetic.

 Here he is in the cone .. trying to sleep.

 

so uncomfortable..

and this is why. 

My poor kitty. Hopefully he'll heal quickly and be back to terrorizing all of us before we know it.

15 Minute Challenge

Not a great week, sewing-wise.  I haven't finished the blue elephant quilt.  It is sitting in my closet waiting to be quilted.  I tried putting the leftovers from Time and Again together and that was a bust.  I'm going to try and salvage that, but we'll see.  I did get some crayon rolls made.  One has a home; the other will be in reserve.  I need to get some coloring books to go with the crayon rolls.  I also need to make some girl rolls.

 

Let's see, I learned from the two I made at Christmas that the ends of the ribbon need to be reinforced so they don't fray. For me, the fabric needed to be 1/2 inch longer so that 16 crayons could fit in the roll.  I had intended for the brownish fabric (men at work) to be on the outside of  both rolls and the others (fireman related) to be on the inside but I cut the fabric the wrong sizes.  I need to remember to read the directions. it worked out okay, though.  Pattern from here. (As I was searching for that link, I ran across a crayon roll that used a hair tie instead of ribbon -- good idea!)

So here's how my week went.

Tuesday - "organized" stash
Wednesday -nothing
Thursday - played with scraps, sewed some together
Friday - worked with scraps, some more
Saturday - nothing
Sunday -made two crayon rolls
Monday - nothing

I am going to take Kate's advice to heart and try to figure out a way to reinvent my space. One thing I can do is to take the extra time to organize my projects and have them in a special area so they are easier to find.  I think I'll spend another day this coming week and try and get more organized.

Anyway, to link up with Kate or to see how others did on their 15 minutes a day, click here.

Quilt Challenged

I am feeling rather challenged with quilting right now.  I don't have a project that I want to get started or one that I am anxious to finish.

I spent some time the last couple of days messing around with the scraps left over from Time and Again.  I sewed them all together and came up with an 18 x 48 thing.  I cut that into 6 inch squares which I'll put borders around and then sew them together and hopefully have something that looks decent of a reasonable size.  We'll see.

Anyway, as I was sitting here getting down on myself that I don't have any quilt projects that I'm excited about, I realized that there are a few other things I want to make that I can probably get excited about, so I'm going to do those next and not worry about the quilts. They are: crayon rolls, a bag, the sewing kits, some coasters.  Some of these are quick projects and the others may be a little more time consuming.


and if I really want to think about quilts, I can quilt the blue elephants ..

I'm thinking about going to the gym .. will probably wait until my husband comes home and then get him to go with me.  I will go today.  I must go today.

Have a great Saturday. 

Favorite Things Friday

I wasn't going to post this week because I was having trouble coming up with any sort of favorite.  On top of that, I'm more than a little bummed (and worried) because the devil cat is sick.  He is lethargic and hiding in the closet.  If he doesn't start acting like himself, we may need to take him to the vet tomorrow (which I dread on so many levels).

Anyway, as I was re-reading Shay's post on coffee, I was reminded of my new obsession. The McDonald's mocha frappe.  I just can't get enough.  I practically dream of them. 

Like a chocolate milkshake, only better.  However, I also realized that a small mocha frappe has 450 calories so I can't drink them all the time ..

So that's it, my favorite this week is the mocha frappe!

So head on over to Quilting in My Pyjamas and check out other favorites, or better yet, share your favorite.

Wordless Wednesday

15 Minute Challenge

So this week, Kate has asked us to show our sewing spaces.  Here is mine.  I wanted to show the whole room so you could see what I am dealing with (and how messy things really are).  I share the table with my husband - and notice I am doing most of the sharing.  When I want to sew, I stack up all his papers so that I have space to sew.

Here is what the space looks like, without the rest of the room.

and here is my fabric stash, in the closet on the other side of the room, also all my tools, rulers and cutting mats.

and the rest of the stash, including books and patterns and other crafty things I am working on/with.

 
Obviously, it's a challenge that I don't have a dedicated space.  When I start to sew, I have to get everything out (except the sewing machine); and when I finish, I have to put everything away, which is a good habit to get into.  The hard thing is not having a place for cutting (I do my cutting on the dining room table) or ironing (which I do in the kitchen or in the bedroom). I find this set up easier than when I was sewing in the dining room because all my supplies are close at hand -- the down side is that I'm away from all the other people in the house.


Here's how this week looked.



Tuesday - four rows - Blue Elephants
Wednesday - five rows - Blue Elephants
Thursday - sewed rows together
Friday - looked for backing fabric, cut out borders
Saturday - bought backing/binding fabric, sewed on borders, prepared backing
Sunday - sewed batting together for Blue Elephants
Monday - basted Blue Elephants

To see other sewing spaces and to see who has met the challenge this week, click here to go to Life in Pieces.

For Rachel

here is my second finish of the year.  It's a quilt I actually started last year but finished this year.  My sister has cancer and is going through chemo and I wanted to do something for her.  The back is ballet slippers because she (and I) used to take ballet lessons when we were young and she loves dance.  I hope she likes it and that it reminds her that I am thinking of her and praying for her.

Updates

I got a few things accomplished this week. I few items knocked off the list.

#26 - posted Time and Again today.  Will post pictures as soon as it is received.

#41 - Sunrise - my husband and I drove to Los Banos at 5:30 a.m. and as I was driving, there it was, a sunrise.

Today has been a very busy day.  After getting back from Los Banos, we went to the bank, post office, grocery store and then I went to JoAnn's. I got the backing and binding fabric for my current baby boy quilt.  Here's the quilt top and the two other fabrics.

 

Favorite Things Friday

My favorite this week is a very simple thing: notebooks.  When I was in 3rd or 4th grade, we read Harriet the Spy. Harriet had a notebook in which she wrote down everything -- I decided that I wanted to have a notebook too so I bought one and then another and another and another.  I wrote down all sorts of things in them -- bus numbers, the names I was going to give my 20 children (several lists of those), and other silly things.  Those notebooks have all disappeared - I'm sure relegated to the circular file.  Since then, I have kept diaries and journals and I keep buying notebooks.  I throw them out periodically so I don't have the millions that I have bought over the years though there are probably boxes in the attic full of them. 

And for those wondering, I am not a prolific writer or artist drawer or list maker -- I just buy a new notebook that I like (or someone gives me) and stop using the old one, so they are mostly half (or less) used and then tossed.

 This one came from Australia and I actually used all the pages in it (just finished yesterday) and need a replacement ..

These three have something written on a few pages. The top one for lists; the second one for journaling; the third came from a study group I was in and we had to write our thoughts in it (the group meets every couple of months so I just need to remember to take it with me next time).

 This is my quilting journal where I draw what I'm going to make or do my calculations.  I've almost used all those pages so will have to get a new one for that as well -- though I'll probably use the tan, spiral-bound one in the previous picture.

These are the drawings for the tetris quilt I was going to make.  never did.  might still.

 I don't know where this one came from, but I'll probably use it for journaling now.

This one was my mothers (she was a big Laurel Burch fan). I've written in a few pages, but will probably use it exclusively for something at some point.

Anyway, those are the notebooks in my bedroom.  I have one that I carry in my purse that I forgot about until just now.  It has addresses and notes and lists and who knows what else in it ..

So that's it.  Check out Quilting in My Pyjamas for other favorites or link up and post one of your own!

Rainbow on The Lake

I don't think I'd want to look for the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow ...

Wordless Wednesday

15 Minute Challenge

I am joining up with the 15 minute challenge again this week.
 
Tuesday - quilted 10 lines
Wednesday - quilted 10+ lines
Thursday - quilted 10 lines
Friday - finished quilting
Saturday - trimmed quilt; made binding; attached binding to quilt
Sunday - finished sewing binding to the quilt; washed and dried it. - ready to mail
Monday - cut blocks for baby quilt

I finished my second quilt this year.  "time and again."  Since I want to take pictures of it in daylight, it'll probably have to wait until Saturday ...  plus I want to wait until it reaches its new home.

I think the key for me to accomplish more is to plan what I'm going to do.  For instance, last week, I planned to sew/quilt 10 rows each day until the quilt was finished.  I think if I had just planned to quilt, I might not have achieved my goals.  I made them something easily measured.

As for workspace, that is problematic.  Right now my "space" is a corner of a table in my bedroom.  The plus is I don't have to completely put everything away when I'm done; the minus is that I'm away from everyone when I sew (this is a minus because if I want to be around everyone, I'm not sewing).  Some day I will have more space, just not now.  I'll post a picture later .. too early now to get out the camera.

Click here to see who else is taking the challenge this week.

Favorite Things Friday

My favorite this week is country music.  When I was younger, I didn't like it at all and now I'd rather listen to country than just about anything else.  Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum, Rascal Flatts, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan ... and so on.  I don't like the twangy stuff, I like the more pop-ish country.

I find that much of the music out there offends me.  The language, the lack of lyrics.  I know that sometimes the lyrics in country music are a little sappy but I prefer sappy to the other stuff.

To see what other people have picked as their favorites, check out QIMP.