Pink or Blue?

There's been so much going on the past week that I haven't gotten much quilting done.  My husband and I are sooooo excited!!!

I'm not very good at holding this sort of thing in. Many people/websites suggest waiting longer to announce, but I figure if heaven forbid something happens, you will all understand my absence.  My due date is somewhere around Nov 30th.  A Thanksgiving baby  :)  We haven't decided if we'll find out the sex, but I think the only reason I'd want to know is to pick out fabric.  You all understand!

Needless to say there hasn't been much quilting going on, but I did get a few things finished.

My cousin's T-shirt quilt is done!  Here it is with my husband holding it up.  I'm telling him to straighten it out and hold it up.  He's standing on a chair and telling me I'm crazy if I think he can hold it any higher or any more spread out. 

Its a monster!  I love the quilting.  I also embroidered my initials and the date on the back.  Don't mind the fuzz:

I've also been working on my swap blocks.  24 done (4 have already been shipped).

I'm thinking I need to make 2 more (2 for me).  For the ladies in the swap, is this right?  There are 13 of us right?

Then the last bit of show and tell is my purchase from the North Penn craft show two weekends ago.  I had a great time meeting Ann Hermes.  I bought this little ornament from her.

I'm off to sew the binding to The General.  I need to clear the sewing decks and make way for new pink or blue projects :)

A Tenth of a Mile

This afternoon I picked up my quilts from the quilter.  I love them both!

Here is my cousin's T-shirt quilt.  She's going to love the basketball design:

Action shot of Nigel checking out the back:

And here's The General.  I picked a vine panto.

It is definitely huge!  I can't wait to wash it to shrink it up a bit.

My husband told me it doesn't match our bedroom walls (suddenly he thinks he's a design expert), but I don't care.  More reason to make more bed quilts!!

The amount of binding to do is sort of ridiculous.  When I added it all up, it equals 1/10 of a mile! Crazy.  I stitched the binding to the front of the T-shirt quilt this afternoon (you know I couldn't wait to get started) so I'll start the hand stitching tonight.  Better get stretching!

Great Wall of Scraps & Ridiculous Rain

Last night was the first sewing night with the Philly Modern Quilt Guild.  It was such a great time!! There are some really lovely people in this group.

Of course I couldn't get out of the shop without doing some shopping.

Before the sewing night, I went through my scraps for the APQ swap.  Since everyone's been showing their scraps, here are mine. Look out!  Its the great wall of scraps!

Here are the next month's blocks:

This month's blocks went to the post office this morning.

I haven't been able to do much of any sewing today.  Its been raining since yesterday and today we lost our power.  UGH!  Every 15 min my husband and I were bailing out the sump pump.  Yeah the last time this happened we swore we were getting a battery back up. Good thing we followed through on that one...  Then the power came back and we realized the rest of the basement was starting to flood.  Its been a delightful afternoon.  Thankfully its slowing down.  Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to do some more sewing!

On that note- I love this rainy day fabric and the post over at Quilt Taffy.  She has weekly giveaways on Fridays.  Its certainly a rainy day!!

Mr March

Mr March is one of my favorites!  Here he is making his debut:

I've been looking for an opportunity to use the great selvedge/close to selvedge part of the Rouenneries fabric.

So I'm sort of ashamed to show this, but my embroidery thread is in such a mess.  I have a bunch of it from when I was in middle school and from my high school babysitting days when I made friendship bracelets and I have some from my grandmother that she passed on to me.  It is such a mess! I haven't figured out how to organize it yet, but this shoe box is getting ridiculous. 

 

How do you store your embroidery floss??

Ready to Swap!

Here are my March APQ swap blocks:

Two blocks with my more traditional fabrics and two with more modern prints.  This is so fun!  My favorite part was all the squaring up this pattern calls for.  I should really do that more.   I've never used  Pigma pens before and they were trickier than I thought.  I used Love's freezer paper idea (thanks Love!!) and that helped, but still tough to get it to write smoothly.  Good thing we've got 7 more months to go so I can perfect this.


So I really do have a problem.  I'm admitting it.  Magazines- in particular quilting ones- suck me in and I buy them.  Ugh!  Why??  I have so many and I'm sure I have enough patterns for a lifetime, but I can't resist them.  The latest Quilts & More called to me today with its cute patterns (these bibs are too funny!!).  I try and tell myself to page through the magazine at the store and decide if I absolutely need it, but I always end up needing it. 

 

Yesterday I took The General and the T-shirt quilt to the quilter.  They'll be done in two weeks and I'm really excited about the patterns (basketball for the T-shirt quilt and a vine leaf design for The General). 

I can't wait to send my blocks off to Katie and Lisa!!