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!

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??

Sewing Snurricane Day

Thanks to the "snurricane" (yes that's a snow hurricane) I was off of work today.  Well really the weather wasn't as bad as predicted and now the roads are clear (thank goodness!) but I was still off for most of the day.

What better to do than have a sewing snurricane day!

I finally finished up my french general quilt top and back.  The top needed borders (I didn't take a picture because it is just too big to lay out anywhere) and then I pieced the back.  I LOVE the pieced back.  Its sort of hard to see here, but you can get the idea.  Again it is just too huge to lay out anywhere and I didn't feel like making the bed look blog presentable.

 

My living room was in quite the state.  Remember Fireside Chat?  Its staring at me from the corner, wanting some attention.

Well at least this quilt and the T-shirt quilt are almost done.  I just need to go get batting for both and backing fabric for the T-shirt quilt and I'll be ready to take them to the quilter.  

I really need to name the French General quilt something besides "the french general quilt".  Any suggestions??

Tomorrow is the first Philly modern quilt guild.  I can't wait! :)

February Fury

Its starting to snow again!  The weather man is calling for another 1-2 FEET!  Its sort of hilarious that they are calling it "February Fury". I feel like I'll need a T-shirt or something that says "I survived February Fury 2010" hahah!  All my patients have been rescheduled and tomorrow will be a snow day :)  Yippie!!! So tomorrow (in between shoveling/snow blowing) I get to SEW!!

I've been really busy cutting, sewing and shopping up a storm the past few days. 

Sunday was my local quilt shop's "Super Bolt" Sunday sale.   Aren't these fabrics fun!?!

I went straight to work on the Joel Dewberry fabric and made this fun bag from the One-Yard Wonders book.  I modified it a bit from the pattern and used two fabrics (instead of one), added interfacing to the handle/top pieces, and I added a zipper.  I'm trying to make friends with making bags.  Bags are NOT usually my friends (for the APQers- remember the "Amy Butler is ridiculous" bag?!) and this bag was better. It still took some fiddling but that was because I added the zipper.

I've made a dent in my cousin's T-shirt quilt.  I put on all the interfacing and cut out the 35 blocks.  I bought the sashing/border/binding fabric (a navy/black blender) at the sale on Sunday.

Oh and look what came in the mail today!  I received my first giveaway from Jenn @ Purpleheart Ori"jenn"als.  Nigel is checking everything out and has officially given his approval.  I love the beautiful scarf and the cute fabric pack!  She had it all wrapped up with a pretty fabric bow, but I was too excited to rip it all open to take a picture of it.  Thank you so much Jenn!! The scarf is just in time for Feb Fury!

The rest of my French General Rouenneries fabric arrived in the mail today too.  So now I can finish that up.

Thanks February Fury for giving me a WIP day.  Hooray! Stay warm everyone :)

What I'm..

What I'm reading:
One-Yard Wonders by Rebecca Yaker and Patricia Hoskins

I had seen a lot about this book.  Today I was at Barnes and Noble and after paging through it I couldn't resist!   It is stuffed with 106 projects (5 extra bonus projects in the Barnes and Noble special edition) ranging from aprons to a firefighter hat to a drawer organizer all from 1 yard of fabric.  In a few weeks I'm going to visit my best friend for a girly quilty weekend and this book will be going with me.

What I need to finish:
Remember my french general quilt?  I still need to order just ordered the backing, border and binding fabrics.  I'm planning to piece the back with the leftover blocks.

Hank is very interested of course.

What I'm going to start:
Anne Sutton's Snowbound BOM.  I finally went out and bought some background fabric to get going.  I love the gray and the swirly pattern.  Plus I love that it was 50% off!  Maybe I'll just be a month behind...

What I'm ordering:
15 yards of interfacing to finally start on my cousin's T-shirt quilt!

What I'm eating:
Everyone gave such a good response to my soup recipe I thought I'd share another.  Tonight I made fusilli with spinach and asiago cheese.  Its a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and I think her food is fabulous.  The only modification I make is I add a package of precooked chicken.  Delicious!  

Last but not least,
What I'm excited about:
I won my first giveaway!! I won Jenn's giveaway of a beautiful scarf and some fat quarters at her blog Purpleheart Ori"jenn"als.  Thank you Jenn!!  :)

Happy Quilting!

Sew Sew Sew!

This has been a marathon of a quilting weekend. I think I spent around 15 hrs of this weekend either sewing, cutting, or running to the quilt shop to pick up thread and new needles for my machine.

I finished the center for my french general queen sized bed quilt. I love it! Its super duper big and I still need to add the borders (I always wait to order border/binding fabric until the center is done). Its so big that there is nowhere to spread it, so here it is on my couch:

Then I made two table runners from one of Rachel's patterns for moda bake shop (here's the link for the pattern Vintage Ribbons).

I made one for my coworker who has hinted a few times that her birthday is coming up and she'd love something for her table and the other is for me. A little bit of spring fever!


I love the bird fabric- its Clothworks "Cherry Blossom". It still needs to be quilted and finished. I'll use the pink plaid for the binding.

Next up- a T-shirt quilt for my younger cousin. Any suggestions about how to prep the T-shirts?? Some websites say to use stabilizers for the T-shirts and others don't.

This Little Light of Mine

I'm so glad that all the APQ ladies are reconnecting over here!! :)

I did my class yesterday and was thrilled that there were 17 that attended. Hooray! I was told I could be paid or take store credit so I picked out a new light for my sewing machine. Although I have a dedicated sewing room, I tend to sew at the dining room table and my dining room isn't the brightest. This light is really awesome!

Today I've been working on a new queen size bed quilt. A while back, Julie showed me a charm pack of Rouenneries and (like so many of us) I fell in love with the line! Santa (aka my husband) bought me the fat quarter pack for Christmas. I'm using the pattern "Yellow Brick Road" by Terry Atkinson.

I've completed 3 of the 10 rows. Here are the blocks laid out on my dining room rug. (Thanks for helping move out the table Matt!)

The plastic bin on the floor is full of my cousin's high school basketball T-shirts to make into a quilt. That's next up on the list.


Random blogging question- I can't figure out how to make the photos a link so that they open in a new window as a larger picture. Can anyone fill me in on how to do this? Thank you!!!

***Update- I just realized after I posted this, that now my photos are working! I'm not sure why, but now I'm good!