Swimming in WiPs!

Hello everyone! I've been waiting for a microwave installer guy to show up all afternoon. Since I couldn't leave the house, I had a lot of time to get some sewing and crafting done!

I have several WiPs in the wings that I've been working on. First up is my beach quilt - Bits and Pieces. I had enough to put a 5 inch scrappy border all around it. So, the top is now done. I plan to bind it in black so it will have a skinny border around all of the color to finish it off.

The border looks a little more pastel than it is in real life. Too bad I didn't have any more red or pink from the middle fabrics to use, but I just barely had enough of the other ones to pretty much make it all the way around.

For quilting I think I'm going to do a loopy all over patter in the middle, then do hearts in the black border. I'm not sure what I'm going to do in the scrappy border, maybe just some free-form wavy lines since it will primarily be used at the beach. Maybe I should be really brave and add some feathers to those wavy lines! *Gulp!* I've never done feathers before...

My second project of the day was finishing up some Christmas stockings for my husband and I.

I know it's way far out from Christmas, but these have been on my to-do list since last November. Obviously I fell short from making them last year, so I decided I'd finish them up super early this year. :)

I really love the texture that the diamond quilting gives the stockings. I still need to run them through the wash to get rid of my quilting lines, but I have a few months to do that. ;) Otherwise, they are good to go!

Third, I started a new scarf! The pattern is called Falling Water and it is a free Ravelry download. I had forgotten all about Ravelry until a couple days ago. Then I rediscovered how much time you can really lose while scanning through everything on that site. I decided I should put some of my browsing time to good use and start one of the patterns I had saved months ago.

I really like how it is turning out so far, despite a couple ssk difficulties. :)

Otherwise, I still have a few other quilts on the to-do list that have been hanging out there for.... almost forever (or for a very long time at least)!

The Double Irish Chain:

These squares have been cut for 2(!!) years now and I still haven't done anything with them. I think this one really needs to be the next one on my get-it-done list.

The Fall Leaf Quilt:

I still have over half of the leaves to put together for this one. Again, I have everything cut and ready to go, just need to do the sewing! I think this is number 2 on the list. :) Or maybe number 1... we'll see if I get motivated enough to work on the Double Irish Chain quilt...

The embroidery project/quilt:

I have 5 out of 12 patterns done and I'm working on the 6th. So, Germany, Egypt, France, Italy and Russia are done. Mexico is in the works, and I still have to do China, Japan, India, USA, United Kingdom and Australia. I plan to border these squares out with the colors of each country's flag and then sew them up into a little travel themed quilt.This one isn't a huge rush, just a guilty pleasure project. :)

The Quilty Barn-a-long:

I have 8 out of 12 barns done. I know I'm a few behind. I also want to make a couple more of my tractors before I sash these and sew them up into a top. Again, this is another guilty pleasure project, but I'd like to finish it up sometime soon...

Lastly, it is my month for our quilting bee - Color Bee Shocked. So, I've been getting a lot of Irish Twist blocks back in the mail. Once I get them all back I want to put this one together quickly. I don't want it to sit in my closet for a couple years until I get to it. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing all of the blocks together! :)

So, that's what I'm working on/not working on these days... How about you?

Current Projects

Hello everyone! We had a pretty rainy evening here tonight with some very strong winds. That meant I had a little bit of time to spend indoors working on crafty things. :)

Tonight I finished up the first of 12 embroidery blocks that I'm working on. I've never done a large embroidery project before, so we'll see how this goes. I don't really know too many stitches, and I have just a hodge-podge of thread that I'm using. (Is it called floss for embroidery? For some reason I have it in my head that it's called floss, but that does sound a bit silly considering you floss your teeth, not your fabric...) Anyway, it's a travel pattern, so each block will feature items from a different country. I started with Germany since we've actually traveled there several times and I thought maybe my husband would be more interested in this block than some others. I think he feigned interest just to humor me. :)

I should have used a different thread for the building. I didn't have a great selection of gray, so I used a silvery thread that was really thick - wrong choice! So, I used a regular thread (floss?) for the rest and those areas turned out much nicer. Lesson learned! :)

Once I finished the embroidery I decided to cut out all of the pieces for the Quilty Barn-A-Long blocks that Lori of Bee In My Bonnet has put together that I haven't done yet. I'm now behind on 6 (!!!!) blocks, which is a lot for me. I try to stay on top of things (at least my bee blocks are all on time so far!).

Cutting took up the rest of the evening since I ironed each fabric first and then folded and put them away when I was done. Since these blocks are all pretty scrappy that meant getting out and putting away a lot of difference pieces. And, I just realized while writing this post, that I have one more to cut out. I've only prepped 5 of them, so I guess tomorrow night I'll spend a little more time with my rotary blade and rulers. :)

My mother and I are getting together on Friday evening to work on these together. She's doing the Quilty Barn-A-Long too! I'm going to her house to work on them, so I figured putting them all into little bags would help me not get things all mixed up. We'll see how far we get versus how much we get distracted by other things. :)

Lastly I just wanted to show off the fabric that I bought while I was on vacation. I did manage to actually get inside 3 quilt shops on our first full day in Portland. My husband had a 2 hour interview that morning so I busied myself by going to 3 quilt shops. One was really large, one was really small, and one was just right. :)

Some of this is for me, and some of this is for other people. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. :) Happy quilting everyone!

Busy February

Hi everyone! I've been MIA for a while here on my blog! So sorry about that, but February has turned out to be busy for me! As an update, I did manage to clear out the apartment for my January goals. It felt soooo good to get things organized, but it's been a challenge to keep things that way. I feel like there are always things to pick up or put away, so it just never ends!

This month my husband and I started planning our summer vacation. We're going on a very long road trip all the way out to Seattle to go to the Sasquatch Music Festival and then driving all the way back. We'll be stopping multiple places on each way, so it's going to be a great trip! Plus I'll get to see Mumford & Sons and Cake live! (And a million other bands...)

With the goal of getting healthier and more fit, we also joined a gym this month. So, we've been spending an hour or two there each day after I'm done with work. It eats up a lot of time, but it makes us feel much better. So far I've lost about 10 pounds, which is great. Here I'll be honest with you - I started off weighing 175! That's not at all where I want to be. I've gained about 20 pounds since we got married in 2009 and I want to get that all back off and more. If I get into the 140s, I'll weigh what I did in high school, and I hope that I can get down that far. Our gym is really fantastic and so far we've really enjoyed going there. :) So - here's a LARGE goal, to get down to at least 155 by May when we leave for our vacation. I really hope I'll be able to revise that number as we go along. So far, so good!

I filled in at another office over the weekend, so I didn't have a Saturday to do any crafting. I'm also hosting a couple friends this weekend and throwing a bridal shower for my great friend Heidi. She's getting married in May (another reason to work out!!!) and I've been busy getting ready for that too. The shower is on Sunday this weekend and Saturday will be dedicated to running lots and lots of needed wedding errands since the bride now lives in Florida and this is the last time she'll be up in Wisconsin before the big day. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Despite all of that, I have managed to do a couple little things with the few minutes I have at night before I collapse in bed.

I started knitting a scarf for my other friend coming up for the weekend. I hope, hope, hope I can get it done! And, now I'm not sure it's going to be very cold any more for her to need it. But, she was joking about how she wasn't going to be able to handle the cold Wisconsin weather and I joked that I'd make her a scarf, and then actually did it. Now I just need to finish it!! It kind of reminds me of the flying geese quilt block pattern since it has a pyramid shape in the knitting pattern. It goes pretty quick, so I'm going to knit, knit, knit tonight and hope I can get close to finishing!

I also played around with some embroidery. I've never really done it before, and I made an awful first attempt. I made this flower embroidery. I used pencil to draw on the pattern. That was my first mistake since I couldn't get rid of the marks and then had to adjust the pattern as I went to cover them up. I hate the shape of the petals and I hate that I filled in the petals, but I had to cover up those stupid pencil marks! Ick! I kept this only because it was so bad I needed to see where I started and hopefully I'll improve from here!

I don't mind the stem and the leaves, but oh my gosh the whole flower should just be ripped out or thrown away. I think I'll hang it over my sewing machine space so I can have the motivation to get better. :)

The next attempt went much better. I made an owl sitting on a tree. I really like the wood grain that I did and I like that I gave it a circular border around the whole design. I also like these cute little leaves on it. So, hopefully my next attempt will be even better. I need to learn some more stitches so I can be a little more creative!

So - that's what I've been up to so far. As far as other February goals, I'd really like to finish my Over the Rainbow quilt this month. It's still sitting on my sewing desk, all pinned and ready to be quilted, so I'm so close to finishing! I think that will be the only other thing I plan to do in February. Hopefully March will be more crafty! Happy crafting everyone!