my first trip to the machine quilter

Today was an exciting crafting day.  In the morning, I began my week-long crochet class at Webs yarn store (more on that tomorrow).  After the class, I took my finished quilt top and bottom to a machine quilter.  The machine quilter was incredible.  She took almost an hour with me picking out the batting, pattern, and thread color.  Above is the pattern I chose.  It will be in a thread color called ‘mint green’, although it looked more like a pale blue.  Now I’m playing the waiting game until the end of September when she plans to have my quilt finished, so it looks like the summer quilt will have to wait until Fall to be finished.

summer quilt 2011 update

This week my mom is in town.  She’s the one who first got me interested in quilting.  She has made (and still makes) some amazing quilts.  Once I finished the quilt top center, I decided to wait until she came into town to finish the border and do the backing, since I was never quite certain what to do.  I had cut strips of fabric before, but it was nice to have someone with more experience give me tips on how to square the fabric, measure for length, and pin the borders.  Here’s what we accomplished yesterday…

All that remains is to cut the back to shape, get it machine quilted and sew the binding.  So it will be a little while until my next update on the quilt since I need find someone to machine quilt it first.

embroidery + pillow = awesome

I think I have the embroidery bug.  Just hours after finishing the tattoo, I began an embroidered pillow.  I had been planning to knit a few throw pillows for our new chair, but this project seriously took like five hours, much shorter than knit pillows would and I already have my eye on my next TWO embroidered pillows: sunburst and sashiko.  The pattern is an adaptation of the sashiko robe from Embroidered Effects.

the best garage sale ever

My love of garage-saling (pronounced sailing and verb for going to garage sales) began early on in life, but things really kicked into gear when I was in college and home for the summer.  My dad would have Friday afternoons off and we would go check out the garage sales each week together.  In fact, one of the last things I did before I got married was going garage-saling with my dad and we found the queen size air mattress David and I offer to guests when they stay the night (although now they also have the option of a queen size bed as well).

Back in June, David and I decide to take advantage of a lazy Saturday morning to check out the garage sale scene in the area.  The day started off well, with a couple cheep books, an ice cream maker, and a lamp.  As it neared 1 pm, we decided to head home, but just then we saw a sign for a church garage sale.  Pardon my political and religious incorrectness here, but a church garage sale is like the mecca of garage sales.  Multiple people, lots of stuff, its a garuntee that you will find something.  This church sale was the best yet, because at 1 pm they start a $1 sale.  Not $1 per item, no its better than that, $1 for a bag and everything you can fit in the bag is included.  We probably brought home 10 items or more, but two I decided to apply at little of my hgtv inspiration to.

Item #1 – Bulletin Board: The change was pretty simple, paint the ‘frame’ white to make it match the new paint job of the office.

Item #2: Desktop Organizer:  I had litterally looked at a very similar desktop organizer earlier in the week from Target and it cost around $16.  When I saw this initially, I thought ugly color, kind of big, but then I thought what the heck it’s a dollor.  I began the update by putting a little paint on the inside to hide the ugly orange color.

The next step was to find some pretty fabric, cut it to shape, sew it together, and then glue the fabric to the organizer.

The final step was to place it on my desk and put it to good use.

Now I need to decide if I have enough fabric leftover to make a skirt or headband…

a productive weekend of crafting

I don’t know how it happens that I have all week off from teaching and I still don’t get anything done until the weekend.  Maybe it’s the break from reading or maybe its the energy from going on a bike ride Saturday morning or maybe it’s buying a second air conditioner.  Who can say?  All I know is that making progress on projects this weekend got me excited to get started on more new projects next week.  Here’s what I did:

1) I pulled out and re-stitched the quilt top. Now I need to cut out and sew the edgings and then figure out what to do with this quilt.  Ideas?

2) I made a headband. I saw the pattern at the beginning of the summer on pinterest (the pattern can be found here) and now that my hair is getting longer I thought having a few headbands might be a nice change of pace.  David tried to help me take a picture, but the camera ran out of batteries and then he got busy with his own project so I was left to my own devices with the big camera.

3) I updated the design of the blog (with David’s help).  Hopefully no picture is necessary for this one because you are looking at it.

4) I’m making a pie for my advisee who is here for summer camp and helped David carry our media unit up to the fourth floor (using the elevator of course).

5) I finally finished knitting a baby sweater for a friend who is due I think sometime this summer, but I’m not totally sure when.  They just haven’t had the baby yet.

This is the Jasper Cardigan from Kristen Rengren’s book Vintage Baby Knits.  I’ve been working on it since at least May.  It was a fun knit and helped keep me focused during the faculty meetings at the end of school.  I actually finished the knitting back in June, but didn’t have time to block it until a week ago.  The best part about this sweater is that I found the buttons for 20 cents at a hardware store today while I meandered around waiting on David.

does anyone notice a problem with this quilt…

So much for finishing the quilt center today…

this year’s summer quilt

Today I finally got around to beginning a crafting project I have been looking forward to since last summer when I bought the fabric.  It’s this year’s summer quilt!  Last summer I made “The Bold and the Beautiful” quilt, which became our shower curtain.  Finishing that quilt got me really excited about sewing more, but once school started I realized that I would have to put aside that enthusiasm until the summer.  As I got out my supplies to start cutting the fabric, I realized that summer quilt making is becoming a bit of a tradition around here.  This will be the third summer in a row that I finish a quilt (assuming I finish before the summer ends).  Here’s a glimpse of the partially cut fabric.

Now that I’m finished cutting the fabric, I can’t decide whether I should layout the cut fabric or start making dinner?

Is that a Quilt…a Shower Curtain…OR BOTH

the new bathroom

What’s that in the corner? No, I’m not talking about the washer and dryer that we have been dreaming about.  Although having laundry does make the bathroom one of my favorite rooms in the new apartment.  You all know that I’m even more excited that the Bold and the Beautiful quilt has taken its rightful place in the bathroom as a shower curtain.  Now I can gaze at it while brushing my teeth.  It really transformed the bathroom from a lot of cream and white, into a colorful, joyful haven.

up close on the curtain

I should also give credit where credit is due.  After a frustrating morning trying to figure out how to make button holes (thanks mom for helping me figure it out), David stepped in and agreed to pound all the grommets into place.  We think it gives the shower curtain a professional touch.

Presenting the Bold and the Beautiful Quilt

it's bold and I would say it's beautiful

While my knitting has fallen drastically behind schedule.  Only 22 of 50 sections knitting on the Maltese and two baby booties to my name, my quilting has really taken off.  After a failed attempt to attend church on Sunday, I spent the next five hours sewing the strips together.  My first quilting attempt was slow going, taking almost a year and a half to accomplish. This quilt came together in no time and I actually found the sewing process really soothing and meditative at times.  Maybe it’s because I really loved the fabrics.  My mom spent like an hour in a cramped quilt shop in Wichita helping me pick them out.  This all our searching paid off.

can you picture it as a shower curtain?

David was right, now that the top is completed, I’m really torn on whether it should become our next shower curtain or if I should make it into a blanket.  I mean, as I said in my last post, we have more than enough blankets, but it would make a great picnic blanket, don’t you think?  On the other hand, I love the idea of making it into a shower curtain because then we would use it everyday.  Dilemma, dilemma…for now we are waiting until we move to decide, so we can see how it fits in the new apartment.  I’ve included a picture of the blanket in both capacities, so let me know what you think.

The Bold and the Beautiful

they are bold...will they be beautiful together?

You may or may not remember the photos of the beautiful quilts my mom and I saw at the Wichita quilt festival.  They were sew inspiring.  They even convinced me to give quilting another try, despite the fact that my last project took like a year and a half.  After visiting like five quilt stores in less than two hours, my mom and I finally found a pattern I both liked and she thought would be easy enough so I wouldn’t get discouraged.  The colors may be a little loud, but I think they are really exciting.

precut fabrics

I’m thinking it would be fun to turn the quilt into a shower curtain.  David’s not so keen on the idea.  He hasn’t said no yet.  Instead he said, “Do you want to put that much time into a project only to hang it outside the bathtub?”  I’m like,  “You see it and use it everyday as a shower curtain.  We already have 5 throw blankets and there are only two of us and currently we only have like 6 friends up here.  What are the odds that all of them will come over at once and each want an individual blanket?”  This conversation is not over, but for now we will have to wait and see what the quilt/blanket/shower curtain to be looks like once all the pieces are sewn together.  And I obviously have a long way to go.  I’m hoping to finish this before school starts too.  I’m starting to wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew…