Scrappy is Quilted & Getting Bound

For the quilting on this baby, I tried my hand at an orange peel fmq using Oh Fransson's tutorial HERE. 

It was pretty easy, especially with the 2" squares as a built in guide.

With all of the wedding plans going on around here, AND all of the illness, I could only get in a little quilting here and there.

This afternoon, I finally felt well enough to get the quilting all finished :)

For the binding, I am using this WILD Grease (you know the musical) text fabric that was on the clearance rack at Gracie Lou's.

It's even is printed on the bias!

I'll work on the hand sewing here and there.  There is just SO much to do!!!

xo

Just Keep Sewing.... (you know, like Dory)

People ask me all of the time how I get so much done.  Well, here is the truth of the matter, I HATE HAVING THINGS ON MY TO-DO LIST!!!  For YEARS, I have had my Christmas ALL finished before Thanksgiving so I can enjoy the WHOLE holiday season without stress.

Why?  Well, I REALLY hate shopping, to tell you the truth ;D  ...but seriously, here is how I see it.  When there is something that needs to be done, it requires the same amount of work to accomplish it whether you do it now or later.  If it is done last minute, there is a TON of additional stress that is not there if the chore is finished earlier.  So WHY ON EARTH would I put things off until last minute if there is another, more sane and peaceful way to do it???


Now, I know that there are often times when we just can't help that things are last minute.  I get that.  It happens to me.  When this does happen, I break out my CHOP CHOP action and start cutting stuff out.  If it can possibly go by the wayside, the chore is given the BOOT!!  Maybe I just have such a bad reaction to stress that I have needed to adapt and learn how to do this, but I have to say, I am MUCH happier for learning this skill :)  Enough rambling :)

Here is what I sewed on Monday :)

..and half of the "?" block :)  Two and a half more blocks to go!!!

Angela's QAL ROCKS!

I had to stop with the Mario stuff because my hubby came home and I really wanted to watch The Amazing Spiderman with my family!!!  ....so I hand bound my friends DARLING baby quilt.

Brittany made this quilt and it is SPECTACULAR!!!!  She had a baby last week just couldn't get the binding sewn on :\

She paper pieced the dragon flies :)

They are three dimensional!!!

Brittany did a BEAUTIFUL job!!!

A Little Sewing.... maybe a little sick???

I am super tired, still.  I am freezing :\  It is the perfect day for hand sewing & movies/tv episodes :)  I finally finished all of the Bones episodes Wednesday night and have now started Once Upon A Time.

Here are the corners of the four quilts I bound for Konda Wednesday night and Thursday morning.  They are top secret and will be revealed at Market at the end of October.

Wednesday morning I had a field trip to Provo with my good buddy Annette.  We stopped at two quilting stores on our way home.  I FINALLY found the little fairy scissors I have been looking all over for.  I splurged and bought them for myself :)  AREN'T THEY FABULOUS!?!?

AND!!!  Last week my sweet friend April made me a present :)

I have a thing about graph paper when planning quilts.  I call them my "maps."  Most quilters that I know make fun of my "maps," even April, UNTIL I convinced her of their magical quilting powers.  So, in honor of my crazy mapping skills, April made me this AWESOME notebook :)  She found one with graph paper inside.

Here is the fantastic back!

This is SO funny because at the first quilt retreat I ever when to, I kept saying "I don't get it!" at every other line of the pattern I was ineptly trying to read :)

Ford's Quilt is FINISHED!!

The binding all piled on the floor waiting to be sewn on.

 My 14 year old held this up so I could snap a quick shot.  I LOVE it!  ...now I know that's a shock ;D  I am pretty sure that my son will love it too! 

 

 

Grey dimple minky for the back per my son's request.

 I decided to go with the walking foot this time.  I had fun with this one and it was pretty quick too.  It's finished size is 60x78.  Perfect for a growing boy!

Official Quilt Business

I sewed on the binding and have made it about half way around. I should be able to finish it off tonight. I am planning to put the boys to bed early so I can start to baste Ford's quilt. We have an important appointment at 8:30pm and I am debating weather or not I can be crawling around on the living room in front of our quests pinning my quilt sandwich ;D What do you think? I dont think they'll mind...

I finally tossed this one in the washer. It is even softer now than it was before. It took so long to get in the washer because a RED crayon made it through the last load of clothes :p I have been him hawing over how to fix the issue, and between that and forgetting about it all together, I didn't get them cleaned until this morning. I also needed to run another regular load through to make sure there were no more RED crayon remnants any where. The reddened load came out mostly better :) I soaked the whole load in HOT water (medium water level) for 1/2 of the day in the washer with 4 heaping scoops of oxyclean and one regular scoop of laundry soap ( Kirkland brand). Then I put the load size setting on "large" and on the longest wash cycle, still HOT, adding 2 more scoops of oxyclean and one more scoop of regular laundry soap. The RED came out of nearly everything. There are a few little bits left that I can live with, or should I say the son who's crayon it was, can live with on his pants ;D

Almost finished...

Today I had a hard time trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Should I make another purse? Should I make a table runner? Should I sew Ashley's quilt top? Maybe make the cover for my sewing machine? In the end I opted to finish the Pink and Grey quilt. I am 98% sure that I can give this one away. I am feeling good about it. We shall see :) After making my quilt sandwich (which I LOVE) and basting it (which I DON'T love), I had to make a commitment to how I wanted to quilt it. Because the backing minky is so textured (and was SO expensive) I thought I should maybe not obscure it with a lot of fmq. I decided to use my walking foot and straight stitch around the boxes and do a little floral stuff in the grey inner borders. I wasn't sure what to do in the outer pink border. I ended up doing straight stitching there. I am officially IN LOVE with the binding fabric. I love the grey and white with a leaf print. I made the binding a bit scrappy by adding pieces of the pinks in between the strips of grey and white. I used Konda's binding "finish it up" technique.

Here is a large daisy/rose. It's just like the one's on Vintage Eva.

I fmq'd daisies round the inner grey border and rose/big daisies around the outer grey border.

I did quilt around the chenille flowers.

The straight stitches around all of the blocks.

A nice shot of the binding sewn to the quilt.

One of the smaller chenille flowers quilting. I haven't trimmed the stray thread yet ;D

This is a good shot of the minky texture.

Quilting and texture.

All folded neatly waiting for me to finish the binding in the morning :) The grey minky is the same color as the leaves in the binding fabric.

Basting and FMQ

Pinning the Minky for the Pinky Yellow Baby Quilt

This only took a little over an hour to quilt

LOVE Minky quilted :)

The back of my name quilted ;D

My signature.

The top all cute and quilted.

Bind it, baby!!!

Minky for Kate (orange), Ashley (cream) and baby quilts.
I used 40% and 50% coupons for these at Hobby
Lobby and JoAnns

Chenille from Morris Quilting $12.95 per yard :) 

I LOST 4.2 AT WW THIS WEEK!!!  My only difference this week was that I exercised 40 minutes every day!! :) ...and quilted instead of eating ;D