Monthly Archives: May 2013

“I like your blog, but where’s…”

My husband gave a nice critique of my blog yesterday.  He told me I needed to go over and fix my grammatical errors, and I need to make more posts.  Over all he did like it though, and he thinks I’m a total goofball.  (hello, I think he should have known this already! :D)

He did say “hey where’s the bunnies, and where’s the pig? You sewed them, too!” I’ve sewn some little stuffed animals that he felt need their day on my blog.  As soon as I get some good pictures of my other little stuffies, I’ll get them each their own little blogs.

for now I’ll leave you with this little bit of eye candy.  Have a happy Friday and weekend everyone!
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Iron staple….what the what?

Last night….I made a planning wall!  It was even easier than I thought.  The toughest part was figuring out where I was going to put it.  This obviously required a rearrangement of my sewing room.  It’s good though,  because I’ve been wanting to do something different in there and this gave me the need.

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At first I considered just putting the panels over the closest door, but this was awkward.  So I moved some things around and bam!

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Now I have a grown up looking planning wall.  Much to the dismay of my little helper

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“Hey, I can’t rearrange them now!”

Cut iron cut iron

I got in the sewing room last night and cut up 8 strips into squares!  8 more to go, then I can start placing them and figuring out how this is going to work!

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It’ll be fun, right?! 😀 I’m hoping to get the last strips cut up tonight and finally start placing them.  If I had one of those “quilt wall” things, that’d be great. (Going for My best Lumburg here)

One of these days…

I swear, even on a 3 day weekend I get no sewing done.  None!  Not even a little bit!  But I did on Thursday…or Friday.  I honestly can’t remember which one it was now.  I mean I did do other things, like we went fishing and went to my mother-in-law’s for some bbq and pool side activities…Monday we watched movies literally all day.  Battlefield Earth (I love that stinking movie. I have no idea why.) The Amazing Spiderman, The Ref, Gangster Squad; if it was on we watched it.

The last time I was in my sewing room I did get some things done though.  See, how I’ve got these strips going I’ve got a dark brown and tan, a tan and yellow, and a dark brown and yellow.  When their powers combine, it takes the form of, a chevron!!  (you know…once I get them all cut into 5 1/2 x 5 1/2″ squares and tilt them back n forth and what not)  I got all of the dark brown and yellow squares cut out.

So far I have 120 squares and by my first calculation I only needed 100 or so squares.  Well, I kind of forgot a “row” I guess you could say.  it’s 9 squares across for a row, but it’s also 8 across for the other…row…I don’t know what you’d call that.  Then it’s 11 high and I suppose 10 high?  SO I need like, a billionty more squares.  I felt like 100 squares was a little small.  I laid them all out and it only covered half the quilt, so yea, need more than 100 squares.  Anyhow, I’m hoping once I get home tonight I can get some *MORE* squares cut.

I did have some help measuring out and getting these squares situated though.

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Sew, Iron, cut, repeat.

This has been the story of my spare time.  I’m working on a chevron back for the big ugly quilt.  I’m trying to decide on which is a better system, all the strip cutting is done so here’s what I’m going with now: 1) sew, iron, cut each strip. 2) sew all the strips, iron all the strips, cut all the strips.  Currently I’m sewing all the strips.  I was sewing and ironing and cutting each strip, but I thought it may be faster to get all the strips sewn together first.

laid out chev

This is the progress I made while laying out the squares.  It’s going to take about 100 squares to cover the back, then some odds and end pieces here and there.

close up chev

This is my first attempt at a chevron quilt.  Doing it this way seemed a LOT easier than cutting out a billion tiny triangles.  And I hate triangles….they’ve wronged me before!  Squares on the other hand, we’re friends. 😀

 

Big brown quilt top: finished!

The day has come…or the night really.  With some help from Pink Floyd and some motivation to keep moving today, I got the rest of the border sewn and put on the quilt top.

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Here it is!

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Ooh look at those lines and the browns and greens coming together.
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I’m so glad this is finished.  But now that this is finished I will need a grown up, adult sized ironing board.  The back….is going to be completely different!

My first sale!

I knew this day would come!  I finally made my first sale!  This has already been a learning experience.  Who knew postage was so expensive?!  If it’s less than a pound you might as well say it’s a whole pound because it’s going to cost the same either way.  So, maybe my first sale ended up costing me .93, but I think that’s livable.  I am very excited to have made a sale anyway!  So, here’s my first sold item:

owl2

owl3

This little sweetie stands about 4 inches tall and has a bell inside.  I really liked making it, it only takes about 2 hours! 😀  I’m probably going to try to bust a few out this evening.

Investing in Quilting

This weekend I got a few things going.  I started on a little stuffed animal for one of my friend’s babies (well, it’s the demo, come on, the first go at a pattern it’s going to be a little questionable!) which has been my first venture into applique.  I’m also working on mastering the ever elusive ladder stitch to close up that little sucker!  I also found a store not too far away from me that actually sells feet for my machine.  I have a Brother XL 2610 (the cute little pink Brother) and all I have is what came with it.  So after a trip to the store, I now have a darning foot and an open toe foot.  I didn’t realize the standard foot was having trouble with the satin stitching passing underneath, but now I do, and voila!  Problem solved!  I plan on going back today after work and getting a 1/4″ seam foot….okay I don’t know if that’s what it’s called, but I’m pretty sure it is!  I’m excited, because I feel like with the right tools I can do anything! (insert rainbow star stream overhead)  Anyhow, I will be posting some pictures soon, once I play with my new feet.

http://sewlittlefabric.blogspot.com/2011/03/owl-softie-free-patterntutorial.html

Here is the link to the pattern I’m using for the little owl.