Yay! A Finish!

I like to blog when I have photos to show off!

I took a short vacation (spur of the minute) a week ago to go home to Vermont to check on my Mom.  Of course that also meant spending some wonderful time with my two sisters and my youngest brother!  The thing with times like these are they are never long enough!

I suffer with a psychological condition called "Delusional Thought Process"!   I always think I can cram WAY more into my time at home than what is humanly possible -  hahaha!

When packing my suitcase, I threw in about 11 yards of fabric I had earmarked for a quilt for Mom.  For Mother's Day this year, I  searched on line for some pretty embroidery designs Mom could stitch up on her sweet little Elna.  I found some, sent them to my sister to download onto Mom's machine.  The rest of the instructions were for Diane (sister) to cut squares of fabric with stabilizer for Mom so she wouldn't have an excuse for NOT stitching out the designs.  Then, the squares would come to me to sew into a quilt top.  Diane would long-arm it, and other sister - Debbie -  would bind it.  This would truly be a joint effort.
Because I was planning a trip (and not telling them - I wanted to surprise them), I thought I would bring along the fabric and put the top together while at home.  [Enter Delusion Thought Process].
Vermont is such a beautiful state, some time MUST be spent driving the countryside and drinking in all the beauty God created!  [Cuts into sewing time].
Then, there's the thinking involved in taking the sweet embroidered squares and creating a whole quilt around them.  Once I decided what would look good (with Mom's input), I needed Diane to use her cool quilt program to plan it out and come up with directions.

This is what we came up with:

Pretty sweet, huh?  Well, let me tell you what a PAIN this is!!!

The pretty blue and white floral fabric stretches like crazy and has made this little product our BEST friend:

By the time Mom's quilt is done, we figure it will take about a gallon of this stuff!

It really is awesome!  We have had to spray and iron each piece to get the stretch to decrease.

Mom's quilt will need a total of 24 - 16" squares.  Some of those squares will be cut and used in half and some in quarters because the squares are on point.

When I left Vermont, we had a total of 11 blocks completed.  I pulled the little sister card - 

1.  I am on the road for work almost every week

2.  My daughter is getting married in a month

3.  My son is getting married in 3 months

4.  There is NO WAY I am bringing this fabric back home to work on

Diane was very gracious and said she would finish it.  Whew!

Being a middle child, I DID feel just a little bit guilty.  Sooo, I want my sister to know that I have been energized by our sewing time together and have taken a little quilt top out that I finished last year and actually QUILTED and completed it for my little grand daughter Alana.

I bought this as a kit a couple of years ago and hand embroidered the squares.  This is a Brenda Riddle pattern and the fabrics were by Lecien.

I did a stitch in the ditch around the rows with small squares and put an "X" in each square.

Then, I did a small meander around the dresses.  This ended up making the dresses "pop out".

The nice thing about the meander stitch, is you can turn your quilt upside down and it won't matter!

Sooo, when I grow up, I want to be a long arm quilter and do wonderful quilting like Judy Madsen of Green Fairy Quilts, and Jenny Pedigo of Sew Kind of Wonderful.

I took a Craftsy class on free motion quilting and this is my stab at a flower using echo type of stitching.

The finished quilt.

I wanted to sew the binding on by machine.  While it does not look bad, I think it is worth hand sewing the binding on!  It just looks so much nicer!

Well, the next project is a few quilted baby bibs and a self-binding receiving blanket for a baby shower I will be going to on Saturday.

Happy Sewing!  Hope to be back soon. . .

2015

The last two months have been quite busy for me!  I managed to make 14 Christmas Stockings with #15 almost complete (I know, it's January 18th).  #15 was something I wanted to try and then will send to my sister for our business, CaDi Corners.

Once those were done, I put together a baby quilt for a young couple in our church who had their baby a bit prematurely earlier in the year.  Here's a photo  (made with Lily and Will the green and browns):

Not the greatest photo.  The quilting was all cross hatching and I used a pretty green thread.  It looks awesome in person!

 I finished up a quilt my friend Kim, and I had started a couple of years ago.  I saw a photo of hers completed and hanging on her wall in a Christmas picture she had sent - I think two years ago.  I have had the top done, but needed to get it quilted, bound, and hung up!  When we decided to do this quilt, we had seen the photo in a magazine and thought it would be neat to do double blocks and share.  So, here are some photos of the finished project:

I love to look at the quilting from the back.  Every other block has a snowflake pattern my sister digitized for me.  Those blocks were all done on my embroidery machine.  The rest were done free motion.

This is the quilt hanging on my wall.  Guess I need to work on spacing the clips better to have the "hang" look right   :)

 

 

I had done some mending and brought my "baby" in for a tune up and cleaning.  I dropped my machine off on a Saturday knowing I was traveling for work the whole next week.  They said it would be done in a week.  Well, on MONDAY, I received a call saying my machine was ready.  Boy, was I shocked. So of course, as soon as I landed in Phoenix on Friday, I got my car and went to the sewing machine shop to get my girl!!!! 

My goal for this year is to FINISH PROJECTS and LEARN HOW TO FREE MOTION QUILT BETTER WITH MY DIAMOND DELUXE!!!  As much as I would love to have a long arm quilting machine, it just isn't in the plan for quite a while.  Why not figure out how to do all those marvelous things with the machine that I have???!!!!

 

On the family news side of things, I have another daughter (Megan) getting married this year!  YAY!  Looks like a June wedding (It will be hot here).  Kimera graduated with her AA in English Literature.  YIPPEE!!!!  Louie had his gallbladder out before Christmas and was sanding down our picnic table the next day (ugh!  He just would not listen to me to take it easy!  Besides that, with all the surgeries I have had, he made me look like a total wuss with his overactive-ness after his!)

 

I hope to be a little more organized and blog regularly this year ALL YEAR!

 

My current project is a quick little baby quilt.  I saw one made up like this in a local quilt store a while ago and thought - No reason why I can't do one!  I will post photos later in the week when I am done.  I will also try to get some photos of the Christmas stockings posted too!

 

Projects to do by the end of the month:

1.  Finish making masks for the grandkids for Valentines day

2.  Put together a bag with some of the fabric CaDi Corners purchased

3.  The little quilt mentioned above

 

Projects for February:

1.  Husband's friend at work is having a little girl and he asked me to make some of my cute little quilted infant bibs for them  -  I will most likely do 4.

2.  Daughter has been asking me to make Gabe a backpack (he is 2)

 

 

BIG PROJECT TO COMPLETE THIS YEAR  -  NICK AND KATHRYN'S QUILT!!!

 

Now for those of you who read somewhat regularly, I am asking you to keep on me so that I can get it done.  I have decided this will be the last quilt that I will pay someone to longarm.  I want a custom quilting job done on this.  I also would like to have it all completed before Megan's wedding as Nick and Kathryn will be coming out for that!

 

Well, enough for now!  I hope you all have a wonderful week!  Please feel free to leave comments AND be sure to visit CadiCorners.com!