Day 59 - Baby Quilt Completed

Yup, finished the hand sewn side of the binding today!  Technically not completed until it has a label on the back, but I will work on that soon.  Time to do the "happy it is done" dance!

Speaking of handmade, I recieved a wonderful handmade gift today from Kelly.  She made all 21 of my John Denver records into CD's.  It is so amazing that it made me cry.  Wow.  No words.

Day 58 - Yo Yo's

Drove up to Duluth to celebrate family birthdays, including mine which was today!  Decided to do a simple craft in the car and began making small yo yo's.  It was a beautiful drive and I will share a couple more photos of gifts tomorrow..I was working out of the brown, black and white scrap drawer...

An enthusiastic party goer.

I mentioned that I would add a photo and because this is a "crafting" blog I wanted to share this unbelieveable hand crafted gift that I recieved from my Dad.  It is a hand turned lamp with the base made of walnut and oak.  The oak is from a tree that belonged to him.  The shade is actually embroidered in cream but doesn't show up in the photo.  The workmanship is ablsolutely gorgeous.  Wow.  What a treasure.

Day 57 - Baby Quilt Binding (again)

Didn't end up with a lot of time to work tonight but did a bit more on the hand sewing on the backside of the baby quilt binding.  I am hoping that very soon we will enjoy a photo of the finished quilt as I recieved a baby anouncement from the friend who the quilt is for!

So just for fun I took a photo of each of the drawers of my scrap fabrics:

Pink and red

Purple and blue

Black, brown and white

Green and yellow

These drawers were much fuller before I cut all of those strips for strip quilts.  I also want to make a bunch of random yo-yo's from some of these scrap fabrics...

Day 56 - Planning

I met over dinner at Panera Bread tonight with my dear quilting friend Lois.  Our planning included some final decision making on what pattern we will use on our Jelly Roll quilts.  We looked at a book of quilts by Kaffe Fassett and were amazed at the colors and patterns that were put together and the awsome affects in the finished quilts.  We studied the pattern we choose and decided that we needed to do some planning on additional fabrics for 3 borders on the front of the quilt.  An outing is planned next weekend to brose 2 quilting shops in the north metro area.

This is a couple of books on jelly roll quilts, Lois' jelly roll and a free online pattern.

Day 55 Part Two

This morning I got the photo uploaded of the part of the baby quilt binding that has been completed...

Day 55 - ARRRAGH.....

Once again I am not able to get my photo online tonight.  I don't know what is wrong!  I worked on the backside of the baby quilt binding which  is completely handsewn and have it about half done.  This is frustrating.

Day 54 - Cutting and Creative Talk....

I think I have finished the cutting (squaring up) of all of the fabric from church.  I have added some of mine to the stack too.  I think I will try and sew up the 2 little stacks in front that are flannel into some baby quilts for missions...here are the completed blocks.

Onto an Archivers evening with my friend.  How can you not feel creative in this kind of a workshop?

We talked about this antique piece of embroidery, this book of Soul Mate Dolls (that I am going to suggest working with my Craft Group) and creative studio spaces with ideas from the current Where Women Create publication.  It was a great 2 hours of sharing.

Day 53 - Part Two....

So fresh start this morning, put in the memory card and voila! Everything is working again as it should be!!!!
I did get a message right before I stopped last night that said that my HP Photosmart Essential has stopped working correctly and Windows will close the program and notify me if a solution is available.  Here goes nothing.....

The red and black quilt blocks for a missions quilt for church.

Part one of the binding sewn on the baby quilt!

Day 53 - Frustrating...

I have just worked for an hour and my photos will not download.  I have no other ideas as to what to do.  It is as if my memory card isn't even in the computer!! Nothing is registering to even download.  I did an online chat with "Vincent" at Microsoft and he said it was the memory cards problem and not the computer.  I told him I had inserted a second card and it was the same with that one.  It has worked fine for 52 days and today- nothing.  I don't know what to do...

I did cut some black and red blocks for church quilts and got the first side of the binding sewn onto the baby quilt....

Day 52 - Tying and Cutting

Seems as if my work today was not that interesting for Pete...

She relaxed while I worked....

Trimmed up some more blocks out of the church mess of poorly cut blocks...

Decided to tie the baby quilt (and got it done)...

Then trimmed the quilt and got it pinned for the binding!

A good day of accomplishing much!

Day 51 - Cutting and Pinning

A whole, quiet Saturday to work...I got carried away with the cutting of more strips from the scrap drawers!  It was fun and a couple of the drawers have some more space.  I also got the baby quilt pinned and ready to be quilted which I think I will try to do by machine.

The baby quilt all pinned up and ready to be quilted.

This is the nice, full basket of strips ready to be made into strip blocks for a quilt!

Day 50 - Cutting

Another Friday night and Pete and I just did some cutting of strips from the scrap fabric drawers which are overflowing.  I have done some reading on strip quilting and decided to get a stash of strips going to work on at a later date.  This looks like a good use for some of the larger scraps that have accumulated.  Pete didn't do much of the work but was good company as usual.

Day 49 - Cutting Felt/Craft Group

Tonight was my monthly craft group meeting.  We have met for 20 years (I think).  It is 4 of us and this is what I worked on tonight.  Finished cutting out all of the flowers and stars for a project out of wool felt.

My friend Lois was working on knitting a little baby cap...

My friend Carol is working on her fall tree book....

and my friend Verna shared a Christmas album that she had put together.

It's after midnight and my brake light and ABS sign on the dashboard was on when I went to go home tonight so who knows what is going on with the car....

Day 48 - Cutting Quilt Blocks

Continued the process of re cutting these blocks for church..  It feels like a never ending project but tonight did clean up some more of it.  Here is what I did tonight.

Day 47 - Cutting Felt

So I hit the wall today and had no ambition tonight when I got home from work about 7:30.  Then I get a call from my dear Archivers friend and I had forgotten that it was a meeting/working night for us there!  Ok, we should be even then because there was one night that she forgot too...bummer.  Would have been good for me feeling the way I do.  Anyway, decided that a change might do me good.  So I cut 64 of these tiny leaves out of wool felt and started to cut the flowers and I also have to cut 64 of them...

I saw I had gotten my feet in the last photo then I looked around the chaos of this room...

Remember gum paper chains???  Well stroll down memory lane and look at this- I draped it over my box of "little ideas".

Day 46 - Cutting Blocks

I have so much fabric here and there that I decided to cut more blocks for church just to try

and get back into some kind of organization! 

 So the photo is what I trimmed up into blocks tonight.  There are 3 different sizes.
These are all flannel blocks.

My excitement for the day is that my UPS package arrived with the first jelly roll that I have ever purchased! The fabric line is a Mary Engelbreit and it is called Attitude Girls. 

 I also purchased a yard of one of the fabrics to use as a border on the quilt project that

a good friend and I are going to work on together using a jelly roll.  Aren't they lovely fabrics?

Day 45 - Cutting on Valentines Day

Spent about 4 hours cutting blocks for church quilts. Yesterday I took home a huge miscellaneous bag of fabric. One of the things inside were blocks cut completely unevenly so I have been working on cutting them to 8" squares for mission quilts.  I made it about halfway through the mess...

This is some of what I still have to go through and recut into even blocks....

Basement/studio update: We now have 2 new windows in the basement!!!

It was Valentine Day today. Wonderful church service followed by a Caribou Chi Latte,

 lunch by candlelight, lots of good work this afternoon, candlelight dinner, some more work,

 pink roses and Valentine cookies.  A little snow fell during the day. 

 It was a perfect Sunday.

Day 44 - Cutting Quilt Blocks

Worked at church with the quilters this morning.  Cut lots of blocks for quilts and here is my photo.

I have realized too that the rest of my pincushions are unreachable in the little sewing room while the basement is under construction...so we will have to think of something else to share for the time being and come back to them later....

Well, look who I spotted...napping as usual...

This looks like a contented kitten...

Day 43 - Quilt Baby

Well, managed to get two borders on tonight.  First is a 1 inch yellow border and the second is a 6 inch stripe...need to trim and iron...

And the pincushion for the day is a little Mary Engelbreit one!

Fridays truly are the best day of the weekend!!!

Day 42 - Card Collaging

It was an Archivers evening with a wonderful friend.  We visited a lot and I worked on 3 Valentine cards and a thank you card.  It was relaxing and fun!

 Here is the thank you card...

Here are the Valentine cards....

And the pincushion for tonight is:

I actually have two of these and they are both in constant use!  I sold these at my gift shop in Butte, Montana years ago.  The base is shaker made wood with a sturdy cotton top. They are generous in size and remain a touchstone to my life in the mountains....