Baby Repeat

I whipped up a couple more baby quilts with the leftover fabric from the quilt I made a few weeks ago for our friends and listed them for sale on Etsy tonight.

Sold - Yay!

Buy me!

Doilies as Art

I found Moonstitches blog the other day and I was surprised how much I loved the doilies. The picture is so neat with all the pins sticking out. Very interesting. Makes me want to try it.

Sloooooooooow Motion

So this is what I worked on all weekend. First of all, I don't understand how to hand quilt properly. I think I know how its meant to be done but I can't seem to do it right. So I stab stitch. I've been working on this quilt for ages, maybe 3 years? I can't remember. I was bored out of my mind this weekend so this is almost all I did and I still haven't even finished this block. It is #12 out of 20. Eek. I think I shall be old and gray when it is finished. I don't have nearly enough patience for this, me thinks.

NQA Photos

I just found Sophie Junction's NQA photos on Flickr. There are 580 pics. Check 'em out.

In Black and White

I've developed a sudden and very serious obsession overnight. I must have a black and white quilt. Now I have to decide what exactly it should look like. Yikes. I think is what happens when I have too much free time on my hands.

The dish

Yay! I bought dishes. I know, it sounds very exciting, doesn't it? I found these a little bit ago and simply had to have them. They're so pretty and they will mix in with anything. They'd look awful nice on a china hutch if I had one, which I don't, but a girl can dream, can't she?

They can be had at Amazon.

Miscellaneous Nothings

I'm bored. My husband is at work and has scheduled extra work for 3 days in a row after his shift, which will be helpful since I've made a list of all the things that we want to buy/do in the next few months and its crazy long. But dang if it don't make the weekend long!

There's been nothing new on buying the house. Its an estate sale and there's some paperwork that has to be done regarding the will before we can even sign a sales agreement. Its been 3 weeks already and I'm impatient! But hopefully it will be done soon and we can finally say that we've bought a house! We've been saving for ages and have a good stash for this, but wow, its going to disappear in an even bigger hurry than I expected! We've picked out the grill, couch and an entertainment center that we want. I still need to pick out an oven. We're hoping to rip up the carpet and get the hardwood floors refinished and get all kinds of painting done before we have to be out of our apartment at the end of August. I haven't packed a thing here because I'm still worried that it will fall through somehow and it will have been a waste of time.

So here's a shop I found on someone else's blog the other day. I love this and this, especially, but also this.

I'm actually tempted to start a new quilt, but I think I shall have to talk myself into finishing a project or two first. Just have to decide which one I want to tackle.

Yo Yo Quilt is Finito

And here it is. . . nothing came loose in the wash. I was afraid it might, but it looks lovely.

Oh, and if anyone should happen to want one like it, I'd suggest here at Gooseberry Patch. Now that I've finished one, I'd say $150 is a bargain if you consider the time involved. Making it was worth the experience & entertainment for me, but I wouldn't part with mine for that much.

Violas

I've finished my yo yo quilt and all you get is this sweet little pic. It is finished after a marathon weekend of sewing (for lack of anything else to do, really) and I'm tired. We were at my parents again today so I sewed the last few on during the drive up. I washed it in Mom's machine, since she has one of those front loaders (no agitator) and I thought it might be easier on the quilt. I'll share pictures tomorrow. I'm going to go to bed now.

Yo-Yos Ad Naseum

I'm in a bit of a yo-yo sewing frenzy. I've now got on 254 of the little buggers, meaning only 146 to go! Hopefully I haven't lost any of the dragging them all about.

Another Yo yo Quilt

We've spent the last couple days furniture shopping and my poor little brain is fried. This is stressful for me for some reason and I feel like I could go lay down and sleep for a couple days.

Today, though, we walked into Ethan Allen and I actually saw a yo-yo quilt on one of the beds. I couldn't believe it! Its black with multi colored yo-yos actually placed next to each other. It looks like they did similar to what I'm doing - adding the yo-yos to a finished quilt. Except theirs were attached with larger running stitches that showed up quite clearly on the back of the quilt and the yo-yos were somewhat smooshy. It was a whopping $699 for the queen! I tried taking a picture of it with my phone and it didn't come out too clearly. The picture on the website is clearer, but its hard to tell that they are yo-yos. Its kinda cool, though. Even if the colors are not really me at all, it was very stricking in a mostly black and white bedroom.

Baby Things

Ta da! Finished baby quilt and blanket for the baby who is still nameless. Just kidding. I'm sure she has a name, but we don't know what it is! He was my husband's roommate for 3 years of college and best man in our wedding. We have them down as "friends" in MySp*ce, but we still don't manage to keep in touch well. How terrible is that? I've been harrassing my husband to e-mail him or call, but haven't had any luck there.

Anyway, on to the quilt . . . in all its soft & wrinkly glory. Its a little girly for me, but its sure cuddly!

Pink & White Striped Binding

Then I also had an irresistable urge to crochet a baby blanket as well, so I did, using Alicia Paulson's Tiramisu Blanket. Its was very easy to make, although I ended up starting over about halfway through and using a hook several sizes bigger than the pattern calls for. Maybe I stitch really tight? I don't know. But it turned out very cute at any rate.

Don't sew your fingers

I stayed up late last night because once I started on the baby quilt, I couldn't stop. Okay, it wasn't that much later than I normally go to bed, but later than I ought to be allowed to operate a sewing machine. I was very nearly finished with it when I realized that I had just stuck the needle through the fingernail on my thumb. It only grazed my finger enough to draw blood, but I almost didn't even feel it. Okay. That scared me. The funny thing was that the machine didn't even hesitate. I just kept going because I only had a few seconds left. Wierd.

Anyway, I put the binding on today, so it is finished, but I want to wash it before I show it to you because I'm not sure I like it as well without washing. The quilting really dominates and you see it almost before the fabrics. So maybe tomorrow.

So here's a picture instead. This is some variety of peony that shoots up in the middle of my tree peony. I suppose I should chop it off, but I only seem to remember that right before it blooms and then I don't want to.

Dinner Napkins and Baby Quilts and Much Sweat

I swear there's something wrong with the air conditioning in this apartment. I keep the shades pulled shut at least until the sun is on the other side of the building and run the air conditioning 24 hrs a day, but last night it never cooled down and today it was about 82 degrees all day. Ugh. I hate sweat, but I can't not sweat in here.

Anyway. I did finish up a top of a small baby quilt that I'm working on for my husband's college roommate's first child. I'm hoping to get that done soon, since she was born a couple months ago. Oops. I'll show it to you in a few days. I just have to scrounge up some batting and then I'll stipple quilt it.

I finished up the quilting on my blue & green quilt on Saturday night and just have to do binding now. I was working on it while watching Planet Earth. Very interesting if you don't mind the occasional stupid science babble. I was having a hard time concentrating on the quilt anyway.

I did some dinner napkins today so I will show them off. Ta da!

Memorial Day

Tree peony

Azalea

Iris

Dad's new toy just for nostalgia's sake

Here are a few images from our weekend. Hope yours was lovely.

Butterflies

I think we might have just agreed to buy our first house! There's not actually a signed sales agreement yet, as it was a For Sale By Owner thing, but we just agreed to buy anyway.

This has taken sooo long for us. We'll have been married for 6 years this summer and we've been wanting to buy for forever, but for various reasons, it never made sense until last summer. So we've been looking for approximately 2 1/2 years now, only seriously for about a year. We've made 3 different offers and looked at a bazillion houses online and in person. I so hope that its over with.

Now on to the other 100 things that have to be done before you actually own the home. Then its on to the 1 million things that need to be done to make it our own.

I hope I can actually sleep tonight. I don't think I will.

Variety

So we spent a long weekend up at Mom and Dad's. That was nice. We don't get many chances to go away together these days with the man's schedule, because he generally works a few hours even on his day off, but he took a night off and managed not to have anything scheduled for his off days. Yeah! It was nice to spend some time with the family.

We picked a good time to go. Mom and Dad's pond has had a leak in it for quite awhile and they had moved all their koi to a temporary holding tank for the winter. They repaired the pond last week and we had the good luck to be there for the transfer of the fish back to their pond. There were so many of them! We counted them and took some pictures of them and measured the biggest ones. The fish are pleased to be back home and are very happy when you come to see them. They all swim over and beg for food.

My husband loooooves the pond and spent the whole time fawning over it and Dad kept telling me that I'm going to have to let the man build a pond. I say we get a house first and furnish it, then perhaps we can argue about what to do with our money next. Besides, he can live vicariously through Dad. We are still looking for a house and have one we're considering, but as usual, there's a catch.

Anyway, another one of my favorite things about going home is actually being outside and enjoying all the flowers and plants. The lilacs were in bloom and so were the crabapples. Lovely smells everywhere. I checked on my tree peony and it has 7 fat buds on it. That may not sound like much, but its slow to come and well worth the wait for them.

I managed to finangle Mom and my husband into helping me with pinning my blue/green king-sized quilt and have finally started quilting it. I finished the top sometime last summer and have had it riding around in the trunk for ages and am just now getting around to quilting it.

I've also been plugging away at sewing on the yo-yos and am happy to report that I now have 120 attached, 280 to go!

Mother's Day

I got the rare chance to go home with my husband to my parents house so we are making a long weekend of it. Yeah! This was my gift to my Mom.

Plum Smoke Ring from Farafield

and candles & tissue paper flowers from me!

Cause she's a frou frou kinda woman.

More treats for me!

I bought another ring for me. Don't know why, but its apparently a new fascination that I have. This one is from Farafield, and it was the Silver Smoke Ring. My husband thinks it looks like a Jolly Rancher.

Slow Progress

I've been working on my yo-yo quilt and its going rather well, but slowly. I'm up to almost 80 sewn on. 320ish to go!

Yo-Yo Quilt Progress

My walking foot had a small piece break off of it awhile ago and it would droop in the back after awhile and create drag. I would just nudge it up and it would be fine for a little longer. I sat down to quilt up the yo-yo quilt Sunday night and it was terrible. So I gave in and bought another one from this eBay shop where I've purchased several other feet from. It arrived Thursday, which isn't bad. I sat down and quilted up the quilt yesterday.

Today, I remembered while I was showering that I hadn't monogrammed the back. I like to do that for quilts that are for me and I can't for the life of me seem to remember before the quilt is quilted the whole way out to the border. So I ripped out one corder and added a monogram. Then I discovered that I had put it down too far, so I had to spend several hours very carefully pulling out the monogram. ERGH! I monogrammed it again and this time, it was perfect.

Then I fixed the border quilting, sewed on the binding and trimmed it up. I love, love, love the binding. Its so cute! I made it slightly wider than I usually do and I really like it. It also seems to be going much more quickly than normal when I am handstitching it to the back. Not sure why - maybe cause its fatter? Or maybe its just the fabrics. I don't know, but its making me happy! So anyway. I've got to finish the binding and then I will start attaching the yo-yo's. Not quite sure how I'm going to do that yet. It could take forever!

But here's a sneak peek of what I've got so far.

Etsy Purchase

I recently "rewarded" myself with the purchase of the Olivier ring from MaryMusic's etsy shop and it arrived today. I was so happy with it, I thought I ought to share. It came with a lovely little robin's egg blue ring box, a postcard from another shop on etsy, and a pair of earrings. Wow. The ring is even prettier in person and I love it.

Highly recommended.

Lots of nothing to say?

I'm afraid I've taken a bit of blog break because I can't think of much to say. I've been dragging my husband outside for a bit of fun any chance I get. The weather has been so lovely and I can't handle sitting inside staring out my window at budding trees and sunshine. We've tried to take up tennis and we have been exploring the bike paths and parks around the city. I intend to keep it up - I'm in desperate need of exercise and have been packing on the pounds lately! He works an odd schedule and quite a bit of it is outside his regular shift, so he'd much rather stay at home some days, but we both need the exercise and its good to do things together. As much as I sometimes dislike living in the city, there are parts that are great and I intend to become familiar with them all!

We've also been house-hunting and that seems to occupy my thoughts. I'm tired of looking and I hope we find the right one soon. Its hard to know what the best decision is and its hardly as if its a minor one! I understand that you're not buying your dream home the first time around, but I'm not one to move much. I'd very much like to stay put for awhile!

We did go to a local quilt show a couple weekends ago and had a look around. I was a bit disappointed. There were some really well-made quilts there with some really great hand stitching. Unfortunately, most people's color choices don't seem to appeal to me. Why do older ladies pick the ugliest prints and colors? Its too bad that there's not more representation there from younger quilters. This is the one picture that I took. Not that it was terribly novel, but I did like it and it was obviously made by someone with younger tastes than all the other quilts at the show!

I have been doing a lot of hand quilting on this quilt and I've started quilting up the quilt that will become my Yo-Yo quilt. The hand quilting is slow so no point in posting pictures of that and so far, the yo-yo quilt is all white, so no point in posting that either. I'll post pictures later when I have something to show.

Smells like happiness

My husband bought me a bouquet of pink lilies last week and they were all still in bud and more and more open every day. The smell always reminds me of our honeymoon. I love that man.

Finished item # 2

I know, its slow in coming, but I've finished something else. Its a set of monogrammed flour sack towels for Mom. I don't know what's taken me so long, but my real job has been occupying my time lately, so I'm going with that for my excuse to myself. I just love this thread color.

Something finished?!

Well, the top is finished. That counts, right? I ripped off the remaining two sides tonight and put them back on. It looks much better. I'm annoyed with myself, though, since its not quite as "perfect" as I expected. Its not really anything big and once its quilted and washed, it shouldn't be very visible. Oh well. There are a lot of pieces and the wovens are very easy to distort.

Toulouse by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company with 3 Sisters Maison de Noel fabric

P.S. I have a second copy of the Toulouse quilt pattern for sale on Etsy

On Pintucks

No, I still haven't actually finished anything. I tried to finish monogramming the last flour sack towel for Mom this afternoon and ran out of thread.

So I decided to try out my new pintuck foot that just arrived in the mail from eBay. I didn't realize that this was done with a double needle (it could be done with a single needle and no special foot, I understand, if you can sew straight and right on the edge of the folded fabric) and was happy to find that I already have a twin needle and the extra spool needed for it. I hooked it all up and threaded it - easy enough - and started to sew. It didn't work right the first time, but that's when I remembered that you need to change the upper thread tension. I bumped it up to 9 and off I went. Its rather neat! After you sew the first one, you just line up the pintuck in one of the grooves and it guides the next one.

This is what my experimental piece looked like (still can't photograph white for the life of me - I need a lightbox set up).

Summer Love

So here's a welcome picture in my inbox today! I love this look!

Its Brocade Home.

A Whole Lotta Nothin

I would post more often if I can actually finished something.

I thought I had finished up a quilt top last week, but the borders are driving me nuts. There's a pieced border and then a solid border. The pieced one was a bit longer than necessary, so I eased it in when adding it to the top and it was fine. But now I have to adjust when adding the solid border and its waaaaay too wavy. I took two off and tried putting them back on and then I lost track of which ones I had done. Apparently I didn't do them well enough or I would be able to tell, wouldn't I? Ergh.

I was bored a few days ago, so I found a crocheted hat pattern and thought I would try it as a quick distraction. Um. It looks really stupid. My gauge must be off. So I didn't finish it either.

I have a set of flour sack towels to monogram for my Mom and for some reason, I've been putting that off too. I did finally do one today. 2 more to go!

I put off trying to speckle the eggs for Mom until after midnight. My husband turned out to be better at that then I was, but that really could have used some better technique.

Oh well. I think work has been driving me nuts lately and it is cramping my style on the creative stuff. Too many little things taking up too much brain space, I guess! Hopefully this weekend will be better!

Here's a lovely spring picture to make up for the lousy post and lack of accomplishment. Yesterday was 79 degrees and tonight it is snowing. Go figure. This is spring in Pittsburgh.

Spring 2006 at Phipps

Robin's Eggs?

I had mentioned a few days ago about looking for natural looking fake eggs and I've still not had any success. Back in the fall, I found a bunch of white egg cups for super-cheap at Ikea and bought a bunch for my mom & me. I've been keeping hers to give her for her birthday or for Mother's Day or something, but I thought I would find some pretty eggs to put in them as well. So I've given up. I'm too cheap to pay for blown eggs on eBay, even though there are some very pretty ones like these. So today I decided that I was going to blow my own regular eggs and paint them.

I recruited my poor husband to help. He loves when I do this, of course! But I only needed eight eggs and I'd already done a couple myself a few nights ago. I'm running out of time, so I thought we'd just do six more and that wouldn't be that hard. Oh my word - I hate blowing eggs! It hurts my ears. I didn't want to make the holes too large so that they couldn't be covered up, but sheesh. My husband was a lousy egg blower. If you ask me, I think its just that the man can't possibly allow himself to be capable at such a stupid thing as egg-blowing. But I digress. He blew all of one, while I proceeded to blow 5 and break 2 more. So we have lots of eggs in the fridge and I guess we'll have to make omelets or a quiche or something this week.

So then I had to make a quick trip to the stupid WalMart near us and see if they would have the right color paint. Amazing! They actually did! I sponge painted them all and they turned out rather cute. I also got some grayish brown paint to try to speckle them with, but I haven't done that yet. Perhaps tomorrow. For now, I at least have some pretty eggs. To be honest, I'd rather stick them in an apothecary jar with some moss or something, but the egg cups are alright.