Catching Up!

I've been keeping busy since I last posted a few months ago.  I would definitely post more often if I could do so on my iphone or ipad... the downloading of photos taken on my iphone from the cloud to my laptop is a royal pain. Anyway, my younger son and his wife are expecting their second child, our second grandchild the first week of August.  And this is the first girl baby in my family in years- almost generations!!  I am BEYOND excited for our family of males to get a little injection of ESTROGEN!!  So, I've been making some little charm pack utility baby quilts for her!!

I take a charm pack with 42 five inch squares and arrange them in a 6 by 7 layout.

Sometimes, I add a bit of fusible machine applique in one of the corners for a bit of whimsy!

Although I don't think my daughter-in-law is big on pink, I've been waiting FOREVER to sew quilts for a girl!!  

So pink and purple is happening!! 

My son and his wife found lots of uses for these smaller baby quilts, so I hope these will get used allot, too!!

So you can see they are not ALL pink!!  LOL!!

Grandson Neal is excited about getting a new baby sister!!

He is growing up so fast!!

 He is into trucks and baseball!  And we are into HIM!!  

Sooooo, what are you into these days?

February Already!!

As I write this, my hubby and I are watching the original Ben Hur movie from 1959.  One of my favorite Bible type movies.  Do you like to watch the old epic movies?
My husband and I had just gotten over a bout of bronchitis and sinus infections when he brought home new germs from his office!  Ugh!  Now we are both coughing and sneezing again!!  Yuck!

I have a few projects I can show you and many which are gifts, that I can't yet!!  I made up a very old fabric panel into a little Christmas tree quilt that my grandson Neal can decorate and undecorate and redecorate. 

We put it up on the end of a lower kitchen cabinet with command strip hooks.  I think he enjoyed playing with it over the Christmas holidays. I had the panel a long time!!

My dear bee friend Linda gave us all cute bee notebook cover kits for Christmas.

I love making little things like this up, in between bigger quilts.  Sometimes, it's so nice how quickly some things can be finished up!!

I bought this kit from Laundry Basket Quilts over a year ago.  I love to put out blue and white quilts in January with my snowman decor.  When I put away my red and green Christmas decor, I am ready for something different, for sure.

I especially love house quilts and find several of mine are in the wintery blue colors that I put out in the winter.  

I put out my snowmen and winter blues in January and keep it out until spring in late March/early April.

I was sooo glad to get this kit on sale, as the pre-fused laser cut applique kits needed for the quilt are quite pricey, and you need three!!

But I am very happy how it turned out!  I cut out and made a few houses each day, so it was a fun project for a little over a week!!

I also took a cool class offered by our local guild chapter on how to use rulers while quilting on a domestic sit down machine.  It was eye opening!!  

I can see possibly using this technique on a wall quilt or table runner, but not on a larger project.  It was very time consuming and tedious, although I'm sure with more use, one would get faster...

Our grandson, Neal, is growing like a weed and talking more every day!!  So cute and smart and curious!!

So, what are you up to these days?  Are you sewing on something wonderful??  Do tell!!

A New Year

There's just something about January... a whole new year stretching out in front of me.  Do you make New Year Resolutions?   I used to, years ago.  Now, I simply think of things I want to accomplish and how to go about getting them done.  And I always do some reorganizing and clearing out/cleaning out.  I really love that part.  So far this new month and year, I've reorganized and cleaned out my kitchen pantry.  I'm surprised at how long it took me and how much out of date food was lurking in there!  Ugh!! I also added a new LED light strip in there that charges via USB.  I added one a few years ago in our coat closet and it is sooooo helpful!
In my sewing room, I had five full old really big - 5" wide, three ring binders full of designs and patterns I saved from 15 years of quilt magazines sitting in my cupboard.  They were so big and heavy and unwieldy with my non-existent hand grip, that I never dug them out and used them.  My friend Suzanne told me she took all her big binders and broke them out and switched them out into smaller ones.  GREAT IDEA!!!  I got a bunch of 1.5" wide binders from Amazon, and spent a few days going through all my old binders and reorganized them into smaller ones that now fit on my open book shelves, where they are in easy reach!!  I threw out over half the stuff I had collected over the years.  Sometimes our likes change over time... haven't you found that to be true with you, too?  Do you reorganize stuff in your home and sewing room in January?
I have some things to share that I made the last bit of 2018!  Most were gifts that I couldn't share before Christmas!  I'm in two bees, so I made some small things for gifts for these dear fiends...and of course, I forgot to take photos of some of them.  But I did take a photo of some little embroidered needle minders...designed by Kathy Schmitz.

I bought an old oak secretary desk that had some water damage on the front to put downstairs in my library. 

I took out all the insides so my featherweight machine would fit in it. Now, if I want to sew downstairs,  I can!!  

I made a wool stitchery for the slant front to cover the water damage and am so pleased how it turned out!

I made a fun stoplight quilt, from an old jelly roll. It was quick to cut and sew together!!  I named it Italian Flower Market.  I would definitely make this design again! As I HATE the cutting part of quilting, this was a breeze with precut strips!!

I finally made the big Moda Swell Santa panel quilt.

I used a jelly roll cut into rail fence strips for the background, and put fusible around the edge of the Santa applique then stitched the edges with black zigzag stitches.  I free motion quilted it on my Bernina 790.  It was fun to make!!  I gave it to my grandson, Neal, for Christmas.  He seems to like it!!  It's a good place to play with his trucks!!

Speaking of Neal, we were blessed to watch him a few times for my son and his wife over the holidays.  He is such a delight in every way!  Cute and smart and kind!  It's so wonderful to see your grown children bringing up their own children the best way possible!

So, what did you all do these last few weeks?  Hope your Christmas was the best ever!!