Wash-a, wash-a, wash-aaaa

To wash or not to wash, that is the question......

I started quilting in 2000. I had made a few patchwork baby quilts and a tree skirt here and there but 2000 was my first class and the use of a rotary cutter. At the time, I was told to 'wash your fabric' so everything that has come into my house and into the sewing room, went into the washer first. Yes, it's a pain in the butt to iron fabric before getting started but I have never had any surprises with my finished quilts, totes or craft project.

This big pile is from many shop hops and quilt shop visits and even some gifts from Christmas and my birthday. I honestly don't have any room in my bins so I think that's why I hadn't done anything with it yet. I dread the washing but in opening up each of these pieces of fabric, I can't believe the difference in the quality of quilt-shop-quality fabric! You probably all know how silky Moda fabric feels, right? (I'm making the assumption that a quilter or two reads this.) :o) Well, the difference between the feel of the fabric and the openness of the weave really surprised me. And since i don't want to mix washed with unwashed fabrics in my stash, I'll keep washa, washa, washaaaaa-ing. :o)

That pile is the closest thing to sewing that I've done. It seems like by the time I'm finally done with everything else I've got going, it's 9:30 p.m. already. It felt good to touch fabric! :o) After making my 'pile', I took these blocks off the design wall, just as I said I (probably) would. I can't start them right now. Too many other irons in the fire. And I still have these waiting on me. And some bags for the bridal party and meet with photographers and..... :o)

Sew and Gather

I have been sewing the last few nights after work but I haven't been making pretty quilt blocks or finishing one of my many ufo's. The sewing I've been doing is the kind I don't like to do.....mending and 'need to' sewing. My youngest bought a couple of tops that were too long but they were 'such a good deal', she bought them and asked me to hem them up. That was two months ago! Hey, we had holiday happenings!! She should've known better. lol

The sewing I did last night was for the office I work at. There are small windows above the doors in the building and at around 3:30-4:00, the sun shines right through the window, into a mirror and in my boss's eyes. Now, we could've just moved the mirror but it gives the boss a straight shot to the door coming into the office and if I'm not here, she can at least see if the boogy man is coming in to get her. hehe So, I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond for some other office things and could not find anything for the size window we have, 16" x 35". I thought maybe I could buy a valance to stick up there but they had few to choose from. They did have a clearance rack though and I found a tab-top panel, about 54" x 81". I bought two tension rods and the panel for $4.99 and made a little curtain. Not much in the "looks" department but it does the trick. The boss is happy and now everybody is happy. (I'm the only other one that works here so that didn't take much!) LOL

And with all the snow storms I've seen on the news the last few nights, I thought I would share this picture too. Looking out the office door. I don't usually have the door open because it's very noisy. We have a bus depot right outside the door and a little farther is the Amtrak train station. Between buses and trains, it's not exactly 'phone friendly'. And if you look really hard, you can see Newport Beach! LOL.....okay, that's a lie but it is that direction and if you drove about 45 minutes, then you'd see it. Such a comedian today. hehehehe

My sister Isabel and I are take a class at Road to California next week. It's a Bonnie Hunter class of Quiltville.com called Jared Takes a Wife. Isabel and I have both been quilting for a while and we both "collect" fabric. She is using some Robyn Pandolph from her stash that she was going to use on another project. I am going to use this Moda fabric called Cinnamon Stars. It was out, gee I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I was going to make a quilt from Jodi Barrows but couldn't get that ol' square in a square technique so I'm a Jodi Barrows drop out. So the fabric went in a bag for 'another day' and well, 'another day' is next week and I'm going to use it for this class.

I'll use the reds for the bigger star points and maybe these golds and yellows for the smaller star points of the block. I'm still playing with the design in EQ7.

It looks pretty good together. I also found some fq's from Fig Tree that I've had sitting for-ever!!

I just have to figure out if I want to pull in the green or maybe use a chocolate brown. I've got to decide soon because I have to pre-cut my fabrics for the class. Good thing my 'mending' is done!! :o)

My sister LOVES me!

And I love her too. (I'll tell you why in a minute) lol She has a B-I-G birthday to celebrate and she wanted to go to Disneyland. She hadn't been then in years so that's what she asked for. Her Birthday wish came true as her boys, hubby, DIL and "me" joined her on Saturday. I had a connection and was able to get us all in for free. Woohoo! Good thing cuz we needed money to pay for the expensive food! :o) It was blue skies and just a tad warm but not too hot. It was a great day to celebrate with family at the Happiest Place on Earth!

And as if it was MY birthday or something, my sissy brought me a bag full of fabric when she came over! Woooo----hooooooo! She had two bins of Civil War fabrics and shirtings. She isn't that found of them anymore and wanted to cut down her stash. And just last week she met a woman in an applique class who was making a Dear Jane quilt. And supposedly, if you're making a DJ, you shouldn't repeat any fabrics so Isabel, aka, The Giver (lol), went through her bins and split her fabrics in three piles. If it was a yard, I got a half and she kept a fat quarter and gave the other lady a fq. If it was smaller, she just cut it in three but I didn't have many small pieces in my stack. As you can imagine, the woman was ecstatic as was I!! I've got to come up with a project for this stack of fabrics. It's delicious!

She also brought me a roll of batting. We decided to split a roll because we both have so many quilts to finish. What a decision that was! There are so many types of batting out there. I had purchased a roll of Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 a couple of years ago and it worked fine but we thought we'd try a roll of Dream Cotton. We finally decided on the Blend and we each got 15 yards. It feels dreamy and soft and I think I'm going to like working with that.

My daughter came over on Sunday and worked on some projects that were cute as can be so I'll go load those and share those pictures with you soon. Maybe even later today! :o)

H - E - L - P!!!!!!!!!

Oh my goodness, is anyone else buried.....in projects, in fabric, in life???

Okay, it's really not that bad but sometimes that's how I feel (and how I look). This is me on the floor in my sewing room. (The bins of fabric in the closet were probably a hint that I wasn't in the kitchen, eh? lol)

We are doing a UFO Challenge on our Yahoo group site, Backporch Friends. We've done it the last few years and it's helped several of us "collectors" to get at least a few UFO's done from our vast list of projects. At the first of the year we list 15 projects that we would like to get done. But first, you have to FIND your 15 projects. As you can see from the photo, I did find them. They were buried in bins, bags, the closet, the spare room, under the sewing table. I've got my list made of mostly tops that need to be quilted. There are a couple of projects that need borders but mostly they are "ready to quilt" projects. And here they are:

1. Christmas Trip Around the World - probably my oldest project from before I was a "real" quilter
2. Christmas Snowman flannel top - kit from Orange County Quilt Guild show 2009
3. Cozy Cottage Charmer - charm pack from Cozy Cottage, simple on-point setting
4. Delectable Mountains 30's - from a swap on Sew Many Swaps?
5. Birthday Table Runner - pattern I bought a few years ago. Half way through with satin stitching.
6. Richard's baseball quilt - retreat mystery. Quilt aka/Sasquatch Quilt :o)
7. Star Studded quilt - from class too many years ago
8. Bread & Butter quilt - yellow and white kaliedescope blocks, BPF swap.
9. Floral BOM - tops been done for a couple of years. Can't decide on quilting
10. Batik BOM - ditto from above
11. Red Pinwheels - top has been together for too long waiting for quilting. It's JUST pinwheels!
12. 30's four patch wall hanging - needs a border and maybe the "A" word around it.
13. Neens's Table Runner - needs to be quilted
14. June Lake wall hanging - snowballs and nine patches. I "might" attempt to hand quilt this one but I'd like to finish it before I'm 80 years old! LOL
15. Fruit Mystery quilt - from CA retreat

Do me a favor. In about two weeks, stop by and ask me if I've done anything yet? Thanks! :o)

Belated Happy New Year!

I hope you had a nice New Year's Eve and New Year's holiday. We had some friends over to play games NYE and then headed downtown Fullerton, where they close off the streets and have a variety of things going on like train rides for the kiddies, bands, food booths, etc. It's called "First Night in Fullerton" and it's got a nice fireworks display at midnight. This is a picture off my camera.

This picture is from the Fullerton city website. It's quite a crowd that shows up.

On the sewing front, I laid these charms on my design wall just to have something to look at. My quilt projects and tops are all buried from stacking stuff up for the holidays. So right now, I'll leave those on the wall for inspiration while I working on some valances for my daughter. The charms will probably be a quilt gift for a friend. I mixed two Moda charm packs called Cotton Blossoms and Wuthering Heights. I didn't know if they would look together but I was pleasantly surprised.

Off to sew while I watch my new movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. :o)

Lil' Pink Riding Hood

I wanted to check-in to avoid getting mail from no-blog Brenda. Don't you think it's nervy for someone who doesn't blog to complain when you get crazy busy and don't do any posts for a while? LOL

This is something I should've posted about back in May when I got this adorable fabric. My daughter Kelley (who has been so busy with life lately, that she hasn't blogged in a month),
gave me a yard of each of these fabrics for Mother's Day. Yup, back in May. She drew them and sent over to Spoonflower to print.

I thought I blogged about it before but couldn't find the post! Being over 50 isn't pretty girls! :o)
Spoonflower is a site that you can submit a design to print on Kona fabric for a mere $18.00 a yard. Yeah, it's crazy expensive but I LOVE that I have fabric of my very own that my daughter drew for me. She "allowed" my sister Isabel, who is her #2 fan behind me, to order some too.
The reason Lil' Red is pink is there was a problem with the printing. The re-ran it for us and I got another yard (free of charge) in orange. When Kelley pointed out it STILL wasn't right, I got Lil' Red in red but she lost most of her details on her outfit. It's okay though. I'm just trying to decide what to make with it. Do I do a tote, or a wallet, or a quilt???? Decisions, decisions. I'm just going to hang onto it until it speaks to me. I did load up the pieces in EQ6 and played with some block layouts but I don't want to cut it up too small so I will play some more.
Do you have some artistic ability and some extra cash lying around? :o) If so, go check out Spoonflower. There are some very creative people in our little world.

Fabric shopping...again!

Two of my sisters didn't get a chance to see Wicked when it was in Hollywood at the Pantages Theatre so when they found out it was in San Diego, they got on the ball to get tickets. My younger sister lives in San Diego and my mom lives with her. So the plans were on....with my oldest sister, Isabel, my youngest sister Virginia, and my mom. We also had two adopted sisters go with us, my friend Sherrie and Virgie's friend, Rachel. But before we even got to San Diego, Sherrie, Isabel and I were off for a little bit of a shop hop.

Sherrie was on a trip when the CA Quilter's Run was happening and my sister wasn't able to go so we hit some shops that I had gone to on the Run in July. Our first stop was this cute shop in Riverside, Stars & Scraps.

When I was there the last time, I only had my iphone so the pictures I posted were blurry. These are much better. It's such a cute shop with great samples all over.

I controlled myself pretty good here, since I had already done some shopping here just last month. They had an adorable little Christmas tree skirt for a mini tree. I have several Christmas trees so I will need several little tree skirts. Add that to my list of a billion projects!!!

Then we were off to Temecula to Quilter's Coop in a quaint downtown area full of shops and restaurants. It's always buzzing downtown.

This new location (I think they moved about a year ago) is open and spread out. So many great fabric collections. This side of the cutting table is all civil war. Yummm!

The other side of the room is wool, stitcheries, and more fabric collections. The shop continues to the back which is bigger than this front section. So much fun stuff.

From here we went to The Fat Quarter shop in Vista and then a little shop in Chula Vista. We got to my sister's place with time to visit for a few hours before the play. I have a few pictures of our trip to the theatre. I'll share those tomorrow. I'm still catching up on things around the house and sleep!

I made a wallet!

My daughter Kelley wanted to make a wallet. My friend Sherrie made one from a pattern she bought and Kelley really liked it so we borrowed the pattern. Last week at TNT (Thursday Night Therapy), Kelley, my friend Neena and I cut one out and started making one. I really wasn't going to make one but I thought I could just work along with the girls if I made one too.
So this is my finished wallet. I like it but I'm not happy with how the binding went on. I ended up stitching it down with the machine and I think it looks tacky. I might take it out and tack it down by hand. I'll figure that out after I decide what I'm doing with it.

The light blue fabric with the kids faces has little birdies on their heads. Kelley REALLY wanted this fabric for her birthday in May. I bought it for her from Spoonflower. This fabric has to be given for something special like a birthday because it's custom designed and printed and is $18.00 a yard. Their site says something about beta printing and done one yard at a time or some nonesense. The cool thing is, anyone can design a fabric and have it printed. You could do a custom fabric for some special occasion and I think that's pretty cool. I just don't like that price. lol Anyway, Kelley shared her fabric so I used it with some brown and made the wallet. We couldn't tell from the pattern pieces what was what. You'd think after years of sewing, I could figure it out but I had distractions. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :o) I would've liked to put the blue on the outside but it's okay. It will stay cleaner this way.
This is the inside of the wallet with a velcro pouch and a zippered change pocket.

And there are two sides for credit cards.....for fabric shopping, of course!!!

The girls are coming back over tonight to finish their wallets. I'll try to remember to take pictures of theirs too!