Friday, December 30, 2011

A Super Christmas

So right before Christmas, whilst I was sewing away on Christmas projects, my machine broke. Of course I panicked, so my husband fed me my own words. Over the summer when his bicycle ended up in the shop for the second time, I convinced him to buy a back up bike. He basically used the same reasoning I used to convince him to make the investment in another bike to buy another sewing machine.


I went into the machine shop expecting to buy a machine in a similar class as what I have but they don't make my machine anymore. And...they were having a great sale on the upgrade aka "dream machine." Not only was it on sale, but the table was free! I couldn't pass it up. The machine is amazing! It has a thread cutter, a second motor to wind bobbins without having to unthread your machine, a knee presser foot lift, an attached walking foot an alphabet (upper and lowercase letters), a huge arm space...I could go on and on. I think I am going to actually ENJOY quilting on this machine. It has been rather cumbersome on my smaller machine but with all the space and the table, it's going to be great!!!

To top it all off, I was nerdily telling my mom how I was going to use my Christmas money to buy a cordless iron and she told me she got a free iron with her vacuum a few years back that she'd give me to try. Turns out, it has a cordless option!! AHHHHH! A free cordless iron for me! A Merry Christmas indeed.


As far as progress on projects goes, I am zipping along on my Seuss quilt and now it's Bee time! I got my fabric for my international Bee and I am hosting my local Bee this month. I got all of my fabric cut and sorted today, and even made my test block. Tomorrow I will make my international Bee block and get that in the mail next week. Certainly feeling good about my progress and super energized about future projects.


Looking forward to even more quilting in the new year. Happy New Year to you all!

Monday, December 19, 2011

A Finished Quilt

I finished my Charmed Prints Quilt this weekend. It turned out splendidly! I am so glad I went with the gingham and I love the framing of these charms. They really stand out nicely.


I pieced the back just a little bit. I love how the red binding looks on both the blue and yellow gingham.


Here is a close up of the quilting. I did some dense straight line quilting on the borders, in the middle and around some of the feature blocks.


This look shows how nicely the flange binding turned out. Definitely glad I used the solid mustard. And I also really love the red gingham binding.


Glad to have this done in time for the drawing. I'm linking up with the Charmed Prints QAL.
Gen X Quilters

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

WIP, on my own



Whilst Lee is taking a well deserved blogging break, I'm following suit with my other bloggy friends and still doing a WIP Wednesday.

And I've been working on lots!!

I have four starry blocks done for my Seuss Quilt. This project is on hold for a bit.


Here is a sneak peak at my almost-finished Charmed Prints QAL quilt. Love, love, love it! The flange binding is super cool although I wish I could sew straighter sometimes. You can see where I stitched it down in a few places. This pic also gives you a feel for how I quilted this, dense straight lines which I think nicely complements the stripey nature of gingham. It will be done by Tuesday so it will be eligible for prizes, yay!

I've also started working on these sweats for Christmas presents from the "Sewing for Boys" book. They are WAY larger than the size they say they are for. These are a 2/3 but they will fit my size 4 toddler. Even though you don't need to with jersey, I am going to put hems on too. Overall sewing with knit fabric was good. I used a zig zag stitch and a ballpoint needle like you should, definitely helped!


Also, the holiday baking is in full swing. My version of Praline Strips, I add melted chocolate to the pecan-caramel-graham cracker goodness.


And this is a family recipe for Crunch and Munch.


Tomorrow I am making dough for Friday's bake-a-thon. Maybe I'll get to some bars too, but have lots of dough making. Hopefully my timer will go off tonight so I remember to take the butter out of the fridge. Ha!

Ta-ta for now.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Charmed Prints QAL Quilt Top

My Charmed Prints quilt top is done! I am loving how it looks, from the front. The back is super hairy from that crappy JoAnn's linen. Never again. (I already ordered and received some Kaufman Essex Linen, yep Cyber Monday sucked me in!)


Next up is to work on what I want to do for the back, I am still considering using the small green flowers print I originally selected. I am not feeling up for a pieced back at the moment. But who knows what tomorrow may hold.

Looking forward to basting and adding flange binding. It's really going to look great.

Now back to my Starry Seuss Quilt.

I'm linking up with the QAL.

Gen X Quilters