Some cook, I sew and write: creativity brings joy

My last post seriously bothered me because I made a green smoothie and went to work.  I'm sure there is room for improvement, but it sure feels better now!!! The shelves: This picture doesn't look super pretty, but it's a whole lot more functional!  The off-white Aldi bag has comfort quilts inside, the green one on the top shelf holds my Row-by-Rows I collected this summer, and the very top is full of smaller projects. Each stack holds one type of fabric: Christmas, fleece and like soft fabrics on the top shelf; prints, solids and the comfort quilts on the second shelf; stripes, geometic, and random fat quarter stacks on the third shelf, and 2 stacks of dressmaker fabrics with the third stack on the bottom shelf being full of other holiday fabrics.  I don't have baskets on hand so that part will have to wait. You can see the batting stack to the side of the shelves.  Here's another picture of that: I have six bags of color-coded scraps, fat quarter...

It's finished!!!  100% pieced and quilted and bound by me!  Design input from Jim!  We make a great team, I think!

Does anyone else struggle with prioritizing your own projects? I'm really good at prioritizing other people's time but not so good at my own.  I wonder if that's why so many women go outside of the home to work, even when they don't have to do it for financial reasons. Not only is it a struggle for me to prioritize my projects, it's really easy for me to feel overwhelmed with ALL the things I want to complete.  Shall I list all the quilts I've already put fabrics together to make?  How about the foreign language I want to learn?  And don't forget sewing for my own wardrobe or re-learning how to play the piano.  See what I mean? One of the things I've struggled with is whether to do my own quilting, and I have decided not to do it myself right now.  There are several nearby women who charge really reasonable rates so I'll hire one to quilt my Hunter's Star quilt.  I need to get it completed by mid-July.  Totally done.  I hate the fact t...

I took a lengthy break from Minecraft skins, but I finished the Witch after completing the placemats.  Here she is.  (My daughter informs me that witches are always girls and boys are called warlocks.  The Harry Potter world certainly reinforces that idea.) Back to Minecraft. The witch caused me a lot of issues because it didn't make sense to me.  My husband helped me pick colors until he asked, "Would it help if you saw the character on the game?" Immediately I responded, "Yes!" Once I saw the pixellated figure on screen, I could see what I couldn't figure out before.  Unfortunately what I saw made me realize that Kelli had really simplified this and other blocks into something a beginning quilter could handle and have that important sense of accomplishment.  These animated figures are * highly * pixelated.  There is another quilter that I've seen on Instagram that works with probably 1- or 2-inch squares in order to attain that pixelated ...

It is amazing how slowly placemats can come together.  I finally finished the third one; can you believe it?  I've been learning a lot about putting together quilts though.  Today I sewed on the binding and the corners weren't laying down flat so I had to go back to watch some tutorials of how to do it.  I finally got it right.  Or almost right anyway.  Missing something still because the binding is still puckering slightly at the corners.  The placemat is laying straight and the puckering isn't noticeable. I ran out of bobbin thread on the third placemat which took the rest of the spool.  Unfortunately, I didn't look closely enough and went out to Joann's to buy more thread.  When I got back home, I reorganized my thread holder and found another spool. Oh well.  I'l be needing that color for the Flag blanket I'm doing next.  Unless I back and quilt the pink blanket next.  So many quilts to make and finish with close ...

Craftsy advertised a darling flag quilt block  for free on Facebook that I saw last Monday that I immediately downloaded.  Since my niece is getting married and I'm very into spending labor rather than money right now, I thought it would make a cute set of placemats out of my stash for her upcoming wedding! I'm not done; in fact, I have only quilted two placemats so far, but I have learned a few useful tidbits! First, here is the first one of the quilted placemats.  Free motion quilting isn't my bag yet so I used the walking foot for stitch in the ditch and echo stitching. This is a close-up of the quilting stitches. At this point, I used white in the bobbin so the stitching on the back is much more easily seen than on the front. If you look closely though, you can see that each line of stitching was separate from the previous stitching.  Apparently this is not ideal.  You should try to use a single thread all the way through your quilt, NOT ...

I finally finished piecing my disappearing quilt blocks for my Christmas quilt today.  Yay! Here's a picture of the stack of finished blocks with the Christmas tree block and the green fabric on the bottom that I've chosen for sashing.  So far I've only bought one small piece of fabric to make this quilt.  Unfortunately, I don't have enough fabric to make the quilt back or batting, but 99% of the top will be from my stash! Now I have to make some big decisions like: How big of a quilt do I want to make?  Is it going to be a lap quilt, a blanket, or a bedspread?  Originally I had planned to make a queen size quilt because I have a queen size bed.  I'm not sure now though.  It might be nicer to have it to cuddle up in on the couch or reading a book. How am I going to lay it out?  I also noticed, while it was spread out on the floor, that these blocks will make a very scrappy, very busy quilt if I push all the pieces together.  I ...

"Finished is better than perfect," says Jenny at Missouri Star Quilt Co. I heartily agree. I grew up hating WIPs. My mother taught me that because she always had half-finished projects from Relief Society work meetings. Relief Society is the women's organization in our church. She was in the organization's leadership, organizing and overseeing the function, so she never had enough time to finish the projects. I think the only completed projects we had were those that the sweet sisters in the Relief Society made for my mother. What sweet gifts! (Eventually, my mother threw out all of her WIPs, making those gifts even sweeter!) Having said that, I've added several tutorials from other very creative (and skilled) ladies. My latest favorite blogger is from Freshly Pieced. Maybe eventually I'll advance to buying a book! In the meantime, I keep drooling over different pieces of fabric and jelly rolls. I really, really want to mak...