Happiness in the mail

It finally showed up today (I was beginning to think it was lost).I've been admiring quilts using this pattern on other blogs for some time and I decided to get a pattern for myself. Just something else to add to my TO DO list.

I am thinking I want to make it from a Patisserie layer cake. Someday.

I've been sewing today but had some tension problems. NOT the kind of tension I usually feel in my jaw and shoulders when quilting. It was sewing machine tension! I stippled for miles on a sample piece until I finally got everything to look great. Moved to my real piece and sewed for quite a bit and then decided I did NOT like it. Not even a little. Sat and unpicked lots of thread. Tried it again. Unpicked again. Finally I was able to equalize the threads and I was happy with the stitch. Oh what a lot of wasted time that was.
Still plugging away at my projects.

Praise - For a beautiful first day of fall that God graced us with! Crisp, cool morning, blue skies and sunshine all day with temperatures never getting much over 70.

Prayers - For a young wife at our church that just found out she is pregnant. That she would get over the terrible morning sickness she has been experiencing. Prayers for a healthy pregnancy from here on.

Be still my heart

My all time favorite scrapbook paper will soon be fabric!!!

Basic Grey BLUSH - January 2010


I actually sent an email to Moda and/or Basic Grey a long time ago and suggested that I would love to see this line in fabric (as well as Bittersweet). What a SWEET surprise. There are a few different prints, they didn't include the stripes and they aren't offering the Dark Chocolate solid or the Tangerine solid. I'll take what they are offering. I can't wait to see some patterns made up in this line so that I can decide what to make.

Sure hope the guys leave change in their pockets so the laundry lady can afford some BLUSH come January.

Praises - friends from church are now the proud grandparents of a sweet little girl, born today. Our travels were safe!!! Long (due to construction), but safe.

Prayers - for college girl's busy week ahead. Praying that she gets enough sleep and is up to participating in all the activities to get ready for welcoming the freshman.

WIP - a little peek

I've already started a little something with this;

If I wasn't leaving town early in the morning I would stay up and work on it some more. I have probably stayed up too late already.

Praise - I THINK I may have figured out the problem with my BSR!

Prayers - yes, still praying for safe travels and good attitudes amongst the travellers.

First Finish - September

I wrote this post last night. I hit some key and poof it was all gone. Soooo frustrating.
Anyway, I FINALLY finished the Old Red Barn Quiltalong Quilt!!! Oh the quilt has been done for ages it was the binding that I was stalling on. If you see the post below this one you will see that I won't be stalling on the bindings anymore!!!! Here is a close up shot of my pieced binding. I was pretty happy with the results and would probably do something like this again.


Here is the quilt before it was washed. I did take more pictures once it was all crinkly. I'll post those later. Right now the quilt is all folded and in one of college girl's many piles of 'stuff to be packed'.


On to the next thing.

Praise - for my wonderful family. We all went to lunch together today and had a nice time and a farewell for college girl.

Prayers - for our trip to the Seattle area tomorrow. 6 hours of driving one way. Getting college girl moved into the dorm. Our time with family and friends and then the drive home again on Sunday.

Those 3 little words

I know that I love to hear them. I am going to shout them from the rooftops tonight. I really don't need to post this, because she already knows, but I'll bet that she loves to hear those three little words too. I am not talking about THOSE three little words. I am talking about these three little words - YOU WERE RIGHT! The thing is, she KNOWS she was right. In fact, she probably thinks she is ALWAYS right. I am talking about Des at Quilt Taffy's Taffy Talk and her tutorial for the Invisible Closing Stitch, also known as the Ladder Stitch. Did you happen to notice the date of that tutorial? Yeah, July 2008. So I'm slow. And stubborn. I didn't want to learn a hand stitch! I hate to hand stitch! I could just fumble along with whatever it was called that I did. I should have listened to Des way back in 2008.

The thing is, I was coming across the Ladder Stitch over and over again. It was kind of like one of those weird recurring dreams. Each time I saw it there were more images. Images and explanations that made it clearer and clearer to me. Like here at Craft Apple. Here at Turning*Turning (although she likes to call it the Invisible Mamma Jamma Stitch :D ). The final straw was when I watched these videos by Sharon Schamber. In the final video she uses the Ladder Stitch as the final step in attaching her binding to her quilt. Okay! I cried "UNCLE!" and decided to give it a try.

I *HEART* THE LADDER STITCH! LOVE IT, I tell you!

Although at least one of the sites mentioned that this was a slower stitch, that did not hold me back. What I found was that it was much faster than the no name stitch that I had used before. The Old Red Barn Quiltalong Quilt had about 9 yards of binding to sew. That is a lot of hand stitching. You know what? I don't think it took me that much longer to do the Ladder Stitch on the ORB quilt than it did to fumble my way around the Neptune Windmill Baby Quilt that I finished up in early June. Seriously!

By the way, I used the Sharon Schamber method, found in the three linked videos, to attach the binding on the ORB quilt. It takes some time to do all of the steps but #1)this was the first time I was able to join the ends of the binding so smoothly (seeing the method rather than looking at photos is what did it for me),#2) there are no pins or clips to deal with while hand stitching and #3)the binding was in place and smooth looking while I did the hand stitching. A bonus - I learned about this method while back to school supplies were on the shelves and Elmer's Washable School Glue was 25-30 cents a bottle! I stocked up. I am going to use this method again and again.

A few other things that I learned from the videos, the third video to be exact,
Needle the thread (instead of thread the needle)- hold the thread tip between your index finger and thumb of your left hand and with the needle in your right hand, slide the eye of the needle over the thread. I seemed to have more control doing it that way and was successful on the first try each time.
To have a slip knot on my thread - GENIUS! I don't know how many times I had to re-thread my needle on previous binding excursions but this time, only when I was starting over with a new length of thread!
How to tie a Quilter's Knot. I had seen this before on Heather Bailey's blog but for some reason it didn't click then. I must have been in the right frame of mind when I watched these videos.

So there you have it. A post with no pictures but lots of links to some pictures, tutorials, videos. Maybe you knew these things already. Just like Des. ;) Maybe you're smart like that too.

Praise - My son has started his fourth week of school and he is staying on task and even asked for some nudging from me. So far he is able to keep up with school and his part time job.

Prayers - College girl is packing up her stuff. Today is her last day of work. Prayers for her to stay on task, get things on her list crossed off and remain calm during it all.

September TO DO List

September. It seems so strange to type that word. I think it feels like it should still be June. Didn't my son just celebrate his birthday? Didn't college girl just get home? How can it really be September already? It was much cooler today. Fall must be on the way. Fall is my FAVORITE season and I love cooler weather so I'm ready for it but I'm just surprised that summer is almost over.

So here's my list for the;

It is quite the ambitious list too. It is what I HOPE to get accomplished. Some of it I really need to get finished, other things have been on the back burner for way too long. I figure listing them here gives me a push to work on them rather than ignore them altogether.

First up - get the binding on these quilts. The Old Red Barn Quilt Along quilt, pictured on the right, is going to college with college girl in a couple of weeks so that is high priority.September goal - complete binding. The Stacked Coins quilt, on the left, is already an overdue wedding present. My goal for this month is to AT LEAST get the binding sewn to the front of the quilt - it doesn't have to be hand sewn down on the back before the end of this month (although that would be GREAT!).

This dress is for college girl and I thought it was going to be a fun summer dress for her. Uhhhhhhh,well she might get to wear it before the last day of summer.Goal for this month - get this dress finished before we take College Girl back to school. Hopefully there will be some warm days once school starts back up and she can wear it at least once before she pulls out the sweaters and jeans. This is the fabric and pattern that I showed in August. Alexander Henry fabric and Simplicity pattern.

Another LONG overdue project. This fabric is for the apron pictured in the center and is for a good friend.She must be a good friend because she still likes me and I was going to make this for her last August! My goal for September - get the fabric pre-shrunk,make the pattern (trace the correct size onto pattern material), cut the apron out.
This one isn't as long overdue as the one above but still overdue. This is for another friend - she knows nothing about this. I saw this fabric on someones blog but could never find it online then one day at JoAnn's there it was!! It is an Alexander Henry print. My friend LOVES lemon desserts. She did pick out the pattern when she was here one time. I have never seen her wear an apron so I'm not so sure about what she will really do with it. September goal - shrink fabrics,make pattern,cut apron out.
Well on this next project I am actually ahead of the game but by the time it is done I will be behind. Yeah, roll yer eyes. I'll understand. This fabric, along with a layer cake is going to be made into the Scruffily Quilt from Rachel Griffiths on The Moda Bakeshop. It is for my hubby's niece that is getting married October 11th. I am going to have to find something to use for backing and also get some batting. I'm hoping that JoAnn's has Warm & White on sale the weekend we take College Girl back to school because I will be near a SUPER JoAnn's that weekend! September Goal for this - get the quilt top sewn, make the binding.

Whew! That is quite the list. I know.I KNOW! Now if I could just limit my time on the computer during the day I could probably make a good dent in this list.

Praise - our friend that was suddenly sick is doing much better! It was determined it was food poisoning.It hit her pretty quick and hard and she was very dehydrated by the time the campus health services got to her. We are so thankful that it was short lived, not the flu and that she is on the road to recovery tonight. Praise the Lord!

Prayers - College girl has been 'shadowing' an elementary teacher for this week before school starts and then next week she gets to be in the classroom when classes begin. I'm praying that she will be a help to the teacher, feel comfortable with the kids and be a great witness to those she is in contact with.

Let's try this again

I've tried to post. Really! It was either a problem with Blogger or a problem with me. It could have been a combination of the two. It was frustrating and a waste of time and in the end there were no posts. So I'm trying again.

The only Charming Girls Quilt Club project that I finished completely for August was the skirt for the college girl. It was a lazy month for me.

I did go through my stash and made up two bundles of love to send to Iraq. My hubby had to hold the one box closed so that I could tape it. If these were not being sent priority mail to an APO/FPO the boxes would have cost $26 and $34! The special rate for the flat rate priority for military addresses is $11.95, so much better. There is still time to get a package off if you haven't done so yet. Here is the link for Iraqi Bundles of Love, even if you aren't participating you should go look at what is going on there and see the bundles that have arrived!


I finally got my Stacked Coins quilt stippled. This took awhile because I backed this with white Minky and that required LOTS of pinning. I was advised that spray adhesive would not hold the Minky. I ran out of pins and had to begin the stippling and then use those pins to finish up the quilt. I have to say though that I LOVE having the Minky on the back, it feels so nice. I didn't have any problems stippling it although having to remove pins makes the whole process so much slower.

Then I started to make the pieced binding for the Old Red Barn Quilt Along Quilt and the Stacked Coins quilt. Cutting all my strips down to 10" pieces and then chain stiching them. The ORB quilt needed about 9 yards of finished binding!

Here is one strip of binding all finished. I just love how it looks now and hope I am as happy with it once it is on the quilt.


I had to trim off all of these pieces from where I joined two different prints on the binding. There is NO WAY I would use such teeny pieces but I am sure someone out there would actually use them. The long side of each is approximately 3" and the short sides right about 2". First person in the USA that says they want these scraps can have them. Otherwise I will just toss them. Fabric is Michael Miller/Sandi Henderson's Ginger Blossom - almost all of the prints in the line.

So that's what I did in August. I'll be posting my list for September soon.

Praise - We've almost made it through another summer with no fire danger. That is such a blessing when we live surrounded by forests.

Prayers - I just got word that our friend that is back to school in IL is VERY sick. Prayers that it is NOT the Swine Flu, that she will have a full and swift recovery and that she doesn't get behind on her classes.