A WONDERFUL Day in Blogland!

You know, I am just thrilled to log onto my blog and see that I have received some comments. Can you even imagine how thrilled I was today to see not only comments but a comment from Nanette at Freda's Hive saying that she had awarded 3 Arte y Pico Awards for Blog Excellence and that my blog was the recipient of one of them!! HOW COOL IS THAT??? Pretty cool I think! Here is the award:

Here are the rules that go along with the Arte Y Pico award :

1) Pick five (5) blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog.

5) To show these rules.

Picking 5 blogs to award this to is TOUGH! I mean I have dozens of blogs that I love to visit every day, Freda's Hive being one of them. Let's see.

1. Des and Corrie at Taffy Talk deserve this award. I MUST visit their blog every day.

2. Kayla Aimee at Tongue in Chic Journalings. She is creative and sweet and such a hoot! If you need a good laugh, go read Kayla Aimee's adventures.

3. Anne at Bunny Tales deserves this award too. Such a lovely blog.

4. Sandi at Portabellopixie is my next choice. She could get this JUST for her beautiful fabrics but her blog is such a nice place too.

5. last, but by no means least, Kelli at kellicrowe . This may have been one of the first blogs that I read on a regular basis. She is artistic, creative and she cracks me up!

Whew! Maybe the toughest thing I have done all day.

The good bloggin' news doesn't stop there. Oh no it doesn't! I got an email from Kristin at Sew,Mama, Sew! telling me that I was one of three winners of the Free Fabric Friday drawing! Yeah!!! Oh, this is even tougher than choosing 5 blogs to receive and award! Now I have to choose one yard of fabric to be sent to me. Not an easy task at all.

I think that is enough excitement for one day.

Prayers for today; My friend on the mission trip to Mexico is supposed to return tomorrow but someone broke into their van and stole SIX of their passports! My friend and her two children have their passports but are missing a backpack now. Praying that photocopies (that they do have) and a police report will give them access back into the U.S.of A. Prayers also being said for my pal PINK as she goes in for a root canal tomorrow afternoon.

Better late than never???

Sometime in January my daughter and I went to a purse party where we both picked out fabric and trim for custom made purses. It was going to be 8 weeks until we got the purses. Coming up in February a friend of the family, a college age gal, was having a birthday. I said to my daughter "HEY! I can make her a purse!" We got online and looked at patterns and fabric. I ordered a couple patterns and I ordered an assortment of Amy Butler fabrics. The birthday came and went. My son kept asking me, "did you sew her purse yet?" and I answered, "NO! not yet". I get a little testy when someone questions my procrastination. I always felt that I had other stuff that HAD to be done. Lame excuse. I know. About a month ago I finally decided which pattern to use, from Cindy Taylor Oates' Slouchy Bags book, and cut the fabric out. There it sat. This past Wednesday I felt as though my other commitments were out of the way and I sat down to sew. It came together pretty quickly and easily. Clear directions were the ticket to success here. Then I saw the blog post for 6/25 at http://www.pamkittymorning.blogspot.com/ and knew that I needed to make a similar pin to dress up the purse. (note **My daughter is the model here :D)


The next morning I had my daughter stop in town and get some buttons to cover and as soon as I covered that one, a whole new world of covering buttons opened up to me. I thought it added SO much! But I wanted to make it with a ruffle around it - I have no ruffler attachment. Thinking, thinking....so the kids suggested using two layers, so that the button would not blend with the ruffle and the ruffle would not blend with the purse (they are smart that way and I like their input). But boy oh boy what a dunce I was. I had NO IDEA how to attach the ruffle TO the button! I dinked around with it for quite a bit, trying different things that didn't work. I finally settled on gluing it, putting a thin strip of Zip Dry glue around the back edge of the button that was covered with fabric. Then I pushed the ruffle on there and fussed with it until it was just how I wanted it. THEN I put something very heavy on top of it all and left it to dry for a bit. I am not sure how secure it is and how long it will last. I used a safety pin on the inside of the purse to attach the button and so it can be easily removed. We presented it to our friend on Thursday afternoon and she really likes it!!! Guess what I found out on Thursday night. No, really, guess. Go ahead.



I found out that I had PERFECT directions on how to make a ruffle and attach it to a self covered button right there on my sewing table! Yeah, I know. Better Homes & Garden 'Quilts and More' Summer 2008. Detailed instructions. No need for me to reinvent the wheel. You can roll your eyes now. I did. I will use their directions next time.

So frazzled I forgot a title

Let me tell you, figuring out that slideshow over there on the right just about did me in. It looks like it is going to be easy enough. I set up a Flickr account JUST so that I could use the slideshow feature. That wasn't so tough. Then I attempt to add the slideshow. Uhhhh, those would be sunsets - try again. Uhhhhh, that appears to be a fire truck? What?? I don't even HAVE pictures of fire trucks - on Flickr OR amongst the thousands of pictures on our computer. Pretty sure. No firetrucks at all. Hmmmm, I think I will use the HELP function. Not so helpful. I did read posts by others that have the same issues. Soooooooooo, at least I know I am not alone in Stupidville. My hubby made a few suggestions. He IS a computer genius you know. This was going to be the answer. Nope. This is not helping the headache that I already had. I did some more searching and found a guy who posted a link that had some information. I tried that. Wah Lah! Slideshow of MY pictures. Happy Dancin' goin' on now.

Then I started some blog surfing and came across some cool crafty/quilty/sewing blogs. My favorite kind dontcha know. I found a tote swap quite by accident and the deadline had been changed from YESTERDAY to TOMORROW! That was a sign. It was meant to be. I am supposed to take part in this swap. It is called the WE THE PEOPLE SWAP (because a bunch of her blog readers VOTED on what they wanted the next swap to be).Ahhhh democracy. They voted for Tote Bags. You can find it here - http://itching2bstitching.blogspot.com/ . You have until Sunday night to sign up. Maybe it was meant to be for you too.

So between the quilt I am making, the apron swap and the tote bag swap I should have some more crafty images to share soon. I can't wait to get my swap partners so that I can choose fabric. That, I think, is my favorite part of a new sewing project.

Praise God for the answered prayers; My little baseball playing buddy is feeling better and back on the field. My SIL came thru her surgery just fine and is at home recuperating.

Oh yeah! A BIG Blogging welcome to my friend http://inthepink-pink.blogspot.com/

W.I.P. - finally underway

Yesterday I started a quilt. It has been a long time coming - aprons to sew, a trip to NYC, being sick, the every day 'stuff'. This is going to be quilt #1 for my daughter's dorm room. It is LAKESIDE CHARM from McCall's Quick Quilts July 2008. I bought the magazine with a different project in mind but as I was flipping through it, my daughter spotted this beauty and fell in love with it. She wanted it with the exact same fabrics, Two Young Street by Prints Charming - Marcus Fabrics. I was excited that she was excited and I got busy figuring out where I could buy all the prints that we needed. We added one more print from the line that the magazine did not show.

The order was placed and the fabric arrived when it was still winter. WINTER! After a day like today I wish that I would have worked on it in the winter. Here are all the pretty fabrics before I started cutting - 180 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 squares.

And below you can see all of those squares. This fabric has a very unique feel to it, almost brushed since it is so soft but at the same time it is crisp. The designers even talk about it on their site.

I stayed up way too late, figuring out how to start a blog ;), woke up way too early to meet my friend for our workout (if she wasn't waiting for me I probably would just skip it!). Then after some housework, some lunch and waiting for my hubby to get my pictures onto the computer (yeah, yeah, yeah...someday I will figure that out) to see if they turned out alright I started laying out the blocks into the pattern. My daughter came in to help tweak it and the picture doesn't show all of it. I had the side borders on the floor, two bottom rows on my sewing table and the top and bottom borders in various places. Oh yeah, did I mention how HOT it was today? Did I mention how HOT it gets in my sewing room in the summer? Did I mention that I could not have ANY windows open because it was pretty breezy out and I did not even want to imagine those pieces flying around the room.

At this point, the family is off to VBS and I needed to take a little break. Back at it at 6:15. I started sewing the blocks together. I tried to chain stitch them but they would twist as they went off the back of the machine and I was getting confused as to which order they were supposed to be in. So it was slower going than I counted on. Did I mention how HOT it was in the sewing room?? I put some praise music on and stuck to the task. Sew a row, iron a row, sew a row into blocks, iron the blocks, label and stack. Something out the window caught my eye...
Just passing through.

My family got home about 9:30 and came to check on me. I had 1.5 rows to go!! My daughter was pretty impressed. They mentioned how HOT it was in the room. I was sweating more than I had this morning at the gym! So does this count for an aerobic workout?? I sure wish I would have left my pedometer on. I was back and forth from the sewing macine to the table to the ironing board. Over and over and over again. Maybe I can give up the gym and just sew quilts on hot days. Here are all my blocks, sewed, ironed, labeled & pinned.

Next step - iron and cut out the white fabric for 'lattice'. After that it will be sewing the lattice and blocks together. Saturday is supposed to be hot, Sunday is supposed to be hotter and Monday is supposed to be even hotter (96!). We shall see when I get to the next step. I'll keep you posted.

Today I have been praying for: 'Ipswitch' a young All-Star baseball playing friend that hurt his neck yesterday. My SIL, who is recovering from surgery. My friend and two of her children who are on a mission trip in Mexico (where it is supposedley very HOT!).

I'm a BLOGGER!

Thanks, I think, to Des at Quilt Taffy. I love reading blogs, especially if they have quilty news and pictures. I figured I was spending so much time reading and being inspired by blogs that maybe I should start one of my own. I don't know if I will be able to keep it up or what I will say.
I think I should figure out how to get pictures off of the camera and on to the computer. I took some pictures today, of some quilty stuff but at this point they are stuck in the camera. One techno thing at a time.
All of a sudden I have nothing to say, and this feels really lame. Hopefully it gets better.