A Green Machine, A Repair, and a Few Bindings!

 My friend Barb saw that we bought a vintage machine the other day and offered up this vintage Singer 185J to me for a price I could not pass up.  She came home with me and Kathy is sewing on her until we get hers up and running.  She thinks we should call her Mrs. Hulk, but I am open to better suggestions!
I still don't have my laptop and this old one moves the curser constantly when I type so I will keep the words to a minimum, ugh!

My sister's great dane ate her quilt.  I did not want to repair it.  It has been at my house for a good long time.  I decided to gift her the repair for Christmas.  I am wrapping this one up again!

 I did the best I could--was able to match but my quilting sucks!  From afar it isn't too bad!

 I made and attached binding on both My Purple Heaven for Hannah and Scrappy Mountain Majesties for Mac.  I still need to sew more blocks for Coleman's Moth in the Window.

O

I have also worked some on Grand Illusion clue two.  Here are forty done..I have ten more that need one more seam and press, then I will be half way through clue two.  We are off to go hiking shortly and I will be sewing again tonight.  First I have to cut that other half!  Slow and steady!

Birthday Times Three!

 Kathy and Tina share a birthday and three days later it is my birthday (and two weeks later it is mom's) so the four of us got together and went and got pedicures.  Tina got Green Bay Packer toes, I am going to do that later this fall!  Mom and I got similar colors which just happens to be close to Angela's Rainbow color of the month and Kathy got more of an electric blue!

We went out for dinner and plenty of drinking.  All of the family in this area was there so that was nice.  We even had a cake.  Here I am between my mom and my (step)dad.  We had a really nice night and spend the night at Tina's new place.  Then bright and early this morning we headed off to Ros' to sew.

BJ's handwork blocks

I felt like I was sewing in slow motion today.  I didn't take too many pictures..got BJ's blocks and didn't take pictures of Meridith's blocks (first time I have met her at the Huggy Bunch) and have no idea what Ros was working on in between taking care of her adorable grandson Matthew.  As you can see I had to do some unsewing, not once but twice on these blocks but I am happy with them now!  These are the Jack in the Box blocks for August.

SoScrappy Rainbow Challenge Color for August

 Friday before doing toes we stopped and picked up the three quilts Ros had done for us and then I whipped up the binding so I could give it to her later that night.  She has several of my quilts and is always appreciative of them but she absolutely raved about this quilt.  She loves it and facebooked about it and everything.  I know she will cherish it always!

Tina's Crown Quilt--she loved it!

 We arrived home from Ros' and our joint birthday gift to each other had arrived!  We got a Kitchenaid mixer (pay no attention to the messy counter behind the mixer, lol!) which Kathy and I have talked about getting for a long time.
 I then went and finished up these stars for Smith Mountain Morning (I worked on the units at Ros').

 Now all three of the different blocks are done and the border units are sewn too.  Kathy helped iron and trim them today, yay!  I am anxious to get this one together, but I have several other projects pulling at me.  The good news is I don't work tomorrow or Monday so I might get several things done!

 Squared up a few more of these and got them together.  Waste not, want not!

Blissful Sewing Day!

 Started off by making my sister's crown quilt binding...her birthday (and Kathy's) are next Friday...I need to pick up her quilted quilt from Ros and get it bound to give her next weekend.  Where does the time go?

 Here are the blues I cut the other night.  And today I added all the browns.  (Still need to cut the muslin so I can start putting the last units together!)

 Since I was tired of cutting I decided to play around and sew some bags.  This led to organizing all my zippers by color (see Amy there is another page for our book!).

 Meanwhile Kathy finished up her clue for the mystery.  Loving the look of this one.  She can hardly wait for the next clue.

 Then I made a few more modern looking bags.

 All while listening to Isabel Allende's "The Sum of Our Days" which was good.  Finished it tonight so it can go back to the library.

 I cut into my modern fabrics and sewed squares together.   I am sure you can guess where I am going with these blocks.  Always a dog in my pictures...

 And the border...

 And tada another Lil' Twister.  This is the first one I have made with the tiny, tiny ruler I bought awhile back.

 See how small it is?  Love it!

 Kathy continued to sew the leftover bits from the Night and Day quilt I made almost two years ago into these blocks.  She isn't too happy with the centers, so she insists I do that part on the remaining blocks.  There are lots of seams that come together and we haven't followed Eleanor's directions to spin the seams or whatever..but maybe I will try to figure that out.

So most of the day was spent in quiet company with Kathy and our audiobook while sewing and cutting to our own beat.  It was really relaxing.  Tomorrow I plan to cut the muslin and start sewing that last unit.  Megan is coming over again to work on her little quilt so I will have a companion.  Kathy thinks she will make some dog biscuits with Ayla.  Speaking of that...Kathy has launched her new website where she sells homemade dog biscuits.  The dogs love them (even June's dog who is quite fussy about what he will eat!) so if you are interested check out http://shop.jandrdogtreats.net/ 

:)

Crown Royal is Quilted!

 Ros just sent me photos of Crown Royal all quilted.  This one is for my sister Tina's birthday in August.  Will hopefully get it bound to give it to her by then (it is still at Ros').

I am happy with how this all turned out and am glad I made it smaller than originally planned and got it off my list.  Thanks for both DJ and Kathy for helping me with this quilt, it was not the easiest one to do because of all the taking apart of the crown royal bags and cutting them up.  So fantastic it is done and off my list!

Crown Quilt UFO is a Flimsy!

 Today I finished up my favorite sister Tina's Crown Quilt.  It is smaller than I originally envisioned, but I just wanted to get this one off my list!  It will look good folded over a chair or on the back of a couch at my sister's.  Her birthday is in August so this will be her gift.  She already likes it and has shared it on facebook so that makes me smile.

 I asked Kathy to take a picture of Doc Schnibbles outside for the parade...this is what I got back.  I will need to retake the picture so you can't see the rectangle thingy and so that is is on flat ground.  She tried, lol.
I also made some more bow ties and had a few done from the other day so I got another block together.  I also cut for more bow ties when I was feeling putzy this afternoon.  I am loving Fridays off and think I should implement it year round.  I have worked way too much in the last year and I need to recharge my batteries.  I am amazed at how one extra day makes me feel like I have time to do the things I want to do!

Kathy and I went to the Deaf Coffee chat at Starbucks tonight for a few hours.  I have made some good friends through that group and wish Kathy would learn some sign so it wouldn't be so boring for her.  She doesn't mind if I go alone, but I have been dragging her along.  :)

Tina's Crown UFO Progress

 Bug always has to get in the photos!  She seems to think when the camera comes out it is time to jump up over and over again til I pick her up.  This is why I have  a ton of pictures with her on everything I make and try to take a picture of!  So this is this month's UFO...it is seeing progress which is great, but I really just want this one done.  I need to add at least two more big blocks (and really four more after that) but I just want to get borders on it and call it done!  LOL.  In any event I plan to get the top done by the end of May to meet my goal and my sister will get whatever size it is at that point!

The Uglies and More

I joined an Ugly Challenge swap because Ros and BJ were doing one and I thought it would be fun for us all to do the same thing.  I think I also talked them both into doing Cal's Mystery quilt on June 2nd!  So my partner is Robyn in TX and here is what she sent me.  I love the two on the lower right and can deal with the others in the bottom row but the top row...well let us just say Robyn did a great job picking out the uglies!  But I will most likely follow Bonnie Hunter's advice and cut it up really small til it looks great!

The Uglies Robyn in TX sent me

 Ros was not at all happy with the fabric she got.  Some of it wasn't even cotton so she was going to ditch the idea of participating but BJ had other ideas and brought her (and me, SURPRISE) a bag of uglies she had picked from her stash.  I love the two on the right end!  So I am not sure if I will be making two uglies or if I will throw it all again together or what but it will get used!

The Uglies BJ gifted me

 Here are the Uglies I sent to Robyn in TX.  At one time I did actually like the three on the right, but I am over them now!  Can't wait to see what she does with them.

The Uglies I sent to Robyn in TX

While at AZ Huggy Bunch at Ros' yesterday (for two hours only then off to help my parents unpack and hang pictures) I sewed up the HST's for this card trick block for Doc.  When I got home I attempted to put a block together and I do mean attempted.  I think this is the most complicated Schnibble I have done to date.  Someone else blogged about having problems with the directions so I should have taken notice.  I mistakenly cut the charm squares into quarters when the directions clearly say to cut the background into quarters and the charm squares into a half and two quarters.  UGH!  SO I had to seam up two quarters to get a half again and then sew them.  Now I need to trim this first block so it can become a block.  Another day.  

 I have been knitting dishcloths though so that just may become my Christmas through the year for this month because I am just not getting in enough sewing time!  I do make them all year long to give at Christmas anyway so that is fine.  I work on them in the car and at work if I get lucky enough to be on hold.

 So May is halfway over (Happy Mother's Day to all you mom's out there--my oldest son made me breakfast, my daughter sent me a bonsai tree and the yougest actually acknowledged the holiday and said if he had his new debit card I would have had flowers!  Kathy took me out for sushi too so it was a great holdiay! ) and I still have my Doc Schnibbles to do and my sister's Crown quilt top for the UFO challenge not to mention I haven't even cut the doll quilt for Kathleen Tracy's challenge.  I have the book and really like this month's quilt so I will get to it.  My sister's Crown Quilt has seen progress...Kathy has been cutting apart bags and I have two blocks together and pieces for more.  I suspect that quilt is just going to be alot smaller than planned.  Done is better than nothing.  I think because it is made of Crown bags it may not wash up great so I don't think I should go nuts on the size and my sister will be happy to get it for the back of a couch and not for the top of a bed!  At least that is what I am telling myself because that is one quilt I never really wanted to make.

Today we are going to June's to help her unpack and organize things.  I would like to get into her sewing room and do that but we will see what she needs done.

Finally Some Sewing Time!

June has been in the process of moving for a bit now...yesterday she had movers come take what we had packed and get it over to her new place in Paradise Valley.  I am excited for her to get a new start but bummed she will be so far from me.  We have lots more work to do over there, but I am amazed at what all we pulled off!

My new bedroom floor is in and I love it!  It sounds different in the room and we can hear every step the dogs make on it at night, but it is clean and looks good!  We also finally got our garage roof redone so it doesn't leak.  We have fixed it three different times (three different people) with absolutely no luck.  Can't wait for the rain to see if the professionals did better than we did.  

I also took some pictures of the reorganization of my quilting studio after the great fabric purchase.  All my modern fabrics are on the top shelf here with yarn and knitting and crochet stuff next to it.  To the far right which you can't really see is the stack of drawers that some of my smaller chunks of fabric are in.  They are stuffed full.

Here is the new (old) shelf that I added to the room.  All the bigger chunks of fabric are arranged by color or type and are easy to see (the old shelf is wider and the fabric was two deep so I couldn't see it all) which I really like.  We moved the microwave cart down to the kitchen and it is already filling up there too.

Close up of the fabric on the shelf.

Today Angela over at SoScrappy posted that yellow is this month's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I am happy to say I made my two yellow Jack in the Box blocks.  My bonus pinwheels were actually made a month or two ago from leftover scraps.  I will make more from the leftover bits of these blocks.

Here are all the blocks I have so far (I got bored one day and whipped up an orange one but we haven't had orange yet, lol!) and I am loving this scrappy quilt.  

My Stitch kitty is finally cooperating and is hanging out in the quilting studio.  She likes to be in the middle of whatever action is going and so as to slow us down!  

And the UFO of the month pick is number two which is my sister's crown quilt.  I have been really dreading getting going on this.  I am using a pattern but the color placement I have (based on another online quilt) doesn't work with any of my patterns so I had to figure some stuff out myself.  Add to that that I didn't realize there are actually FOUR different blocks in each of these big blocks (I thought there were two for some reason) I really struggled to get the first block together correctly.  Today I finally managed it and of course getting the second one made was much easier.  Kathy picked up cutting the Crown Royal bags where DJ left off and I made more hsts, so I may have hope of completing this top this month.  In any event it is seeing some progress which it would not have if not for the UFO pick!

Going to go to bingo tonight with Kathy and a few new friends.  We haven't gone in a long time so it should be fun!