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That baby quilt I posted about a few weeks ago – I finished it! I did diagonal lines in one direction across it. I did not quilt through the center of the alphabet blocks. I like how it turned out! This was a late gift so after rushing to get the binding on, I mailed it, and a note let me know that it arrived at home when the baby came home from the hospital.
 Alphabet Baby Quilt I also finished a Christmas gift in January. I know, I know. I’m crazy late. My only excuse is that it is for my husband’s Uncle and we knew we weren’t going to be seeing them until sometime in January. This one quilted up super fast. I did lines in either side of the seams, both horizontally and vertically. I kind of wish I would have added another set of lines? It looked fine, I was just thinking about the design after the fact.
And this is the only picture I can find of it!
 Chargers Quilt – just the top here I did the binding on both of these quilts in two days! The rush to the post office and the rush to be ready for a late Christmas dinner will do that to a person. I need to find a better thimble.
Here is to a lot more finishes in 2013!
We’ve moved. Again. I know, that’s pretty much all I do.
 We saw the Hollywood sign on our drive through! We’ve been in our new house for a week and we have less then ten boxes to unpack. Since we move so often, I can’t stand living amongst boxes so it is just easier to jump in and unpack everything at once. We also had to hang curtains here because the house we rented is older (built in the 50s or 60s) and so it is cold! Sure it is in the 50s and the rest of the country has been in winter wonderland with snow and freezing (and far below freezing!) temps, but the 40s at night has gotten to us. So we unpacked and hung curtains and organized. We still have to organize the kitchen pantries (we have two!) and four boxes of kids toys (that is at least five years worth of toys so I’m sure we have some to give away). We had a lot of boxes in the garage in San Diego that we didn’t unpack, but here we decided to unpack them. I found some things I forgot about! And really, if I did without some stuff for six plus months I can probably do without for good.
I am desperate to sew and I am making it a priority to finish up in our living room/office/sewing desk area so I can take a break and sew.
 Unpacking, unpacking. But so close to being done! I realized yesterday that I really like living here. We are about ten minutes from the schools, we live in a nice house with a great yard, the hubs is about fifteen minutes from work, and the entire area in general is just really nice. I look forward to exploring a bit more (I’ve already found a local quilt shop!) and traveling a little. I don’t think I felt that way in San Diego, and I don’t know why.
 Deer! Seen on the walk to the bus stop.
I figured out how to sew an inside zipper pocket for the purse I am making!
I should have typed that in capital letters – that is how excited I am about this!!!
Last night I cut and ironed interfacing to two pieces of fabric. I was following a tutorial until I realized I was too tired to continue and it would have to wait until today. Today I realized I need to find a better tutorial to just spell it out for me. Jennifer of All Things Belle recommended this zipper tutorial over at the Busy Bean and that just made it so easy.
I cut one piece of fabric instead of two and after a little time, I had a pocket!
Here it is on the inside of the finished purse ~
This is so awesome.
All my new purse needs is the grommets for the handle and the handle. I am debating making a matching handle instead of buying cotton webbing, or I’ll have to go buy cotton webbing. I love this fabric though so maybe that’s what I should just go with.
Welcome 2013!
I figured it is a good time to jump back in and say hi!
We are preparing to move. Again. I know! The place we are in now is the fourth place JW has lived and he isn’t even 3 years old yet. Ah well, such is life in the navy. I have most of the move out set up – moving truck, packers, house cleaner and carpet cleaner, and I’m trying not to worry about finding a place to live. A couple of months ago I could feel the stress and decided to just stop looking. The stress disappeared! Now that it is closer, I am able to look for a house and secure it rather then wishing or hoping it will be available in our time frame.
 Packing has begun I’ve been sewing up a storm. And finishing my semester. And thinking of what is to come.
I didn’t unpack everything when we moved into this house. Layout is key when picking where to live! There is little kitchen storage, I converted a coat closet into a pantry, and there just wasn’t a place for everything. The garage has a lot of still packed boxes so maybe that will be a good thing when it comes time to load the moving truck.
I’ve been sewing a lot. I did a couple of swaps – a zipper pouch organized by Heather at The Sewing Loft and participated in the Post Sewing Summit Swap. Sadly, I haven’t received anything in the post sewing summit swap, but I’m not letting that bother me. I made a baby quilt for a friend who is having their first baby, and lap quilt for Chris’ Uncle.
 Pouch I made for Sewing Loft swap  Pouch I received in the Sewing Loft swap! I love it so much! I am a block away from finishing Jeni’s HST block of the month! I actually made two blocks each month, so I have 24. I am going to use all of them in one quilt. I was thinking I would make a king size, but after doing the calculations I would need to add a lot more fabric – either in blocks or in borders. So that one is still being planned out.
I have a lot planned for this year:
~ 52 Lists – as seen in A Quilter’s Table year end review, this is old but I love lists and I think this would be a great thing to do. I haven’t seen that a new project is starting up so my plan is to do a list each weekend.
Dancing Stars Quilt Along – paper pieced quilt along. I feel like I’m jumping right in with this paper pieced thing!
Lucky Stars Block of the Month – a paper pieced block of the month! This looks fun and I am forcing myself to not get started.
If you are on instagram, you may have seen the scrappy trip along that I think was just started a few days ago. I know that a few have already finished the top! That is some fast sewing! I am interested in this but again, I have to move first!
I still want to participate in the WIP Wednesday posts, and recently found the Finish A Long for 2013.
Skill Builder Block of the Month – no harm in learning new things or sharpening your skills.
I am also going to pick a word for my year again. I didn’t do that this year, but a couple of years ago I did and I really like the idea. I’m looking for the word to pick, as I think about everything going in with us moving multiple times and me finishing school.
I am forcing myself to not start any new projects. No working on the Dancing Stars practice block or first month block, no starting a charm pack quilt, no new anything. Because I have three quilts to quilt. The most important – and only one I started – is a baby quilt. I’m not positive on the due date, but I think it is tomorrow. Or maybe today. At any rate, we are right around the corner and I’m not done yet!
First I tried marking straight lines with painters tape. I think I saw someone else do this? I can’t imagine any other reason why I would try. Long story short – don’t do it.
 Crumpled painters tape The tape got jumbled up and stuck to itself. It sort of worked on the first one, I didn’t realize that the end got stuck on my walking foot and that was part of the reason that it was wrinkling. I did two more lines this way and then pulled it off.
You can see the markings and lines here. Can you see that I didn’t sew through the alphabet blocks? Yeah, I don’t know why I did that. I thought it would be easy, or even fun. But starting and stopping that much, not fun, and really not easy either! But I’m about half finished and hoping to finish today!
The Creative Journey class with Amanda was so good. She had a cute doodle and had a story to share with every word or phrase she drew on the board. Hearing about her journey was great, she was very inspiring. She made me feel like I need to take a deep breath and check where I am, which is a good thing!
I took the foundation paper piecing with Lee and Elizabeth and LOVED it too. Before moving from Washington, I took a class and I thought this class would give me more tips and tricks to paper piecing. I did learn a few new things and I made three blocks using the pattern they had us work on.
I did three because I’ve gotten into the habit of making two or three blocks when something I am working on calls for one. I don’t do this all the time, when I make a quilt I just make that quilt. But this class called for material for one block, so I just did three. Two are in this picture, and I finished the third the other day but didn’t grab a picture because it just doesn’t look as good! I don’t know how that happened, how the third block (which was really the first, that I worked on in class) ended up a little bigger then the other two and it just looks a little off.
I am thinking of making these into pillows and giving them away.
I didn’t get into Kelly‘s metal frame class, but she offered to teach an unofficial metal frame class and I signed up for that! It was a great class! I learned a new skill and bought a few frames so I can make more of these purses. They are cute and fun and relatively easy to put together.
Of course I had to use some Native print fabric. I have a whole box of Native print fabric – every quilt shop I stop at gets checked for fabric like this. I buy it either because it is pretty, or because it is so hilarious I can’t help myself. I put this one more in the hilarious column then the pretty column, though the colors and design are not terrible.
My Sewing Summit classes were great. They were fun, informative, and I managed to get almost all that I wanted. I actually had to look back at my wish list to see what I didn’t get, since I really liked all of my classes.
I started off with a Creative Journey class with Amber and it was great to listen to. I enjoy hearing the process of how people got to where they are today, because I recognize the importance of knowing where you came from and how hard you worked to get to where you are today.
Next up was fabric selection with Jeni. I used her Art of Choosing series to when organizing and sorting my fabric after we moved in and really loved it. I now fold my fabric the same way and sort it before putting it away. The class really helped me think mostly about color saturation. The dark and light of it all. She showed two of her side braid quilts and pointed out that because of the saturation of the fabrics, you were able to see the fabrics a lot more clearly in one then the other. I am planning a side braid as well and have my main fabrics picked out already and need to pick a background. I don’t want the pattern fading into the background.
My first sewing class was a piecing class with Amy. I spent way too long trying to get my quarter inch seam to be a quarter inch. I admit I usually just sew and I know where a quarter inch is because I use a quarter inch foot as often as I can. I know that making sure your seam is correct is the key to getting a pattern right, so I liked taking the time to set it up. Amy had cute fabrics picked out for us to use and enough blocks to make a smaller sampler. I am the person who either cuts the first step of the quilt, then the second step because the sewing might be a touch off OR I cut it all out and make it work. It would be nice to not have to make it work so I cut all of a project out and let’s see if I can put my new skills to use.
There was open sewing each night, provided by Babylock, and I had only taken one project to work on. I knew I would be too busy to start something new or to want to work on something that took a lot of attention. Plus I didn’t want to pack a lot because I knew I’d have a lot to bring home.
This is the Atkinson Classmate pattern. It has a lot of fabric pieces, and you use something I never used before called soft and stable. This was also the first time I sewed with vinyl and it wasn’t as bad as I thought, and I also didn’t take the advice to use tissue paper with the vinyl. It is clear so definitely tough to see, and I didn’t pin it since those holes don’t go away.
I took this to Sewing Summit just needing to finish the binding. While I did manage to sew the binding on during open sewing, I didn’t finish it until I got home. I love this case, lots of pockets and space for supplies, and it is not a hard sewing project. It does take a very long time, but I have a lot of vinyl now so I am thinking of making a couple as gifts.
Next up ~ more classes!
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