Ritzy Cracker Quilt - A Christmas Quilt

Here is a quilt that I finished in December, yet haven't shared with you yet.  It's called the Ritzy Cracker Quilt and it is from a free pattern that I found at the Moda Bake Shop (my favorite place to find amazing and FREE quilting patterns!).   I used a Christmas charm pack.....and for the life of me I can't remember what it was called!  I know it was from Basic Grey though......hopefully I figure it out soon. lol  This was the most involved block that I have made to date.  It took me a few days to sew them all together, but I found it very helpful to do it in stages.  I also learned that I need a lot of practice getting all of my seams to line up properly!  I mean A LOT!  Or, I can just accept the fact that it really isn't that important to me and just enjoy the fact that I have a beautiful quilt to put out every Christmas! :-)

I wasn't thinking right when I started putting the back together.   I added the thicker band of fabric and then realized that it wasn't long enough, so I had to add more on there.  Oops!  But, it works and no one would even know that I messed up, if I hadn't have told you. ;-) lol  

I was able to keep this quilt out on our couch through January, because the fabric wasn't so Christmasy that I needed to put it away with the tree.  I have it rolled up now and in a basket in the living room with the other quilts that I have made.  I just couldn't put it away!  And, since I've only made a few lap quilts, I am able to keep them all out all year long.

I started another Christmas quilt, but only got 2/3 done with sewing the top together.  I just ran out of steam in December and was getting such a big baby belly, that I couldn't sit at my sewing machine any longer.  I hope to work on it throughout this summer....well, as soon as I actually have some free time to sew again!

I'll be sharing a couple of other quilts that I was able to finish last year with you soon! I'm having a hard time getting on here.....I can't imagine why! lol  I have to say that I'm loving every second with my little guy.  He's the sweetest baby ever and so mellow!  It's been a welcomed change, because my little GG is a very active 3 year old. lol 

Take care friends and God Bless!

di

Well, I did it....

I entered my first quilt contest.   I'm not sure why, because I know that it it was closely looked at, it's far from being a quality piece of workmanship.  I'm still learning. ;-)   But, I really love this quilt and on Friday it's going to be packed up until next Autumn.  So, I thought I'd give it a shot.  The contest is being hosted at Quilting Gallery and this weeks theme is "Thanksgiving" so I am going for it.  I entered.  lol

If you'd like to stop by their site and vote, that would be wonderful, even if it's not for my quilt!  ;-)  There are so many talented quilters out there.....and it's a great prize that's up for grabs!  Voting starts on Friday. :-)

I spent this morning doing some cooking for Thanksgiving.  Yep.  Already.  I know that there is no way that I can handle standing the entire day on Thursday cooking, so I've decided to break things up into three days worth.  Today I made my grandma's candied cinnamon apples, a cheese ball and got the cucumbers soaking for sour cream cucumbers.  Tomorrow, I'll finish the cucumbers, make two pumpkin pies and a real cheesecake.  Then, I'll just have casseroles to bake up on Thursday.  The wonderful thing is that my husband smokes the turkey, so I have my oven to myself all day!  

I'm really not looking forward to being pregnant on Thanksgiving. Well, I'm not looking forward to my next OB check the first Monday of December and getting on that scale! lol  I had my check-up yesterday and somehow I gained 4 pounds the past two weeks!  I'm not sure what happened, because I haven't been eating any different or worse....I've only been gaining about 1/2 a pound each visit my whole pregnancy.  So, as I'm doing all of this baking and looking at all of the containers of sour cream, cream cheese, and butter.....ugh!  lol  It's just not fair!  But, I'm pretty sure that at least one of those pounds that I gained was in the clothes I had on.  I was so cold yesterday and had a cam on, a t-shirt, and two sweaters, not to mention knee highs and jeans.  That all adds up, right? lol 

Are you all ready for the big day?  Before we know it, it will be Christmas......this time of year always goes by so fast!  

Take care and God Bless,

di

WIP's for Sew and Tell Friday :-)

Good afternoon everyone!  Well, it has been one crazy week here at my house.  My poor husband has been working non-stop since Saturday night.  I'm talking, up at 4 a.m. and working late into the night, once until 1:30 a.m. the next day!   I'll just say that he's been working so much, I almost think it would have been better if he had gone out of town for business.  At least that way it would have been easier on me.  I know that sounds strange, but it's hard when he has to work so much like that, but I know he's still here in town and not far away from me.  It seems worse when he's close by, but I still can't see him.  At least when he's out of town, I KNOW that I can't see him. lol  I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but I don't feel like anything makes much sense this week.  I'm tired and worn out from my week-long, no breaks from my no-napping, non-stop talking three year old, sweetie, GG.  I'm just incredibly grateful that tonight is my FarmGirl meeting, so I get some time away tonight with the girls!  FarmGirls are groups of ladies who enjoy the magazine Mary Jane's Farm and I'm lucky enough to have an awesome group of ladies who get together once a month.  Sometimes we make things, sometimes we cook, sometimes we just sit, chat and laugh a lot.  It's wonderful!

I spent this week finishing up a baby quilt.  I can't share it just yet, but hopefully I will be able to soon!  Now it's just waiting for it's recipient to be born!  I am also waiting because I want to put his name, birthdate and such on the label.  I'm really excited how this quilt turned out, too!  I was excited at first, then started doubting my color choices, then started liking it again, then more doubt started sinking in, but now that it's all together and finished, I'm just thrilled to pieces with it! :-)

With that project finished, I was able to start working on my Ritzy Cracker Quilt by Mary Lane Brown from the Tulip Patch through the Moda Bake Shop.   I'm using Moda Fruitcake charm packs by Basic Grey.

I've been working on this one bit by bit each day.  One night I cut the charms....

The next night I sewed the first part of the block together and yesterday I sewed the patterned triangles on to each block.

Today I've been working on sewing all of the white triangles onto each block.  I'll be working on this tomorrow, too, since I'll be gone all this evening.  This is the most involved block that I've worked on to date.  And, my first time using triangles!  So, I've been going slow and making sure that I have them centered and such.

Here is what one of the finished blocks looks like.  I just have 41 more to do! lol  Then the fun part.  I get to decide how I want to lay them all out.  This is the first time that I get to make a decision like this!  There are several different layouts for this block to make the quilt top, so I guess I'll just play around with them and see what I like the best.  I've never had choices like this before and I'm used to being told how to lay each block out, so this is another first for me!

Oh, and look what I got in the mail yesterday!!!!!  Isn't it beautiful????  Oh, I just can't wait to open this up and see all of the amazing fabrics!

Another first......my first time purchasing fabric on-line.  I bought this jelly roll through The Fat Quarter Shop and had a great experience with them.  I ordered it late on Sunday night and it arrived in the mail Thursday afternoon.  Great service!  I am going to turn this into a quilt for the living room.  Hopefully I will get it done before Christmas! lol  I am just swooning over this jelly roll and couldn't live with out it.  It fits our color scheme perfectly, with the bright reds and greens to the blue, which matches the walls in our living room.  I can't wait to start working on this!  Now the hard part though, deciding which pattern to use!

I guess I have a semi-finish to share this week......I finished up this embroidery one night when I just couldn't sit at the sewing machine anymore.  My belly is getting too big and my ribs start killing me if I sit too long.  So, I picked this up and finished it up one night.  I love it to pieces and I am going to put it on a mug rug.  It's a free pattern from Wild Olive.

So, that's it for my rambling today!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and have some time to get crafty!  Can you believe that it's almost Thanksgiving?????

I'm linking up with Amylouwho's Sew & Tell Friday's......be sure to click on the image below and visit all of the other wonderful and amazingly talented ladies out there who are sharing this week!

God Bless,
di

Sew and Tell Friday.....

I had to go on a bit of a sewing hiatus this month, because my dear husband took over my sewing machine.  He volunteered to make my daughter this coat for Halloween.   I must admit, it was the hardest thing I've done in a long time!  It wasn't the having my husband sew it instead of me, because he is actually a good sewer and has sewn several of my son's costumes from scratch......as in he designed and constructed it without a pattern.  Something that I could NEVER do! lol  The hard part was sitting in my living room and listening to him at the dinner table trying to sew that coat.   Let's just say that the coat was made of vinyl, my machine didn't like it and didn't want to sew it nicely, the thread and tension was all messed up no matter what setting it was on, and he was very frustrated.  (I would have been, too, and have since promised myself to not touch vinyl unless it was a life or death sewing situation. lol)  So, just imagine sitting in a different room, listening to your poor sewing machine rev, hearing needles break, and having lots of not too nice words being said to it. lol  I tried to read, but it didn't work.  I tried to watch TV and that didn't work either.  But, he finally finished it, my daughter loved it and she looked great on Halloween!  

Whew.

Now I have my dear sewing machine back.  I've been treating it gently and giving it positive words of encouragement.....it's helped me sew 3 quilts in the past 2 months!  It's a trooper and needs a little TLC now. lol   

So,  I started out with an easy project that I've been wanting to make from a tutorial at Sew, Mama, Sew!  A case for my new cell phone.  The case is designed for a camera, iPod, etc., but it actually works just fine for my phone.  I guess I could have taken the sides in a bit, because there is quite a bit of wiggle room for my phone, but that's okay.  It was a fun and easy project and a great way for me to get back to sewing.  This project only took me an hour or less to make, and would have come together real fast if I didn't have my little helper by my side getting into all of my supplies. ;-)

I dove into my scraps for this project and used some Amy Butler fabric that was left over from a baby sling I made for my daughter.  I also used 2 vintage buttons stacked on top of each other and adde a bow to the elastic loop, because I didn't like that so much of my loop showed when I had the case shut.  Silly, I know, but I had to make the loop a little big because the button was so wide.  And, I do like bows anyway! ;-)

After I made the case, I started and finished a car seat blanket cover that I shared the other day and you can see it here.   Now I need to figure out what project I'm going to start sewing for Peanut next!  I have a very long list to choose from! 

I'm also excited to say that I finally started machine-quilting this quilt today.  I need to finish it soon and have had it pinned and ready to go for a couple of weeks.  Now it's time to get to work and get this one quilted and finished!   This is a special gift and I don't want to show any more of it until it's safely in the hands of it's recipient.  ;-)  

While I was in no-sew limbo and not working on the quilt I just showed you, I started cutting two Fruit Cake charm packs up to make this quilt from the Moda Bake Shop.  I'd really like to get it done by the beginning of December, so that we can enjoy it all month long.

And I just had to start this......I just couldn't resist.  I absolutely ADORE Pumpkin Spice Lattes and it was just a requirement for me to stitch this up!  I think I'm going to put it on a mug rug.....something else that I've really been wanting to make for quite awhile.  I just love all of the amazing mug rugs that I'm seeing at so many blogs!

So, once again, I have several things going on at the same time....lol  I'm not really sure if I can function with only one project going.  I need the fun and opportunity to switch from thing to thing, if I want to.  Guess that's just my side-tracked, right-brained nature. lol

I'm linking this up to Sew and Tell Friday's at Amylouwho's!  Be sure to visit her site and then go see all of the talented ladies who are sharing their amazing creations!

Take care and God Bless!

di

Quilter's Blog Festival - Mighty Max's Quilt

I am really excited to have a very special quilt to share with you all for the Quilter's Blog Festival that's being hosted by Amy's Creative Side.   Well, I'm just really excited that I finally started quilting and that there are so many wonderful bloggers out there who are so talented and generous with sharing their tips and tutorials that help self-taught quilters, like myself.  :-)

The quilt that I am sharing with you was made for a very, very special little guy, who's mommy is a friend of mine from high school who I was lucky enough to reconnect with over a year ago.  And by little, I do mean little!  Max was 2 pounds 1 ounce when he was born almost six month premature.  This fact in itself just astounds me, because I am six months pregnant right now and I can't imagine having my own little guy enter the world this early.  But Little Max did and he had a very long and hard first 100 days.   He had several surgeries and many close calls and it wasn't long before friends and family started calling him, "Mighty Max".  A name that describes him perfectly!   

When Max was in the hospital and going through all of her terrible ups and downs, I started feeling my nesting phase hit and for some reason,  I decided that I wanted to start quilting.  I think part of it was just the idea of making something snuggly and comforting for others and my own family.   I have made a few very simple baby quilts many years ago, but that's it.  And by simple, I mean that the quilt was one gigantic Ohio Star made from one huge triangle template.  I never quilted them, I just tied them, but they were great baby gifts and fun to sew.  But, I hadn't quilted since then and I'd say it had been at least 12 years or longer since I had made one last.   

I knew that I just had to make a quilt for Max.  I found this great tutorial for The Road Trip Quilt at Click. Cluck. Sew.   I went to JoAnn's and found this super cute fabric with the zoo animals on it and that lion reminded me of sweet, little Might Max.   This is a great quilt for a beginner, because there aren't any seams to match up!  And, it came together really quickly.   If I ever make it again, I will make it longer, but this will be a great size to wrap Max up in this winter.  

This is the first quilt that I did any real machine quitting on, too.   I went out and bought a walking foot, because I was working on another quilt for a benefit and was going to machine quilt on it.   I guess the benefit quilt was my FIRST quilt to machine quilt on, but I only went around the strips and didn't do any more than that, because I was afraid to mess it up. lol    I was actually working on both of those quilts at the same time, because I needed to finish the benefit quilt before October and I worked on Max's quilt here and there at the same time.   I decided to quilt it like the quilt in the tutorial was done and I'm glad that I did, because it was a good learning experience and just plain practice in sewing straight lines.

  

For the back, I used some snuggly, polka dot flannel.  :-)

I really wanted the label to be special, so I sat down and drew a larger version of the lion from one of the zoo print fabrics.   I embroidered it with some DMC floss and then wrote the rest of the label with a permanent marker.

So, as you can see, this is a very special quilt!  It's for a totally amazing little man, who I'm happy to say that after almost 120 days in the hospital, he has been home now for almost two months now and he's doing fantastic!  He weighs over 10 pounds and is a happy and adorable guy!   And, I really learned A LOT while sewing this quilt.   Besides learning how to really make, sew and quilt a quilt, I learned something else......I am here by and officially addicted to fabric and quilting.  lol  I have another baby quilt sitting by patiently waiting to be quilted and I can't wait to get started on it.   And, a Christmas quilt for my table....and a lap quilt for the living room.....lol  My husband has actually been hogging my sewing machine all week!   He's sewing a Matrix coat for my daughter for an Anime Convention.  She's a huge Kingdom Hearts fan (it's a video game. lol) and some of the characters wear coats that resemble those long coats from The Matrix.   That was a little much for me to tackle, but my husband has tailor blood running through his veins and he's a natural when it comes to sewing.  Yes, I'm jealous! lol    And, yes, there is a long list of other projects that I want to sew, mainly things for my own little man, who is due to arrive the first of February.   :-)

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I've linked up to The Blogger's Quilt Festival, Tidy Mom and Fun to Craft and The Airing of the Quilts.   I can't wait to sit down and look at everyone's quilts and projects that they are sharing.   Please know that I am so grateful for everyone's sharing of their quilts, tips, hints, ideas, you name it!   It is what really got me wanting to quilt, has helped me learn to quilt and is what's keeping me inspired to learn more and make more!

God Bless,

di

p.s. Oh, I forgot to tell you.......if by some twist you actually know who Might Max is (the world is smaller than we think sometimes and the internet world connects us all together!) please don't share this with Max's mom.   We are taking a little road trip soon so that we can hand-deliever this quilt to Max and I sure want to keep it a surprise!   I'm pretty sure, well hoping, that she doesn't read my blog......but I really wanted to share this quilt with you all for the Quilter's Blog Festival, because it is so special! :-)

Friday's Sewing......the benefit quilt

Wow, I have been quiet all week.    I feel like I've been going non-stop since Saturday!   Lots have been going on and I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend, finally.  lol   I spent all weekend helping w/ a charity benefit, had an OB appointment on Monday, an ultra sound appointment on Tuesday and since then I've been stuck in Girl Scout Fall Product paper land. lol   Our big and exciting news is that we found out on Tuesday that we're having a little boy!   We are SO excited!  Even my older children wanted a boy.   I have 3 girls and one boy, so we were due for another one.  lol  So, now the hard part......figuring out a name and the fun part, I can start sewing for him!   I actually made something for Mr. Peanut last night and I'll share that in another post. :-)

For Friday's sewing, I can finally share a quilt that I made last month.   I made it for a benefit and I didn't want to share it until the benefit was over this past Sunday.   This is my first "real" quilt.  I had made three other quilts before this one I'm going to share but they were all the same pattern, a HUGE Ohio Star baby quilt.  So, even though it is a quilt, it didn't feel like a "real" quilt because it used one gigantic triangle.  Plus, I tied them all because I was too afraid to machine quilt. lol   So, this is my first quilt that I actually pieced together lots of fabric and machine quilted on it.   

I used the Stacked Coins Baby quilt tutorial at Moda Bake Shop.   I am so thrilled at how this one turned out and I think I might make one for my little guy.   My 13 old daughter wants one, too!

I used the Spirit Charm Pack by Lila Tueller, which I absolutely love the mixture of colors in it!  Pinks, blues, browns, yellows....so pretty!

And here's the back.....I'm loving how designers are adding quilted elements to the back of quilts!  It really makes both sides so much fun.   I used some pink gingham flannel that I found at JoAnn Fabrics for the backing.   Which, it was very frustrating, because the printing on the selvage edge was very big!   I'd say it was at least an inch thick and the backing was just wide enough, so there is a small part in the back where you can see part of the words, because I couldn't even get it covered up w/ the binding.  

I went back and forth with putting a label on this quilt.  Since it was being donated, I didn't it to seem like I was bragging or something by having my name on it.   But, I asked several of my quilting friends and they all told me to put a label on it, so I did.   I embroidered all of it w/ DMC floss and chose a rainbow, because the decorating theme for the benefit was rainbows.   Ever since the accident,  almost everyone close to Colby, including Colby, have seen rainbows, so rainbows are very special to them all now.  

As far as the quilting goes on this.......I went out and bought a walking foot (the best thing in the ENTIRE world that I have EVER bought!!!!! lol) and just did some simple machine quilting 1/4-inch around the outside of each pieced strip.   Since this was the first quilt that I was machine quilting, I was afraid to try anything more than that.   The original quilt in the tutorial has free-motion quilting on it and I might try that the next time that I make this quilt.  

So, most importantly, the benefit was wonderful.   There were so many people there showing support and it was very touching to be a part of it.   I also did all of the decorations for the benefit, so I spent a couple of weeks painting rainbows. lol  

I'm nice and new to linking to amylouwho's "Sew & Tell Friday's" and Lit and Laundry's "Finished for Friday". I am so grateful and appreciative of everyone who visited me for my first share last Friday.   I haven't been able to sit down and thank you each personally yet, but please know that I am so thankful for all of your kind words about my Autumn Table Topper Quilt.   I plan on thanking each of you this weekend!  I'm looking forward to sitting down tomorrow and looking at everyone's wonderful creations that they have finished up this week!

Take care and God Bless!

di

Show & Tell Fridays - Autumn table top quilt

I am so excited today, because I finished up the Autumn table top quilt that I've been working on the past few weeks.  I used a great tutorial that I found at the Moda Bake Shop and changed it to Autumn fabric, instead of Christmas.   You can read about my adventures in learning how to do free-motion quilting on this quilt here. 

And here it is on my table.......I adore it!

Now I need to find one to make with a Christmas theme!  This is a nice size, too, and would be great for a lap quilt.... more ideas....more to add to my ever-growing "to sew" list..... ;-)

I just recently found a wonderful quilting blog called, Amylouwho, and she is the hostess of "Sew and Tell Fridays".  It's a place for sewers to share what they have been working on and get feedback, share what they have completed, and for inspiration.  I'm so excited to be sharing my finished quilt there and look forward to visiting all of the wonderful blogs to see everyone's beautiful creations!

I'm also linking up to Lit and Laundry and her "Finished for Friday" link party.  It's another great site and there are lots of talented people sharing some great projects!

Take care and God Bless!
di

sewing - Autumn quilt WIP

I have really had the quilting bug these past few months.....I'm not sure why, maybe it's because I'm nesting or something & the idea of cozy quilts laying around is really appealing to me right now.   I finished two baby quilts last month along with the top of another baby quilt and I've almost finished a quilt to put on my dinner table in celebration of Autumn.   I found this beautiful Christmas quilt at the Moda Bake Shop (which has amazing FREE sewing/quilting ideas all of the time!  I LOVE this site!)   It is a Christmas quilt in the example, but I really wanted an Autumn-themed quilt for my dinner table, so I used the Awesome charm pack by Sandy Gervais for Moda.

I've been quilting up a storm on this one, because I want to have it done in time to have on our table throughout October and November.  Plus, my husband is waiting to use my sewing machine to work on my daughter's Halloween costume.  He's much better at making adjustments and additions to patterns than I am, so he gets to sew up her costume! ;-)

Here's the embarrassing part.  I tried doing free-motion quilting for the first time.  Let's just say that I started with WAY too big of a project to learn this technique!  And, I should have been smart enough to read my instruction manual before starting on this new venture.   

So, I went out and bought a darning foot, made up a quick quilt sandwich and started sewing.  It looked great on the top side and I was pretty excited at how easy it was to actually meander around and sew.  Here's what the top looked like....

It looks pretty good, huh?  Well.......then I tuned it over and saw this:

EEK! lol  What in the world is going on?  My thread has eyelashes!

Well, after a lot of heartache tweaking all of the buttons on my machine (which is only a few because I have an old Viking!), Googling, and hair pulling.........I got out my sewing machine manual.  Wow.  I should have done that first!  Turns out I was turning a knob that I thought was the upper thread tension and it actually adjusted the height of the feed dogs.  I NEVER knew I had that option! lol  Plus, I forgot to put the stitch length to zero.  So, after I used the correct knob for the feed dogs and set my stitch length to zero, things started working pretty well.  I am still having some minor issues with tension.  If you look closely at the back of my quilt, you can see my upper thread pulled through a bit and there are a few places where I have very, small eyelash action going on.  But, I prevailed and did free-motion quilting in all of the blocks of the quilt.  I decided to not attempt to do it on the entire quilt....I'm not ready for that! lol  So, I stitched 1/4" around the outside of each block and I think it looks pretty good!

There are lots of great video tutorials out there on free-motion quilting and this helped me out a lot, because I am a very visual learner.   I also found this great blog called "Sew Inspired" that was extremely helpful, because she uses a regular, ole' sewing machine like I have, has lots of pictures and great advice.

Here it is so far.....all quilted and waiting for the binding (which I hope to work on tonight):

and here is a close-up of  my attempt at free-motion quilting:

Hopefully this quilt will be finished in the next day or so!  Then it's on to my next project.......finishing this one up which will be a gift for a dear friend!

Take care and God Bless,

di