Customer Quilt

I know that Carol doesn't mind me showing her quilts on my blog so wanted to show you a quilt I recently did for her. She is our guilds "scrap queen" as 99% of the time what she does is scrap quilts. You should see her scraps since everyone knows she is a scrap quilter most of our leftovers tend to end up at her house.

Here is a cute zig zag quilt she made.

I had a nice day yesterday running errands, visiting a quilt shop and attending a planning meeting for next springs fiber arts conference. Did me good to get away from quilting for a day now I am refreshed and ready to tackle the next customer quilt.


Kathie

I Promise

I promise by the end of the week that I will do something that I can take a picture to post on here. I seem so out of touch with my own blog and with those that I usually read.

Between craft shows and a heavy customer quilting schedule I just have not had the time or energy to keep up on my blogging.

I have taken the last quilt that I am promising for Christmas. Have to cut it off somewhere plus I don't want to be quilting up till December 24th. People need time to get things bound plus I need time to relax, organize the sewing room as it is a disaster and hopefully bake some Christmas cookies.

I have six customer quilts and two table runners left to quilt in the next three weeks (hopefully less) than I am going to take a break of a couple of weeks to do other things and maybe do some piecing of my own so hope to have lots of pictures to share closer to the holidays.

I do have a couple of pictures of customer quilts I will post once I find the camera.

We had another great piece of mail this week. Mandy was also accepted at Salisbury University. Now only waiting on one more (her first choice school) before she has to make any type of a decision.

Kathie

Mixed Emotions

I always have mixed emotions at Thanksgiving. I am thankful for a great husband and wonderful daughter and love them with all my heart. It is also a sad time of year as my father passed away Thanksgiving morning 16 years ago. All these years later I still miss him and my mom so much.

Last night we got a great piece of mail. My daughter got a college acceptance letter from Towson University!!! Not her first choice school and she will have to wait till January to see if she gets other acceptances but so great to get this one.

I am excited for her as she has worked long and hard for this but also kind of sad as I am sure all parents are when this happens because them leaving for college suddenly gets very real.

First thing I wished is that I could call my parents to tell them as they would be so proud of the first in our family to go to University.

So again a time of joy, sadness and mixed emotions.

Kathie

Reflections

Our community has reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving season. The Girl's basketball team from the school my daughter goes to was involved in an accident with a drunk driver last night. I was so surprised to get up, grab a cup of coffee this morning and turn on Fox news to see a story from our little community on national news. Three of my daughters good friends are part of the team and were on the bus last night coming home from a game in Virginia. Don't know their individual conditions but was happy to see on the news that no serious injuries were involved and that all the kids had been released from the hospital.

Must have been a super scary night for their families and I am so grateful that it all had a good outcome.

Kathie

No slow down

Seems like forever since I have blogged or had the time to read others blogs but it has actually only been a week. I have had two craft shows and multiple customer quilts to do in the last week. I am loving having all the work to do but it leaves no time or energy for anything else.

Missed out on the sunday stash report (have been buying sale Christmas fabrics) and design wall monday (didn't have anything on there anyway). Hoping that I will get back to posting more after Thanksgiving but realistically it might be more like the middle of December.

I decided I am taking two weeks off at Christmas. No customer quilts at all during that time. I want to clean the sewing room, do things around the house that have not been getting done and maybe even read a book or two and do some relaxing. After of course, all the Christmas shopping gets done.

kathie

Crazy Time of Year

I always go crazy this time of year, between customer quilts and my craft show preparation and actual shows I seem to be constantly tired and that has been one of those week. Toss in a dentist appointment for myself and a doctor appointment for Mandy and not much sewing (or working on customer quilts) has occurred in the last couple of days.

Sunday I did get this runner made, quilted monday and the binding finished tuesday night. That is the extent of my sewing this week.

Well I guess I actually did a little bit of sewing yesterday also, I had to put ribbons and elastic on Mandy's new pointe shoes but I hardly call that sewing.

I have my 2nd and 3rd (out of 4) craft shows this weekend so maybe once that is over with I will be able to sit back and breathe again.

Kathie

Design Wall Monday - November 14, 2011

Where in the world is November going? I can't believe it is already the middle of the month!!!

My whole day of "ME" sewing got interrupted by several things but still had several hours in the sewing room. I finally got the last two borders on this quilt that was started back in April at our local Fiber Arts Conference.

I really like how it turned out. Now folded up and put away on the shelf as I probably won't get it quilted until after Christmas.

I also spent a lot of time yesterday ironing and folding up fabric and putting it away that had been strewn all over my sewing room. It looks a whole lot better now. The rest of the time I had I used to make another runner using the wedge ruler and striped fabric. Since I have some of my backing fabric on the frame that I never got to quilting yesterday I am going to quilt a couple runners and then switch gears back to customer quilts. I think my next customer job is quilting three runners for a lady so guess this will be runner day for me.

Kathie

Sunday Stash Report - November 13, 2011

I was busy and totally forgot to post my stash report last weekend so this is for the last two weeks. Very little fabric used in that time as I have been concentrating my time on customer quilts and household chores.

I did purchase fabric AGAIN. A couple of yards of nice Christmas fabric for craft show items and then when I was in JoAnns to get some wonder under I saw some flannel they have for purchase by the bolt. The bolt was on sale plus due to Veteran's day I got an additional 20% off for showing my military ID. Couldn't pass up a sale like that right?

I have been trying to purchase only for craft show items or a project I am working on NOW and not buy just to stash but I broke that rule this time. My daughter told me she would like to have TWO dorm quilts to go off to college with next fall so this bolt is destined to be backings. Won't start picking patterns or anything for a few months but in this case I thought it was worth stashing it for awhile.

Stats for the last two weeks are:

Fabric used: 4 yards (borders and backings for runners)
Fabric used YTD: 261.25 yards
Fabric purchased last two weeks: 10 yards
Fabric purchased YTD: 198.50

Net fabric used in 2011: 62.75

Even with all my recent purchases I still have a great net amount that I have used up this year so overall am happy with the numbers.

Kathie

Quilting and Stuff

Well waited all morning for a delivery of a new bed to find out that the delivery truck broke down and now will have to wait till monday. It is one of those sleep number beds and was looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight.

I have been slowly putting borders on my purple quilt so hope to have those all on so I can post a picture in a day or two.

Still plugging away on my customer quilts, making good progress. Today I quilted an "interesting" one. The backing was a home dec fabric that would be more something I would recover a chair with. To my surprise no problems with it on the frame, no thread breakage or other problems.

I am declaring tomorrow a ME sewing day. I am only going to work on my projects. I want to finish up the borders on the quilt and hopefully get a couple more table runners quilted and hopefully bound.

Kathie

Latest Hospice Quilt

This hospice quilt was recently donated but I never got around to sewing on the label. I did that yesterday and now it is folded up with the other quilt (only 2 right now as I recently made a delivery) waiting on an early 2012 delivery.

This quilt was pieced by Elsie, quilted by Julia (great job) and Jane did the binding, a nice community effort!!

I finished the twin customer quilt that was on the frame yesterday so took the time to get a couple more of my runners quilted. The Santa's Sleigh runner I completed hand stitching down the binding while watching the CMAs last night.

Today is looking like it will be an extremely busy day with a few errands and a late afternoon meeting so I don't know what if any sewing will be accomplished today. Next up on the frame will be a baby quilt so if I can at least get that loaded and get another binding done I will have accomplished something.

Kathie

Wednesday Update

So that you don't think that all I have been doing this week is customer quilts I did finish the binding on this quilt last night. I had quilted it several weeks ago but never got the binding done.

Sandy asked how many more craft show items I am trying to get done for the rest of the shows and the answer is as many as I can...lol

I have two runners that just need to be bound, need to put binding on the Hidden 9 patch christmas quilt and need to quilt the four runners I have done and not quilted. If I get those all done I would like to make a few more runners but don't know how much will actually happen.

They were looking for vendors to participate in a local concert series. Guess they are going to have food vendors and art/craft vendors in addition to the music. Figure I would give it a whorl (since there is no fee to participate) so have an additional show now on the 18th.

Better get to sewing!!!

kathie

On the Frame

Since I am so busy with customer quilts right now I figured I would have to show some of them to have anything to blog about.

This quilt was on the frame yesterday, it was made by a 13 year old girl for her little brothers bed. She did a wonderful job, it is nice and flat and square, a pleasure to quilt.

My friend Jane is teaching her to quilt and has done a great job in stressing the importance of the 1/4 inch seam and pressing correctly.

In addition to this almost twin size quilt I quilted a wall hanging yesterday afternoon and another this morning.

I did take a few minutes for my own project last night and got the stitching done around the motifs on the santa's sleigh runner. After the next customer quilt is done I will toss a couple of my runners on the frame.

Kathie

Design Wall Monday - November 7, 2011

Well............nothing that was on my design wall as of last monday has been completed, or even moved off the design wall. I did add this partially done runner to the wall. No original design, basically used what the accuquilt GO die had on the package. I have some other ideas on how to use the sleigh but that will have to be for next year.

Wow it was a super busy week, in fact I was so busy I totally forgot to do the sunday stash report. Wasn't much to report so I will just combine it with next weeks.

This is my SUPER BUSY customer quilt time of year, I received 10 quilting jobs in the last week. Luckily (time wise) is that several of them are pretty small so I can knock them out quickly.

The other busy part of the week was that I had my first craft show of the season on saturday. This was a small one and I didn't sell as much as last year but considering how inexpensive it is to rent one of their tables all and all I came out ok. My hubby also sat there and kept me company a big portion of the day so that was nice also.

Have you ever seen the movie Pearl Harbor? My daughter was watching it this weekend. She has to pick 3 works on a subject and then right a comparison essay on them for her high school/college english class. She decided to pick the subject WAR and how it is portrayed.

I didn't see the whole movie but the parts I saw were very intense. We had the opportunity to visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial in April so I think the movie really hit home for Mandy. Watching it we said we could practically smell the oil smell that still hangs over the Harbor all these years later and I for one as I was watching the movie could picture the wall of names of all that were lost that day. It was great that we were able to combine a history lesson with a vacation last spring.

Kathie