Sunday Thoughts

Well hello there blog world. It's been awhile. Things are full steam ahead with my job, Sophie back in school, school activities and play time with the brilliant boyfriend and I just have been putting the bloggy blog on the back burner of life.

So, a quick little catch up...

I made a quilt with Jenny Eliza fabric designed by Jennifer Paganelli for JoAnn's.

Finished quilt using Quilt As You Go tutorial from Maureen Cracknell

This is mostly what it is being used for

What I made with some of the scraps - kitchen towel
The kitchen towel was made using this tutorial from Schnitzel & Boo

Quilt for my friend Mary

I used the Designer Star pattern by Lee from May Chappell

Cotton + Steel, Kaffe, and Moda fabrics

I love the back!

This quilted table runner turned out so cute! I think I will put it in my etsy store that is completely empty right now. I need to take better pics for sure...

...and the back...

My biggest quilty love is paper piecing!! I will try to focus and make a tutorial for paper piecing. I know that there are a lot out there so I wasn't going to. I have had a lot of people asking me how though.

paper pieced feathers

Last bit - There was a partial eclipse last weekend and we wanted to see it from the beach. This was my picture with my phone camera - obviously my phone camera is not the greatest.

Phone camera - no partial eclipse noticed

HOWEVER! Ernie, with his ever present camera, caught this doozy!! So amazing. I will leave you with that :-)

Sarasota Surface Design Guild

I promised myself that I would get more involved in life this year. Creative life, community life, etc. So, the boyfriend wouldn't let me back out of going to the monthly meeting last night as I so often do. I joined in December 2012 and went to 3 meetings all year :( Poor sportsmanship. Epic failure on my part. I joined again last night and plan on getting more involved. Such a lovely group of ladies from all walks of life! The creative energy in that group is astonishing! Weavers, painters, quilters, art quilters, jewelry makers, nature printers, fabric dyers, doll makers…I could go on and on. Plus they do play days once a month and you can try your hand at something you may never have thought of doing. One meeting I learned how to hand dye silk and made a beautiful scarf. I'm not sure why I talk myself out of going to the meetings. Maybe because after 3 meetings I still knew the same amount of people? ZERO. This time I brought a show and tell.

An art piece that I have been working on. I will finish it as soon as I get my other sewing machine up and running. I need the free-motion quilting foot. Oh well, I need it anyway for the Modern Quilt Guild meeting I am going to join this Saturday. They are doing a workshop on free-motion quilting too so it is perfect timing! 

I met some really amazing women last night and am very glad I have a boyfriend as stubborn as me who pushed me to go. Calamity Kim is a member of the guild and is a bit of a renaissance woman. She did a presentation/history of fashion and talked about losing your inhibitions and creating your own style. She talked about cutting up old pieces of clothing and reverting them back into just fabric to create something new and useful. I loved her quirky style and she was too funny! Such a great spirit. It is not my style to wear but I would love to make an artist apron using her techniques. Hmmm…just what I need. A new project…

Cheers!

Winter Cleaning…Kinda Like Spring...but Not

So, I finally got fed up with my creative work space and took the time to do something about it. Our little duplex leaves much to be desired but I am so grateful to have any space at all that I should at least make it user friendly! When we lived in Texas we had a 3 bedroom house and the 3rd bedroom was my sewing/craft room. It was wonderful! Somehow I had to cram that entire room into 1 wall. I read a few of my favorite blogs and took tips from their spaces. Let me give you a quick tour. Now don't get lost…I know the space is enormous ;)

My very embarrassing "before"

The lighting is better than it looks. We have a wall to wall sliding glass door to the left of the space and a light on the hutch behind it. I moved the Ikea basket shelf thing to the side so that I have more useable table top space and can watch Netflix and my favorite obsession of the moment. 

I added a little cheap bookshelf (Target $22) and found a little hexagon shaped tray, some cute heavy paper boxes with ribbon handles and a pack of stick on labels in the Target dollar section. I may have to go back for more before they are gone. I labeled one little box for scraps and the other one for selvedges. The blue containers on the new bookshelf are from the dollar store and I labeled those with current projects I am working on. One is for a Split 9 Patch Quilt and one is for an Art Quilt series I am creating.

All in all I love my new space! All together my "remodel" cost $27. Whoo hoo! I guess sometimes it helps to have a lot of crud you can reuse and repurpose. It's still a work in progress but I will tell you this past Sunday morning was bliss. It's so much easier to sew when you can find everything and not trip over boxes. Off to sew for the last 30 minutes of my morning…

Cheers!

Short n' sweet...

I have to get ready for my real job but I wanted to post the progress on my modern petals table runner that I am working on for Sophie's Aunt Robyn. It's been a challenge with all of the curves but I think it is going to be pretty! I need photo tips from Ernie obviously…

So tonight I will hopefully at least have the blocks stitched together and the quilt sandwich put together. The backing I found is a perfect match and I can't wait to see it finished! 

Yay for Saturday!

It is so nice to wake up and not have anything pressing to do. I can just enjoy a cup of coffee, peruse emails, news, social media, or a good book with a warm puppy at my side. I think Ernie and I are going hiking later to look for Bald Eagles so I will enjoy my quiet morning for now.

I finished my Blogger Girl's January Block of the Month II Thursday. This will be very cute by the time I am done with it! It's fun to watch the other bloggers put theirs together and see all of the different color combos.

On another note…I have to have a proud mama moment. My daughter just turned 15 the week before Christmas. She has always had a talent using color and shading, etc. When she was young we would buy her more blank drawing tablets than coloring books. She loved to draw and when she colored in coloring books she would use the crayons like pastels and she would shade whatever she was coloring to give it depth. This is something she is working on for her 9th grade art class. It's not finished yet but it is already pretty amazing. It's been such a blessing watching her talent grow. 

Well, I will jump back into the book I am reading for a few more minutes of solitude before the troops are up and wanting breakfast.

Cheers!

New Year…New Goals!

This may have been one of the best New Years ever. Of course I was asleep (or trying to be asleep while the neighborhood hooligans were blowing up their firework stash) but so many good things happened in 2013 and I just know this year is going to be full of good things too. Do we ever think the New Year is NOT going to be better than the last? :)

I have very simple goals this year…

1. Finish projects…ANY projects.

2. Get my Art Quilt collection for the coffee shop on Siesta Key done. 

3. Take my Real Estate test and get my license. Class is done I just need to take the blasted test!

4. Get involved in the Modern Quilt Guild of Sarasota and the Surface Design Guild.

and then the usual…

5. Lose a little around the middle.

Okay, I've started 2 new projects to get the New Year going…

The first one is Blogger Girls Block of the Month.

Monique at Open Gate Quilts has a free 6 month Block of the Month where you do 2 of the same blocks in 2 different color settings so by the end of the 6 months you have 12 blocks. She also has the settings designed for you for free. She did red and greens but has a list of a few other bloggers that are doing this as well and they have different color schemes so you can see what that would look like. I chose turquoise and tangerine…although instagram made them look like turquoise and hot pink :) I will post pictures as I go along...

The second project is a table runner that was supposed to be a Christmas gift for one of Sophie's Aunts. I was killing myself trying to finish the other one from my last post for the other Aunt so I decided to stop worrying and bought her gift instead. So this will be a New Years gift! This one is also from Modern Patchwork's Winter 2014 magazine. The colors don't show well in the picture but they are deep rich colors and the gray has a nice sheen to it. I just love that fabric. I am challenging myself because I have never sewn curves in a quilt so hopefully my next block won't be so messy!

 We'll see how this goes!

Happy New Year!

Cheers!

Post Christmas Not So Blues

Well, Christmas has come and gone but this year there were no blues. Yes, Ernie and I had to go back to work the next day and yes, Sophie was able to stay home and enjoy more of her Winter break from school but it still feels Christmas-ish to me. This was our 3rd Christmas here in Florida and it was an overcast day but it was 81 degrees yesterday afternoon. We spent Christmas with Ernie's family and ended it with mine and I guess I am still relaxed at heart knowing that there are people in my life to love.

I think my favorite thing this time of year is seeing the Amish girls all lined up in their bright solid colored dresses with their crisp white bonnets and sun kissed skin and sandy bare feet waiting for the bus after a day at the beach. Even though there is NO parking by my office, everyone is so happy and there are large groups of families greeting each other while waiting for seats at the local restaurants that it makes everything ok. It's just a short time period and everyone will be back to their normal routine in another week or so. I tell myself to let them enjoy each other and just allow more time to find parking!

This is what I was working on up until Christmas:

I made it for one of Sophie's Aunts back in Texas. I found the pattern in Modern Patchwork's Winter 2014 issue. Here's the link if you want to check it out! 

I'm working on another pattern out of the same issue for Sophie's other Aunt. It will just have to be a New Year's gift :) 

Off to get ready for the day! 

Cheers <3