My Monthly Goal Finished!

Can you believe there is only a week left to August! It seems like I just signed up for One Monthly Goal over at Elm Street Quilts and it's time to show if you completed your goal! I'm happy to say I did! I have a few threads left to hide, but as far as I'm concerned that baby is done! I'm very happy with the way the quilt turned out and mom loves it too, and that is all that matters! She is my biggest fan after all and loves everything I do, so that might have something to do with it! The pattern is from Pat Sloan's QAL that finished up back in January of this year and it was called Grandma's Kitchen.

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - August Finish Link-up

Little T's arms aren't quite long enough!

What I love about Pat's QALs are the patterns are always available and for FREE! We just finished up on In The Summer Time and that was a wonderful QAL. I'll probably have that on my OMG for next month ! ;) And we are finishing up on another called Let's Go Camping. I'm enjoying that one very much too! I need to finish, OK I need to start the last block then there is only 2 more blocks to do! And let us not forget the latest one she started Merry and Bright. I'm pretty excited about this one too. We are on block 4 so plenty of time to join in!

I just started a Sew A Long with Gnome Angel . If you are feeling really ambitious or just crazy like me come sew a long with us! It's the Farmer's Wife 1920's quilt we are working on! It's only a mere 111 blocks! I'll be foundation pattern piecing mine. I'm new to it and have already pulled stitches out because I sew them in the wrong position or the fabric was right side down UGH, but I figure by the time I'm well into this I should have a hang of it! I'll be posting photos of the blocks I have finished in another post!

Another Quilt A Long I'm doing is Seeing Stars with Melissa over at Happy Quilting. We are in our 2nd week and I have to admit I'm a little nervous about this weeks star, it has curves! Drunkards path to be precise. But she's a pretty good teacher, last week she gave a tutorial on the no waste flying geese. If you haven't tried it yet you really should! I did 3 stars with 8 flying geese each and I did them in less than 2 days! They went together so easy! I'll also be posting these in another post.

So that's it for my week! I'll be back to show you more blocks in a bit!!!

Enjoy the last bits of summer, it's going by way too fast!

Sheila

I love to create...

Especially when it comes out how I envision!

When little T was younger he loved the book Where The Wild Things Are.  We read it so often I knew it by heart and it was on of my favorites to read to him. So I made him the monster from the book! It wasn't near perfect,  I wouldn't even call myself a novice at making toys,  but he loved it and carried it with him everywhere and let me say that he was a heavy little monster!!!

2007

I made him out of old jeans, crocheted the hair into of his head after sewing a grid of the same color yarn to his scalp and used one of little T's baby shirts to make him a shirt. I'm proud of it because little T loved it.  The reason I'm telling this story is because I never thought I would make something that he would care much about.  Until I finished his chrome book cover for school! He thought it was great and wanted me to make more to sell to the other kids at school. He's such an entrepreneur! He wanted an anchor. That's where the FPP anchor came in from last week! Plus he wanted the dolphin material I had and he wanted a hammerhead shark in the center of a star! Which I also had to design and then I foundation paper pieced it to make sure the points came out right. I quilted it all, the anchor was in the ditch (sort of), I echoed the star and the ocean scene with the dolphins I did a watery ripple. I also purchased a couple foundation paper piecing books to try more of those! But I have to say it has been very rewarding to make up my own pattern!

 This project was filled with a lot of firsts for me. I do enjoy a challenge though so it just added to the fun! Plus I got it done in time for the first day of school! Nothing like a deadline to motivate you to finish a project.
Here's to fun projects and new ideas!
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!!!
Sheila

Anchors Away and My First Attempt at FPP

I love trying new things. I try not to over think and scare myself out of doing something, I just leap in and do it. That being said if you decide you want to try FPP at least try someones pattern that has been proven and they can give you info on how to do it. Yep my first attempt at FPP was with my own design, crazy huh! Well it may have taken longer than it should and I may have wasted some fabric, but I did it, it's done and I 'm pretty happy with the results! Here it is...

Anchors Away!

My son starts school on the 15th and they passed out Chrome Books for the kids this year. Little T is very good about taking care of his property and gets a little nervous when it comes to taking care of things like this so he wanted me to make a cover for it. He spotted the Anchor block in Jinney
Beyer's The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns. If you've ever seen this book it's huge and it's only the pictures of the blocks with a little graph of the block, no instructions or detail how to make the block. I changed the block a little bit from the picture, but it looks like and anchor so I'm happy! And so is my son and that's what matters! Now to figure out how to make the rest of the cover!

Wish me luck and have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Sheila

A Quick Post on an Upcoming QAL!

And YES I'm playing along! It's at Happy Quilting and it's called Seeing Stars...> See the button on the right!!!! I love those things! Click on it and it will take you to Melissa's blog (or the above link) and you can see the beautiful quilt we will be making. Here are the fabrics I'll be using, batiks of course!!!! With Kona cotton in black as my background. This QAL is great for those fat quarter bundles you have sitting pretty on your shelf, waiting patiently to became something wonderful! I know you have them, I can't be the only one with several fat quarters sitting pretty waiting for the perfect project!

What do you think? I love bright batiks with a black background! I may not use them all or I may change one or two or add a couple more, but this is what I'm stating with!

Here's the latest QAL and this is my fabric I'm using, come join the fun!

Sheila

Life, Blocks, Challenges, Ideas and Goals

Happy August! Boy July flew by! Little T will be starting school on the 15th...10th GRADE! Oh my goodness where has the time gone. He's been ready to go back, since the last day of 9th grade! We did spend the day in the city last week. Compared to our small town, it's a city. We had to go to Half-Priced Books first. Little T just loves books and bought a bunch about history also something he loves. I found EQ5 software there for only 7.99! I've been wanting to try it and I see that I will be able to upgrade so I thought I'd give it a shot. We also went to Malibu Jacks, it's not just for little kids. They have miniature golf, go carts, laser tag, virtual reality and arcade games with video games...I'm talking retro games like Pac-Man on steroids! And since little T is into the retro games (remind me to tell you about his video game consoles and games collection!) he enjoyed playing Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and one that he's been playing on his cell phone, Crossy Roads. Which to me is like Frogger. Daddy played Space Invaders with him and Timmy beat him! Check out the score! We also played miniature golf and had a great time! Maybe next time laser tag!



 

And since we were in Lexington we had to have Steak N Shake for dinner! I wish they would put one in our small town, I love those fries!

Now to blocks! Wednesday was the 2nd block in Merry and Bright QAL!!!! It was also block #7 of Lets Go Camping! But I didn't have a chance to work on that one yet. Both are run by Pat Sloan, she's one busy woman! She also gave us a challenge of doing a whole quilt of the house block! That got me thinking (this is when my hubby cringes) I 'll have to work on my idea before I let you in on it though. Anyway, here is my 2nd block;

Hang the Wreath

Here's block 1 and 2

I'm liking the blues, but the red and greens that Pat and most of the others are doing them in look absolutely wonderful! I may break down and do this QAL in those colors too!!!

I'm finishing up on my In The Summer Time. I absolutely loved this QAL. It had me pulling out old photos of our Adventure Wednesdays and reminiscing. Looking at how young little T was in some of those pictures just made me realize how fast time flies! Here's my flimsy top I still have a scrappy border to put around it, but the challenge was to get the top posted before the 3rd! I can't wait to quilt this special quilt.

 

Speaking of quilting...that brings me to my monthly Goal! OMG! I've been trying to participate in this for months, but never could get things right. I think it's a wonderful idea to help motivate and keep you focused on what you want/need to get done. It's run by Patty Dudek of Elm Street Quilts and it's full of inspiration, tips and tricks. Now to my goal...finishing mom's quilt! It's Pat Sloan's Grandma's Kitchen QAL that ended in January. I'm finally quilting it, but keep getting side tracked! I'm on the last round of quilting (I have ten 12inch blocks plus sashing to finish) and I need to bind it before my Quilt Guild meeting on August 21st, there I put it out in the universe and hopefully that will keep me on track to finally get moms quilt completed! Here's a photo of it under the needle of my Tiara III.

Spread out as best as I could

Close up of the basket full of roses

earlier work on a block, meandering roses

I hope you have a week full of fun and creative bliss and here's to getting projects done!

This is my goal and this is me,

Sheila