Yesterday my darling daughter Lily celebrated her 7th birthday. This seven years has truly flown by, and now my baby is a young lady. I am so proud of her, and happy to have this sweet girl in my life. She was a surprise baby (I was supposed to have my tubes tied after I had my twins in 1997, long story), so she is truly a blessing and a gift. Happy Birthday Miss Lily!
I had a busy weekend between my DD's 7th birthday party and doing my Girl Scout mom cookie duties, but I was able to get the borders on my Rhubarb & Ginger Anniversary Stars quilt. I had some reservations about the purple border fabric but now that it's on, I love it. I really do! I think the striped inner border looks great too.
I got my pink baby quilt back from my quilter, but sadly, she won't have my orange one done until the end of March. Our guild's quilt show is coming up mid-March and she has quilts of her own as well as customer quilts to finish for the show. That's fine, I didn't have a deadline. I am just anxious to see how she quilts it. The baby quilt, she asked me if she could experiment with a different border pattern. She did an all-over pattern in the middle and a feather around the border. I really like it and she didn't charge me extra because she wanted to play with turning a corner and I was happy to be her guinea pig.
Well, off to sew binding on the baby quilt! I can't decide what to start next!
I love having 3 days off! Too bad it's a long dry spell until our next one in May. I was able to get a lot accomplished this weekend. I got the top together for my Anniversary Stars quilt and chose the border fabrics from my stash. I thought I had some yardage of the Rhubarb and Ginger for the borders and backing, but what I had were some of the purple prints from the Sweet Romance line (same designers). I'm not completely pleased because the red is more pink than Rhubarb & Ginger, but I also do not want to go out and buy yards and yards more fabric to make the borders "perfect." I hope I will be able to live with my decision!
I also sewed the blocks together for the Charming Hearts tablerunners. I won't bother to post pictures of either of these finishes, since they look pretty much the same as the last photos and I don't want to bore you.
I looked around my sewing room, trying to find SOMETHING interesting that I could share on my blog. Well, what about my fabric stash? How do you store your fabrics? I have 3 main storage areas - the first is a CD tower that is a perfect fit for my folded fat quarters.
The second is a bookcase that houses my books and magazines, along with some stacks of fabric that I like to keep out in the open to look at, and my button collection lives on top in the glass jars.
Last but not least is my double-wide sliding-door closet. I wasn't able to stand far enough back to give you the full floor-to-ceiling perspective, but - believe me - it is stacked floor-to-ceiling. The other side is too! Fabrics are sorted by collection or project in a labeled box. Some of the largest boxes are either large backing pieces or things I have a lot of, like backgrounds. I also have many Rubbermaid boxes full of fabrics that are grouped by color, which I find really helps me when I am pulling things to coordinate with a particular print.
Along the lines of the "6 weird things about me" thing that folks have been doing for weeks on their blogs, I was considering some of my own weird habits this morning and thought I would share, for lack of anything quilty going on right now.
1. I brush my teeth with hot water and I need to have the water running during my entire brushing session. Horribly, horribly wasteful, I know, but otherwise, they don't feel clean. If I am at someone else's house, I conserve water and energy but since I pay the bills at my house, I indulge myself.
2. I have to have a fresh towel whenever I shower. I hate to reuse towels, ever. Even if I'm the only one who uses it.
3. I buy most things in pairs. If my usual brand of toilet paper, dishwashing soap, laundry detergent, etc. etc. is on sale at a good price, I have to buy 2.
4. When I eat small snacky items like almonds, goldfish crackers or plain M&Ms, I have to put 2 in my mouth at once (there's that 2 thing again....)
5. I do not drive on the freeway. Ever. I like to drive, I just cannot do freeways. Neither can my mom.
6. If there are soap bubbles in the sink after I wash dishes by hand, I must rinse them all down the drain. They can't be allowed to stay there. (There I go, wasting water again!)
7. Not a weird thing about ME, but my daughter was born on February 29, 2000. I think it's so cool and special for her to be a Leap Day Baby! Her brothers love to tease her that she doesn't get a birthday every year, but of course she does. She is my Princess, after all!
OK, I'm sure I could think of many more, but that's what sprang to mind this morning. Don't laugh!
I spent the better part of 2 hours after dinner last night assembling almost 75 Valentines for my kids to take to their parties on Wednesday. They wrote in all the names, but needed help punching out little bits of cardboard and putting them together to form cupids' arrows and crabby patty boxes. I lost 2 hours I could have been quilting!
I did sew all my rows for Anniversary Stars, but now need to sew the rows together. Hopefully that can be my goal for the week. It's getting there!
I am kicking myself for missing out on a beautiful white Singer Featherweight machine on Craigslist. I'm always checking for machines, but rarely think about it on the weekend. This one was pristine and the case and everything else was too - they were asking only $300!! I didn't see the ad until 3 hours after they posted, and I was #2 to contact them. Curses, foiled again! :(
I've been accepted into the Quilt Studio netring - thanks for including me! It's great to be part of this online quilt blogging group - all your sites provide so much inspiration to me! :)
My original plan was to make this tablerunner and use the leftover charm squares to make a border around the runner. I had enough of the half-square triangles to make another tablerunner, but not enough charm squares unless I bought one or two more charm packs. I really want to finish and be done with this project this month, and since my February plans don't include any new purchases, even small ones, I decided to make do with what I had. I took apart the border and used the charms to fill in the squares for this second runner.
There is enough of the backing material I had already purchased to use for these 2 narrower runners, plus plenty of the binding fabric. I have 2 perfect-sized pieces of batting from the leftovers of my last 2 projects, so I have everything necessary to complete these, without making a single purchase. I even have several spools of various colors and types of pink machine quilting thread and will try quilting this one myself to save some money there, too.
I'm feeling so frugal! (Don't laugh - I know it's only the 4th!).
I'm going to try and stick to a fabric diet that restricts any fabric from entering my house this month. It's only 28 days - should be a piece of cake, right? I have been a fabric glutton the last month, especially, so I need to put on the brakes, seriously. No new fabric. Thanks for the button, Kim.
