Finally Finished after 2 years

Good Evening all

My day has gone pretty good but am getting really tired....didn't get a nap today. LOL

This is just a quick post to tell and show you all

I'M FINALLY FINISHED!!




The cone I've been working on for over 2 years is finally finished. I can't believe how long this cone lasted me. Its either a lot of thread or I'm a really slow piecer.

I've been working steady on this project and learned a lot of things that I'll catch you up on in the next few days.

My little guys birthday is tomorrow - he's turning 7. Tomorrow is gonna be a busy day.

Have a great day!
Vicky K


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Design Wall Thursday

Good Evening All
We are under a storm watch tonight. They are forecasting another 20 cm of snow. Its a good thing I live in Alberta as I love snow. I'm getting excited about taking kids for skiing lessons again this winter. Last year, my kids and the neighbour kids took an hour private lesson. It was a great introduction to skiing. I've only skied 5 times in my life so it was an experience for me too. Myself and the other mom were allowed with the kids for a discounted rate. Someone should have been taking a video of my first attempt on the magic carpet. I'm sure it was quite the site! Trying to get my 3 year old on it without her or myself falling. Got her on and then its my turn. Oh My Goodness! I couldn't get my upper body forward, so I'm waving my arms with the poles that are supposed to be pointing down but slashing through the air to prevent myself from falling on my but. I think I finally got my balance halfway up the teaching hill LMAO. Can't wait to see how I'll do this year. :)
Yesterday I started cutting out my next project. I'm hoping to to be finished cutting the block pieces tonight. I won't cut the sashing and corner blocks until the blocks are put together.
Here are the pieces on my design wall.




I like purple but just don't play with it very often. This is a turning out to be a very springy quilt. I'm trying to get it finished so that I can enter the quilt into the Iron Quilter II competition at Missouri Star Quilt Co that's due November 30. Better get off the computer and get back to cutting.
Have a great night everyone!
Vicky K
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WIP Row Robin #2

Good Evening

I've been missing in action for a while because I was sicker than a dog for over a week. I had the worst cold and cough and could not stay awake for longer than an hour at a time. Went to doctor, got meds, feel better. But now my little girl is going on her 5th day of fever and cough. Taking her to the doctor tomorrow. Hope she gets better soon. When she's sick, she has to be near me and she won't sleep without me.

So I decided to join up with Freshly Pieced's WIP today. I'm having trouble adding the button tonight and will play around with that another day.

I've been working on the 2nd Row Robin for my quilting guild. I had lots of fun and frustration working on this row. The theme was Women's Intimate Apparel.

Here is the top that I received.


I was thinking of doing a row of shoes but when I reread the note from the creator, I figured it wasn't intimately appropriate. So I tossed all the designs I came up with for shoes and I must say, my runner was amazing. LOL

So here are some of my blocks during creation:














Its getting late here and I'm gonna have a busy day tomorrow. Hope you have had a productive WIP Wednesday!

Vicky K


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Scrappy Binding for Son's Quilt

Good Evening All

Today is a snow day with just me and kids home. Hubby is out hunting again. I really wanted a whole day of quilting and playing in my room. But I was feeling bad for leaving kids alone. So I spent all morning and most of the afternoon with them. I got in about an hour after lunch. Right now I'm working on the scrappy binding for my little guy's quilt.





I'm pretty excited about finishing the quilt. Its been a long time coming.

I'm back in the sewing room tonight for hopefully a few hours. It'll depend on when little girl comes on down. Have a great evening.

Vicky K

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Binding Question

Good Evening All

Hope you had a great Halloween! I had an awesome time with friends and family this year. Great memories. Both kids had parties at school and then my friend had a party for 12 kids and everyone had a blast. Then my niece, her husband and 18 month old kids met at our house with my friend and her kids and we headed out Trick or Treating. It was lots of fun for all to have so many walking together. And the weather was so nice. I feel like this was the first Halloween that I've been able to get into the festivities with my kids since my Mom passed away. Things are starting to settle down with the estate. Its been a long 2.5 years. I can't wait for Christmas! I even attempted to make eye balls from apples. They worked out pretty good but they aren't "Take to a Party" food. Kind of have to be eaten right away.

I've been working a lot in my sewing room the last few days but I can't show what I'm working on. I've been working on a Row Robin that I joined at the Fort Sask Quilting Guild and its a Secret. I know one of my readers are in the exchange with me so Mums the pictures LOL.

On October 30, I went to Sparrow Studio to quilt my son's quilt. It been sitting in my room, sandwiched, waiting for quilting for at least 2 years. My son is turning 7 at the end of November, so I figured I should get it finished while he still likes what's on the fabric. I picked a spider web panto. I think my little guy will love it!





I'm working on the binding now. I'm going to do a scrappy binding. It'll have the solid colours - Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and Orange. How long do you make your strips when doing a scrappy binding?




My kids and hubby will be back from gymnastics soon, so I need to get off the computer.

Have a great evening!

Vicky K



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String Block Day 6 and final day

Good Evening All
Hope you've had a wonderful day. Mine was pretty good. I was able to accomplish a lot in my sewing room today. I finished taking the paper off all the string blocks. Now I just need to address and stuff the envelopes.

Here are all my blocks finished:




Pretty excited about them. I'm really liking this project. Can't wait until I receive all my blocks and can put them into a great quilt.

Tonight I still have to un-baste a quilt. I basted it before thinking/knowing I would be getting a longarm quilting machine. And tomorrow, I'm renting a longarm at Sparrow Studio so I can quilt it. Its a quilt for my little guy who turns 7 at the end of November. I figured I should get my act in gear as he won't be liking the theme soon. LOL This quilt has been a UFO for at least 1.5 years. It'll feel really nice to be finished it.

Here is a picture of my little guys quilt before I removed the pins.





I've been trying to figure out how I want to quilt it. Should I custom quilt it with machinery, should I just do fun free motion, or should I do a pantograph. This will be the 5th quilt I will be quilting using an APQS and I still feel like a real beginner. So I'm leaning toward a pantograph. I need to start somewhere to grow and I'm sure this is not going to be the last quilt I will be giving my little guy. The next one can have custom stuff done to it ;)

Oh and I thought I would tell you a funny story about last night before I sign off:

My little girl was, of course, still up when I went to bed last night. She crawled into bed with hubby and me. When she gets too awake at night, she will talk or sing to herself until she gets sleepy again. And I also like to read before going to bed. Lately I've been catching up on Facebook stuff before turning out the lights. So around 2 am, as my hubby is sleeping, my little girl starts singing quietly. I end up reading a post about Auto-Correct. I started laughing so hard, I just couldn't keep it in. All of a sudden, hubby is awake and worried about me because he thinks I'm crying. My daughter pipes in and says Mommy's laughing not crying. I'm can't talk because of laughing so hard and also kind of nervous to tell him that I'm reading Facebook and waking him up. One thing about my hubby - he likes his sleep in the night. Gets really grumpy if he gets woken up. Could you image soundly sleeping and then all of a sudden your daughter is singing and then you think your wife is crying. The poor guy LOL. He took it pretty well, even made a joke about it this evening. Its been a long time since I laughed that hard and it felt really good.

Have a good night everyone and hope you've had a laugh today.

Vicky K


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String Block Day 5

Good Evening

So I wasn't able to get into the sewing room yesterday. I got lazy and ended up staying upstairs watching TV and playing on Facebook. The evil time consumer. lol

As I was feeling lazy about yesterday, I made myself come downstairs tonight. It took a while to get motivated to cut the strip blocks but I finished them. I'm a procrastinator when it comes to cutting fabric. I'm thinking that's my biggest hurdle in quilting. And its not like I don't have enough fabric in my stash if I made a mistake. (wink) When I was first learning how to quilt, I miscut a few times (or should I say many times), so now when I buy fabric for a quilt, I usually buy an extra .25 meter. I have lots to spare in my room. Especially when I'm doing stash busting.

I learned something while cutting tonight - Include extra fabric past the edges of my foundation. It can/will shrink up with seam allowances.

I cut my paper foundations to the size of blocks required - 8.5". The first one I trimmed tonight, I used the paper as a guide. Trimmed all four sides. I then started trimming the second one the same way. And something made me stop and actually measure. Well, good thing I did. The paper foundation was 8.5 X 8.25. One side shrunk. I changed the way I trimmed and started using the measuring using the ruler.

So then I started debating with myself about removing paper first before trimming as it seems that the blocks will distort slightly after removing the papers. I decided to cut first and then just be really careful when taking off the paper. I looked at some of the other blocks that I received from my swap partners and it seemed like the blocks also got distorted in the mail. So I figured as the blocks are cut on the bias, its gonna be really hard for my partners to receive perfect blocks and to not worry so much. I'll do my best to send great blocks but I'm relieving the pressure of perfect.

Do you get stressed for perfection when quilting?

Here are some pictures of my night.

Before picture



The difference out in paper foundation



Here are all my cut blocks and the pile of scraps leftover. I'm excited to have more to add to my crumb block scraps.



As I didn't sew tonight, there's no new picture of my thread cone.

I guess I should get up to bed, its 1:30 am and my little girl came into my sewing room tonight for the 3rd time. Halloween is really getting to her, she won't sleep without me when she wakes in the middle of the night. We finally got her going to sleep on her own without too many issues.

Have a great night!
Vicky K


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String Block Day 4

Good Evening

I was able to get into my room again today. Yay!! Its been a good week when I get to play 2 days in a row without guilt.

I was able to finish sewing all the String Blocks.

Here is my pile of rough blocks all finished and on cutting mat to be trimmed down to size. I'll be cutting them down to 8.5".




I've been trying to use up the cone of thread on my machine before I change to Aurifil. It feels like its been taking forever that I've been working at this. For more motivation for blogging and seeing an empty cone, I've decided to take a picture of the cone after every sewing session. Ha ha, hope you don't get as sick as I am of this never ending thread.

Here is my cone at the end of day - October 26.



I might even be able to get into my sewing room again tomorrow as they are calling for snow tonight and tomorrow. It might be a pj day tomorrow.

Have a great night!
Vicky K


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String Blocks Day 3

Good Evening

I finally got down to my sewing room at 10:30 tonight. But better late than never ;)

Tonight I'm working on String Blocks for a swap I'm doing for the Just Us Quilters on Facebook. This is the first time that I'm making string blocks. We are using paper foundations for the blocks. The first day I worked on the blocks, it was a learning curve and exciting because it was new. The second night I was working on the blocks I started to get worried that the blocks were diverse enough and then started to not enjoy working on them. Right before I had to quit to go to bed, I realized it was a really quick way to make blocks and got excited about the blocks again. I mean, it should take me only another evening to finish all the blocks. I'm working on 20 blocks. That's really productive - 20 blocks in 4 evenings. I can't wait until I receive all the blocks from my partners. I think I've received about half of them already. I won't let myself take the blocks out of the envelopes until I have mine in the mail LOL. I looked at them but pulled out my will power to put them back and not on my design wall.

Here's my pile of fabrics and the pile of blocks started.



I gotta get back to my blocks - Have a great night everyone!



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2 Suckie Blankies Finished!

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend to all my Canadian Friends

Today was a great day. I made cherry pie, pumpkin pie, and chocolate zucchini muffins. My kids really liked the muffins! Then I spent most of the afternoon and early evening with my kids watching Halloween movies. After they went to bed, I was able to come downstairs to play in my sewing room.

I decided to work on some projects that were laying on my shelves and my sewing table. It feels really good to have clean surfaces around me when I'm working. Next will to clean up the boxes that I haven't been able to unpack since I moved into my new space.

Here are two of my finishes tonight.











And these finishes work great as they are for my great-nephews, who I will be seeing tomorrow for Thanksgiving Dinner. My husband and I will be hosting turkey dinner. Looking forward to the yumminess and company.

Have a great night!


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I'm Back

Good Evening!

I can't believe how long its been since I posted last. Boy does time fly!

It doesn't feel like I have been able to finish a lot the last year. But I want to change that. I would like to be able to finish at least one project a month and post here at least once a week. Here's to a new start. I'm also testing out posting from my IPad again. I'm using a new app and I purchased a keyboard for it. So far its working great but we see how it posts ;)


Lexi Burg from Lexi Bee Designs came to our September Guild Meeting for a trunk show. She also taught a class - Let It Snow Pillow. I was able to get my hubby to watch the kids and took the class. It was lots of fun. This was my first time putting a flange on a pillow's border and I made a mistake. I finally took the time tonight to frog some of the seams, fix the flange, and finish the pillow. Yay!




The pillow is covered with tulle and we put beads between the snowman and the tulle. Its like a snowglobe. It's a great quick project. Especially since Lexi had kits for us to purchase for the class.

You can find Lexi's patterns on Craftsy.

Have a great night!


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Mystery Quilt #3

Good Afternoon All

I've been out all day doing errands for my Mom's estate but thought I should show you what I've been up too the last few evenings.

Remember I said a lot of things have happened in the last 4 months and I would be telling you about them.  Well one of the things that happened - I volunteered to be Co-Programmer for one of the quilting guilds that I'm a member of.  Its been fun and stressful.  I started in January and showed a quick demo on Chain Piecing to the Next level.  I'm a newbie quilter compared to most of the other members, so I stress out about showing the ladies something new.  In January, I also started a 4 month Mystery Quilt with the guild.  The first month was fabric selection and the second month (February) was cut and start sewing.  Here is a picture of my pieces all cut and ready to start sewing.

I would love any ideas or suggestions you have on what I can demo or do during our meetings.  Our guild doesn't have a lot of members which leads to not much funding to bring in guest speakers.  So all ideas will be welcomed!

Hope you have a Quilty Day.

Vicky K



New room again - Before Pictures

Good Morning All

Today I'm taking my kids to a babysitter so that I can do some errands for my Mom's Estate.  Its gonna a be a day of great accomplishment :) positive affirmations, right.  LOL

I've been trying to do the bookkeeping for a while but I've been getting distracted with moving my sewing room and setting up my esthetics.  And what started the mess of cleaning and organizing - Our trip to Cuba.  I wanted to have gel nails for our trip and because I know how to do nails, it really hurts to pay to have someone else do them.  Well I haven't done a set for 4 years and knew my first ones wouldn't be the prettiest or the fastest but I still had to try.  My niece came over one evening so that I could practice on her.  It took me a very looooong time.  They didn't look bad but I didn't have the time to do mine so I decided to get my nails done by someone else for the trip.  But I had all my stuff for nails in the living room, kids play area downstairs.  And I had to put it away for the kids to play.  So knowing that I would have my nails and my nieces nails to work on, I decided to take my sewing stuff out of the room DH built for my esthetics and set up my esthetics.  In the last 4 years, my esthetics have been stored in the spare room and in my daughter's closet.  Well my quilting room is now in the spare room.  Its a small space and was crammed with esthetics.  So it was a jumble of sorts to get the two rooms switched.  I thought I would show some before pictures of my sewing space.

This is from the doorway looking left. 

  

This is looking straight in from doorway.

 

This is looking in from doorway between above pictures.

 The boxes on the bed are stamp sets that don't fit in my Stampin' Up cabinets.

The garbage bag in back left corner is the bedding that goes on this bed.

 

 Here is the top portion of my closet.

 

Here is the lower section of the closet.

 

Behind wall in closet 

 

Pile of quilting things to put away 

 

Looking at left corner from closet

 

Vanity hidden under all junk. 

 

  I've been working at getting this room organized and useable. I'm almost there.  I need to move my design wall and set up a cuttin/ironing table.  My oversize ironing table I used previously is too big for the room.  My design wall will go against the closet wall behind door.  It sure is coming along but for the cost of my paperwork suffering.

Now off to do errands.

Hope you have a Quilty Day!

Vicky K

Mystery Quilt #4

Good Evening All

Just thought I would sent out a quick post about a Mystery Quilt I just signed up for.  Its called Plenty of Fish and is from Prairie Quilt Mercantile on facebook.  They have listed the fabric requirements and the first clue comes out on March 1, 2013.  It goes for 6 months.  Check it out and join in on the fun.  There are more than 600 people joined.  Click here for their website.

I'm off to see if I can pick the fabrics from my stash.

Hope you have a Quilty Day!
Vicky K

1 inch Postage Quilt UFO

Hello all

While I was moving my room I found the packages of Postage Stamp squares that I received from a swap I participating in about 2 years ago.  I'm making a 1 inch Postage Quit and I want it to be a true (?) postage quilt.  Which means to me - not one fabric is a repeat.  I wasn't sure the best way to go about making sure that there are no repeats in thousands of squares.  So the type of person I'm am - I didn't open the packages.  Well its been a few years now and I need to deal with them.

 Here are my packages waiting to be opened in my new room.

 

When I'm cutting the last of my scraps into my scrap system, I always make sure that I get at least a 1.5" square to add to my postage quilt.  The squares I have personally cut are stored in these muffin containers I got from the dollar store.

 

I've now started going through the packages and have added to my muffin tin.  A few of the packages have had repeats so I lay out all 50 squares from each package to remove any duplicates and then I've been sorting them into Lights, Darks and Brights/Unknown.

The muffin tin is now sitting behind my sewing machine so that I can grab a set of light/dark to use as leaders and enders when sewing other projects.    The white square in the top middle are my squares that I have joined.  When I want a moment of quilting without thinking, I can grab those to iron open.  I've been stalling on that step as I'm not sure how I want to store the twosies and then how I'm going to store the foursies and so on.

I would love some hints or suggestions if anyone else has made a postage stamp quilt.  How did you sort the fabrics, store your squares, and your work in progress.

Oh yeah, and by moving the tin behind my machine, I'm hoping to move this project from UFO to WIP.

Hope you have a Quilty Day.

Vicky K

Happy Mail!

Good Morning All

My little guy woke us up in the middle of the night with croup.  The poor little guy :(.  I know what it sounds like and what to do as I ended up taking him to hospital last year for the same thing.  My hubby thought he was faking it.  So I've kept my kids home from school today.  So far its been a relaxed morning.  Hope to keep the day relaxed.

We have some guys coming to take a look at our bathroom and kitchen sink today (which just reminded me, I should have sink clear of dishes for them).  My Esthetics room where I had my Quilting room previously has a lot of water damage on the ceiling.  So before I set up completely I'm having it checked out to see where the damage is coming from.  My theory is the hubby and kiddies splashing water on the floor and not wiping it up.  Hoping not the pipes.  Hubby redid the bathroom himself about 7 years ago.

On Feb 5, 2013 I joined in at Talking Tuesdays.  The sponsor was the wonderful Sondra from Contemporary Cloth Store.  I won the Giveaway!  Yea for me.  I rarely win so I really appreciate when I do.  Placing the order was easy to do and when I had a question for Sondra, she replied very quickly.  So go check out her store before March 1 as she is having a sale on precuts and konas.

Here is my package.  Of course I had to order as much as I thought would fit into the envelope especially as the postal rates for Canadian packages just increased. 

My goodies peaking out!

  

My fabrics!  Love stash builders.

 

 

Hope everyone has a Quilty Day!

Vicky K 

Going on a Trip in 82 days!!

Good Evening all

Today I took my kids and my niece and nephew to Boston Pizza for heart shaped pizzas for lunch.  And then we came home and played in our backyard.  I think they had good time.  I know I enjoyed spending time with them.

This evening I'm off to my guild meeting - no special time with hubby.  Hmmm, what's more important - hubby and kids or spending time with quilting friends, hmmm.   LOL

My hubby and I aren't big Valentine celebrators.  So its not really a big deal that I won't be home.  My hubby didn't even want to buy the kiddies anything for Valentine's but I ran out last night and bought them some chocolate and a movie each.

I mentioned yesterday that I bought the Quilters' Travel Companion.  I'm really excited!!  A friend and I are going to go to Salt Lake City in May for the Home Machine Quilting Show.  I can't wait.  We are most likely going to drive down from Alberta through Montana, Idaho and then Utah.  Its about 19 hours straight driving.  We are thinking of spending the night near Kalispell and then driving the rest of the way the next day.  Of course, since we are going to be in the States and the prices are so much better we want to do lot of shopping ;)  Please let me know if you have any suggestions for quilting stores or restaurants that we should stop at.

The reason that I'm going to the HMQS is I'm testing out longarm machines.  My Mom passed away more than 2 years ago and I'm finally getting ready to do a major distribution of her estate.  Its been 2 years of hell, please excuse the language.  And I thought as a reward and gift to myself, I'm gonna treat myself to a longarm.  I looking at getting all the bells and whistles that I need (want lol) and right away.  If I don't spend the money on myself it will just be eaten up with the rest of my family's income and then when I'm ready for it with regards to time and space, I won't have the cash available.  And this is not something that my hubby would agree to do on credit.  So here we go :) :) :).

And please pass on any opinions or information on Longarms.  I'm looking really close to APQS and Gammill and then HQ's.  The closest dealers are APQS and HQ's.

Gotta go get ready for the meeting.

Happy Valentine's Day XO XO
Vicky K

Quilt U Be Mine Reveal Day is Here

Hi All

Today my kids celebrated Valentine's at their school which makes today feel like Valentine's Day not tomorrow.  I also went shopping at a LQS and purchased 9 metres of fabric, and Quilters' Travel Companion Book.  More on that tomorrow.

Today I'm linking up to Michele, the best hostess, at Quilts From My Crayon Box  Quilt U Be Mine Round Robin.  If you are new to my blog, Welcome.  If you are a regular follower, please go check out the linky party and see all the great quilts.

I had lots of fun, learned lots of stuff, played with some great fabric, and get an awesome wall hanging in the process.


This was the centre block that I created and mailed out to my fellow swap partners.  I love the look of stained glass and I love to paper piece.  So it was nice to have both in the block.   And.....

My partners also followed through with the stained glass look.

Doesn't this look great! 

 I love it and I can't wait to get it quilted, bound, and hung.

Its almost time for bed.  Have a great night everyone!

Vicky K

Testing out blogging from new phone

Hello Everyone

Long time no blog.  Life has been crazy and quiet at the same time.  Do you ever feel like that?   Lots has changed for me in the last few months and I hope to catch you up in the next few weeks.

I tried blogging from my phone awhile ago and didn't like how it worked.   But I got a new phone a few months ago and tonight I decided to try to blog again.  I  have tried my Ipad and don't like the procesd or results. My laptop is the best device to post with and I don't get to my laptop on a regular basis.  I would like to blog more and hope new phone has great results :)

I'm posting a picture of a quilt I, of course, finished after Christmas.  The fabric is The Grinch.  My little guy loves the Grinch.   The layout is from EQ7.  The top is finished, now it needs to be quilted.

k, I've tried to move the picture to be between my paragraphs and can't do it.  I'm using Blogger for Android.  If anyone knows how to move the pictures, please let me know.

Thanks
Have a good night!
Vicky  K