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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