Let the vacation begin!

Today is the first day of my week long vacation. I originally had plans to tell no one about my vacation and stay inside my house for nine days and do nothing but sew and listen to podcasts. But that is unrealistic, isn't it?

Last night I spent some time doing some cleaning that has been on my list for months. I organized my pantry.

I can see everything that is in my pantry and get to it without knocking other things over!

I cleared off my patio and threw away the old, dried out firewood that has been sitting out there for way too long. I still need to clean my chairs and pillows and hang my bird feeders. I may get a rug to put out there, and I also thought about hanging a large screen to block some of the afternoon sunlight. I feel like the big sliding glass doors let so much heat in to the apartment, and a screen could cut back on that somewhat.

boring, empty patio

I squared up the big, heavy T-shirt quilt that I am working on for a client and cut binding strips, but have not sewn them together yet.

This morning I planned to go to the gym for their bootcamp class, but my wrist is hurting a lot. I have an old sprain that bothers me sometimes and on the Fourth of July my cousins and I played tetherball. Sometimes I get so involved in something that is a lot of fun, and I forget to be careful not to aggravate these kinds of injuries. So I have decided to wrap my wrist, skip the class, make some tea and sit down to write a short post.

I do have some fun things planned for this week:
Saturday - I am getting a manicure, then going to my grandpa's 90th birthday party in Rockne. My family is expecting over 400 people to be there for his celebration and Robin and I made a quilt to give him, we each pieced one side, similar to my grandma's birthday quilt.

sneak peak of Grandpa's quilt, blog post coming soon

Sunday - I have the morning and afternoon to sew and to work on Robin's wedding paper system (it is almost time to mail invitations out!), I need to get a few things from Ikea, and then I am headed to Texas Old Town for my cousin Judith's wedding. I am making these place mats for the wedding gift and will have them ready by the time they get back from their honeymoon.

Judith's citrus place mats

Monday - first personal training session at the nearby powerlifting and bodybuilding gym, Big Tex Gym. (did you know that I was a powerlifter in high school?) Then bootcamp at Austin Self Defense if the morning workout hasn't taken me out completely.

Tuesday - physical and donation at the plasma bank, lunch with friends, and an afternoon with my stepson Xavier. I am planning to go visit fellow local art vendors, Ian and Megan of Plaid Pigeon. They sell adorable potted plants, and they are going to put some succulents in to some pots that I have on my fireplace hearth. I also have a handyman coming over to hang some shelves in my sewing studio and try to fix my washing machine.

image by Plaid Pigeon

Wednesday - sewing! Lots of sewing planned for today, including sewing some pillow cover samples for a class that I will be teaching in August at the amazing fabric store, Remnants:fiber[culture], and then bootcamp in the evening.

I have plenty of sewing projects to keep me busy

Thursday - another plasma donation. Plasma saves lives and I am using the money that I make donating to save for a new car. More sewing, I also have things to do around the house like cleaning, organizing, sanding and staining my antique chair, updating my Etsy sites and editing photos for this blog. And there is an Austin Modern Quilt Guild meeting in the evening, we will be voting on new officers and announcing committee members.
Friday - I'd like to spend some time painting, I have so many blank canvases on the walls of my studio and it would be great to take some new work to First Thursday next month. More sewing and cleaning up around the house, in the evening I will drive up to Fort Worth to spend the weekend with my dad's side of the family.
Saturday - My aunt says we are going to the Peach Festival in Weatherford. I don't know anything more about that. Hopefully I will feel like getting some sewing done when we get back to the house.
Sunday - Sewing and visiting with the family, then driving back home in the evening to get ready for the work week.

I already know that I probably won't accomplish as much as I hope to, but I'm going to do my best. I work such long hours during the week and my commute to work is about an hour each way, so I have gotten behind in sewing projects, household tasks and my online commitments like blogging and keeping my Etsy shop updated. I'm using this vacation time to work on all of this and try to get back to a place where I feel like I am no longer drowning in my to do list.

Have a great week at work!

W.i.P. Wednesday, real progress for once

Well, I am disappointed that I haven't posted anything here in over a month. But there are tons of projects going on right now, and I will try to update you on what is happening. Today I am piecing this T-shirt quilt together. I am hoping to get it pieced and ready for quilting by this Saturday, which may mean an all-nighter Friday night.

T-shirt quilt, commission piece

I bought some Thangles and tried out my 1.25 inch template. I have a few good half square triangles, and a few that weren't lined up so well. I like the template, I just need more practice using them.

I finally cut the pieces for the two picnic blankets that I will be making for two sets of twins that I need birthday gifts for. I am using this adorable Michael Miller Backyard Baby collection. I cut out squares for the top of the blanket, and folded and put away all of my extra fabric.
I am happy to report that I finally finished ironing, folding and organizing my entire fabric stash! The only thing I have left to do is fold my larger amounts of yardage around some mini cardboard bolts that I ordered from Amazon.

I have an Etsy custom order for a pair of these pot holders. They need binding and then they will be ready to ship.

I participated in a color wheel swap with the Austin Modern Quilt Guild. I received 56 five inch squares (I think) and I decided to quarter them in to two and a half inch squares. I have four stacks of 108 squares and I will be piecing them together in to a postage stamp quilt.
There were four fabrics in the swap that I decided to remove from the layout, I replaced them with similar color fabrics from my stash.

squares for a postage stamp quilt

four fabrics removed from the color wheel swap

Over the long weekend I spent a lot of time organizing my fabric stash and my works in progress. I got this T-shirt from the Austin Modern Quilt Guild and decided to piece it in to a wall hanging for my studio. I added a border of scrappy orange fabrics that I won as part of a giveaway on Jen Carlton Bailey's blog, BettyCrockerAss.
I took a little break from cleaning and organizing to piece this top together, I added a teal border outside of the orange border, I sandwiched it with batting and an orange backing fabric. It is waiting to be quilted now.

This fabric comes from a sample quilt that I was going to make for Remnants: Fiber [Culture]. I made a mistake in the piecing and just bought the fabric from the store instead. I don't know exactly how this will turn out but I have some fabric pieced together and I will just continue in that direction.

Parson Gray, Curious Nature collection

Here is the drawstring bag that I have had sitting on my table for months and months. I am making four of them, the outside section is finally pieced for one of the bags. I found the tutorial on the amazing blog, Freshly Pieced.

drawstring Lego bag

In April I spent an afternoon visiting and sewing with two girls that I used to take care of full time. Grace decided to make a scottie dog pillow (very frustrating, I will post pictures later) and Faith decided to make this purse. We didn't finish either project in April, their attention spans don't allow them to sew for five hours and I lost my helpers to a video of Tangled. I finished Faith's purse strap over the weekend.

Buttercup Purse

inside of the bag

I am making a set of place mats to give my cousin as a wedding gift in July. I found the pattern in the Spring 2012 issue of Stitch. They are going to be round and look like slices of lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit. I have everything cut out except for half of the tear drop shapes.

citrus place mats

I am making this hounds tooth quilt as a gift for my sister's birthday. I bought the pattern from V and Co. I took a break from this quilt because I ran out of fabric and had order more of the Kona Robin's Egg online. However, this weekend, I uncovered a yard of each of these blues under a stack of stuff in my studio. I am glad to find the fabric that I originally bought so that the colors will match but I am frustrated that I bought another four yards of fabric that I don't really need. I'll use it eventually, but it also is annoying that I have so many projects going on right now that I can't keep track of where all of my supplies are.

hounds tooth quilt

Yesterday, I also made these blocks for the Austin Modern Quilt Guild block swap that is going on right now. I got behind in turning in my blocks, I am almost caught up now so that I can turn in blocks at the June meeting.

Thanks for visiting, I am linking up with the blog, Freshly Pieced.

Feautred on the Austin MQG blog

The Austin Modern Quilt Guild is featuring a member each month to help fellow guild members (and the general public) learn more about each other as a person and as a quilter.

This month I am so excited to be the guild member in the spotlight. Head over to the Austin Modern Quilt Guild blog to read the article about me and what led me to try my hand at quilting in 2009.

Feel free to comment here or over on that blog post. I really appreciate all the kind comments I have received about the article so far.

Also, this weekend is going to be a weekend full of sewing and spending time with family; so I will have lots of pictures of quilts next week. Today I will show you a quick project that I worked on while visiting Aunt M and the rest of my dad's family in Fort Worth two weekends ago.

These sun visor covers were easy to make for my Honda, and now that old brittle batting in my visor can stop raining down on me every time I pull it down to block the sun.

Linking up with Freshly Pieced.

Happy Wednesday!

A quilted birthday gift

Last month I turned thirty. I had a great birthday week; it started out with cupcakes and tequila shots on the Tuesday before my birthday and didn't stop until Sunday when my family met for lunch at Polvos.
We had a great lunch and a lot of fun. My sister made a trifle that somehow contained three different kinds of alcohol, it was delicious. Robin gave me a table topper that she made using several fabrics from the Moda Circa 1934 line.

I love the colors and the pattern that she used. The five big X shapes create a bold pattern, and then the next time I look at it, the diamonds stand out to me more.It has a lot of visual interest.

She quilted it on the long arm machine with a free hand meander pattern. It feels strange knowing that she was at the quilter's house without me, and without telling me about it. We usually talk about all of our quilting ideas and projects.

I really love this table topper, it looks great in my dining room and works well with the red accent wall.

Robin,

Pleated Towels

These towels are a birthday gift for my friend Mackenzie. She bought two sets of pot holders that I made using this fun P & B retro kitchen fabric. After receiving those she said she would like to have some matching hand towels. I showed her the pleated pillow tutorial that I had recently read in American Patchwork & Quilting. The tutorial is called Jolly Holiday and was designed by Anna Griffin. At the end of the tutorial is a short explanation by the executive editor on how to dress up a kitchen towel using the same pleated fabric idea.  Mackenzie said that she liked the look but also wanted to add some sort of closure so that her toddler twins wouldn't be able to pull the towel off the rack and drag it around on the floor.

towels with button closures

I found these snap closures on a strip of white fabric at the craft store and cut it into four small sections. Sewing the pieces to the towel proved to be difficult because the presser foot and the buttons kept getting in the way of each other. Eventually, I just removed the foot and sewed them down without it.

sewing the buttons down, without a foot

the pleats

finished toddler proof towel

I made these Aggie towels as a White Elephant gift for my family's Christmas Eve gathering. Lots of my cousins, aunts and uncles are Texas A&M University Alumni, and my brother is a freshman there now.
I used my aunt's embroidery machine to sew the word 'Howdy' on each towel using maroon thread and at the bottom of the towel I added some maroon fabric folded into pleats. There is a one inch strip of fabric at the top of the pleats to give it a clean line.

the pleats require a lot of pins to hold them in place

My aunt Janet received these towels in the White Elephant gift exchange; all three of her kids went to A&M so I think the towels found a good home. My family had lunch at her house yesterday to spend time with my aunt and uncle who are visiting from Colorado, and Aunt Janet had a Howdy towel hanging up at the kitchen sink.

finished Aggie towel

I have plans to make a few sets of Valentine's Day towels, and after making these two sets, I think the Valentine towels will be slightly different. The fabric is cut, the towels have been washed, I bought matching thread yesterday, and I have started folding the pleats and pinning them down.
My sewing machine is being cleaned and serviced, and hopefully soon I will get a phone call letting me know it is ready to be picked up.
I have been without it for eleven days so far and my projects are beginning to stack up.

Benefit for Michael Adams

I don't know Michael Adams. I didn't know anything about him until yesterday afternoon when my friend Mackenzie sent me a link to his benefit website and asked if I would like to make a donation to their silent auction. Mackenzie doesn't know Michael Adams either, but her friend Kristin knows someone who knows him.

I love that the world can work this way. I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Michael and through the powers of generosity of spirit and technology his situation has been brought to my attention.

Michael was recently diagnosed with stage four cancer and his family, which includes a wife and three children, need help paying all of his medical bills. The benefit will be held on Saturday, January 14th at the Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin from 5 to 8 p.m. There will be local musicians, a silent auction, kids activities and food. Donations can also be made on the website if you are unable to attend the benefit but still want to contribute.

Kristin met with me today and selected three of my things to add to the auction.

baby blanket

set of pot holders

purse with yellow duct tape lining

 I hope that the event will be a success tomorrow and I am glad that I had the opportunity to make my first donation so early in the new year.