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.

Donation quilt for silent auction

Recently, Robin and I spent an afternoon with one of our cousins and we all worked on this quilt. It came together pretty quickly with three of us sewing, pinning and ironing seams while listening to one of my favorite weekly podcasts, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!
We decided to make this University of Texas quilt and donate it to the silent auction that is a part of this year's Relay for Life.

We sewed the top together using a disappearing nine patch method in three fabrics, burnt orange UT fabric, a solid white and a solid black fabric. We backed it with a marbled black fabric.

Robin quilted this on the long arm machine using a free hand meandering stitch with burnt orange thread.

The silent auction will be held this Sunday, April 1st from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The event will be at Playland Skate Center at 8822 McCann Dr. There will be food and drinks for sale, roller skating, and lots of great items to bid on in the silent auction.
One of my teammates, Debra King-Isaacs has donated a stretched canvas painting, titled Clara.
The Austin Modern Quilt Guild also donated a quilt, I helped to organize that project and quilted it on the long arm last Saturday.

My team, Goertz Family Ties, will be there selling water bottles. The proceeds from our water sales and the sale of our donated items goes toward our team fundraising total. Grab your roller skates and come out to support our team and the American Cancer Society!

 

W.i.P Wednesday 12, making slow progress

I have so many things going on in my life right now that I find it difficult to work on my many quilting and sewing projects. I did manage to get a few things done this week, so I'll show you what I have been working on.

I joined a Color Wheel Swap within the Austin Modern Quilt Guild, and I chose to contribute the green and blue-green colorway. These are my two fabrics, I cut 56 five inch squares out of the green fabric, now I just need to cut out my blue-green squares and I will be ready to trade these for 112 squares of different fabrics that represent the entire color wheel. I am thinking about cutting the squares even smaller and making a postage stamp quilt, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

Color Wheel Swap

Some progress has been made on this secret quilt for a family member. I still don't have any blocks sewn together, but I put some more of these strips together and I should be ready to cut them soon.

gift for a family member

My family is participating in The American Cancer Society's Relay for Life event on April 27th. Our team name is Goertz Family Ties, so I am appliqueing ties to t-shirts and they will say Goertz on the back. I added a button to my blog; if you want to make a donation to our team to help the American Cancer Society beat cancer and create more birthdays, click the button on the top right of this page and donate to our team. Thanks for your support!

Goertz Family Ties, team t-shirts for Relay for Life

There is a new fabric store open in Austin and I agreed to make a sample quilt to hang in the shop. These are my fabrics and the pattern, now I just have to get started on it. 

Sample quilt for Remnants: Fiber [Culture]

The Kickstarter widget on the right side of my blog provides you with an opportunity to support this new fabric store in the Austin area. Click on the widget to learn more about Jessica and her plans for the store. She needs more help reaching her fundraising goal!

This is the quilt that Robin and I are working on together. This is for a family member who is on tour in Afghanistan with the Navy right now. These are three and a half inch half square triangles, I am really excited to see it progress and start becoming an actual quilt top rather than a bunch of pieces of fabric.
Can you see my Alexander Henry Regent Skull there in the middle? Oh, how I wish we had more of this for the quilt, I pulled every little piece that I had in my stash, and I hope that it will be enough for the quilt. We searched all over the internet and in stores around town, but haven't been able to find any of this popular fabric for sale.

another gift for a family member

Part of Relay for Life is a Silent Auction. It is being held on Sunday, April 1st at Playland Skate Center in Austin from 5:30-8:30 p.m. There will be many great items to bid on in the auction, including this University of Texas at Austin quilt that Robin and I made with our cousin Sarah. It is 64 by 50 inches and has a dense, all over meander quilting pattern in burnt orange thread.

UT donation quilt

I am also working with the Austin Modern Quilt Guild to finish up a quilt that our members made for the silent auction. I am sewing the binding down this week, and I will post pictures of that soon.

I am linking up with Freshly Pieced and Lily's Quilts today.

Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to follow my blog and check back soon to see what I am working on!

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!

W.i.P. Wednesday 10

Hello! Wednesday again! This keeps sneaking up on me; I took some photos last night, but I should of done it during the day. These photos aren't great.
Regardless, I have been very busy and I have a lot to show you. I just had a four day weekend which was really great. I spent most of my time working on this t-shirt quilt. I will be quilting it on Saturday. There is still a lot of work to do, I may have a late night Friday night, but it will get done. It is becoming more of a horizontal layout than I intended, I may have to take those four big pieces on the right side and line them up in a horizontal row at the bottom to create a more vertical layout.

custom order t-shirt quilt

Every so often I needed a break from this quilt, so I worked on a few other things this weekend. These are some half square triangles for my cousin's quilt that I mentioned last week. Robin and I created a layout with 90 friendship stars, which means we have to sew 180 pairs of squares and then cut them in to 360 half square triangles. So far I have sewn and cut 20 squares, and squared up two HSTs. So...there is a long way to go!

half square triangles for Ron's quilt

I also worked a little more on this Lego bag. These strips for the outside of the bag have been sewn together in groups of four, leaving me with 10 big pieces. There is still a lot of work to do on this.

Lego bag

Here is the mess next to my computer desk as I work on Robin's Save the Date cards for her September wedding. I got my desk for free (found it next to the dumpster!) and I am thinking about buying a new one from Ikea with some of my birthday money. This desk is big enough for my computer and nothing else. I don't have room to write or even set my printer. The printer lives in the closet and I get it out and set it up on the floor when I need it. I think I am overdue for a new desk.

working on Save the Date cards

I ordered this coral stamp from Stamp Out Online, an Etsy shop that was incredibly helpful and accommodating while working with me to get the coral looking just right for the wedding stationery. The shop has several great stamps and can create custom orders. I plan to order a stamp from their girly business section soon.

second draft of STDs

Recently, I joined the Scrap Attack, hosted by Stitched in Color. There I read about this scrappy piecing method. I tried it out last Wednesday and came up with this ten by ten inch block. I will eventually contribute it to the Austin Modern Quilt Guild's Block Swap, but I need to make it bigger. I really like this method and how crazy the block turns out. I pulled out scraps randomly and only paid attention to not having the same color next to each other. I plan to make more of these scrappy blocks using a monochromatic color palette.

Scraptacular block

Here is my sister's table topper. I pieced the back over the weekend without planning it out, I just added fabric until it was big enough. I am still thinking about how to quilt this and whether or not I will add heat resistant batting to it.

Christmas table topper

I am linking up today with Freshly Pieced. Stop by and take a look at some other crafty blogs!

Linking up at Jay Bird Quilts for Scrappy Sunday. I am so excited about the scrappy block that I made, and I am going to use this link up opportunity as a motivation to continue building those scrappy blocks.

I am also linking up with Lynne at Lily's Quilts. Click the button and support a few other small blogs with views and comments. If you find something that you love, become a follower!