Work-in-progress

I'm linking up with "Freshly Pieced" work in progress Wednesday today, where she asks of to post about our own "WIP"'s.

I'm afraid I have SO many of these that it'd be down right boring to list them all. My most exciting / special quilty WIP is something that is going to be a surprise, and the recipient reads my blog, so this is all I can share.... LOL Yep, the dog ears and thread on the floor. I'll hopefully be able to share a picture soon.
My quilt along quilts are at a standstill, and they, along with others will be Christmas presents. But these are my most important WIP's... My kidos. I normally don't like to post pictures of them on the internet. They're now in the "tween" stage, so I thought it'd be fun to post a picture of them when they were still in that so-adorable-that-you-forget-how-difficult-they-can-be stage...

They're off from school this week, so I may not get much progress done on the sewing front, but on the kid/family front, we'll try to do some fun things. BUT, I just bought them both their very own copy of "Dairy of a Wimpy Kid, The Ugly Truth" that just made it's first appearance at the kids' Scholastic Book Sale that was going on at one of their schools today. We visited after attending parent teacher conferences. It was at these conferences that we learned of some... ahem, school work in progress that needs to be done over the "break". But right now my house is quiet, as they're both READING! I LOVE this series! IT GETS MY BOYS TO READ!!! So I'd better go now before they finish the books!!!

"Green" reusable gift wrap

I'm again joining in at the Quiltstory blog's "Fabric Tuesday" link party! I decided to write about using reusable fabric instead of wrapping paper.

I grew up far away from extended family, and just have one brother, so a pile of wrapping paper wasn't usually a big deal in our house. But after getting married, and living closer to extended family, I was shocked one year at the piles of wrapping paper that were throw out, some literally minutes after they had been used to wrap the present. Soon after, I made up a bunch of Christmas gift bags, using clearance Christmas fabric I bought after Christmas and started using these bags to wrap presents. My husband especially loves them, as you just pop the present in there, and pull the draw strings. I hate wrapping presents with paper, have never been very good at it, so it's a no-brainer for me as well.

As years went by, I decided it wasn't enough to give a gift bag that may only be used a few times a year, and started giving gifts away wrapped in reusable shopping bags and pillow cases that I make. This was after I had decided to be a stay at home mom and no longer worked outside of the home. It was also after my kids were a bit older and I could leave the sewing machine out without it being sabotaged by little fingers and hands.

Recently I discovered the Japanese art of Furoshiki, or fabric gift wrapping. Think origami, only with fabric instead, and around a present. Here's a fun youtube video that shows how to do it. It's a bit too much like using wrapping paper for my tastes, but it's fascinating to watch, and would be a most excellent way to wrap any gift for a quilter (using some yummy fat quarters or quilt fabric!).

So what are you waiting for? Grab some fabric now for Christmas / Hanukkah and start sewing! If I ever get my project list whittled down, I may try to sell a few on etsy soon!

MA, ME, MD, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT

I got a bit of a surprise over the week-end when I found out that a package I mailed 2 weeks ago to an eBay buyer still hasn't arrived. I've been dabbling in eBay selling for a few years now. I sell used times, mostly kids toys, video games, and household items we no longer need or want. I've had a few glitches, but mostly it's worked out well. This buyer tried to open up a case against me, but eBay didn't let them, due to the still short time frame, and encouraged them to contact me, which they did. Unfortunately, I don't' always check this email account, and hadn't for 4 or 5 days, since the last eBay transactions were 2 weeks ago. Now I'll be checking it every day.... So I'm off the the post office today to investigate.

But I know exactly what happened. This person lives in one of those "M" states (there's 8 of them!!). I know this because I used to live in one of those "M" states. During that time, I also had packages take weeks and even over a month to arrive to me through the post office. Shipping from one small town to another really doesn't help either, but I find that many of us eBay'ers are from small towns.

The name of the town I lived in was also a common name and had other towns in other "M" states. When I quizzed our local post master about the delay in receiving packages, he said that often packages mistakenly get sent to the town in the other "M" state, and either misdelivered, or caught and mailed to the correct "M" state. Sure enough, there are multiple towns in "M" states with this particular address too. It's enough to drive me batty! So I'll probably get no where at the post office, and have to refund all the money to the buyer, which will leave me in a bit of a hole.

Hmmmmm Any ideas or suggestions on how to handle these handling errors? Off to the post office!

Spare your knees (an alternative way to "sandwich" your quilt)

When we moved from Michigan to Oregon a year ago, like so many families, we had to downsize. Not a bad thing, really (less house to clean), but I no longer have much space to quilt in. I quickly adapted in all ways except one. I have no floor space big enough to sandwich together a quilt any bigger than a crib (unless I move furniture). Necessity, though, is the mother of invention, and I experimented, and asked everyone I could think of for ideas, until I developed this method. Now that I do it this way, I don't think I want to ever go back! So I thought I'd share it with you. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. This is what I did yesterday, as I got my niece's quilt ready to finish up.

All you need is a table and some large binding clips (thank you Colleen!). I bought the table at Jo-Anns, in Michigan a few years ago with a 50% off coupon, and it's been one of my best quilting purchases! It folds up compactly, and has wheels on it that can roll around to be moved from room to room. I also use it for cutting and all sorts of stuff. When the kids are in school, I bring it out and block all sorts of doors and hallways :-). But then I can move it back quickly.

I start by folding my quilt and quilt back into quarters and marking the center of each side with a safety pin. That way I can line these up as I layer them together. I can also use these as guides on the table to keep it pretty centered. Warning.... I am NOT a perfectionist...

I then unfold the quilt back (face down), and straighten it our and use the binder clips to secure the edges to the table. No tape, and I can WALK all around the table. No crawling on the floor, no need to vacuum first, or to keep the dog off (although the cat sometimes likes to jump up to "help").

Once the back is all smooth and tightly attached to the table, I lay the batting on top, then the quilt top. Once I make sure the centers are all lined up, and that I have all 3 layers in all spots, I start pinning the layers together.




I start at the center, and work my way out. Once the top is done, I take the clips off and work on each "corner". It's no perfect, but it works!!! Now my quilt is ready to "quilt" together!!!

Food and Friends

My good friend, Jen, is starting a new food blog! I'm so excited, and wanted to share her blog with you! It's "Cooking with Jenny Jennifer", and will highlight budget and family friendly cooking. I've known Jen for almost 20 years, and have sampled a LOT of her food over the years, and can tell you she's an excellent cook, and has a great sense of humor! So show her some love, leave her a comment, sign up to follow, and enjoy!

My own food journey has taken us into the fall, and we've been working on the very last of our garden produce, all the winter squash. Last week-end we baked, pureed, and froze several of our pumpkins. We carved up the rest, and roasted all of the seed. We still have dozens of acorn squash that keep well and will be eaten in the weeks and months to come. And we also have these monsters, "pink banana squash". Luckily, these store well too, but with so many, I'd LOVE an idea or 2 on how to cook and serve these, as they're new to us.

Last night, after a long hiatus, our deep fryer made it's first appearance for the season. With our garden potatoes long gone, I'm now buying them fresh and cheap in the grocery store. I LOVE potatoes, and my favorite way to cook and eat them is french fried! I know they're not good for you all fried an all, but gosh were they good last night with our burgers!!
We also had a house guest last night, and since my sewing work space is also the dining room table, it's all been put away, but I'm hoping to get it back out today and get busy!

Purple Party

I'm joining in at the linky party over at "Quiltstory" today. I'm very new to the whole link party aspect of blogs, but I'm quickly getting hooked! What fun!

Today I've been working on the quilt back for my niece's quilt. My SIL told me that her favorite color right now is purple, which is great, because it's one of my favorite colors too! In an effort to be frugal and to avoid buying more fabric, I decided to piece together the back with what I had in my stash. Of course this takes more work, but it saves money, and she's going to have a double-sided quilt when I'm finished! I really flew by the seat of my pants with this one. I first dug out all my purple fabrics. I had a lot of fat quarter, quarter yards and half yards, plus some larger scraps to work with. I decided to cut them into 9 inch strips, to minimize waste, then sewed some scraps of the neutral background fabric that I had left over from the front, and some co-coordinating fabric I had left over from my "BQ quilt". I'm now sewing the strips together. I hope finish tonight.

I must admit that I might like the back of this quilt better than the front once it's done. Has that happened to any of you? Hopefully I can show you the finished product soon!

On a side note, today it election day, and while the press likes to brand each of us as "red" or "blue", I think in reality we're all various shades of purple. Now, if we can only convince our politicians to think purple.....

Tip Toe, Through the Tulips...

I finished a quilt top today that will hopefully be a Christmas present (this year LOL), for my oldest niece. She was the recipient of my second or third quilt, a simple checker board quilt. At the time she was 3 or 4. We've been blessed with 5 nieces and a nephew (and 2 boys of our own). They all have at least a baby quilt that I made, and now that they're growing up so incredibly fast, I hope to start making them all bigger quilts to enjoy.

I was trying to figure out what to make for my niece. At the time, I really wanted to do a "bear paw" quilt as well. I was chatting with a quilting friend of mine about this, and joked that I should make her one, since she had been really scared of bears when she first visited our house in Northern Michigan. At the time, she was 5 or 6, and we lived deep in the woods, and yes, there were bears. Being the city girl that she was, her fear was understandable. But my suggestion was tongue and cheek at the time.

Well, no lie, the very next day, our family was out in the woods, and we saw a bear!! It wasn't a big one, and it was running down the gravel Forest Service road in front of our truck, but we followed it for several hundred yards, before it dove off into the woods! We all got to see it and were just amazed, as it's not a sight even people who've worked and lived in the woods for years see very often.

It was then that I knew I had to make this quilt! I hope she likes it!