WIP Wed

Just a quick note to post a few pictures of my current work-in-progress's, for "Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday" link party. I have many more sitting on top of dressers, tucked away on shelves and piled onto bookshelves, but right now here's my ironing board in real time....
The main quilt I've been furiously working on is a very special gift that I don't want to show until after the recipient sees it first hand. I'm so happy with the way it's turned out so far, but still have a bit of work to do. I have the top all finished, and the colorful strips in front are part of the border. I hope I don't give away too much.

I've also got back on track with the quilt along I'm participating in. I'm doing 2 of them at once, to hopefully be finished my Christmas. Considering the time crunch and how many projects I have going right now, I made the decision to skip the "wonkification" of them, as this'll add an extra step, and right now I really need the time. Maybe I'll make a wonky quilt in 2011, but for now, I have enough tops to quilt, Christmas presents to finish, and other not-so-fun-household-things-to-do that I'm simplifying them.
As I was getting a bit overwhelmed with my things-to-do list, I took a time out to figure out what's up. I'm not usually so harried. I came to the realization that due to school vacations and sick kids, I've only had 3 out of 11 days that my kids have been in school (I honestly don't know how you quilters with little ones manage), and my husband has only been home 2 out of the last 7 weeks (this week is no exception... he's gone for work). No wonder I'm a bit stressed. Oh, and yes, blogging does take time too :-). SOOOoooo. I decided that once the holiday's are gone, I'm going to slow things down a bit... With maybe one exception, I'm also not going to take on any new projects until after that too.

So hopefully this blog will read "finished projects" very soon, and I'll have some fun stuff to show you!!

Patches

Today is "Fabric Tuesday" again, over at Quilt Story. The fabric project I'm working on today is far from glamorous, and not nearly as fun as quilting, but as the days have gotten colder, my boys need their jeans. With 2 active boys who spend a lot of time playing in the dirt, on their knees, we rarely have a pair of jeans that don't get patched up before the youngest has outgrown them. I usually wait until I have a few to patch, and today's no exception. Since they're the ones who have to wear them to school, I have always let them pick out the fabrics that they want me to make the patches out of. I tried to talk my youngest into the fly fabric, but he's gotten too old for anything too colorful I guess, and wanted the "camo" pattern. In the past, I've layered a fun cotton fabric on top of a scrap of old jeans and made the patch that way. The camouflage fabric is actually denim, so no need to layer today.

I start by trimming all the strings and fuzz away from the hole, then trim up the pieces of fabric. I use "Wunder Under", a double sided fusible interfacing. It has paper on one side that peels right off once the fusible side is attached by ironing. I then iron the patch onto the jeans, covering the hole. I use the paper that I peeled off to place under the patch, inside of the jeans, to prevent attaching the patch to the back side of the leg when I iron (learned that the hard way). You can also use parchment paper.

Now all I got to do is to stitch it into place. I've learned that the Wunder Under only lasts a few washes before it'll start peeling off. You can do it by hand, but I do just about anything to avoid stitching by hand, so just do a sloppy zig-zag as best as I can. Now they're ready for more wear, and that family dollar has been stretched!!!

hunting and sewing

After being gone elk hunting for a week and a half, my husband returned yesterday, and has been busy all week-end drying out tents, putting away gear and food, and washing dirty clothes. Only one of 5 men in their group shot an elk, which is fine with me, since we still have a bunch from last year. They split up the meat, so we still have a front quarter to butcher in our extra fridge. We'll probably get to that this afternoon.

I'm not too crazy about him going hunting for a few weeks every year, but I know it makes him happy. I used to go out when he was gone, and buy a new kitchen gadget and toys for the kids back when I had a paying job, but after quitting to be a stay at home mom, I can't afford to do that anymore. Besides, after years of him hunting, I no longer need very many more kitchen gadgets (although I did attend a Pampered Chef party while he was gone, and spent a bit there). Plus my kids are getting older, and no longer really want as many toys, or rather the "toys" they want are getting to be more expensive... ipods and such...

But despite our budget crunch, we've come to a bit of an agreement when it comes to our hobbies. I try hard to bite my tongue and let him enjoy his weeks off with the guys, and he does a pretty good job at ignoring all of my fabric purchases. I may get a raised eyebrow every now and then, but we've pretty much come to a truce. He hunts, I sew. Of course we both work hard together to make sure that neither of us break the bank. Lucky for both of us, we pretty much see eye to eye when it comes to managing money.

Here's a few of the projects I worked on in the week or so that he's been gone. Both are quilt blocks that I'm making for my "quilt along" project, and both I intend on giving to my nieces for presents, hopefully for Christmas. My boys have been pretty good at letting me sew, even though they've been off of school for the last 5 days. I'm really looking forward to them going back to school tomorrow :-).

Sew.... What about you? Do you have any "deals" with your significant other when it comes to sewing? How do you find the time and money to do it, or any other hobby for that matter?

Veteran's Day

I just wanted to thank our veterans and their families. The boys and I made some gingerbread cookies and delivered them to 2 of our neighbors who are veterans. Their service is something I admit to taking for granted far more than I should. I feel incredibly lucky to live in a country that is safe and free, and I know that a lot of that is due in part to our service men and women.

As the wife of a man who also gets called into service at times to protect our forests from fire, I have had a small taste of what the military families go through. Fire fighters lose their lives, and I certainly worry about him. But at least he's not under hostile fire in another country. Cell phones and the Internet has certainly made it much easier to keep in touch with him, but as in the military, I often have no idea where he is, or how he's doing. So I really do appreciate the role that military families play, and have an inkling of just how incredibly difficult it can be for them.

Finally, as a mother of 2 boys, I have thought about the "what if''s". The realization that each "casualty" is a mother's child makes me yearn and hope above all for peace.

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!