November... how the time just fly's

Yikes, so long since the last post. Life just gets in the way sometimes. I had a quick trip up to Vermont to visit and then drive the second car down weekend before last.... good thing I didn't wait as they got a bit of snow up that way this weekend. I had a good visit with my siblings and families while there and brought Mom back with me! She was a trooper and we got down here in 2 days of driving time... 22 hours driving and probably around 28 hours in the car those two days. What a way to spend a weekend! She was able to come down and see the house and kids and headed back last Thursday to the snow covered ground in Vermont.

While there, I visited a cute quilt shop in Barre/Montpelier called A Quilters Garden and picked up a few FQ's of 30's prints.

Still have not found the ones I know I have somewhere in this house.... I'm sure I'll find them once I finish putting my sewing room in order. While gone, I had emptied out my closet of boxes and hubby installed a few shelves for me. Of course... that is the spare room so once Mom decided to come down with me... he got to throw all the boxes back into the closet and see about getting something for her to sleep on while down here. I was able to finally get in there last Friday and empty some boxes of fabrics and put them on their new shelves. Sill lots to do in there.... but lots of other things have to get done this week before my training starts next week.

On thing I decided to join is the Jacobs Ladder quilt along. I decided to do scrappy in green and creams. Since it is scrappy.... I need to have lots of patches and HST's sewn together before I can assemble a block. Having the greens out and on a shelf is much easier than pawing through a box of fabric. This is the stack I have so far.


I did try the 3.5 inch strips and the specialty ruler to cut them.. but it seems my seam allowance is off and they are too small. I need to pick those seams out and try again to get the correct size units.

I also had some quick sewing to do for Halloween. I got a bit of brown leather looking fabric to make a vest for AT's costume. I have never sewn anything but straight line for quilts...so this was an experience. I just took some packing paper and his shirt and came up with a back and two sides. Since it is just for play... I didn't do a liner. I think it came out pretty good for my first attempt. He made a cute pirate and will get more use out of it as a cow boy and sheriff in the future. That is one versatile garment! The good part, I have enough fabric to make another one for Em.
Here they are in costume last night.


Off to finish dinner... and see if I can get a few things finished this week. My list:
Do the rest of the 5+ hours of on-line training and the test before class next Monday. (Grandma is kid sitting tomorrow so I can get this done!)
Quilt the Star Struck quilt for C and get the binding put on so I can finish it next week while away. (need to unpin, re-iron everything, repin and quilt. Binding is made already)
Cut the creams for Emily's quilt so that log cabin can start construction.
Make more 2 patches, 4 patches and HST's for the JLQA.
Make a midget block (maybe tonight since it is Tuesday?) to keep that project going.
Clean and organize the 4th bedroom/sewing room for MIL (who is a neat freak... yikes!)
Wish me luck.. I'm going to need it!

A little of this and that

Not as much sewing this past week as I'd prefer. As you can see on my side bar, I've decided to join in on the Jacobs Ladder block along.... The tough decision was purples or greens...... I pulled some nice purple floral print and a coordinating purple leaf 'solid' and cut some strips for the 4 patches and the HST...... that turned into this...


The colors don't show well in this photo... but they are too much the same.... tone maybe? Not enough contrast. Back to the drawing board.... I know I had a good bunch of greens that I had packed. Green and creams it is. A scrappy quilt.... needs lots of things cut before I can assemble a block. I've been cutting away but have little to show for it yet. Hopefully I'll have enough to make a couple of blocks up in the next few days.

I seem to be running out of my 1.5 inch 30's prints and can't seem to find the other 4.5 inch strips I know came down with me in the car and are somewhere in the 4th bedroom. I've gone through it twice... still can't find them. Good news though... DH picked up 3 shelf boards at Lowes today and will be putting them into one half of the closet so I can get the fabric out of the boxes and out so I can see them. Hopefully, I'll find them when I do that. Until then..... my crumblies will be on hold. I did manage to make 4 of the log cabin blocks and think I have 36 of them right now.

Wanting to work on something different - I found a little bag with 4 dark blue rectangles, 4 dark blue triangles, 4 light blue triangles and 8 white triangles. No instructions. I sewed the triangles together to get 8 HST. Looked again for instructions... nothing. I set them like this

The next day... I found this!

Figures. Oh well, I like the one I came up with and think it may turn into a scrappy blue quilt. We'll have to wait and see....And yes... that said 1997 for this block. I don't think I have any of the other ones.. don't remember seeing that when I packed things up, but you just never know!
Time for some pumpkin mouse and hope the kids stay in their rooms and go to sleep.

Scrappy orange.......

This month Angela over at Scraphappy said Orange is the color. Very appropriate for fall and the Halloween season I think. I was looking around blogland and found PS I Quilt and she had this little tutorial for a quick pumpkin wall hanging. I knew I had some orange and purple and brown... so I cut it out and came up with this little wall hanging. It really needs some dimension on the pumpkin and I plan to hand quilt some curves in there this week.


I also read my comments on the last post and was thinking it is all squares - 9 patches are square.... and today I reread and figured out they meant a square quilt. Silly me. I think I am going to go with my original thought and put QST's in two colors - green and cream in between each of the 9 patches. I'll carry the 'frame' into the border I think... if I can figure it out. Not sure if I'll wait another week or two for my big cutting mat and rulers to arrive...and I have a feeling I get to fly up and drive it down.

I have done a little knitting and made this dish cloth.

It is a simple pattern that I found years ago but I don't remember where. Cast on 4, knit two, YO and knit to the end. Turn and continue knitting these rows until you get about 50 stitches on the needle. Then you decrease - knit one, K2T, YO, K2T and then knit the rest of the row. Continue decreasing one stitch per row until you get about 4 on the needle - then cast them off. Very easy pattern that requires no thinking. I need to get back to the sweater for Emily... but think that will be worked on while I am away for a month of training in a few weeks. Without kids underfoot I should be able to make some progress in the evenings.

Other news.... I twisted wrong yesterday and pulled something in my back. It was ok until I got up this morning and could feel it. Then, I made the mistake of attempting to pick up Em...... Ouch! Between - Aleve, Tylenol the heating pad this morning and now the icy hot I am starting to feel better if I don't overdo. That will be the hard part... with 2 kids and all the bending and tending it is going to be difficult to not overdo. DH did this a few months ago and it took a week to get better..... Lets hope mine is quicker healing.

A package in the mail.....

A big Thank you to Jill over at Ramblings of a quilt and yarn obsessor for this wonderful little gift in the mail yesterday! She had a question going every few weeks and if you answered them and then linked to her blog she included you in a drawing... and I won one of the months!
Isn't it so cute? This is a great bag for putting sewing things in and the little closure case has some cute little pockets, great for tucking little things in. Thanks Jill, I'm going to fill them as soon as the kids go to bed tonight!


I needed a break from crumbs and dug through a bucket and found some 9 patches I was working on back in May when I made the log cabin quilt. I had 20 of them... and made 5 more in the last few days for a total of 25. They will be about 6 inches finished..... so I could set them 5x5.... or make another set of blocks to go with them.... what do you think? It will be small if I set it like this with a border or two..... I was originally thinking of a specific block to frame them so they look on point...but can't think of the name right now.


I also did a few more star blocks and I have 2 more blocks in process (don't you hate it when you have to stop sewing because someone woke up from a nap?). I have 10 stars and 21 other blocks. I think I'll be needing to make a bunch more of these in the next week or two. I need to find where I put the other set of 30's prints... I know they made it here just need to find where I put them among the boxes.

Crumblies part 5

Today Jo put up the instructions for this week and it was using HST's! I love using HST's! I decided I needed to use more of my solid so used blue today to tie them together a bit more.

I also finished off a couple from last week that needed a little more so I could trim them up.

This is the lot of them so far, all trimmed up.

Thank you cards....

I was in need of a few thank you cards to send out and I found some boxes with my stamps and card making supplies. I came up with 4 of these (sorry, the others are sealed in their cards and ready to mail). I was looking for the black stamp for the leaves and of course found it about two hours after I finished making the cards. Oh well, I think they came out nice. I'll need to make a few more when I get a chance to have on hand.

October is orange month over at Scraphappy's blog. I know I have some orange fabrics I purchased at one time to make a pumpkin wall hanging. I think I remember packing some a couple of months ago so when I find it I might actually make that this month.
Go on over and check out what everyone is making with their orange scraps this month here.