I must be a real quilter now!

Currently I'm working on our last 2 Scrap Squad quilts, so I can't post any pictures of those right now.  But as I have been cutting and sewing on both of them, I realize how many projects I have "in progress".  I used to wonder at my peeps as they would begin one quilt only to put it aside and begin another one.  That USED to drive me bonkers!  But some where down the line, I have become a real live quilter.  I have my 2 scrap squad quilts, a Christmas mystery quilt, 2 full size quilts, 2 wall hangings and a queen size quilt all in progress.  Yikes!  How did that happen.  No mind you a couple only need binding  and some are half quilted and well, the rest, are just tops. 

Well I did manage to get my #4 Scrap Squad quilt done, start to finish.  (Guess maybe I really didn't have a choice.)  I must have been in the Christmas mood back in July, August and September because not only is my mystery quilt Christmas, but I decided that I should be my Scrap Squad in Christmas also.  Here is my Country Christmas Morning.....

I really love paper piecing, so this was a really fun quilt to do.  And I got to use my Kaleidoscope Kreator program, which is always fun too.  I managed to do some fun free motions quilting, holly leaves AND feathers.  And last but not least, my first mitered border.  The first corner was a disaster!  But after some ripping and resewing, each corner got just a bit easier.

I guess this one and I will be using on my table for Christmas and my not quite finished mystery quilt in Christmas, I am well on my way to some new decorations for Christmas. 

Well enough procrastinating, time to hit the sewing room and try my best to finish something!! 
 

MOVING DAY!!!

Yesterday began week 16 of our destruction/construction project began.  Needless to say it's been either a LONG or very short summer.  It pretty much seems to be a blur for me.  But things are beginning to wind down here on the home front.  My new sewing room was ready to move into yesterday.  There are still a couple of odds and ends to finish up, but everything from my "cozy" (small) sewing room is now in it's new home in the basement. 
Now for a few pictures........

Back yard before

Back yard now!

Basement before (the dungeon!)

And now...........Our new (dry) basement with my new quilt cave-

View of sewing room from the doorway

Another view

View from the back

My Hoosier cabinet and display wall

There's still a few odds and ends to finish up, but it's pretty much done.  And there is plenty of room to spare.  I have reserved room for a longarm someday, but that will have to wait a while longer.  The budget for that went out the door about a month ago, so guess Nina and I will be quilting my quilts a while longer.  But that's OK, we make a pretty good team and I don't think she is ready for only doing piecing just yet. 
Well back to my new home.  I have a mitered border that is putting up a real fight and I have vowed to be the victor in this battle!

Remember when you looked forward to your birthday?

Growing up birthdays were always a big deal.  The whole family got together, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles all got together to celebrate.  I would look forward to that for a month before my birthday.  It seems as we get older we no longer have that anticipation for another birthday to come our way. 

My birthday is May 6 and the year is a well guarded secret.  During the time that I owned my flower shop, my birthday always fell the week of Mother's Day.  Have you ever visited a flower shop Mother's Day week?  It's usually pretty crazy.  So I have to admit my birthday became a nonevent.  In fact it would come and go without me really realizing that I turned a year older.  Plus I have to admit that the good genes that I got from my Grandma Grace, I don't look near as old as the calendar says I should be. 

Our Iowa Quilter's group started a birthday group.  This year we exchanged fat quarter's.  You pick out either a color or a theme and everyone in the group sends you a fat quarter for your birthday.  How much fun is it to get 25 envelopes with some of the most delicious fabric in them!!??  This year I picked Asian fabrics for my birthday.  Going to the mail box for the 2 weeks prior to my birthday was such fun.  And then the anticipation for waiting until May 6 was just like when I was a youngster. 

Here are my birthday goodies......

As you can see there are some very tasty fabrics in there.  I think I spent part of my morning mixing and matching my birthday fat quarters.  Even more fun, right??

I have always had a thing for Asian inspired fabric and have been collecting some over the past 2 years.  They have just been waiting for some companions to go in a quilt.  Well today I finished my top.  It still has to be quilted, but I'm waiting to get in my new sewing room to get it quilted.  But thought you might like to see what I have done with my collection and some of my birthday fat quarters.

I decided not to add a border to the top because it would just be too long for our queen bed and I really want to be able to enjoy each and every square on the quilt when it's on our bed.  I really love all the fabric in here and I have enough fabric left from my fat quarters for at least 2 more quilts.

Well guess that I can look forward to another birthday in a little more than 9 months!  Hurray, another birthday!! 

Butterfly Glory

I can hardly believe that we are half way through our 6 quilts for Scrap Squad.  I can honestly say that I have learned "sew" much from not only the 6 other quilters, but I've learned a lot from the patterns we have done so far and a lot about my own quilting abilities.  It's been a great experience.  The greatest thing that I have gotten from doing these is learning to think outside the box.  Take a look at a pattern and decide how you can change it and make it YOU!

Scrap Squad quilt #3 is one that you can real go wild and make it your own.  The original pattern was called Old Glory and would be awesome for a Quilts of Valor donation.  But one of our tasks is to take a pattern and "mix it up" a bit.  Here's the original Old Glory.

 
The very first thing that I noticed about the original pattern was the great diagonal line that the stars make.  The stars really gave some movement to the design.  So I really wanted to even accentuate that line even more. 

My next step was what to use for more colors and my applique motif.  I really wanted to do something girly and bright. 

I decided on hot pink, lime green, bright yellow and turquoise.  Girly AND bright would certainly describe these colors.  In order to make those colors pop even more, make it even more scrappy AND accentuate the diagonal line through the center of the quilt, I added     
3 1/2 inch black spacers.

See how I can add even more fabrics to the background?  Should be colorful!  Now to decide on my applique motifs.  I LOVE Laurel Burch fabrics.  Her colors are so saturated and bright.  How perfect would one of her fabrics be with these colors.  Searching the trusty internet, I came across some of her fabric with butterflies.  Honestly, the could not have been more perfect if I had planned it that way!! 

A great time to fussy cut butterflies, I watching TV.  Bonnie Stapleton, one of the other Scrap Squad quilters suggested that I do some of my large butterflies 3D.  If you check out our Scrap Squad blog, I have it all explained in there.  Try it!  It's really fun!! 

So here's my Old Glory rendition.....Butterfly Glory.  

The possibilities are endless with this pattern.  So whether it red, white and blue Old Glory or girly bright Butterfly Glory, have fun with this one and think outside the box!!



CONSTRUCTION UPDATE

I can hardly believe that it was 2 weeks ago today that we started construction on our basement and addition.  If you have ever been through a home remodel or lived in a construction zone, you know what I'm saying when I'm talking about the noise and the dust and dirt.  Since there was only a crawl space under part of our house, there was a bunch of excavating that needed to be done.  But let me tell you how worth it the dust and noise here in the house has been!  In 2 weeks time we have come from this.....

To this............

Pretty impressive considering that there is also a full, brand new basement under our 117 year old home. 

Last night was the first time I was in the basement since the floor was poured on Friday and I got a first hand look at where my new quilting home will be.  Too bad someone didn't have a camera to capture the moment.  I JUST COULDN'T BELIEVE HOW GREAT IT WAS!!!  I didn't have my camera with me, but I do have a picture of what it looked like from above on Friday.

Can you believe this is ALL MINE??????  Am I the luckiest person in the world or what?!  So during my visit to my quilt cave last night I found myself laying things out in my head and it was BEAUTIFUL!  Hubby even surprised me a week ago and told me that he was putting a window in there for me.  Now it's below ground, but at least when I'm down there working there will a bit of natural light and I'll know whether it day or night.  You know how it is when you're working on something and next thing you know 3 or 4 hours have passed.

The upstairs will have to be finished before I get to move into my space, but that will give me even more time to decide exactly how I want Nina's new home to be.  I want her to have the nicest room she could possibly have.  She deserves it. 

I'll keep you updated on progress.  Keep your ideas coming!

Construction Update-Day 4

4 days into construction and we have 2 walls up!  I actually got to stand in my new quilt room last night after work.  What a feeling!!  I found my mind going every which way planning where things were going to go in there.  Here's a view of my new room.  May not look like much to you, but looks like heaven to me!!

Now everything has not gone as planned.  If you have ever lived through any construction on your home, I know you can relate.  Day 3 we had a "little" mishap and part of our old basement wall collapsed.  It was going to come down eventually, but not quite yet.  Thankfully no one was hurt, including our house.  The workers got everything shored up before they left and assured us that the house was still sound.  But talk about sleeping with one eye open that night!!  WOW!!
Here's a picture of the mess!!

Yikes, right???

Can't wait to come home tonight and see what progress has been made!  I'll keep you all updated!!

I'M DREAMING OF A NEW QUILT ROOM

Have you ever daydreamed about creating a perfect quilt room or craft space?  For the longest time I have thought about what I would do if I had a large space instead of my tiny little room.  Now I know that I'm lucky to even this tiny space for nothing but sewing and quilting.  I start out as a quilting nomad in my home.  Moving from room to room and having to leave my mess where ever I happened to be sewing cutting at the time.  Or worse yet, having to clean up and put stuff away so we could sit at the table and have dinner.  Currently we have a very small bedroom that I can at least leave everything sitting out and just close the door until I'm ready to go back at it.

Rather than small, let's say it's cozy!  The room is small enough, there isn't even a closet in there.

Well, hubby and I have been talking about putting an addition on the back of our house, redoing our basement and digging out the crawl space that is under part of the house.  Well, the time has come.  They started on our project this past Monday and we are in day 3. 

This picture was taken on the 2nd day of construction.  This was all dirt the day before.  Nina and my new home will be in the basement here.  We will have more room to play in than we will ever no what to do!  It'll be about 24ft x 14ft!  I know, holy cow!!!  You are one lucky girl!  And I know just how lucky I am!!!!

So now I'm facing the dilemma on what do I really, really want in my new play area.  I have spent a lot of time just gathering ideas.  One of our Scrap Squad gals has an area that she uses to spray baste her quilts.  What an awesome idea.  So I'm thinking that I really would like that also and it could double as my design wall too.  But I would like to use cork, so that I could pin right to the wall without putting holes in the drywall.  So that will be a must have!

A huge cutting table would be great too.  I have found a couple of ideas on line that I really like.  I love the idea of being able to have book shelves under there.  Here are a couple of picture that I would like to use a combination of the two.

Also, I should be thinking about what long arm I would like.  The AQS show will be in Des Moines this fall and I suppose that I should wait and test drive them all again. 

I really like this idea for my storage of fabric etc.  Will my room every be this neat????  Too funny to even think about!

I know that I will have a million decisions to make in the next few months.  There will be paint colors, tile and/or carpeting, light fixtures etc.  I'm hoping that Nina and I will be in our new home by Christmas.  So I guess that I have a little time yet to keep dreaming and tweaking.  So if anyone has any ideas, share please!!  We only get an opportunity like this once in a lifetime, so might as well get it right the first time!