Valentines day (2015) quilt and dress.

This is from Valentine's Day 2015. I am still not finished with it, but I am so close. Since we will not be in MN on Valentine's day I haven't had the motivation to finish it all the way. I'm hoping that you will see it on 'Me Made 2016' this year!

Hi friends!

It's been crazy this month. I'm making a quilt for the valentine's day silent auction at our church. All the money goes to the youth group on their mission trips this year. I'm happy to help them out. Although I wish I wouldn't have taken on such a big project. Oh, well too late now. I'm enjoying making it. I'm playing with triangles a lot lately. I love how you can turn them different ways with different patterns and you get some different designs in the quilt. Like the 'X' that showed up in the Block of the Month pattern a friend and I are doing, the triangles in the 'Wild Rose' pattern that I'm working on from the quilting retreat. It's a simple idea and doesn't take a lot of fabric. Pinwheels are another thing that is just triangles together. (I'm working on one of those too, but still working on cutting out the fabric for it. I will post on it later too.)

These are the colors that I'm doing. I made up a pattern that comes out looking like a heart on a different background. I'm sure that someone had made it up before me as it is not terribly hard, but I don't know who and I'm not looking it up.

Here are some in progress shots. I wasn't too concerned with this since I was trying to finish it up fairly quickly. But, this gives you some idea of how involved this project was/is and how stupid I can be sometimes. 

                                      

As of Feb 9th I have 4 more days to finish it up and give it to the church and I'm about half way done with the squares. 

I am making 46 heart blocks and 4 corner blocks with some of the leftover blocks. 

All the squares laid out, before sewing them together. I know some of the whiter blocks look like they are running together here. But they look better in person. 

 Here are a few of the heart blocks and my corner block. 

Getting ready to go out on Valentine's Day. It was cold! 9F.

We had a great time. Even though I didn't get the quilt finished. Or the dress. 

I'll get to them. But, I'm trying not to stress out about little things like this anymore. 

I'm very excited to finish both of these projects. I've stayed up late into the night working on the quilt so far. And I'm sure that I will have the same issue with the dress. But, Valentine's day was a great night. 

Me made in 2015

I decided to try and keep track of the things I've made throughout the year. I feel like I made more things than this, but there are some things I'm still working on. Such as the Valentine's day quilt and dress. The Downton Abbey Quilt (I'll never make that pattern again...) and I plan on doing another BOM this year. I might even have enough scraps to make a scrappy log cabin quilt soon enough. I have so many plans and things started that I just haven't finished so I suppose you will see them in 2016s 'Me Made' page! I've also got a few costume pieces that I want to finish up as well. Sometimes you start things and you hit a snag or you just get tired of looking at it and you have to put it down. I'm trying to finish all those things up in 2016. 

I made these quilted placemats early in the year. 

 only made 4 of these squares so far, but they are a lot of work!My Mom and I worked on these together for awhile.(This may have been Christmas 2014 into 2015...)

This is a BOM that I was doing with a friend. I finished mine while she cared for her mother. 

We had fun making the big square together and I made it fun to do the rest. She recently showed me an easier way to do those piano keys. Quilting/sewing with friends means you can share your knowledge with each other! So blessed to have such a wonderful friend.

This tiny quilt was a pain in the butt to make. But its a doll quilt. Maybe when I have children they will use it.

This Baby Quilt I made for my neighbor's new baby expected soon!!*update* she was born in Early January. Healthy baby girl, and so cute. :) 

I made this bag to carry the baby quilt in from the same fabrics. You can just see the quilt sticking out of the top here. 

In my effort to use less plastic in my life and recycle the things I do have I made this grocery bag. Every time I go to the store someone comments on it. It carries a lot, but I usually have to pack it myself. I'm working on another one, which will probably be much smaller. 

Do you have problems finishing up all your projects too? My friend, that I did the BOM with above, and I are not buying any more fabric this year until our UFOs are finished this year. She has 7 on her list and I have probably 15... Most of them just need one more thing! I really need some encouragement to finish up!  We did add a rule recently, that we would do an abbreviated shopping trip $50 or less, after we finish up 2 of our quilts/projects. 

Downton Abbey Quilt-part 2

Well, this quilt has been tough. I did it as a challenge and it was that! 

The top squares are together and all I have left now to do is put them together in strips, make the middle and outside strips and attach all of that together. Then the top will be completed and go off to the quilter. 

On the left side you can see the fabric that tI will be using for the strips in the middle.
If you are interested in the pattern it is "Wild Rose" by Chris Hoover, All of her designs you can see here including this one and a few others that I really like.
This is a intermediate pattern and I really feel like I stretched my quilting abilities with this one. I feel really good about it so far!



This is my master bedroom. It normally looks this way, I didn't clean anything before I took this picture. I'm actually proud of my accomplishments in keeping a clean house. It's a daily struggle for me. I am working on my daily habits still. Laundry day is a success.



This is where the quilt will be going. Hopefully, you can see the reasons why I chose the colors that I did. I want it to look good in this green tea room.

I hope to have some pictures of the finished quilt up as soon as I can get the rest of it attached and off to the quilter's house.

Pat sloans block of the month-2014-globetrotter part2

The friend that was making this along side me had to take care of her mother so I ended up doing this one alone. I waited awhile, but then i just wanted to finish it. I told her it was understandable, and it totally is. If it was my mother I hope that people would understand that she is important to me and I would take time out of my regular lie to take care of her if she needed me.
I did most of it within a few weeks. Ill show you all the blocks. They are not in order of month or anything. My favorite block is the one with all the purples and no green. It has the floral white print in the middle and dark purple on the sides. It looks like a folded origami piece to me.

This is my favorite, in case my description was weird. 

             

Here is all the blocks attached and the inner blue border being attached. I had some issues with that...but I got it all squared away. (Ha, ha...quilting jokes...*sigh* I know I'm a nerd.)

My quilt inspector. Who is also my 'Declutter dog', but he approves of soft pretty things that he can lay on, like pillows and blankets and they are even better if I love them and want to lay on them too. I should be glad someone wants to cuddle me. 

And this is what it looks like all together! 

I've gotten loads of complements on it when I went to the store to get some backing fabric for it and decided to use up what I had at home. I also took it to show my friend. She loved it too. The outside borders are called piano keys. I thought that was interesting. It took awhile to get them all sewn together, but I like the effect it gives the quilt. This was supposed to take a year...but I wanted to get it done so I could start on some Christmas presents. Now, it's off to my favorite machine quilter's house. 

I will post photos of the quilting when it comes back as well. This quilt is 62" x 62"-lap size. 

Have you ever done a Block of the Month quilt? Have you done this one? Post it in the comments! I'd love to see it!

Pat Sloan's block of the month-globetrotting. Block 1

A friend of mine and I are working on a block of the month pattern this year. We are excited to do Pat Sloan's 2014 Mystery quilt-Globetrotting. Although at this point it is no mystery. I had never done a mystery quilt before and I wasn't too sure about it, so we decided to do the one from last year and polish up our skills and tidy our sewing rooms while whipping through our stash of fabric. I would say that I'm doing pretty well with going through my stash. This quilt is all stash fabric that I have had for some time and it all looks pretty cool together. We started in January 2015.

This is the fabric I chose for my quilt.

Well, some of it anyways.


If you are interested in the pattern or following along with us you can go to the 2014 Mystery Quilt Link and check it out.

This is what her quilt looked like when it was finished. It gives you a better idea of what mine might look like.

See the center of her quilt above? That block is block 1 and this is my version of it below.

This is my first block. It was a doozy! It's 22"x22" and those blocks were fun to make, but it was also odd to me too. What do you think of my color choices? This block will be in the center of the quilt with a border around it and then the other blocks will go around that. This quilt will be 60"x60" I'm thinking about adding something to make it bigger. But I think I am going to make it the size it is supposed to be and see how it looks before I do that.

Here is a better picture of it after it was all put together.

I leave you with one more picture. My friend's quilt inspector!
Isn't she cute?

Downton abbey quilt retreat Part 1

I went to my first quilt retreat a few weekends ago. Here are some pictures of us working. 

Here's some pictures of what i worked on there. 

We had a 7 course dinner on might where we all dressed up and here is a picture of the whole gang plus some smaller groups. 

Me being silly!

They had a retreat the year brfore and showed their fan fare quilt that they worked on. These ladies have skills! Look how much color can change a pattern!

There we some beautiful quilts shown and i didnt get pictures of all of them. 

Stack and wack. I really want to try to make one of these at a later date. 

Below this is a room off the kitchen. I would have loved to stay in there. I thought about going down there to sleep in that bed because my roommate snored really loudly. I've been told that I snore, but jeez. This room was so cute. 

Me being fancy at the dressing table. It was obviously made for short people because I hit my knees on it getting up and sitting down. All the ladies loved my costume. I didn't have time to plan out much in my opinion, but it was era appropriate. 

I hope to go to another one of these next year. We will see.