Weekend sewing and happenings.

What a weekend!  I have so much to tell you about.  It's been so busy and I've gotten alot done. 

Friday night, I went and sewed with some of my buddies at the church. I started working on my Bento blocks. I'm doing a swap with these and had to have them finished by the 11th.  I just started them as I had been getting ready for the Think Christmas blog hop.  I  was able to finish them up today.  I have to square them up and cut them apart now.  I made 12 blocks and you slice them up to  make 48 blocks.   Here's my blocks. I hate being behind and cutting it so close to the deadline!

Saturday, my MIL came over.  We went down to see my sister.  I took the grandbaby with me too. My sister and BIL had never seen the baby so I thought it was time for them to meet.   We stayed and visited for a little while and they fell in love with Carmen.  It was a great visit.  While I was there, my sister said she had a garage sale earlier in the week but didn't sale everything.  She pulled out three quilt tops she had tried to sell and gave them to me.  She said she didn't like them and I could have them if I wanted them.  Uh, what do you think I did?  Of course I took them.  I was thrilled to get them.  My sister is a hand quilter and she quilts on a frame.  She didn't like these enough to finish them for herself.   She also gave me some books, (regular books to read, not quilting books!) some crocheted doilies, some embroidered place mats. She was having a clear out and I came at just the right time.  Lucky me. My sister is so good to me!  I didn't take a pic of these but I'll show them later.

We left her house and headed back home.  My MIL hadn't been to my #1 son's new house to check it out yet. So, we headed over there for her to see it.  We had a nice little visit there and then headed home again.  When I got home, I opened the mail box and had a nice little gift in there too.  Debby Kratovil sent me her calendar on CD!  How cool is that? What a great gift! Thank you, Debby. I'm going to really enjoy this!

I went to Joann's later and bought some things too.  I have been wanting this little  pincushion for a while now. I've looked at it several times but didn't like the fabrics on the ones I had seen but I decided to get this one. I collect pincushions and this will be a good addition to my little collection.  I also bought a new book and am starting to read it.  I've been wanting to do Etsy for awhile now and this book might just help me do it and answer some of my questions. 

Now, the reason my sister gave me the quilt tops was because I told her what I had purchased last week.  I went to a Long Arm demo last week and bought a new machine.  I haven't got it yet but it should come in next week.  I'm so excited.  I bought a Tin Lizzie 18 and can't wait until it arrives.  I hope I can finish up all my UFO's now and my husband hopes I can too! 

Now, I have to get off and review and read the blogs of the Think Christmas blog hop. Today is the last day of the hop and I've got to see what everyone has done. I've got to trim my blocks up too so I really have to hurry.  til next time, happy sewing!

I finished my scarf and the Walker Bags are finished too.

I came in tonight and watched  an old movie on Encore called GI Jane. I finished knitting my scarf while it was on.  When the skein was through, so was my scarf.  I think it is a great length (64 inches)  and I'm really pleased. All I need to do now is block it and it will be ready to give away.

I got this pattern off of Turvid's Blog...Here's a link to her pattern.

I also put the velcro on the walker bags and they are ready to give away tomorrow.  I'll be going to Tatting Tuesday and give these to my friends. Then onto my ASG meeting for a Pizza Party to celebrate the end of the Pizza Box Project.  I'll show you pics of that later.   Here's a pic of the inner part of the walker bag...

Til next time...happy sewing,

Scrap Happy Saturday and finishing up on Sunday

Ok, it took longer than I thought. We worked nearly all day cleaning house, putting away Christmas and rearranging our bedroom.  He fixed breakfast and we started in.   We have a Queen size bed in our guest room and our bedroom has a King Size bed.  We switched them out and tried the Queen bed out last night. Not a good idea....

After all the cleaning and rearranging, I was finally able to get up to my sewing room for a little while. I sewed up a little blue mug rug. I got the directions from Angela's blogsite. She is hosting a Scrap challenge this year for the first Saturdays and this month was blue scraps. I told you about it in my last post.   I made the little mug rug with some of my favorite blue scraps. It was fast and easy and fun.  
I  made two Christmas 9 Patches for another mug rug but I won't be putting those together until  later this week.  I didn't finish the little blue mug rug until this afternoon. I quilted it and bound it and I'll be using it tonight with a nice cup of hot tea.

Here's my scrappy blue mug rug.  I know it doesn't look blue but trust me, it really is:

Here's my Christmas Nine Patches:

My husband and I were trying to go to a smaller bed so we would have more room in our bedroom.  Well, neither of us slept last night.  The bed was too hard and we decided we were alot more comfortable on a King size bed.  So today, we moved everything back the way it was and I'll be sleeping on my regular bed tonight.  I don't want to move anymore furniture for awhile....

After we moved everything back I was able to sew again.  I finished my mug rug and almost finished two walker bags.  I say almost because I will have to add the velcro closures tomorrow. I searched my sewing room up and down and I guess I used up all my velcro.  (All right, that means I have an excuse to go to Joann's!!)I'll buy some tomorrow and put the velcro on these and give them to my friends on Tuesday.  Both of these are for two of my tatting friends.  One is for Lucille, she had knee surgery and is on a walker right now.  She will have another surgery on the other knee soon so, she will be on a walker for awhile.  The other is for my friend, Nancy.  She asked me to make one for her Mom who will soon be on a walker. 

Here's the walker bags....

I finished up by making me an eyeglass case for my reading glasses. I have about 20 pair of reading glasses all over the house but no case to carry any of them in, until now.  I had just a dab of this fabric, it's not blue but I liked it anyway....

Ok, you have to start somewhere, right?  I enjoyed making all of these and the good thing is , they are finished (well, almost) and I get to work on something else. I'm hoping now to finish my scarf that I'm knitting and I'll show you that tomorrow.  It's back to a normal schedule tomorrow and I guess that's good.  I have enjoyed the holidays but I can tell you, I don't feel like I got enough rest.  I'll be sleeping good tonight!  Til next time, happy sewing!



Sewing with Heidi and Bobbi and friends, finishing up on Saturday

I went to the church last night and visited with friends while I sewed. I worked on making a snuggle for my granddaughter.  I finished it up last night and then worked on putting my Crazy 8 quilt top together.  I got it about half way done before calling it quits for the night.  I'm going to get that quilt top together soon...

The snuggles are great but they are hard to cut out because fleece is so thick. I sewed two more today. One for the youngest and oldest grandsons.  I had just enough left over from all the yardage to make scarves for the three of them.  Two gifts in one...Here's a picture but it's really hard to tell what they are....I didn't have any models to put them on.

I did a single crochet around one of the scarves and I just cut the ends and fringed the other two....

We are wrapping gifts tonight instead of going out...We'll celebrate our anniversary later.

Some great Show and tell from some friends

I went to two meetings tonight. First, I went to my Tatting group but I only stayed for a little while. I needed some help with a sweater and several of the ladies in our group are wonderful knitters too. I gave the sweater and directions to Mary Jo and she's going to look over it and see if she can help me with my problem. I hope so cause it is driving me crazy and I really want to finish it...I talked to a few of my friends and had to leave pretty quickly to get to my quilt meeting. Lots of ugly traffic but I finally got there. We had a quick meeting and then some great show and tell. Here's some of the things this small group has been working on...

We have some great sewers in our group!





This is Naomi's Halloween quilt....



Look at this cute bag.  Nadine made this for her daughter who lives in Savannah, Ga.  Yes, it has Savannah, Ga fabric on the inside and on the pocket. Too cute.




Nadine made this BQ Zebra quilt for her granddaughter for Christmas.



Judy made this charity quilt.



These are two mini quilts turned in during the daytime meeting.




Bonnie's Floating 4 Patch quilt.  Hmm, I need to make some more of these.  I love how she set these together. 




Melissa's quilt.  I forget the name of this one but it is a Marti Michell pattern.




Evelyn has been knitting hats for Parkland.




Evelyn made these cute bags.  They are fabric covered zip lock bags.  You can put quick Christmas treats like Pumpkin Bread or candy or whatever and give as a quick gift.  Evelyn made some for Halloween too and gave to some of her little friends. They were a big hit.  I've got to make some of these too. 




Shirley made this reversible apron.

 



Naomi showing off her sweatshirt jacket. You go, girl!



Naomi made these cut Christmas tree napkins for a church function.



Linda made this great star quilt for a friend's son.



Sew What's Group and goodies in the mail

Last night was my small group meeting. It was our annual picnic and installation of new officers for the coming year. Good food and fellowship was on the agenda for the evening and we were not disappointed. We had sandwiches and drinks from Jason's Deli. It was just right for our picnic. No one had to cook or slave over a hot stove for this meeting! We had a good turnout and everyone had a great time. We had a little show and tell too for the meeting. Here's what some of our members are working on..

Judy's basket quilt. She's going to have this one hand quilted by another one of our members. Irene will be hand quilting this one for her...




Irene's bluebonnet pillow.



Cathey's pieced baby quilt. Cathey is not friendly with her machine. She is an appliquer and scared of the machine. I think she's getting a little more friendly.


Sharon's wool pillows:





Helen's quilter pillow:






Dee's Quilt top:


Martha's friendship quilt. She made this along with several other ladies to give to the bus driver that always drives them to the Houston Quilt Show. His favorite color is purple. They will be giving him this when he drives them to Houston.... Look at the sweet label, isn't that cute?







Martha's Mola:


Cindy's cute bag:





The Church Quilt. Our group meets at a church each month. One of our member's is a member of the church. We don't have to rent the room or anything. We do give them a quilt each year to raffle off as our way of saying thank you for letting us meet there. This is the quilt for this year...





Our leader gave each of us a cookbook or member's recipes and she gave me this sweet coin purse. I was the treasurer for our group this year and this was her way of saying Thanks. Thank you, Glenda. I love them both.





Weren't those great? We had a wonderful meeting and our members are so talented. I love this group.

When I got home, I had more goodies in the mail too. I received my wonderful bag from Terry with so many cool things inside. She had the goodies inside the bag and it was all wrapped up with a sweet fat quarter. She gave me some floss, two Aunt Martha's transfer patterns, a vintage apron pattern and some wonderful patterns too. What a sweet and generous gift. Thank you, Terry. I love them all.





I also received a beautiful hand made card from Jane along with my first signature block. I'm going to have to get busy and start making some signature blocks to send out...this is going to be so much fun. Thank you so much, Jane, I love them.





Wow, I had a great day and got lots of goodies too. It couldn't have been a better day unless I had won the lottery.

More Marti Michell blocks, a surprise gift and Quilt Rally Day tomorrow.

I worked on two more of my blocks last night. I got one completely finished and it's called Broken Dishes. This is the biggest broken dishes block I have ever made! I worked on the other block and was on the last few pieces and was getting ready to put it all together and noticed I had sewn the outside pieces together wrong. I turned off my machine, grabbed Mr. Ripper and the pieces and came downstairs to unsew. It was quitting time for me. I unsewed the pieces and they are now ready to be sewn properly and the block finished. I try not to ever leave an error in my sewing when I stop. I try to always unsew it and sew it properly or get it ready to be sewn the next time I start. That way I'm not ending on a bad note and I won't forget to correct it when I start sewing again. These blocks are easy blocks with the Marti Michell templates but there are alot of pieces so they take awhile to do...I'll take pics later and today and show you my finished blocks.

I received a nice little gift in the mail yesterday too. Cornfield Quilter sent me a little surprise gift. It was a quilt pattern and it has a star on it. My favorite thing! She sent me this because I'm such a nice person...Actually, that's true, but she sent me this little surprise because I signed up to follow her blog and I was her 100th follower. Thank you so much, I will enjoy this little pattern!

Tomorrow is TAQG Rally Day. For those of you out there that do not live it the big state of Texas...TAQG stands for Texas Association of Quilt Guilds and is an organization made up of Texas Quilt Guilds. These guilds get together once a year in July and have a meeting with a national guest speaker and play all day long. This year's speaker is Cynthia England. She is amazing and I am really looking forward to this. Here's her website. http://www.englanddesign.com. If you haven't seen her work, go check out her site and you will see some of her work. Pictures do not do these beautiful quilts justice. They are so wonderful in person. I first saw her work several years ago when she won Best of Show at the Dallas Quilt Show and I have paid attention ever since. One of these days, I'll do something with her methods.

My electricity just came back on from a spectacular lighting storm and I have been sitting in the dark for 2 hours. I didn't do any sewing or anything tonight. I'll finish my block tomorrow night and show them to you then. Take care and have a great weekend.

A Sweet Gift: Teddy

Hey, I just got home from Tatting and I had a sweet package in my mail. I'm so excited!!! Jane aka Loopy Lou sent me one of my favorite things. A new Teddy! Actually, I admired her Teddy on her blog and raved about it so much, she made me one. Teddy's brother! She sent me a sweet card too. Oh, Jane, thank you so much. Teddy is so happy with his new brothers and sisters and seems to be fitting in already. He says he had a very safe trip and thinks he will be very happy here. Look, I took some pics so he could say hi to you...He says not to worry, he's sure he'll like his new home.

Quilt Meeting tonight

Tonight was our annual picnic. It really shouldn't be called a picnic cuz we don't eat outside on the ground, we just call it that instead of annual dinner or whatever. Anyway... tonight, instead of a potluck dinner, we all chipped in and ordered from Jason's Deli. We had sandwiches, chips, pickles, fruit, cookies, tea and lemonade and the good thing was, we didn't have to cook it. We have this every year in August to announce the new leaders for our small group, the Sew What's. Door prizes are given out and gifts thanking others during the year that did things for our group. We have a treasurer, block chairpersons for the summer blocks, block chairpersons for the winter blocks, church quilt chairperson, Sunshine and Shadow person, etc, etc...I was the treasurer this year and will be again this next year and I received a gift for those duties.

I also won a door prize and everyone that attended received a gift too. The leaders this year made pincushions (one of my favorite things!) and gave out to all the members.

Here's the barbeque mit I received as a gift and the pincushion with scissors and tweezers that all of us got...







The door prize that I won was not quilt related but can be used for photos. It was a scrapbook kit...look at this. It was a great bag with 2 photo books and all kinds of embellishing items too...



I love this group of ladies. I have been in this small quilt group since 1992 and I have learned so much from these wonderful women. All of us have been the leaders/co-leaders of this group until last year, when we started getting some new members. Now, we have some new people to con into taking on these tasks! It's always fun to start a new year to see what the new leaders will come up with. I'm looking forward to another year of being with my friends.
Alot of these women have been quilting alot longer than I have. I learned from the pros...alot of blue ribbon winners and teachers in this group. I can remember how intimidated I was when I joined this group way back when. But, we sure have had some great times. Here's some pics of show and tell tonight. These are just a few but I thought you would enjoy them...


Look at this, it is so sweet. We had two leaders this year and one of the leaders gave the co-leader this as a thank you gift. All of the members signed it...



This was a panel, or should I say 4 panels put together. Sewn on lines and then cut down to the bottom layer to make it appear chenilled....very cute.



Blocks collected for a BOM but not used for the BOM...put together and made into a small lap quilt.



This was a turning 20 quilt..block sizes were increase a little bit and a big baseball appliqued on for a lucky grandson. He just got his own room.







This was a mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter's Website, Quiltville.com