Kinsley's baby shower

Middle child is finally close to her delivery date!  9 months seem to drag along when you are grammie waiting to meet a new grandchild!  Little Kinsley is due April 9.  Last night we had a baby shower for Janessa.  Lots of friends came and Janessa was even surprised with a visit from her sister.  I told Janessa that I could keep a secret!   It was pretty funny how Janessa saw Jessica walking across the parking lot and didn't recognize her since she wasn't expecting her to be there.

I have been busy for the past month making decorations, etc for the shower.  I am not a party person so I stress and stress but in the end everything always works out fine.

I made banners to go on the tables.


Kinsley's baby quilt made with love.  I make a quilt for each new grandbaby.  

Thank you gifts for the shower attendees.  26 owls in all!  These were fun to make with a fat quarter.  I found the pattern here.  I'm proud to say I used fabrics from my stash!

My test owls.

Wasn't sure how many friends to expect so one of the girls reserved a room at the library.  Here is the food table.  

Lil' Kinsley received so many presents!

Janessa seeing the quilt for the first time.  I'm usually not very good at hiding my sewing projects but this time I don't think Janessa even knew the colors I was using.  Hope she likes it!  Every time I sat down to sew, I thought about how this lil' one that will soon be joining her mommy and daddy and our family.  I am so excited to meet her.


It has been a busy, stressful month and I am so glad it is over!

Quilt in a Day

Before Thanksgiving last year, I received an email from Linda at Quilt in a Day.  She asked if I would like to review a book from Eleanor Burns.  I knew that I wouldn't have alot of time with the holidays coming up but I told her that I would love to do so.

I was even able to pick which book I wanted to review.  I have already made or bought several of Eleanor's more recent patterns so I choose Egg Money Quilts.  Linda was kind enough to send me not only the book but a ruler from the book that I didn't already have.  I love this company!

Before Christmas came, I was able to make a couple of the blocks.  Eleanor's books come with A LOT of information on how to make her quilts.  

What is also wonderful is that if you still don't understand the instructions from the book, you can find each block from each book online in Eleanor's Media Theater!  Talk about awesome!!!

Time to sew!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope you have a lovely day with those you love!

Addiction!

I've been busy!

I LOVE FABRIC!  Oh yes!  I thoroughly enjoy visiting fabric stores and petting all the fabric but....because of that love, my fabric stash at home was getting a little bit (okay...alot) out of hand.  When I saw fabric in a store that caught my eye, I usually would buy a bit to take home for those "future projects".

My cupboards were getting a bit reckless!  I usually stacked like fabrics together or fabrics from the same line all together and tied them up with a cloth ribbon.  It worked fine until I would pull something out to use and then somehow it never got put back nicely in the same spot.  This is how messy it was becoming when I finally decided to do something about it.

I now can't remember where I first saw this idea of how to wrap your fabric.  But you can google "comic board fabric wrap", then click on "images" to see other pics of the same idea.  It's very easy and a very efficient way of storing your fabric.  I can now see ALL the fabric I have instead of pretending to know what is in that cupboard!

I bought my comic book backing boards off of http://www.amazon.com.  The size I bought were 7 1/2" x 10 1/2".  I ran out of boards and had to order some more and found that size was harder to come by the second time around.  I ended up not buying the same brand but it really did not make a difference.  To wrap the fabric, I just folded it in half length-wise and then placed the board on one end of the fabric and wrapped it up.  To secure the fabric, I used old straight pins.  

Here is a picture right after I finished wrapping most of the fabric.  I still could not bring myself to switch from fabric lines to just colors.  I left it like this for a few days and just looked at how pretty it was.

Finally I gave myself permission to sort the fabric into colorways.  Doesn't it look better?  I do miss not knowing exactly which fabric went together with a certain designer.  But I know that this way of sorting will make pulling fabric to use in my future quilts so much easier!  Isn't it beautiful?!  It makes me want to sew!

Almost forgot to show!

Here is Janessa's take on our "watermelon" blocks.  She made her blocks into a Ladybug quilt!  I think it turned out darling and can hardly wait to see it quilted.

Almost done!

Now to decide if I keep going around with a black border or just stop and wait for binding.  

To make the quilt, I modified a Circle of Nine setting with my BOM blocks.  I will put the 3 extra blocks on the back of the quilt.

Way back when...a whole year ago...when I first heard the LQS ladies calling this a watermelon quilt (because of the red and green colorway) at our January meeting, I knew I had to incorporate some of the design I saw from a quilt in Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting magazine.   The issue is May/June 2010 and the inspiration quilt in found on page 18 of that issue.  It's called Watermelon and Shoofly by Tammy Johnson.  I quickly made several watermelon blocks from the inspiration quilt and they have been waiting patiently to somehow make their way into my own quilt.  A few months ago, I watched a demonstration on how to make a Circle of Nine quilt.  I knew that my watermelon blocks would work perfectly with some modification on my part.  I added the ants and crows onto the corner blocks just because.

My Watermelon Quilt

This is what is on my design wall today.  Trying to figure out how to put my BOM all together.  The blocks are the 2011's BOM from our LQS.  Will talk about it all later once I get it sewn together.  I'm pulling from everywhere to make this into a quilt.  Hope it comes together like I envision!