Quilting 101 Class #2

Last week was class 2 in the quilting series. We learned how to do the pinwheel pattern. This pattern can also be used to make flying geese, depending on how you turn them. I liked the pinwheels best though.


Here is a picture of what it looks like after adding the 2 rows of pinwheels. I am finally up to speed with the class and hopefully tonight I can spend my class time working on this weeks part. We are supposed to learn the log cabin pattern tonight. Look for more pics soon!

Quilting 101 Class #1 Part 2

I've been slack only because I've had so much going on at home and at work. The last blog I only showed peices of the quilt. Here is the picture of everything learned in class 1 put together. I think it's coming along rather nicely, if I do say so myself!

Quilting 101 Class #1

So my quilt class started last week. It was fun! There are 6 women in the class and we seem to get along well. This beginning of the class was just instruction on supplies to use and stuff like that. Then we got into the actual learning to cut and piece the beginning of the quilt and we sewed and sewed.

We were asked to bring a 1/2 yard cutting each of a small, medium and large print fabric that coordinated. So here's what I picked out and took:

The first pattern we made was a checkerboard. We started by cutting a strip of 2 different fabrics and sewing them together. This is what we had when finished:

This by itself is also called a rail fence I think. Then we cut this into small strips and sewed 2 small strips together. Then the groups of 4 were sewed together until we had 9 small strips. We made 2 of these checkerboard strips.

The next step was to pick out a 4th fabric. We then cut 4 large squares that we used to make a checkerboard with but this time it only had 4 squares. It is going to be the center of the quilt. Here's what I used for that :

It's hard to tell in this picture, but it's a bright green not yellow. It goes really well with the purple. All of the fabrics I picked were all made to coordinate with each other. I'm really excited about learning how to finish the rest of it! Class 2 is next week so there will be more to come!

Time Flies

Wow I knew it had been a while since I posted anything but didn't realize it's been almost 6 months. Life has just gotten in the way. Along with facebook and a lot of reading and Christmas and the list goes on right?! I hope to be more diligent in the future about posting stuff on here. My wonderful husband bought me a Bernina Bernette 66 sewing machine for Christmas(my old one broke). The bernina store here offers different classes for different needs. I've always wanted to make quilts like my nanny did. Unfortunately she has alzheimers and I wasn't at a point in my life where she could show me before she developed it. That said the Bernina store has a quilting 101 class. It's a 10 week 5 classes every other week that shows you how to make a quilt. I decided I was going to sign up for it and it starts tonight. I plan on posting pics of what I do along the way. Hopefully I will be able to keep it up! if not check out my facebook page!

Play Room Organization

I'm ashamed to show this picture but you won't appreciate the after if you don't see the before. Our play room has been a mess for a long time and I just kept ignoring it. I guess I was hoping it would go away. Well that didn't happen. So here is what it looked like this morning before I started cleaning and organizing:

So I finally had all I could take. Target had the fabric cubes on sale so I went and got 4 more. I've been wanting to make label holders for the ones I had but just haven't gotten around to it. I went to Mary Jo's and got some vinyl and visited Hobby Lobby for ribbon. It was on sale there and Mary Jo's didn't have any I liked. I spent $5 for the materials to fix the label pockets. I had to experiment with the first couple to get it right. Finally I decided to use the hot glue gun since it was much quicker. Basically I cut the vinyl to the right size ( I wanted to use a 4x6 card for the label) size and glued it onto the cube. Then I glued the ribbon around the edges of vinyl.

Of course the most daunting task was cleaning the room. Emi and I started sorting into piles. I finally sent her out and I began to throw old worn stuff away. Then I started sorting into the 8 cubes. Slowly it came together and several hours later this is what the room looks like now:

Hopefully the labels will help Emi keep it clean and organized! Especially now that she can read, there should be no excuse for her not knowing exactly where everything goes!

Easter Egg Hunts

I took E to an egg hunt this morning. My friend and her almost 3 year old twins came along too. We were out numbered 3-2. It started at 1000 this morning at a local park. It was a fairly easy hunt. The eggs were "hid" on the outfield of a baseball field. So about 10 minutes later all the eggs were found. It was crowded and since we had little kids, I suggested we ride back up the road to another small playground. My friend agreed and off we went. It was a small playground with a few swings. We got there around 1030-ish or so. E and my friends son A played on the slides while my friends daughter H preferred the swings. I took a few pics and they played and played. Did I mention I drank a mug of coffee on the way to the egg hunt? Well I did. You know what comes next. I start looking for a bathroom and my friend and I see a man on the outfield of the baseball field tossing out eggs. So we figure theres gotta be an egg hunt. E and I head off to the bathroom. As I come out I pass the man and ask what time the egg hunt begins. He replied 1200. It was about 1110. I asked my friend if she was up for another hunt. We decided to stay and the kids kept playing. About 1/2 hour later more kids were coming to the play area. Some kids were rude and knocked H down so we headed to the car to cool off for a few minutes. Finally the egg hunt started. All 3 kids got a good many eggs. When it was over, the man who was hiding the eggs said they had refreshments. Being the bad mother that I am, I didn't think to bring any water with us. I only planned on one egg hunt, not 2! So we got in line so I could get E something to drink. I had a little cash and would have gladly bought her something to drink. Then we saw they had chips and hot dogs. In my mind I was tallying up how much it would be for a hot dog, chips and drink for us both. Then a lady behind us asked the man in charge how much the hot dogs were. Imagine my surprise when he said everything was free! That was so wonderful! It was a blessing in disguise because we had a lot of bills due this week. Although I got paid Thursday, it was mostly gone by Friday. What was left over we didn't need to be wasting on frivolous things like eating out since we still needed to get gas and things. I had told my friend when we got to the playground that if we went anywhere it had to be free and we just laughed about it. So I guess you could look at it as having a prayer answered, even though it was a want and not a need. How cool is that?

Free Doughnuts!

Sounds good right? The only thing better than free doughnuts is free hot doughnuts. You know when they are rolling fresh off the conveyor belt?! When you can eat 4 or 5 without even thinking about it? Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Well that's what I have waiting for me when I finish this post. We visited Krispy Kreme a few months back and I noticed kids bringing in their report cards. I asked the cashier what the deal was and was told that kids bring in their report cards and get a original glazed doughnut for very A they get up to 6 doughnuts. What better motivation than that to get A's? So we took E's report card and got her doughnuts. Last Monday they got report cards again. And my baby had all A's but one and that was a C. I was very proud of her because she brought most of her grades up. So we headed off to KK tonight to get our/her free doughnuts (If it weren't for mom and dad she wouldn't get the A's!). And the hot doughnuts now sign was on!!! W0ohoo!!! So sweet dreams everyone I'm going to eat my doughnuts!