Finishes

I was looking forward to getting in the studio today to get some of these projects wrapped up. but as I looked around, I realized with December 1st being tomorrow, I need to get some labels on quilts that need to be sent off ASAP! So I made labels for many of the quilts that have been sitting here, the amount of labels I need to make is adding up... Usually I leave them until I send them out, but I decided I should get organized and catch up now...as long as I had a few to make anyway... Plus, I need to keep better track of where they go, what size they are etc. I always forget to keep records of sizes...

I like had written labels. It's my last bit of work to add to a quilt, So I print it out on paper, centered etc, so I can then write it out and it looks all straight. Then I add my little BEE picture, and stitch them on. I always include the name of who they go to, who quilted it, (if I didn't), any contributors to the quilt, state, date, year etc... I don't know if they people who get them like that or not, or if they just want to cut them off, but, I like that fact that someday maybe my quilts will still be lingering around somewhere, and someone will know that it was made with love, by me. It's a nice feeling that these quilts will live longer than me...

Do you have a unique way of adding your labels? creative touches? I'd love to hear...

I also realized I need to get this other shirt done for my godson ASAP! Birthday and X-mas both in December makes the month very short! So, to go along with his BMX shirt I made him,
He also loves Star Wars, So I am trying to decide if I stitch the design on or paint it...
Gotta do it today, so I better make up my mind....

Separately, before Thanksgiving, I think I've settled on this layout for my dresdens,
I wish I could play with them today,
but not sure I will get to it.

I'm also ITCHING to start working on these FABULOUS prints from Paula Prass's new line!

She sent me some scraps to play with, so my and Shelly are going to work on something together. Aren't they fun? Love that orange....

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving (and or) a lovely weekend. We went to the beach at sunset, and oohed and ahhhed over the pink sky and purple water. (above)
So peaceful!

relaxin'

Stitchin'

craftin'

Decoratin'

relaxin' & reflectin'

My, how time does fly.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So important, I am posting again,
if you haven't signed this yet,
Sign the petition and help us ensure that all women have access to this life-saving screening. CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE.

**

More Playing.

It's back to the drawing board with my dresdens... I still have not decided what I want to do with
them... I may just put them away for a bit or go very simple on them... They are just so fun, I did want to step it up a little... we'll see.

Girls playing in scraps...
B and her pal came over for a playdate and rummaged through my scrap bins...
They made little patchworks, and want pillows made out of them. So cute.

We're off for along weekend. I hope you all have a lovely Holiday!

Easy being green! and blue!

To fulfill my obsession with small stars, I put together a bunch of charms I had of Kaffe, and picked out some of my favorite greens and blues to put this quilt top together...

It goes together very quickly and easily. Although I should be binding...
I have a lot of binding I need to get to today also.

**

Need a great Xmas gift idea?
check these out.

When Cheri came by the other day, she very sinfully brought me a variety of Vosges chocolates.
I am putting away quite quickly, the Black Pearl bar.
wasabi
ginger
black sesame seeds
and dark cacao

(and by "PUTTING AWAY" I don't mean in a drawer....)
it means nobody else is getting any... ;-)

Yum.
they come highly recommended...

***

And, if your interested,
regarding breast cancer and mammograms
Sign the petition and help us ensure that all women have access to this life-saving screening.
Click here

Starting to look a lot like Xmas

Girls Night out!
Look who came for a visit and dinner?
Cheri from jovial Quilts!
We had a lovely visit, then we took a walk from my place,(it was so nice out!) to a restaurant downtown fro some yummy Indian food. One of my favorite places in NY. What fun!
She thought it was funny when I said let's walk I need the fresh air!
Well, as fresh as it can get in NY.... But we did actually see the moon and a few stars which you pretty much can never see in NYC. Bonus!

Even Minnie was out for a stroll!

Macy's has their Christmas window displays up, and so we had to take a peak.
They did a pretty fun set of windows this year.
We're out of here Wednesday, for Thanksgiving. We live to close to all the parade gathering and crowds so we get out early...Believe me it's so much better to sit at home and watch the parade on TV, in front of a fire...

This was one fo the windows...all Santa's mail being blown up the North pole.
Very cute and fun.

And although I am not much of a sports fan, I am guessing there was a METS game on tonight, as the Empire State Building was lit up in Blue and Orange. I guess being a NY'kr I should know these things better....

So i stand corrected since baseball season is long over! thank you Amy for pointing that out! ;-)
click here...
A cool site shows why the empire state building is the color it is each night...

It was actually the 125th Anniversary of Boys and girls clubs of America last night and their colors are blue & orange. who knew!

And, I got home to find my package from Jenny who swapped me some 4"ers for
my ON POINT quilt! I got two more blocks laid out with her blocks! Thanks Jenny!
They were perfect!!

QUESTION: Can anyone recommend a Good beginner sewing machine that you know of that someone has? Like the Janome beginner machines etc.? I have a 14 year old friend who wants a beginner machine, and am trying to keep it to under a $100... If anyone had any advice I'd be thrilled. thanks!

9 p.m. Winner

My fairy (fabric) godmother sent me some lovely prints for me to play with!
What? Never heard of her?
Well, I am blessed to have one, and she sends me goodies every now and then.
I recvd a package this week with the red yellow/black yellow fabrics, another red that I used in the outer blocks of the mini quilt above.

Some cool old New York fabric, and a bunch of whites for my ON POINT quilt!
What a doll! Thank you fairy FABRIC godmother!

I did these other African inspired quilts a year ago after seeing a show on
African textiles at the MET...
Fabulous!
I've started hand quilting both of them, but, SIGH, they are ,
not done.
yet.
one day.
I'm hoping now that I've posted them AGAIN, perhaps I will finish them...
Wishful thinking??

Now I am seeing patterns everywhere....

*****

One more Xmas gift done. My godson, O, loves down hill BMX, he likes to ride his bike around with a helmut on, like the BIG GUYS.... He's 5. ;-) So I did this drawing of a bike flying through the air... cut it out like a stencil, taped it on with PAINTERS tape... (ha! very fancy stuff here..) and free motioned in the details... over a gray piece of fabric...

Here it is! I think he'll love it... Now I have to do that Star wars shirt...

******

Oh! Canada~
And last but not least, BRENDA, of scraps and strings was the name picked out of the hat by B, she will be getting the box of scraps!

Thanks for making my bins a little emptier! ;-)
Thanks everyone, for your nice comments!!

HAPPY FRIDAY

Ok, Family quilt top done.
My indecisiveness came from my daughter wanting just the opposite of what i wanted yesterday.
Darn Mommy guilt.
I wanted one big family quilt, she wanted one for each of us...
I also want just the log cabins... Mom is winning this one... ;-)


MOST of the Sis Boom POW! Blocks are done and in! I think I am just waiting on two people's blocks... Can't wait to find a good home for this Charity quilt.

Don't they look Fantastic! I look forward to putting these quilt together.

CLEANING, CUTTING, DE-CLUTTERING....

I've gone through two more bins in my de-clutter my scraps binge...

I have a nice box full of larger pieces that I have a lot of scraps for.

not really crumbs.. fat 1/8ths and strips mostly.

Any takers?

send me an email today only.

I'll draw a name at 9pm tonight.

If more than one wants the box, I'll pick a name out of the hat...

(the photo is not the box in reference)

Have a great weekend!

decisions

Circles and Stripes top is done! Yippee! I've wanted to do a nice stripe quilt for ages... So I finally got around to it... I might not want to let this quilt go... I just love red.


So indecisive today!
These are family blocks that me, B, my mother and niece made.
My original idea was to put one of each blocks into lap quilts one for each of us...
The fabrics I had chosen, once I made them, I really disliked them. So they sat in a box for a year. Then as I was cleaning up my stash I had this yellow/brown weird fabric,
(I'd always wondered why on earth i bought it) then it struck me, those old blocks!

So I dug them out, and decided to punch them up with some solids. I will use the stripe for borders. But now that I have a bunch of the blocks all scrappy and wonky, I kind of like them all in one big quilt!!!!
so now I don't know what to do... 4 lap quilts? or one big one? (I'm leaning for one big one)

Then, I did this snow boots, hats scarves ear muffs gloves and snowball applique a week or so ago. And I had decided to use up my swap Xmas blocks, like in the first picture, but finishing it off with a nice red border ALL around...

But then again, I could just make TWO MORE blocks and put them all together with a red border ALL around... and put the applique in entirely something else.... !!!!!!!

argh!~ this one I really can't decide what to do with....

what to do, what to do...

I lean towards all log cabins, as the applique picture thing is so not me, it hit me one day as a fun project to try to machine applique, but I have hand appliqued them... The red dots are actually ear muffs if your wondering I just haven't gotten around to putting the strap on it in the photo...

Becky was giving away some scraps, so I offered to swap some scraps with her so I'd have some new goodies to play with... here's my stash! And a few cute little holiday ornaments!
Thanks Becky!

productivity

Look what I got in the mail yesterday! my BEE!!! Thanks Shelly! I Love it!
ha! She appliqued my little Bee from my old logo, which I put on all my packages!


****

One commenter had many questions how I can get so much done... asked if I have a housekeeper, husband around etc...

here's my answer...
I work fast and in a particular, (scattered way!)

I sew during the day while my daughter is at school. Mondays are baking days, and I make many meals that can be eaten as leftovers. I do not have a nanny.

I do have a regular babysitter for Thursday eve's only,
so I can have a date night with my hubby. This event does does not have any affect on my sewing time...
My lovely husband is home every night for dinner. I pick up my daughter from school everyday, and we have family time til she goes to bed...
then I hand sew things as I watch my favorite shows on Tivo!

It's not perfect. Sometimes dinners are very simple because I can't tear myself away...
But we make it work.

Laundry is in, dishes are in the dishwasher...

I work fast to get the ideas out of my head and then I go back and
work on them when the time is right...

For instance the tile quilt. All the blocks were slightly tacked,fused so
that now I can work on a block during the evening while I watch my shows. The borders are cut, so once I have the blocks all appliqued, then I whip the borders on, and wallaa!



Or cutting up all those squares out of my scraps.
I did this for an hour last night after B went to bed...
I see another red quilt in my future!

My studio is right next to my daughters room, so I don't run the machine once she goes to bed.
So it is all about planning it out, and leaving things to work on in the eve or things I can take with me while B is at gymnastics for an hour, or take to the house on the weekends...

Part of this is the reason why I have so many projects going at once.
Sew sew sew all day, hand sew in the eve...

here's the pool table in our loft. It's taken over as my layout table...
These are: a stack of finished quilts, the alphabet "B" project , B's Buddha wall quilt, the ON POINT Quilt blocks, which will be on hold til I do my swaps with some of you! two quilts for binding, the scrappy happy quilt and the Black and gray windows Quilt, otherwise known as the BOB quilt, the Tile quilt blocks, Xmas log cabin blocks,
(ALL evening sewing work)
And the recently finished Parsley Patch quilt...
**

Also, I like to keep you guys on your toes... if I keep showing you the same project for a week you'd get bored and stop reading my blog! I find the blog to be as enjoyable as sewing. It's inspiring to me to put down my projects, and think about them in a different way. And I like the idea that I might inspire a few of you... I get inspiration from you all, so I like the idea of full circle moments...

Does that explain it? Others call it quilters A.D.D.... Take your pick! I don't mind!