Wedding Quilt top complete!!

Here it is!

It was a little windy that day...I may need to take more pictures on another less windy day.

This is the largest and most complicated quilt I've made so far. So I'm giving myself a pat on my back. I'm really happy with it. Also the first time I added sashing, but it turned out that it wasn't very hard.

I was working on it over the weekend, Steve was out of town at his bachelor party, so my quilting kinda took over the whole apartment. As I mentioned earlier we're buying a house and moving out of our apartment soon. So here I am Sunday afternoon still wearing my pajamas and uncombed hair, cause I'm not going anywhere, nobody's going to see me. Next thing I know there's a knock on my door and here comes my landlord with a parade of potential renters to see our place. "Yes, under this giant pile of fabric is the dining room. And you can see the lovely living room here, but you can walk into it because I have all my blocks laid out on the floor just as I'd like them and so I don't want to pick them up and forget their order." And of course things like doing dishes and making the bed were not high on my list of things to do. In all fairness though our landlord is a nice guy and he did send a text beforehand I just didn't see it.

So now that the top is done I've been working on the back and some other projects that are going to have to stay a secret until after the wedding...Less than 4 weeks left!!

Busy but not dead

So I know it's been about a month since I last posted... I have just been extremely busy in the last few weeks, but this is not a complaint because all these wonderful things are happening to my fiance and I. Have I mentioned I'm getting married in 6 weeks? On top of that we learned our stay in Cleveland may no longer just be temporary so we're buying a house!! And trying to do that quickly before our lease runs out in about 7 weeks... And also work has been extremely busy including required traveling and extra projects coming my way. And did I mention I'm getting married in 6 weeks?

Last week there was a day that I mailed all our invitations, settled a contract for the house, and did my taxes. I felt so accomplished at the end of that day.

Needless to say with all these other pressing things going on quilting has made it's way to the bottom of my long to do list. Last night after being out of town for a few weeks I cleared the dining room table, which is my sewing area, of mortgage papers, tax papers, bills, old mail, my fiance's new work contracts, Scout's meds, my disorganized pile of wedding related contracts, and shower gifts, which can't get unpacked until after we move into the new place. The sewing may resume shortly, but first I really need to address and send out the thank you letters from our shower.

It's a start...

A few blocks complete!

Several more to go...

Kyra's Baby Quilt

This quilt was finished not long after my previous post, but since I was planning on giving it as a gift I had to put posting about it on hold until I got it to the new mother's hands. The mother, my friend Christy, has a very very large collection of rubber ducks so when I saw this orange fabric with the ducks it made me think of her. I think the baby's room is in pink and green, so I tried to tie that all together. The binding is striped orange and yellow and reminds me of Slimey the worm from Sesame Street.

Lost and Found

I'm calling this post Lost and Found because my sister found this scraf she had started a while ago at the back of a closet. She decided that she didn't want to finish it herself as she's been very busy lately and so she gave it to me thinking I could find use for the needles and yarn. I decided to just finish it for her.

...and lost because I worked on it while Steve and I were rewatching old seasons of Lost to refresh our memories before the new season started. Knitting lends itself to sitting cozy on a couch much better than quilting, which requires sitting at a machine. It's been a long while since I knit something but I think I should start doing more again. It was nice to have something to keep my fingers busy.

Wedding plans

Keeping me busy right now is wedding planning, which is very time consuming...Especially if you're like us and choose a spot where you don't live. Steve and I spent another weekend down in Dayton (3.5 hrs away) visiting my parents and to meet the baker and the officiant, who are actually in Hamilton (+45min) and Cincinnati (+1hr). We just really like our wedding site and think it will make it more beautiful and special that it's worth all this trouble. And this weekend I'm going to meet my Aunt to talk about jewelry for the day! She makes beautiful jewelry and now does silver work which is pretty cool and I wish I knew more about it.

I decided to make a wedding quilt. My idea is that I'll have people sign a block of fabric as a guest book, and then sew it into the back so I'll always have it as a memory. And much more useful than a book! I'm planning on making it big enough so Steve and I can cuddle together under it on the couch. I don't want to make it for a bed, because my wedding colors aren't necessarily the colors I want to have in my bedroom.

I wish I could make a double wedding ring pattern, but I think those curves are above my skill level right now and I want this to be something I'll enjoy looking at for years to come. A sloppy job would bother me for years. I decided on doing a pattern I saw in a book called peony, but it doesn't look like what I find online when I google it. It's similar to a bear paw pattern. We are going to use peonies in the wedding so I thought it was fitting. Also since our colors are blue and green, which aren't great flower colors we are using a lot of white flowers. So in my quilt I'm doing colorful blue backgrounds with white in the flower part and then green blocks at the corners and centers of the blocks.

I ordered my fabric online for the first time. I shopped at Hawthorne Threads and had excellent service! It was very exciting when they came in the mail. I really like on their website how you can search by colors very specifically. That was very helpful and kinda fun.

Have I mentioned that Scout is not a fan of me doing anything that doesn't involve paying 100% attention to him?

Filmstrip quilt start

So I took a picture of these fabrics yesterday morning to say "I'm starting a new project today"

Later that day I had the top finished!

I guess it helps that it's been snowing literally all weekend and so I've tried avoiding going anywhere at all. I followed this tutorial here from crazy mom quilts, but made mine a row and a column smaller than hers.

One hard part of all this snow is that Scout doesn't understand that it's cold and still wants to go outside often. My big rubber boots are getting a lot of love.