Things I have done....

I thought this would make a fun end of year post, I found this on Quilt Mama's Blog http://patricia-quiltmama.blogspot.com/

Things I have done, with one little change, I have put things I have done in the past year in purple! So here goes....

To participate just copy and paste in your own blog, and bold all of the things you have done. Let me know if you participated by leaving a comment!

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

Well, That's my list, I would love to see yours!

Have a wonderful day!
Ginny

Back to the Grind....

It's Monday morning and my week of relaxation and play has come to an end :( Back to work for me. But I won't complain too much, I had gotten into the bad habit of staying up past midnight every night and sleeping late (I am very much a night owl!) So it was so hard to get up at 5:45 this morning. I do have a few minutes quiet as my two little girls I have today came in and went right back to sleep they had been traveling hard for the past two days.

So I thought I would share with you what I have been up to this last week. Ever since we built my little sewing room there has been one area that I have needed to finish.

I have two nice 8 foot deep storage lofts, they are only 3 feet high but good to hold batting and such, but ugly as sin to look at since they are unfinished. (Pretty bad huh?)

So the plan has been to cover each opening , the roof angel is a bit strange more than 45 but less than 60 degrees, I finally sat down and sewed up a couple of covers, they are not perfect but will work till I can figure out something better (read that as they will be up for at least a year and probably forever! Grin)

This is what each opening looks like now....

The colors are a bit washed out as I was using the camera on my phone and it is my nature yuck, but the blues are bright and the yellows are vibrant and match the buttery yellow of my walls.

All in all I am happy with them they do the job and make the room look a little nicer.

Well, back to work I have another child coming in soon.

Have a wonderful day!

Ginny

Belated Merry Christmas!

Good Morning, I just wanted to say a belated Merry Christmas to you all, I hope your day was a special as mine. We had a lovely quiet day with just Stuart, the girls and I, but how nice it was. We got up at 8 a.m. (I do love having older children!) rearranged the living room for present opening, Then opened presents, it was nice. I had forewarned every one that this year we were doing a small Christmas and I was good to my word, Each of us got one present that was spendy ($65 limit) For Morgen it was a new mp3 player, for Torrie it was her contact lenses, for Stuart it was a book about anvils and for me it was a small stair stepper machine so I can loose some of this dratted weight!

The rest of the day was spent in piece and quiet, with the girls putting away their new clothes and Stuart playing with his new toys and reading his book, I snuggled down and watched a movie or two then made a nice ham for dinner.

We then watched another movie and went to bed, see a nice quiet day! I will post Christmas pictures soon, but now am off to shower and go to Joann's for some muslin, I am finally getting around to making the quilts to cover the loft openings in my quilting room. I will post pictures on that too!
Have a wonderful day, and get some rest!
Ginny

Holiday Fun! Hot Tubbin in the Snow!

I am amazed at how tired I am! But happy oh so happy! I had the best visit with my nieces and my sister!

I have to start with the nieces, they are wonderful young ladies, we had a blast, we baked and made candy, (think I mentioned that before) anyhow, we had a huge amount of snow while they were here so were home bound for a couple of days, then of Friday the weather cleared and the roads were good, so we made a trip to the mall, hung out for a while, did a last little bit of shopping, had a nice dinner.

Then on the way out we passed a dress store, the kind of store that sells formal wear, so we went in, just to look at the pretties, well turns out they were going out of business, All the dresses (I am talking price ranges between $150 - $200 each) were $20 each, Oh and a buy two get one free! Well, with three high school girls and proms coming up this spring... we went shopping, by the time we got done each girl had 2 dresses each (averages out to $13 each!) I was so excited about our super find! And the girls are beautiful!!!

From left to right, Torrie, Jacki and Lauren. Are they not the most beautiful girls! They are all within 6 months of each other in age more like having a week long slumber party at our house than having family!

This time, Lauren, Jacki and Torrie, I almost cried when I saw Jacki in her dress, it was amazing! It has butterflies embroidered across the top and up the side closest to Torrie. Torrie's dress was pretty awesome too, I could picture her getting married in something like it.
OK so the rest of the pictures are a little bit different, I have to tell you that you may not want to look as it show me in a bathing suit, and that is NEVER a pretty sight! The picture below is of all of us girls in out hot tub, it was 9 degrees out, COLD! So cold in fact that we have to wear hats because the steam goes up then freezes and lands back on your head! By the time we got out our funny blue hats were coated in ice! Then to make matters worse it was snowing HARD! But if you have never been in a hot tub in the snow and cold, there is nothing else in this world like it!

So, after we soaked for a while the kids got the brilliant idea to go run around in the freezing and the snow! It is a rather strange sensation, you are still steamy warm from the water, but you feet are super cold, and it feels wonderful when you fling you self back in the water. Then they decided to make snow angels..... I will not share all of the pictures, but this one of Morgen making her snow angel should give you an idea of how nuts these kids were.... Make me cold just looking at it!

At this point we had gotten about 10 inches of snow, as you can see. My sister was afraid she would not be able to travel to my Moms for the rest of their vacation. But the snow let up long enough for then to be able to leave this morning and travel across the mountain passes, it sounded like a long dicey trip but they made it late this afternoon.

All in all it has been a wonderful week bonding and visiting and giggling and so much fun! Now I am off to finish off my Christmas sewing I have to finish up the two purses I am giving.
So I will sign off wishing you a warm and safe holiday, I will post again after Christmas.

A Very Merry Christmas To All.

Ginny

The Girls are here and having fun!

I can hardly believe that my first day with Jackie and Lauren is almost over! We had so much fun today, these two girls are GREAT! They were up early even after a late night when they arrived, they were stunned at the cold, it was about 10 degrees out when they got off the plane, they are not use to that kind of cold! We spent the day baking Christmas cookies, laughing and chatting about family, All in all it was a great day, they are curled up on the couch with Torrie and Morgen watching Get Smart, BTW, Funny movie!

So, one of the things we decided when the girls got here was since it is so cold they could use their quilts, I let them open them. They were really happy with them!

Check it out....

They really are the sweetest girls!

Well, that's it for about now, I just wanted to share our fun.

I will post again later in the week.

Till then, be safe and have a wonderful week.

Ginny

Oh, and Sheri, Hint taken, what is your favorite color? And, Funky for Conservative?

Jackie and Laruens Quilts Done and 1 Extra Too!

I love it when I get a lot done in a short amount of time and boy was this the weekend for that!

First let me say BRR it's cold, currently it is 18 degrees out and that is suppose to be the high this week. There are only a few things I miss about living in Texas, the weather is one, I HATE being cold! We also got about 3 inches of snow, so here is sit, snugged up warm with a scarf on and the fireplace running full speed. (we heat our house solely by pellet stove heat in the winter, no electric heat!) The nice thing about the fireplace, my house is a balmy 75 degrees!

OK so on to the busy weekend, I got so much done, I made 75 breakfast burritos, finished Jackie's quilts and had just enough quilting steam left over to make my 12 days of Christmas wall hanging. I also baked, 4 batches of cookies, a batch of chocolate chip muffins and for dear hubby two pans of rice crispy treats! Morgen and I spent some time finishing her Christmas gifts for her friends as school, she made rag pillows and a rag quilt for them all, I think it ended up being 7 or 8 total. Got some shopping done and started clearing out the "play room" (daycare room) for the impending arrival of Jackie and Lauren, I can hardly believe they will be here tomorrow, I still feel really unprepared!

So to keep this short (I have noticed that my posts have gotten really long lately)

Here are pictures of this weekends quilts.

Enjoy!

I saw this panel on line early this fall, loved it, saw it at our local Craft Warehouse, Loved it, sewed it up, hung it up LOVE IT. LOL

Jackie's quilt, Thank you to everyone who voted for purple, this quilt is beautiful, I know that sound conceited, but really I was so happy with how it turned out that I used the extra fabric and made a small lap quilt for me!
This is the quilting detail on Jackie's quilt, I quilted both girls the same, it was just easier. I am not a professional quilter and never will be! But I do enjoy the process. This was a simple free motion loopty loop, with a flower in the center of each block. Very girly, and perfect.
Laurens quilt, amazing how the different the two quilts are even though I used essentially the same block design. Laurens quilt detail, again, the same loopty loop with flower. It worked well for both quilts.Oh I almost for got to add my other bit of quilting... I finished the purse I was making for my friend Dianna. Here is a picture of Dianna's Purse....

Well, that's it for now, I still have much to do and not much time to do it in. I will try to post while the girls are here, but no guarantees! I will surely post once they are gone! So until then, have a wonderful, safe and warm week.

Ginny

A Quick Christmas Tour

Wow! Can you believe it less than two weeks till Christmas and amazing things are happening in our home!

I have been working hard to get Jackie and Laurens quilts done, just have the binding to go, I have to say that they turned out nice! I am in love with Jackie's it is beautiful! I will get a picture of it as soon as I get it bound I promise!

We decorated the house last weekend, I thought I would show you a few pictures of our little Christmas world!

So, welcome to my house!

Torrie and Morgen with a newly decorated tree! They have been in charge of putting the ornaments on the tree for years now, one of my favorite traditions we have done since they were born, every year they each get a special ornament, when they are grown and have homes of their own they will get their ornaments for their tree, complete with a life time of memories!Scoochy loves to sleep under the tree! We thought it was so cute, Scooch on one side, Groucho on the other!
Scoochy meets "Tommy The Talking Snowman" or as Stuart and the Girls call him, Tommy the Evil talking doll! They Hate Him! I don't put him up often, and when I do I have to put tape across his motion sensor because he never stops talking!

This is Morgen's Nutcracker collection, we took her to the ballet several years ago, she loved it! (pretty amazing since she is my tomboy) Ever since she has collected nutcrackers. We actually leave these up year round she loves them so much! Psst, don't tell her but the one she is getting this year is super cool, and nothing like any you see here!

OK so this is MY favorite Christmas decoration we do! We have this beam that runs the length of our house, I put a Garland up, wrapped with lights and hang ornaments from it, The picture does not do it justice, it is breath taking, and everyone who comes into the living room notices it and comments!

Every year we put up our Christmas village, this year it is Santa's village, next year it will be the Victorian village, we alternate years! The Victorian one is mine, the Santa one is Stuarts! I like both! (oh the blue stocking was made for Stuart when he was a baby, isn't it cute!)
The large house to the right of the picture is the advent calender.
Almost done with the nickel tour! This is Torrie's stocking, We got this for her on her first Christmas!
This is Morgen's stocking, I made it for her when she was just 2. It is cross stitched and I love it!

Well, that was the quick tour, we love Christmas, and I love to decorate for it. I will try to get some good outside pictures after it snows this weekend, Oh did I mention they are predicting tons of snow and sub zero temps for us next week.... Brr I hate the cold!

Well, I will check in again soon, time to get back to work.

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

Ginny

A walk down memory lane

What a busy week! It started out with taking my quilting frame into the shop since we cannot seem to find why it is breaking threads all the time and several other problems. So off to the shop it went. (I am going to omit the horrible story of Rachel throwing up all over herself and the car on the way to the shop!)

I did manage go get Jackie's quilt top done this week, so now I have 3 quilt tops done and quilting machine in the shop. Oh and the girls will be here on the 16th, YIKES

I will put up a picture of Jackie's quilt soon, I did the purple and it is Wonderful!

Well the good news, I got the machine back today, and it tested fine at the shop, I will be putting it on the frame later tonight and doing a test piece.

So, having gotten almost nothing productive done this week sewing wise I thought I would take a walk down memory lane and share some of my favorite quilts I have made. Most were done this year with a couple of exceptions.

So sit back relax and enjoy!

This quilt was one of the first quilts we did when we were starting to teach our Girl Scout troop how to sew and quilt, this was a fun quilt, all of the snowflakes are actually the names of the girls in the troop, I took me ages to digitize and embroider all of the names, but it turned out wonderful. This quilt and the next two were donated by our girls to Project Linus.




Much like the quilt above, this one was made by the girls in our troop, this one as you can see had a space theme. my favorite part was the back, check out down below!

This is the back, I love it!
This quilt was also fun as each square is a heart, and each heart is very different from its neighbor.These are the girls from our troop, they each made a quilt to donate to Project Linus this last year. And I am happy to say that they voted a couple of weeks ago and have decided that they would like to make quilts again this year as their community service project. GO GIRLS!


The Lone Star was one of the first patterns I ever made, I love this quilt, so much so that I made two at the same time, they are twins, one live here in Washington with my daughter, the other with our friend Adam who now lives in Tennessee. The funny thing about this quilt,I found it really easy to do, it was about a year later that I found out that Lone Stars are suppose to be hard to do! Go figure! Now, one of these days I am going to tackle a Broken Lone Star... OH I do love those too!
This is the King size quilt I made for my husband, his Trip Around The World. After making this quilt, I told him I would never do another king size quilt on a table top machine again! I hurt for 3 days afterword!
This was a little quilt I made for one of my old daycare children, Little Ella, I loved Ella and was heartbroken when Dad got a job on the other side of the state. I made her this little fishy quilt for her to remember me by.
This is Morgen's Orange Peel quilt. So pretty and heavy, I would never have imagined that flannel batting could weight so much, the fun bit about this quilt, it was quilt as you go. And self finishing and NO BINDING! I can point you to where I got the pattern. It was only $5.00 and worth every cent!

This was Morgen's quilt for her 13th birthday, I love bright colors and black backgrounds! I don't think she was quite awake yet in this picture!
Another Lone Star, this was a gift for our Girl Scout leader Michelle. See I don't always do blue!



A small Trip Around the World for my sister Kelli. She told me she love mossy green, I also love green but never seem to make green quilts. Hmm sounds like a New Years resolution, do one green quilt in 2009


This quilt was my daughter Torrie's 14th birthday present. I liked it so much that I made a wall hanging too! These two pattern are from Eleanor Burns Still Stripping After 25 Years book, Great book worth every having in your library!

Only 3 more pictures to go, thanks for hanging in this long! This quilt I made for ME! Then when I got done, I hated it, Oh I love purple and love the layout, but for some reason this quilt was just UGG to me. When my friend Wanda saw it she loved it! So I sent it home with here, there it gets all of the love and affection it deserves.
This is my Dad's quilt, I have shown it before in my blog and it proudly resides at the top of my blog. I love this quilt, I had a really hard time giving this one up, it was such a labor of love. And I will probably never do another like it, but you never know, I might! BTW, this pattern was one I found on another blog. If you are interested, please check out Rachel's tutorial on her blog! Here is the link.

http://2ndavenuestudio.blogspot.com/search/label/%22Bali%20Pop%20Tutorial%22


And last but not least! This is my favorite quilt. I tried to teach myself log cabin, I was almost successful too! Why do you ask do I love this quilt? Well I love how bright and cheery it is. I based the entire quilt on the little black center and the black sashing, I loved the black with the colorful rings all over. I had had that fabric for years. (BTW If you ever see a bolt of it laying around please let me know I would LOVE to find more!) The colors on the black and just had to reflect them in the log cabin. The funnest part, I machine embroidered hot air balloons on each square in a rainbow variegated thread (they don't show in the picture) and the backing for this quilt is rainbow hot air balloons. I also had fun with the decorative stitches on my machine and each log cabin is quilted with a different stitch. Yea, I love this quilt.Well that's it that's all I have for you today.
Thank you for joining me on my walk, it was fun and lifted my spirits!
Have a wonderful day and an even better weekend.

Ginny

Machine Stitching Your Binding.

Hi, Welcome to my Blog.

In this blog I am going to share how I machine stitch my bindings. I read several Yahoo quilting groups and in one of them there has been a discussion about the pros and cons of machine stitching your binding. Well what ever side of the debate you fall on is great. I personally machine stitch all of my binding. I know I will never enter any of my quilts to be judged in a show. I make my quilts for rough wear and tear, so it just makes sense to me to machine stitch. With that I was explaining how I do mine and offered to show how as it really is pretty simple, I had someone ask me to post pictures, So with out further ado, this is how I machine stitch my bindings, complete with photos.

The fabric I have used is a junk piece that I was using to work out the bugs in my quilting machine so pardon the Ugly factor please!

I start on the BACK of the fabric, lining up the cut edge of the fabric and the cut edge of the binding, I then stitch 1/4 inch from the edge until I reach a corner (I do leave a 10 inch tail at the start and stop of the binding for joining) as this is a sample piece I did do that here.

When I get 1/4 inch from the corner I turn the quilt and sew off the edge (see the arrow!)

this is the start to my mitered corner.

I then fold the fabric up and then back down (see the next picture)


Once I fold the binding back down I continue to stitch the edge down as before starting at the corner.

Once I have sewn the binding all the way around to the back of the quilt I then flip the quilt over and wrap the binding to the front of the quilt. I place the foot right on the edge of the fold of the binding and start to sew, slowly, if you decide to be a speed demon you will fall off the edge and have an opening. When you get to the corner, neatly fold you miter and stitch.

This is a good shot of how it is done, this is the Front of the quilt. Mitered corner, and top stitched binding. You can see how close to the edge I sew when I stitch it down. Also, I used white thread in the photos, when doing a real quilt I would try to match the thread on top with the binding color and the bobbin thread to the backing color.

This is the back of the quilt. OK so I made a little good, I should have sewn in more than a 1/4 inch on this one, or not wrapped the binding so far over on the front. Ideally you want you front stitch to land in the ditch on the back, you can see where I missed it. In my defense I was not using my usual machine but my daughters Featherweight! I also think that in the case of a quick child's quilt, this would be OK. But for something more special I would try to make this neater.

So, for those of you who came from the Learn Quilting Yahoo group I hope this helps. And be sure to ask if you have anymore questions!

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to come back again.

Have a wonderful day

Ginny