Pigtales and Quilts is having a sponsored give away you might want to check out this design wall. Tell her I sent you and I get another chance!
That Girl…That Quilt is also having a give away of a jelly roll go see her site to see what you have to do to win.
I decided I better take time away from the sewing machine this morning to get a hand work item ready – I go to a quilt group that will meet tomorrow night and then the usual one that meets on Friday morning and I didn’t have anything to work on – I don’t feel like having to bring my machine.
The next red/green block:
my stack of blocks that I worked on yesterday:
More ready to work on later and all week?
I finally got done with a row of quilting on the frame and gave the rollers a crank and got done with one side of the border last night – the borders are the part that take the most time.
Now for those of you in the north snow is a normal thing for you – but not as much snow as you got for the last two days. My daughter near Madison Wisconsin sent the following photos that I thought I would share – believe me having grown up by Lake Michigan in Wisconsin I do not miss this!!
My grandson standing by the backdoor this morning at 6 AM – no school today!
My daughter Jessica taking the dog outside this morning – looks like Marley got stuck in the snow
The back of the house – you can see where it all drifted from the wind – she said they had a two day total of 18 inches or there about.
Jessica told me that everything is closed today – I know that doesn’t normally happen – life goes on in the north no matter if you have snow or not – it is a fact of life.
Another give away is going on – a $50 gift certificate from the Fat Quarter Shop is the prize!! Go on over to Pigtales and Quilts and tell them I sent you – I get another chance for whoever says I sent them. This is such an awesome give away. You all know how much I love that shop 
My package arrived in the mail today from Spun Sugar Quilts. This was the last give away that I won – 12 fat quarters of Fandango by Kate Spain! These last several wins that I have had – the one last month of 22 fq’s and this one are so different from what I normally use that I will have to think outside of the box. I do not normally use big prints much at all. Any ideas for a pattern to use with this fabric?
I have been hand piecing strips for the quilt that I gave a link to the other day – I’m not wild about the colors and prints but it is just for a small quilt to keep myself occupied while I heal so no big deal. This was some of the inexpensive fabric from Connecting Threads — a jelly roll called Sweet Pea. I might use this for more machine quilting practice of the simple straight stitch on the machine later. That way I won’t ruin anything I am wild about! I need 27 sets of these and then white 1 3/4 inch strips in between in the setting the pattern shows.
News from the doctor visit today was that nothing else is wrong, I am healing as I should be and will be sore for several weeks or longer – each person heals on their own time so we are all different on the way we heal from the seat belt slapping you hard across your chest!! The bruises are turning yellow – looking real pretty 
I am resting a lot and then come in here to the sewing room and sit at the table where my computer is and watch the birds outside the window and check mail and blogs – then I go back to reading and hand stitching not doing a lot! Mike will help me this weekend put all the Christmas stuff away I had planned on doing that today but no rush and we have the weekend to do it before Mike goes back to work.
I’m glad I had baked bread last week and had sliced and froze it in several bags. No kneading bread for a couple weeks I think – if I want to do that I might have to drag out the old bread machine which I normally do not use anymore.
Not a great photo of the finches hanging on the bag outside the window but I will try to get some better ones while I am sitting here in the days to come – this was taken through the window & screen. Winter always brings the finches.
Santa was good to me I had plenty of presents to unwrap. I also got some good books – I opened one up on Christmas Eve and I’m done with it already! That is what happens when I take a break from sewing.
Love this author – Dennis Lehane. This book picks up on Gone Baby Gone only 12 years later. You do not have to read the first book to enjoy this one. It has been awhile since I had read it and didn’t remember the whole thing and totally loved this book.
Got another book that I just started – I guess I am in reading mode again – it left me for awhile – this one has both cop – Harry in it and lawyer – Mickey in it – should be a good read.
I have been looking through my red and green applique book and I was running out of blocks that I liked – I found a different red and green applique book that I liked before Christmas and I am going to take the final 4 blocks out of it. I need to enlarge the patterns slightly but love them – these have embroidery on them to, so mixing in with the other blocks well look great – this is the one I will start to get ready to work on this week. Each of the 4 blocks are in the wreath style.
Mike got a new camera for me – my other one went and had a break on it several months ago – the little thing that holds the battery in broke off. I managed to keep it working for awhile but more and more over the last several weeks I never knew if I would be able to keep it going. He got me a small Lumix HD AVCHD Lite with a really good zoom lens on it. Now I have to learn a new camera 
I have gotten a little quilting done on Going in Circles this past week but not a lot – I just love the colors of all of these circles.
Over the past several days I have also made two pineapple blocks for a total of 9 blocks finished – no idea how many I will make and if it will be couch size, queen size or what – we will see and I will keep working on them off and on during the upcoming year.
I had planned on getting to work on my Star Crazy quilt yesterday afternoon or today – but I am thinking that will be delayed until tomorrow. We are talking of going to a movie this afternoon. We do not like our local movie theater – it is filthy – sticky floors, bad smell, the people that own it made a lot of improvements about 10 years or so ago and then let it go badly once again instead of keeping up with it. We heard there is a new place that opened in Conway about 45 minutes from us so thought we would check it out. In recent years we drove to Little Rock when we wanted to see a movie and would spend the day – lunch, shopping, movie ect. This place is closer so that will make it nice if we like the theater.
Oh I totally forgot to mention that I was the winner in another give away from Spun Sugar Quilts- my stack of fat quarters should arrive next week – I will show a photo then. Around Thanksgiving I won a quilting book from Abbey Lane Quilts – the book is called Fab Five due to the holidays it got lost on a table in their office and arrived the day before Christmas. I will take a photo of when I post about the other win when I get it. I have been so lucky in give aways this year. I have lost track of how many I have won but I do know I have won a lot of good stuff this year. I guess I need to keep leaving comments on all these really good blogs that I keep finding!
I just got an e-mail from Michelle over at Quilting Gallery to let me know that I won a $50 gift card from The Fat Quarter Shop. This prize was from her 3rd birthday bash anniversary – not the one you all were voting on but a different giveaway she was having. I can’t believe my luck – I will be thinking and looking through the shop to see what I want to get. Such a great time to stock up as there are so many sales going on. Of course with as many give aways as I enter I guess I am bound to win some but my luck has been really good lately. I am also expecting a book in the mail any day now from another give away that I won recently. I will show that when it gets here.
I got a little quilting done last night but mainly I enjoyed my day off of mostly no sewing yesterday by doing yard work and reading. I’m almost done with my book though so I am sure to get back to sewing soon!
Enjoy your day everyone!! I didn’t get any baking done yesterday so I guess I better get to it today (maybe – we really do not need a lot of cookies it is mainly just us and two extra on Christmas day).
First let me announce the winner of the give away – Sandi at Call Me Crazy – number 14 in the comments has won the give away. Sandi send me your mailing address and I will get the gifts out to you. I have also included pieces of two fabrics that were in my Going In Circles quilt.
Last night I finished the Red and Green Applique block – this is the 7th of the blocks. All those little red circles where a pain to make but they really make the block. This block originally had a different applique for the green pieces but I didn’t like them once I had them cut out and placed on the block so I went back to the book to see what was there and I decided to combine two blocks into one instead. I like this arrangement better. I need to look through the book to find 5 more of this size block to use (16 1/2 inches) then I still need to make the center block. It is coming along nicely. I will put it aside though for at least a couple days while I finish up a couple things. A lot of the blocks left in the book seem to have a lot of these little red circles so I’m sure I will be going through this again soon.
I am not a seamstress by any means and rarely make clothing but my daughter asked me to make a vest for her – I have it started – now I need to get it finished – so I will be trying to work on that for the next couple days and get that out of the way. Also I need to make my Star Crazy BOM October blocks. I have fabric picked out and pressed. The patterns are printed out so I need to get busy with it. Maybe I will organize that completely and take it with me to quilt group Friday.
I cleaned off my table last night and I am trying to get better organized once again. Things tend to get piled up and sloppy when you work on 4 things at once! I need to get my boxes on the shelve under the cutting table organized once again also – maybe in a couple days.
Once I finish the vest and the BOM for October I will soon to be starting work again on the border triangles and cornerstones for the Insanity Revisited Dear Jane quilt that has been put aside since late June – I really need to get back to work on it and finish it. I will be going back and forth on Insanity Revisited and the Red and Green applique while continuing to hand quilt on the big frame.
Three projects in the works will be much better than juggling 4 or 5.
Several weeks ago Vicki from “Field Trips in Fiber” had a give away – actually she is having more than one give away hop on over and see what she has. I won one of the give away’s and my prize arrived while I was at my mom’s visiting. Look at this fabulous hand dyed fabric that I got!!! Thank you Vicki!!!
2 nice bars of hand made soap, a card designed by Vicki and this wonderful 1 yard cut of hand dyed fabric - a surprise for me because for some reason I thought it was going to be a fat quarter!! hm-mm , now what to make with it - I have a feeling it is design time coming up.
I need to get busy now, been home for a couple hours and need to get some groceries in and do a few errands – hope the storms hold off!! I have a lot of family photos to go through and will be busy I am sure for the rest of the day.
Last year, I don’t remember when, I had an idea to use up some of my scraps by making scrappy 6 1/2 inch pineapple blocks. The idea is to eventually make enough of them for a queen size quilt. Only problem is I am slow at paper piecing which is the method I am using. I actually worked off and on all day on one block!! Of course the rest of the day I was blowing my nose so maybe it is possible I could have finished two blocks instead if I wasn’t grabbing Kleenex? I am estimating right now that I need about 256 blocks to make a quilt that is about 100 x 100 inches large. I have 5 finished – 4 of them from last year LOL.
my 5 blocks. Some of the color choices weren't perfect as I had several dark colors too close to the same shade next to each other, but I will be more careful in the future - none of these are getting tossed out!! and I'm not picking them apart either With so many blocks in a quilt I really don't think anyone will notice a few bad color choices here and there.
I will continue to work on this quilt for several years I bet. I had sore fingers from quilting and just didn’t feel like working on any of my other projects today so went back to this one. I used the Singer Featherweight. I thought I needed some practice with the machine as I had not used it since Bea had worked on it. The machine worked great although at first I thought I was going back to the same old problems with tension but then realized when I put it in the storage bag that I had bumped the upper tension dial. Got that back to where it should be and practiced threading and putting the bobbin in and then got started sewing.
Learning how to use my new phone has been interesting. There are aps for everything it seems but I do not want to spend money on buying them. We found one ap for the weather channel that is free and you select gps and it finds the location wherever you are and tells you what the weather will be and shows you a weather map too. That sure will come in handy when we are traveling.
I will select the winner for the give away tomorrow and then mail it out on Monday – good luck and thank you to those who participated. You still have time this evening if you want to get in on it.
Before I left for the Paducah Quilt Show I said that I would go through my basket when I got home for another give away. I have gone through the basket – decided there were a few things in there that I still might use and put them back on the shelf and tossed in a few other things – such is the life of a quilter LOL
The give away items plus I will toss in some fabric from the stash - it will be a surprise.
I am giving away two quilt patterns for Christmas. This might be a good time of the year to start working on those projects. I had bought these patterns some years ago that went in a Christmas Wall hanging that had about 12 patterns in it. I never collected all of the patterns and have no interest in doing two small wall hangings or making pillows or table toppers out of them. The quilt title was “Father Christmas” one of the blocks finishes at 18″ x 6″ and the other is 18″ x 12″. These can be done with fusible or needle turn applique. The apron pattern was given to me by a secret pal one year but I am not interested in aprons so someone else can enjoy it.
The Rules: leave me a comment and make sure I have a way to get in touch with you – either e mail address or blog address — something! The winner will be announced on May 1st – Saturday. You might be surprised at how many blogs I have read that have give aways where they can not contact the winner. This give away is open internationally.
Sherry comment # 19 Here is a link to the 
