The quilting = The done!

Woot! Woot!! I FINISHED QUILTING my quilt!!! The clouds have parted and the angels have sung! All is right in the world! However... I wasn't sure I'd make it! One of my Facebook status messages while I was quilting yesterday was something along the lines of: "If my sewing machine was a person I would stab it". All was hunky dory until it ran out of bobbin thread. That seems to send Sadie (my sewing machine) into conniptions and it takes some finagling to get her back on track! Here's proof:

And.. here is more proof:

(and yes, that was two separate times.. this happened no less than 4 times)

After much seam ripping and cursing, I finally got the train back on the tracks! All I had left was free motion quilting over the borders. Holy crappola... that's a lot of landscape to cover. Have I mentioned that free motion quilting is a bit of a workout?! I kept telling myself, "I think I can, I think, I can" and kept swirling away! I finally finished (praise God!!) and then it was down to the floor to trim it up!

Can you say done? D O N E! Yippeeee!

I personally think the back looks almost as cool as the front!

Now that I'm done with the quilting, it's on to the binding!! I cut my strips, sewed them together, then had to iron them.

That is as far as I got (that ^ picture) before babies woke up!

 A pretty darn tootin' successful sewing day!!

And the quilt goes on....

I have to tell ya, this quilting thing sure is a test of my patience and stamina. Not in a "this is too hard" sort of a way, but more in a "this thing takes forever and I'm an instant gratification sort of a gal". I don't do projects that take a long time! I know I will be thrilled to bits when it's done.... (and then I can take a mental break and work on some quick projects before finishing up Brooke's quilt!). BUT, will it ever end?! I am supder de dooper proud of all that I have done so far, so I must press on! My post today is actually of the work that I did during naptime, yesterday. Today I had a workshop from 9-4 and therefore I missed out on my naptime craft time! Boo hiss! The workshop was swell though, and I learned a lot!

My afternoon began with an AWESOME package in the mail from Three Rivers Fabric on Etsy. She had the best price on the yardage I need for the quilt backing of Brooke's quilt. I have to say, fabric makes me happy!!! Here's the gorgeous stuff I got!

I LOVE this fabric. Like true love!

So many possibilities with this one as well!

This will be cute for a composition cover,

or even a little teacher apron, crayon roll, or art case!

This floral print is the backing for Brooke's quilt!

Moving on... to the quilting! Aaaaah the quilting! So, you can see that each letter in the panel has a box around it. Well, let's just say I've learned some things. For one, I ALWAYS do things the hard way!! I should have just done the free motion quilting all over the quilt, not paying attention to the boxes, or borders.. But, not moi! I quilted the tree first, then around the tree, then inside each letter box, then I quilted straight lines AROUND. EVERY. LETTER. Holy madness batman! That calls for a whole LOT of stitching, stopping, backstitching, trimming, raising the needle, sliding the fabric down, rinse. repeat. Oh well, so what if I could have probably been DONE with the quilting had I done it the easy way. This is teaching me patience, remember?!?! ;) I will say, it does look super awesome on the back. Like uber neato!

Here is the back.. I have a crap TON of strings to trim. Have I mentioned that I don't like trimming strings?.. yeah, well it's not my favorite thing to do, we can leave it at that!

(That's a wet spot on the bottom of the tree trunk. It has dried now.)

And now for the cool, fun things that are hidden in there!

See the heart and the U? (Love you!)

Butterfly!

Turtle!

Bird!

Here is the front. All I have left to quilt is the white and green borders.

Someone wanted to get in on the action!

I always die laughing when I upload pictures and find things like this:

She LOVES to take pictures and steals my camera on a regular basis!

See yall tomorrow and thanks for reading! :)

McQuilts-a-lot

 

After our super fun play date at the Science and History Museum, it was time to get cracking on the quilt! I need to get this DONE before my SADD sets in and I lose interest!! I'm feeling a little twitchy as it is.. and I have happened upon a couple of tutorials I'm DYING to try out!! Focus, Tracy. Focus!

All I did today was free motion quilt. I got the middle panel done and then quilted inside of each of the letter squares around the center panel.

Tomorrow I have to do the straight line quilting around the letter boxes and quilt the borders. You are supposed to quilt the border fabric, right? (better google that!).

I feel like I got a lot done today, but of COURSE I had a couple of snags along the way! First my bobbin of thread ran out. No biggie, just add a new one, right? Yup. But, for some reason the tension was all off and I had a MESS. It was pulling the red up to the top and the bottom wasn't pulling tight. So, I took it off and messed around w/ the tension and used a scrap piece of fabric to get it figured out. I ended up working back with it on the original tension I had. I had to re-thread my top thread a couple of times and I think that fixed it. Odd.

I finally got the ball rolling and I was cruising along.. then, to my dismay, this happened:

Whoops! My material got folded under and I sewed it on to the back. Nothing a little seam ripper can't fix! That stupid tool sure does save my a$$ a lot!

I thought I'd show you my super rad gardening  gloves that are my new BQF (best quilting friend)! They have saved my fingers from a countless amount of finger pricks! These have a deerskin palm and fingers so they grip the fabric well, but are soft and supple as well!

Another one of my favorite sewing items is my electronic bobbin winder! I picked this up for half off, plus my teacher's discount, so it was cheap! It's super fun!!

Up tomorrow: Play date on the Mini Train and hopefully finishing up the quilting!! Woot!

Taking a stab at free motion quilting and our super busy day!

On our way to church this morning we saw these:

They were so amazing! This group was all up at the fence looking at the horse and it's baby in the field across the street.

I also took these pics to play with my new phone! I love the zoom feature! :)

When we got home, we made some piggies in the blanket! Brooke LOVES to help in the kitchen, so she had to get in on the fun!

(Be glad these were for us, and not you. She may or may not have licked a couple of them...)

After lunch was happy nappy time. We had a short nap time today because we were going to the lake with our friends. But, I wanted to get something done before we left! I busted out the darning foot even though I have been told not to use this on your first quilt because it is hard. I'm one of "those" people. One who, when told not to do something, or that something is too hard... only makes me want to do it that much more! So.. here we go!

This IS difficult! Not in an impossibly sort of way, but in a "this is really weird" sort of a way. For one, you have to drop the feed dogs (the "teeth" under the fabric that move it along when you sew regularly). So, you become the feed dogs! Woof! Woof! It is weird b/c it is tricky to get your stitch length to be uniform since it depends on how hard you press the foot, which speeds up or slows you down. You also have to coordinate this with moving the fabric through, and making rounded swirly type stuff so it looks cool! I had to break out the gardening gloves to help me move the fabric through (my fingers were too slippery). Corey looked at me like I was CRAZY when I walked out of the craft room with gloves on! I think I got the hang of it, just don't look too closely. I have super tight and close stitches and really long ones too! Oh well, it's my first time and as my friend Crystal said, it is made with love and that is what matters!! Quilting this way made me feel like a slug. You know how they trudge along and leave a little swirly trail behind them.

 I started with free motion quilting inside of the tree.

Then I went on and worked in the center panel.

That is all I got done before we had to get packed up for the lake. I love how it looks on the back side!

Then we were off to the lake! The heat index on the way out there said it was 109!

This is what is laying next to me right now.. my loves!

(By the way, this picture was also taken on my phone- it has a flash! cool!)

Tomorrow's agenda = fun at the Children's Museum and more quilting!

 I'm feeling the dress-making urge though, so I see a dress in Brooke's future!

A little quilting and a LOT of waiting!

I didn't have much time to sew today since my new phone came in!! I sold my "old" Iphone 3gs a week ago on Craigslist (for more than I paid for it.. score!). I was able to get the new Iphone 4 at the upgrade price, so why not?! Corey talked me in to getting the 32gb one though.. who ever needs this much in a phone though? Not me, but I'll take it! :) Anyway, I got the email saying it was in store and I could go pick it up! Yea! So, I got the kids down and called the store to see if I had to make an appointment. There was "more than 8 people ahead of me" in the calling line, said the "lady voice" on the phone... So, I figured I'd better work on the quilt while I waited. I added the batting (Warm & Natural) and the material for the back. The, I got to pinning. I have NO clue how many pins to use!
I started pinning..

22 1/2 minutes in to being on hold.. there was now "only" 6 people ahead of me "in line"....

Before I was able to talk to a customer service rep.. I had finished pinning the entire quilt!

Thirty eight minutes later I FINALLY talked to a person at the Apple store. Guess how long our conversation was... 30 SECONDS, and that is being generous!! She told me I didn't have to make an appointment, I could just come in to the store. Fan-flippin-tastic! So, off I went. Babies were asleep, husband was watching True Blood (HORRIBLE show!!!).

Shockingly, there was 2038203820 people at the Apple store. But, I was able to get my phone rather quickly. Of course, the system to let me pay was down, then up, then reset, blah blah. Finally, I got out of there, but I had to go to the ATT store to have them put the new phone on my line, instead of Corey's (our numbers are flip flopped on their records, so it's annoying). They sent me to a "new" store that didn't exist, so I "ran" into Target. No. such. thing. Then off to the ATT store that I knew and again was met by 349384023834 people and a sign-up list. I waited for a while, I'm pretty sure the Asst. Manager hit on me.. awkward. I left to get gas, and when I got back only had to wait a few more minutes. Got 'er done then got a call... and I COULDN'T HEAR the caller!! So, she called me from another phone and I STILL couldn't hear her!! AAAhhhh! The customer service lady at the ATT store said I'd have to go to the Apple store if I had a problem... then she looked at my phone and noticed the protective plastic sheet was still on.. You know, the one that covers the ear piece part!! Doh!!

I finally got home and in between being mom and wife I managed to get a little bit done on my quilt. I decided to use red thread in the bobbin and white on top. I am pleased with how it is going so far and hope that I get some time tomorrow to get quite a bit more done!

There's a lot of material to roll up and it's quite bulky to sew around!

Not sure if you can see it here or not, but I quilted around the tree and the trunk.

Here is the back, you can see what I quilted b/c it's red!

Here is Brooke last night with her hand wrapped with ice. Her daddy likes to play rough with her and make her "fly" on the bed. Well she landed on her thumb and it bent back!! We both thought it was broken, but thank God, it wasn't!!