The End of Hoarding

Okay, I have figured something out that will be life altering. As a new quilter I have been watching blogs, joining bees, forming guilds all with the best of intentions.

There is one huge GLARING problem that I am willing to disclose to you. I cannot bring myself to cut into my fabric. I mean REALLY cut into it. Take my bee blocks. Here are the last six I made. I have two more to go as I was in 2 groups for a portion of this round.

They look nice but see how little i had to cut into my fabric? no big chunks.

I have so many ufo's it is ridiculous and I think this is the reason.

It was my birthday last week. This is a sampling of goods I received for my birthday.

My first obsession was Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks. I still own ALL of it. Some of it on bolts, the same with Garden Party, Chocolate Lollipop, Drawing Room and now Innocent Crush which I have been raging for since I knew about it. I love it. I love it so much that I have made a decision. I am cutting into it

 now. Thanks to Mary Dugan. You can find her at www.mollyflanders.blogspot.com. She does beautiful work. I have been following her on flickr for a while now and her work is perfection. The hand quilting, the fabrics. I realized that she takes the time and effort and really USES her fabric to its full extent. So...this is my promise to myself. I will finish my bee blocks and my Cross Quilt (which i intend to handquilt.) I have chosen The Quilt that i will cut into my Innocent Crush for. It is in Material Obsession 2 and the name of it is Erika's Honesty. I begin cutting today. The fabric is pulled and ready to go.

I cannot believe it took me this long to figure this out and although it is a relief it will be hard on me. You see I have all of Jennifer Paganelli, alot of Amy Butler, Erin Michaels, etc. etc. I have the entire cabinet filled with Heather Ross, Munki Munki and all my Denyse Schmidt including my Flea Market Fancy. If I can conquer this fear and get through this quilt then I can move on and create some beautiful quilts. Yes, the fabric will be gone but there will always be beautiful fabric...right? Then there are the scrap boxes and jars brimming with remnants for all those lovely scrap quilts. Real scrap quilts...where a scrap is not 10 yards...

hugs,

leslie

Fresh Beat Band

Does The Fresh Beat Band ring any bells out there? This is why my daughter needs a baby wrangler!
I try to keep my blog to quilting but isn't he the cutest thing you have ever seen? : )

This and that

It is so easy to get bogged down. I often wonder how some of the bloggers have time to turn out the quilts they do at the rate they do. I have no idea why my clock runs slower but it does.


I do tend to get into projects that are of no interest in blogging about. Such as special projects for people that choose what fabrics or things they want. I do not blog on those. Maybe I should.




I have not arranged them in the final positions



I have started our first Guild Quilt Along. I am in the West Virginia Modern Quilt Guild but several of the members are far away and our meeting turnout has been slow to say the least. Meetings are on hold right now. I decided it was time to do something, anything to get some involvement. Thanks to Sandy Deem for helping me rally the troops while Stephanie was out of town. We are working on Cross Quilts. Any darn one they want. I chose the Me Plus You pattern because it has been a UFO in my bin for a long time. I am using green and navy with white with Modern Meadow and some Amy Butler tie ins.

I have a definate issue with photograhy in this lovely sewing room of mine. I try my best but the lighting really needs to be natural.



I have made approximately twenty swaddlers with burp sets. I do not know if any of you do these kinds of projects when fabrics go on sale but it is time consuming. Here are about half of them.

I ran into a great tip out there regarding labels or pesonalized tags, i do not remember who wrote it, I wish I could so that I could thank her. If you are out there thank you! She suggested to get your logo printed onto Spoonflower! It was so easy to download, size and figure out! It took me about twenty minutes and they turned out perfect! I received them today. I ordered them with the repeat I wanted and i did use cotton sateen so that quality and fading of the colors of my logo would not be an issue. I have hundreds for under thirty bucks! I thought it may be too good to be true but they are great for any of you that tag your custom orders or place in or on any etsy items you may sell. I received them today and very pleased!  



these are about 3x 1.2 or so


                            I received a pic of Cooper on his blanket.

If only they would stay this sweet a little longer

My daughter cannot catch my grandson long enough to take a picture of him. Next post.

ADDENDUM: she got him!

he looks like this picture thing is a setup...and it is..hehe

jackson with his old quilt and new wall hanging

hugs,

leslie

FOR BABY JACKSON AND COOPER

Well, I finished my first applique. I have the definite opinion that it takes a lot of practice. I got much better with the second quilt but perfection is far, far away.

Jackson is my grandson and his quilt was the first i ever made. I used the scraps from his brown bear quilt to make a wall hanging. He moved to a bigger room and his walls looked empty. We can't have that.

Cooper is brand spanking new so congratulations to Ashli and Nick. Castle peeps are perfect for boy quilts. I can't wait to use all of them together.

Aside from the applique these were super easy. Coopers quilt is 42 x 48 and the wall hanging is 43 x 21. This was a project from moda bake shop found here.

Julie and Ashli, I will get these in the mail on Tuesday!

                                                    

                                                         Off to dive in to the WIP bin!

Fabric LOVE....and I do not mean AB

I can spend hours looking at fabric, fondling fabric, smelling fabric. If you have been bitten by this bug then you understand. I spend a lot of time looking at fabric. The majority of my time if the truth be known. But I never get tired of it. I also buy a lot of fabric...because you never know when it will go away...right? Let us take time for some fabric love.....ready?
                                       

yummy...lets break it down

modern meadow 1 and 2

whimsey circa 50 organic and how about michael miller kitchen utensils?
courtesy of fresh squeezed fabrics as well as the purple tufted tweets

castle peeps...i started with green in a quilt
they are just too cute

color!!!! i can hardly stand it

red and aqua but...
the alice and wonderland gauze is no more
i could just cry. you have never felt anything so soft in your life
way softer than kokka double gauze.
thanks to kerri at sew deerly loved

purples..finally awesome purples

hit the bargain bin for some 30's prints,
no bargain on the sugar prints

farmdale...i love these prints-fabricworm



That is it for now. I wonder how many other prints you all picked out in that pile
there are a lot of them.
We will have moments of fabric love occasionally.


hugs,
leslie

may the fabric be with you.

A salute to the end of summer and a back to school project.

 I think this is the end of summer. It has been an unusual summer. I did none of the things i usually do in the summer and things did not go like i thought they would (some surprise : ) )...my tomotoes are just now ripening but they are the size of golfballs. I have heard others say the same but let us say hurray for some things.

We have had the BEST watermelon this year!

great corn on the cob, red peppers and midnight grapes
and did anyone else get a kick out of the
"throwback" pop cans? hA! I did.


The antique and  resale shops have been full of good stuff

i found these great scarves, a vintage pin and look at the set of
dishtowels i found! all of this for 12 bucks!

Last but not least it is back to school for those of you who do not home school.

I always found back to school very liberating. I know it is hard on some of you but

I had a lot of kids around so I thought it was cause for adult celebration.

Anyway, my stepdaughter came up with this clever solution to a boring white binder

What she wanted was basically an idea straight out of denyse schmidt's book

"quilts".  Using the technique for the project "discards" she wanted munki munki

I cut out some cardstock the size of the binder, set the sewing machine on a patchwork

type stitch and she picked out the pieces of munki munki that she liked.

VOILA!

i thought she did wonderfully

The only thing I would change is to serge or overstitch the top fairly secure
after one week it was beginning to fray.
She is happy with it and I credit her with a great idea!

You guys have a great day and i will be back soon with some fabric love.
It is about time for some, don't you think?

hugs, leslie
oh...have you headed over to Heather Ross blog to check out
Macaroni Love? The newest spoonflower release?
here is the link.

Lots of Go! giveaways

I have noticed a lot of AcuQuilts being given away this week with the same requests for entries...hmmm. well i will post about only one as using this to post about all of them would be kind of cheating...i do not want that. you have until september 2nd to enter on sherri's blog..a quilting life. Good luck to you!