♥ Pure Pleasure!

I know I haven't been blogging as much as I normally do. I did hint that I was doing a little 'secret sewing'.  Well I can now let this little secret out of the bag! :-)   Last week I had the pure pleasure of testing Kim Sherrod's newest pattern~the Tote Along Tool Caddy.  :-)

The tote was designed to take your sewing and quilting supplies with you to a workshop, or to set on your sewing table and have everything handy. It has a large back pocket for your 12.5 inch ruler, or pattern book. And smaller front pockets for charm packs, smaller rulers etc~ and even side pockets for your rotary cutter  or whatever you want.  Your fabrics will fit inside, templates, marking tools, well, anything you can think to take along! And the shoulder strap is really comfortable.  You know, sometimes you buy a pattern and you can't figure out what it is they want you to do? Well, not this pattern! It is written so clearly and has such nice illustrations that anyone could make this bag and have fantastic results.  :-) 

♥  I loved it so much~ I made two!! :-)

The inside is loaded with pockets too~ I didn't take the photo with all my supplies inside because I wanted you to see all the pockets. :-)

Kim's etsy shop  has the pattern as well as the link above.  If you want to surprise a sewing friend~ or even want to step out to that next workshop in style yourself, hurry over and get a copy!  And have fun sewing up a beautiful tote!  :-)  Kim, thank you so much for trusting me to test your pattern! I love it! ♥

HST's!!

I have been sewing HST's a lot lately! And I still have more to do! :-o  Thank goodness for Triangulations~ otherwise I might be crazy! LOL ;-)

The plaid and stripe HST's are for a recycled shirt swap project I am doing with my friend Bingo~Bonnie. We are each making a bunch of blocks and then exchanging, so our quilts will have lots of variety.  Bonnie sent me a box of shirt sleeves from her thrifting and they have worked wonderfully with my collection. :-) Thanks Bonnie!!

The red/white HST's are going into 6 inch blocks for a siggy swap we are doing at retreat in September. I have over 60 to make, so thought I should get busy. ;-)

This is the result of my weekend sewing~ I had 2 other blocks and 1/3 of the feathered star done after FNSI, and I kept sewing to get some what caught up in the Just Takes 2 quilt along.  I haven't done the 2 blocks that came out on the 15th~ I am seriously thinking about doing something other than a hand sewn compass star. ;-) And I don't have the honey bee applique block finished yet. ...one of these days I'll feel like it though. ;-)

If you visit my Mom's blog~ Granny Quilts;  then you know that she had knee surgery on Tuesday. It went very well.  :-)  She is still in the hospital~ hoping to go home tomorrow.   :-)

That's all for today~
Hope you are having a great Thursday!
Until tomorrow~ (when I will be revealing a little project I've had the pleasure of working on) ;-) ;-)

Happy Stitchin'!!

Happy! Happy! Happy!

Happy National Quilting Day!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I couldn't decide which to put in the title. LOL :-)
And I am sooo happy to be here! FNSI was so much fun!  AND the power and cable stayed on! :-D Although this morning we have had sleet, snow and rain, but we aren't supposed to get any accumulation of snow, so its all good.

Now on to my results~

I worked on my Just Takes 2 blocks, and although this doesn't look like I sewed much, I did! The block on the left is paper-pieced. It took me forever and there were mistakes in the pattern. I thought I would get an email if there were corrections, but I didn't~ the errors weren't bad ones, the templates all printed fine. But I cut too many of one piece and not enough of another. I was most unhappy with cutting too many as I am working with a FQ bundle and can't really afford mistakes. I guess when my fabric runs out, I'm done. ;-) The pinwheels on the right are too light. I had that swirly fabric as one in the bundle and needed to use it, maybe on pinwheels wasn't the best choice? And the bottom is one third of the feathered star. I think I did as much ripping as sewing to get that much done. LOL Mostly 'operator error' LOL :-)  Since today is National Quilting Day~ I am going to continue to work on these blocks and catch up a little bit. ;-)


I hope you find some time to sew today too~
And to have a little St Patty's fun!


Until next time~
Happy Stitchin'!!

Tonight! Tonight!

 ...Is Friday Night Sew In!!
You may recall that at the first sew in we had bad weather and our electricity and cable were out.
Last month my computer decided to act up and the cable was out! :-o
So I am really keeping my fingers crossed about tonight! LOL  :-)  The skies look pretty clear, the computer is just a few weeks back from the Dr, my projects are lined up and dinner is going to be easy.  ;-)

I hope the plan comes together!!  :-)
Happy stitchin'!!

Where Have I Been?

I can't believe I haven't posted in 2 weeks!! :-o Where have I been? If you saw me, would you tell me... I have no clue how time could have flown by so fast!! LOL :-D

Seriously~ I've been here and there, shopping, cooking, sewing, you know.. all the things we do and try to fit into a day! :-) DS is home for Spring Break, so yes there has been more cooking~ he has two hollow legs! :-)

And sewing? Oh yes, I've been doing lots of that! Unfortunately, I can't show you the 28 blocks I made for the three row robins I am working on. But I did finish them and get them mailed off. And I can't show you the birthday gift I made for my Mom (hi Mom! :-))  And I forgot to take a photo of the postcard I made for friend's friend~ it went into the mail too fast. ;-)

I can show you two more Just Takes 2 blocks~

For some reason I had a hard time with the house. :-/ The fan went together like a piece of cake! Go figure. I have the next bunch of blocks all cut out and waiting by my sewing machine for my next 'buckle in and sew' day.  Maybe Friday? There is going to be a Friday Night Sew-In going on. ;-)

And I can show you the new project I am starting. :-)) Ok, ok... it is a long term project. I'll bet you were thinking~ uh-oh, here she goes again! ;-)  I'm going to be working on an exchange again with my friend Bingo~Bonnie.  We just love all the plaid quilts in Bonnie Hunter's Scraps and Shirttails book 2, so we are going to make and exchange blocks for a quilt in the book. No hurry, no worries. Just for fun. :-) I would love to make my DS's plaid quilts.  I cut out a bunch of rectangles today and matched them up with Triangulations pages to start my 'homework'.... making loads of HST's. ;-)

So there you have it~ my not-so-exciting life! ;-)  I just received 2 more row robins I need to get to work on... and I need to work on my April BOM. See? Always something! :-)

Hope you are finding some sewing time too!
Until next time~
Happy Stitchin'!

Mystery Solved~

Thanks to my friend Karen at Briarside Lane I now have an answer~

The designer of the wonderful sewing machine graphic is Ursula Michael. It is a counted cross-stitch pattern and you can find it here~ The Stitchery~ Let's Sew.  :-)

Some Fun~

I can't show you what is going on in the quilt room because I am working on the next HGTV BOM~ which gets revealed Thursday. ;-)  And I'm working on my row robin rows. Remember I started out with 2 lap quilts and wall hanging size rows, so I have 3 rows to do each month it gets passed around. I know some of the gals in the Row Robin visit hoping for a peek at their quilts! ;-) LOL We all have to wait until the 'big reveal' in September. :-) I must say, some really creative rows have been coming my way! It is going to be so fun to see all the tops!

In the evenings, I find myself stitching~

I finished the asparagus towel last night and the beets a few nights ago. (sorry my photo is a little blurry :-/ Both of these patterns are the monthly freebies from  Bird Brain Designs.  Scroll down and look for 'freebie'. They are going to do a vegetable freebie each month all year. And they stitch up really fast. ;-)

I used Transfer Eze to transfer the designs to my towels. It is a water soluble product that eliminates the need to trace. It comes in 8 x 11 inch sheets. I must say~ I like it!  It didn't affect my stitches at all. I did one towel in perle cotton and the other in regular floss. You need to remember to set your printer to 'light', so you use the least amount of ink possible. I forgot to do that on one project and discovered that it was much harder to rinse out in small areas. This time it rinsed fine~ I haven't rinsed the green towel yet. I was too excited to show you! :-)

Yesterdays mail brought my next project~ perfect timing!! :-) I was lucky enough to win Quilt n' Queen Pauline's giveaway for a Bird Brain Designs gift certificate last month :-) and I ordered 2 patterns~ one of them  printed on Sticky Fabri-Solvy.  BBDesigns uses this product now because it comes in larger sheets~

I am going to be prepping my background fabric today and stitching soon! Thanks so much Pauline!!  You are keeping me in stitches! ;-)

A reminder before I leave you~ Wednesday is Thimbleberries Sew Day!  I won't be joining you this month, but please let me know what you are working on so I can visit!!

Until next time~
Happy Stitchin'!!