Today

What a beautiful day today!

I woke up with a migraine and had to cancel a morning with a friend. :( stayed in bed til noon, then ate and vegged a little. Suddenly felt like running at 1:30 and decided I'd better do it since I hadn't since tuesday.

Gorgeous run. Tried through the neighborhood near our place since I'm bored with the running track. Thankfully it wasn't as hot today as the last few days and I made it two miles when I was only planning one. :)

Got back and decided to stretch outside in the grass. It felt so nice and peaceful with the breeze, looking up into the sun-spotted maple tree. It reminded me of all the time I spent just enjoying being outdoors growing up.

What a blessing!

Birthday Projects

So...today is my birthday. Hubby made me breakfast in bed and then I went and saw my little preschoolers. They made me an art apron with all their handprints all over it. So adorable!

One of my requests for today was some time for sewing. I haven't really had much time in the last couple weeks, so hubby understood. 

As I have mentioned before, my sister likes giraffes. Yes, she is 18 so maybe these are a little young for her, but who knows, she may like a soft pillowcase every once in a while. :P

I also spent some time working on my sister-in-law's double wedding ring. I'm trying to keep it out so I will work on it when I can. :P

I also started a 9 patch. These are 6.5 in square. I'm going to call it "Tiny Things" because of all the tiny things! :)

Tiny Squares Commissioned

My mother in law saw something like these when out of town (she likes to visit quilt shops and send me pictures and ideas, which I love - my grandparents do, too!), and wanted to buy a tryptic, but then figured she could get me to make them! And I happily jumped on board. I may make a few other sets in the future, and I'm still not sure exactly how to finish them, but these little guys are so cute and only 4.5 in square!

The top and the bottom ones were easy just to sew together, but I actually created a pattern and paper pieced the middle one. My first of my own making, and it was pretty easy! And looks good :)

Quilt Shop Hop

Today was really great! Apart from the 5 hours of sleep I got last night and the sick feeling I had when I woke up, it was really awesome and so worth it!

My friends Emily and Brett and I visited seven of the 12 shops in our area. We started at 8 this morning and I got home at 4:30. I got birthday money so it was my birthday weekend with two great friend! And fabric! :D

I am so excited for what I got! Lots of fun things!

Also! I had several fun visitors from my last post and I thought I'd share their work with you!

Donna, Pam, Mrs. A, Amy, and Jenelle! And my ever faithful mother, but she doesn't have a blog so I can't recommend that...but my mom is awesome and I definitely recommend her! :D

Small Project Finishes!

I have finished quite a few things in the last week, which is one of the reasons I haven't posted. Been a little busy bee over here!

This one is the pillow cover for my sister. She turns 18 tomorrow and it was her birthday gift (we visited this past weekend so I gave it to her then). She is very into giraffes. I found this little guy online. Definitely not my own creation and I will give credit where credit is due! I made my sister's New York Buildings quilt last year, and this will match pretty perfectly. :) She was excited!

Next I finished my wonderful Mother-in-Law's table runner! I really don't know why it took me so long to finish. She bought the pattern and the fabric. All I had to do was put it together. I had it mostly done - all the cutting and even a lot of the piecing. So I pulled it out and finished basting (and binding before I even quilted! gasp!) in a few hours before we left for the weekend. Then I hand quilted it while we visited.

Finally, I whipped this out today in about an hour and a half. Another pillow to match my parent's quilt that I gave them for Christmas. I still have some fabric left so a third will probably appear eventually. :)

We spent the three day weekend (four days for me, cause I took Friday off, too!) first with my family in Watsonville and then with hubby's family in Stockton. :) It was great. My little sister graduated from high school with honors! So proud! She will be attending Cal State Long Beach in the fall and will be majoring in Criminal Justice! One smart cookie!

Lesson Learned:

Make hubby come along for the quilt photo shoot. :)

I may be good (and getting better) at making quilts. They are fun and cute, if I do say so myself. However...I know almost nothing about photography. Even with a fancy camera like Andrew's...someone who doesn't know how to wield it is not going to get a lot of amazing shots!

I got some ok ones. Definitely acceptable for the first time I've done an actual "photo shoot" for one of my quilts. And in the interest of time, I did it by myself, because I know if I take Andrew, my 10 min walk around the apartment complex and take some pictures is going to turn into an hour and about 1000 shots. :) He takes great photos. Every single one would turn out. But he's a perfectionist and to him, it's important to take 30 different shots from slightly different angles. :P This is where we're different.

I think I've decided to call it Ripple, Baby, Ripple. Maybe :P I was thinking along the lines of Baby's Beach Umbrella...and then when I was taking photos near the pool, it reminded me of the ripples on the water in the sunlight...you know how they catch all those colors...and the quilt has that red and orange and yellow tossed in...I don't know. I also really liked it under the willow tree. 

I did a scrappy binding with some leftover fabric from the fat quarters used. I accidentally cut the strips too thin and had to make up a way to do the binding that I haven't done before. It turned out a little weird, but it works. It was a long process of folding it in half, then ironing it, then unfolding it and ironing in the sides so that they almost meet the middle, then attaching it to the quilt with both sides folded under. I didn't take any pictures and it's hard to explain, but suffice it to say, I wont be using that method to bind again any time soon.

Also, for the quilting I tried a "free motion straight line" method. That basically just means I don't use the walker foot and I try to keep the lines as straight as possible. It gives it an organic feel. I think it added to the ripple feel cause I'm not good at the "straight" portion. :P I was pretty disappointed at first and after several lines thought about ripping it out and doing something else. But...I stuck with it, reminding myself it's never as bad as it seems. And it wasn't! Towards the end I decided with a few of the more open grid spaces to do some back and forth swirls. It turned out really cute! I actually really love it. There is one photo where you can see what I mean. They are like little drops on the water that create all those ripples!

Ripple, Baby, Ripple is now for sale in my Etsy shop!

A Cute Secret

I'm making something for my sister. She graduates high school on Friday, and her 18th birthday is the 31st. I got her some stuff for college (she's going to Cal State Long Beach in August!), but I wanted to do something more personal. I ordered some fabric, but it got delivered to the wrong address and it's not going to get back here in time...so I'm making this! Started last night. A little embroidery. Just a sneak peak today. I'm hoping to get a little quilting done today so I'll have something to show you later!