Crumb Quilt FINISHED!!!

Yep!!! That's right!!!! It officially went on the bed this afternoon!!!





I started this little darling about 3 years ago. I love when a quilt like this is complete!!!! I am already going through my mind the next big scrappy quilt I want to make. I'm thinking of a chevron quilt next time!! I have alot of 2 1/2 inch strips that I need to use up and this will be a great way to use them.

Although I took this month off from the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I still had the colour purple going through my mind. I mentioned some time ago that I had a purple and green row by row robin I was involved in back in the 90's and thought this would be a great opportunity to brush the dust off it and make it into a lap quilt. Last night I measured out all the rows and now I need to decide how I will put these strips into a quilt. I have an idea, but if anyone out there has some suggestions please share with me!!!!



In the past week of silence from me here in blogland, I have been keeping busy working away on embroidered towels. I now have about 6 different Christmas designs stitched out. I want to make up a few more designs both whimsical and traditional so customers have a nice selection to choose from.



While my towels are stitching out, I am working on two bunting bags for my boy.



The bags he has now that he sleeps in during the night are getting too small for him and he is unable to kick out as good as he use to. During the night he moves from one end of the crib to the other, so I like putting him in these bags rather than putting a blanket in with him for safety. The bunting bags still keep him snug as a bug and he just looks so gosh darn cute in them!!! He loves frogs, so of course I HAD to add a frog design to one of the bags. He is also a very active and busy little bee during the day time, so I added a cute little bumble bee to the other bag.

I was recently involved in a mug rug swap. Today I received the CUTEST little mug rug pressie in the mail from my mug rug swap partner. Kristy over at Cotton Addition sent me the cutest rug, mug and some yummy yummy organic green tea with ginger. I actually used one of those teas in my new mug tonight after sewing and it was DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kristy thank you sooooooooooooo much!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!



Well can you believe my little boy turns 1 on Friday?????? We are having his birthday party on Saturday. Trevor and I went out this afternoon to pick up the party favours, decorations and loot bag gifts. I am now putting a list together of the food and finger foods I will be making for the big day.

Last week my good Mommy friend from playgroup set up a photo shoot for William in her home for his professional 1 year old photos. Jeannine is an amazing and talented photographer!!! Here is some of her work!!!

















Well I think I caught up with as much as I could think of I did in the past week. This is another busy week between prepping for the birthday party and tomorrow I'm off to get my income taxes done... sigh... Wish me luck for a nice big fat REFUND!!!!!!! Momma needs more sewing supplies!!!!!!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Quiet Yet Busy

Its been quiet yet busy since my last post. William and I had another birthday party on Saturday for one of the little girls in our playgroup. Only William's birthday left for April month. Although we have two more parties to attend in May. We will be partied out!!!

I figured I would write now as William is heading into hour #2 of his day nap. He will wake up any time now I figure but while making lunch I am also trying to squeeze in this post.

I got a nice start on my crumb quilt. I am now around almost 2 sides!!!!!



I also got back to finishing up the binding work on the Christmas placemat sets I made over a month ago. I really need to complete these sets and put them away for Christmas to sell. I have a few other plans in mind to sell both for Christmas and for year round (mostly baby stuff) but other things too. Stay tuned as I will be posting about it and advertising here on my blog in the coming months.

Tonight I will take some photos of what I am doing and post it. ooh I have a mug rug to send out (ooops I'm a wee bit late sending it... but it is going out tomorrow in the mail.. PROMISE)!!! I will show you what I will be sending to my mug rug partner too.

Well lunch is ready and I'm starved!!! Once kiddo wakes up and has his lunch we are meeting up with a friend and her 3 month old little girl to take a stroll around the neighbourhood. It is a beautiful sunny day here.. In fact the temperature is going up to a balmy 10 degrees celcius!!!wooo hoooo!!! highest it has been in a few months!!!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Pressies!!!!

I just looove a good pressie in the mail!!! Especially when you were not really expecting anything. Well yes I was, but didn't know exactly when during the 2011 year. Melissa sent me this beeeeeeeeautiful little handmade notebook and bookmark!!!



It was part of the Pay It Forward Giveaway many of us quilting bloggers are in. The notebook is sooo cute with the pretty flower on the front, and the bookmark has the CUTEST brad that is keeping the tassel to the bookmark. If you look close enough in this photo you will see the brad is a silver camera!!!!



I LOVE IT!!!! Thank you sooooooooooooo much Melissa for the sweet little pressie!!!! I know already what I plan to use my little notebook for!!!!

Tonight I finished the Green Scrappy quilt top!!!!



Wooooooooooo hooooooooooooo!!!!!! All I need to do now is serge around the edges to protect them from ravelling. I don't want to layer or quilt this one yet until I get the Red Scrappy Strippy quilt quilted and binded. I put alot of work into that green quilt. And I just looooooooooove how the interweaving pattern turned out. I decided I will keep this quilt to put on William's Big Boy bed when he eventually graduates to that bed. I have some quilt tops already made up for some time that I will use to donate to my Iris Kirby House charity.

William and I have another birthday party to attend this coming Saturday. I am hoping to get out tomorrow afternoon or Friday afternoon to pick up the gift I want us to give. Hopefully that night, I might get back into the Rainbow Stash Challenge. I had a purple/green row by row UFO that has been sitting in my UFO cabinet for ages. I need to size each row and determine how I am going to put the rows together. I will post a photo of the rows on Saturday when I pull them out.

Tomorrow night I need to put away the machine and ironing board and haul out my scrapbooking supplies. I will be working on making William's birthday invitations. His party is at the end of the month and since we have a birthday party to attend this weekend (a little girl from his playgroup) it would be a great time to pass out some of his invitations. It still blows my mind that he will be 1 at the end of the month!!!! I hope every year of his life doesn't go by as fast as this one. He is growing up so fast on me. It makes me sad. SLOW DOWN SWEETIE!!! What's the rush????


(A little stroll down by the ocean close to where our friend and new (almost) 3month old new playdate friend live!!

Sigh..... til next time.

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Bits and Bods

For the past 24 hours I have been nursing a migraine. I am on the other side of it now... otherwise I would NOT be looking at this bright computer screen!!! I spent much of last night and this morning lying in my bed in my dark tomb bedroom. Very rarely do I get physically sick with migraines. I might have done that twice in my life. Usually I get the flashing light on the side of my eye and the intense throbbing head pain, one of side of my face goes numb and I can actually say even my teeth hurt!!! I usually get 2-3 of these migraines a year. They don't come on by food or wine (although I have learned to stay away from Merlot wine for this reason). I can eat all the chocolate and cheese and coffee I want and not get a migraine. They just happen. I thank my Mum for inheriting her migraines. Mum and Trevor looked after Sweet William today while I nursed this migraine. It was such a nice and sunny day outside, and when I was up I had to wear sunglasses in the house as the light was waaaay too bright for my eyes. When I did get up to try a bit of lunch, I took my bagel and tea down to my sewing room where I kept all the lights off and closed the blind. It was just light enough down there for me to see what I was eating.

I am still a bit wonky and it usually takes me a couple days to get back to myself again, but I did feel I wanted to spend an hour or so in my sewing room tonight and feel a little bit productive. So, I managed to keep myself occupied and mind off the head by making all the rows for my green scrappy quilt. My goal is to at least finish the quilt top by month's end.



I also worked on this little embroidery darling that will be going into a little mug rug swap I am involved in. I did the embroidery work tonight while working on the green scrappy quilt rows. Tomorrow I will sew it into a mug rug.



Before the migraine started yesterday I was in the mood to try out a new cheesecake... So while Bambino was down for his morning nap I made this OMG yummy yummy Caramel Apple Cheesecake!!!!!!!!!!!





I loooooooove making cheesecakes!!!

Ohhh one more thing before before I head off to bed. Last week Mum shared with me this really funny news article she cut out of the newspaper for me. There is a small column in our local newspaper called "News of the Weird". Okay so before I get started and type it out, I just want to say I am glad to know there are others out there that are more crazy than I when it comes to making insane projects. Don't get me wrong there are many of us quilters out there that love to come up with crazy and insane quilting projects that require a TON of pieces of various sizes, shapes and colours. But I have to now say I don't feel so bad any more!!!

Okay, so here it goes.
"Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum is already home to an artist's rendition of da Vinci's "The Last Supper" made from burned toast, and now comes a version by Laura Bell of Roscommon, Mich.: da Vinci's masterpiece made with clothes-dryer lint. Bell said she did about 800 hours of laundry of various-coloured towels to obtain lint of the proper hues, and then worked 200 more hours to construct the 14-foot long, four-foot-high mural."

My question is this..... did she hand stitch all this lint down????? I also would hate to see her power bill for all that electricity she used up washing all those towels!!! LOL Something to ponder!!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Crumb Quilt Update and Other Stories

The Crumb quilt is now machine binded!!! woooo hoooooooooooo!!! All the left over threads on the back of the quilt are also now trimmed off and tucked away within the layers of the quilt. All that is left is to hand stitch down the other side of the binding and remove all the basting threads. I'm already coming up with ideas on the next big scrappy quilt I want to make!!!! I have a number of designs I want to do, I just need to narrow it down to the one I want to do first.

Tonight I did a bit of clean up and tidying up of my sewing room and work space. I need to make it look a bit more sane before picking up the next project I want to complete. I set about making a short list of projects I want to complete or get started on before the month is out. I also have 2 more birthday parties to attend from William's playgroup, plus organize his own for the end of the month. I can't believe my little boy will be 1 year old April 29th!!!!! It is amazing just how fast this past year went!!!

We took him to get his first hair cut at the barber shop on Thursday afternoon. Because he is so active and wiggly, I had to sit in the chair with him to get his hair done. God love the fella who did his hair. What patience!!!!


(Before shot. I miss those cute little wispy hairs... unfortunately they were getting down into his eyes.)





My little boy has lost that little baby hair look and looks like a real little boy now. The baby is starting to go... sigh.... sooo sad. Afterward, we went up to the shopping mall food court and celebrated his big haircut day with Tim Horton Timbit donuts!!!! Needless to say he enjoyed his first chocolate Timbit!!!

Tonight I got a little head start on Scrap Saturday. I managed to get the first two rows of blocks sewn together.



I will work on that quilt top again Saturday evening after William is gone to bed. My goal for this weekend is to get as much of that quilt top completed as I can.

While I worked away in my sewing room, I also warmed up my ole Embroidery machine and stitched out this little darling.



It has given me an idea of what I want to do for a mug rug swap I'm involved in this month. I need to have that little project completed and mailed out before the middle of the month. My days are getting numbered, so I better get my mojo going.

Well it is just after midnight, my tea is almost gone and I need to get some shut eye. William and I have a birthday party to go to in the afternoon. Before we go there, I need to run to a card shop to pick up a birthday card and then off to Fabricville as I want to get some more polar fleece to make a couple bunting bags for William. The two I have now are starting to get too small for him. I still don't want him to sleep with a blanket overnight as he moves so much from one end of his crib to the other. At least with these bunting bags, he is still keep cozy and warm and he doesn't get caught up in a blanket.

Good Night. I hope to post again Saturday evening to show you the results of my Scrap Saturday evening.

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Crumb Quilt Update

I am on a roll now with this quilt and I just want to get it completed!!! Last night I dug down into my scrap rubber maid container and found a bunch of fabrics I want to put into my binding. Since this is such a scrappy coloured quilt I want to make my binding multicoloured.

Here is the pile of fabrics I picked out.


The night was still young, so I got them pressed and cut out.


And not to end there, I decided to sew the pieces together. Tonight I will press the binding down properly and start sewing the binding onto the quilt.


ohh, btw, the other night (Sunday night) Mum and her good friend Theresa (who is also part of our Wednesday night sewing group) between the three of us we got all the remaining paper off the quilt!!!! Yippeeeee!!! That job would have taken me a few days of Baby nap times to get that paper off. We finished the paper removal in just under an hour!

Today, with the help of Mum who will be spending some Baby/Nana time with her little boy, I will play a bit of catch up on my housework including cleaning out my deep freeze. I need to take a little inventory of what I have and what I need to get. I want to start getting some casseroles made up and get my freezer set up for the Spring/Summer season. There are days during the summer when you just don't feel like cooking much and it is much easier to just take something out of the freezer and reheat something up. I'm also hoping to make a Taffy Apple Cheesecake at some point before the week end.!!!

So on that note, with breakfast finished and my tea almost gone, I am off to start some laundry. Fun day!!!! Sigh.. I would rather be sewing!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Crumb Quilt QUILTED!!!

Wooooo hooooooooooo!!! The Quilting is FINALLY done!!! Now the fun job of removing lots and lots of paper!!!!





I decided since this is going to be a very dull and boring job, I will need to do it in short stages. So, saying that, I will work on it while William takes his morning/afternoon nap. These days he sleeps from 1-2 hours during this nap and then he is good til bedtime. That way, I can do it in stages and I won't feel like all I'm ever doing is removing paper!! LOL

I also decided since April is Purple for the Rainbow Stash Challenge, I will be taking this month as a semi month off. I have a few things I need to play some serious catch up on with some of my sewing projects. Not to mention William and I have at least 4 more birthday parties from our playgroup to attend this month as well as plan his own 1st birthday at the end of the month!!! I want to scrapbook his invitations. I also want to try and finish up another recipe binder. I started my pasta/rice/fish binder but didn't complete it.

But if time does permit, I did pull out a little Purple UFO I had stashed away for several years in my UFO cabinet. It was a Row by Row Robin I did back in the late 90s when I was living in Nova Scotia. I'm not a big fan of purples, so I will make this quilt up and donate it to the Iris Kirby House along with the other quilts I am making for this organization this year. By doing this I am making the effort to tackle a UFO as well as donating it to my charity organization. I will post a photo of these rows at another date. Right now they are still sitting all folded up nicely in a clear bag.

I will still be watching and participating a little on the sidelines this month. I will still be watching and getting inspired by all the rest of my Rainbow Stash Challenge blogging friends. I also still have to get quilting on the red month quilt, as well as, get the green quilt top together. So I definetely need to take this month to play a little catch up before starting up another Rainbow Stash quilt for next month.

Well I'm off to bed. William and I have a birthday party to attend tomorrow afternoon, and I also am seriously thinking of trying out a new cheesecake. Every now and then I get the craving to make a new cheesecake. I LOOOOVE making cheesecakes. I think the one I have my eye on this time is a Taffy Apple Cheesecake!!! mmmmmmmm


William has decided to claim poor Alexi's bed. I suppose if Alexi is not using it, its fair game!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Just A Short Note

I will try and post more again tonight. I had a few more tests done (medically) this week so have been off my groove. When I'm not tired I am back in my sewing room working away on my Crumb Quilt. I am hoping by the end of the night to have the last two sides of the final border quilted!!! I will only have to remove the rest of the paper, take out the basting threads, then start the binding process. I'm sooooo excited!!!! This was a project I started a few years ago. I was never in any big hurry to finish it as I was still not living in the house I am in now but sharing a small condo with Trevor. Now that we have a much bigger house and I have more room to leave my projects out and about I am working more at getting this project from a UFO, to a WIP to a COMPLETE!!!! My goal for April is to have this quilt finished!

Anyway, again I just wanted to drop a little note here. I will post more again tonight along with some recent photos.

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea