Running Circles

That's how I feel lately, like I'm running circles all over the place! I haven't had much time for quilting, which involves many circles as I pebble quilt my quilting bee quilt, however I am excited to announce a new quilt in the works! 

My coworker is expecting a new baby at the end of the year (which means an upcoming baby quilt) and she has asked me to make her son the quilt for his new twin sized bed! We've had many brainstorming sessions and I've spent many evenings sketching plans for the fabric she wanted to use. Finally a quilt layout was chosen, calculations were made and she ordered the fabric, which arrived today! Tomorrow I get to go pick out some coordinating prints to go with it for a special paper pieced train panel, there is a transportation theme because this 21 month old loves "Cho-CHOOOOs!" I am so excited, this is my first BIG TIME quilt project. :)

I promised to get it done before Lee and I head to Hawaii next month, which is when they plan to re-decorate his bedroom/the baby's room. All this will be done while we work on mudding and painting our new basement bathroom, plus I am organizing Lincoln's second annual Bark For Life which is next weekend. All these things on my to-do list are making me want to go for a run to handle the stress of it all. At least my half marathon I've been training for all summer is over, I did not do so well! Needless to say blogging may not get done for a while, sorry friends.

It's About Time

...this quilt is getting quilted!

Keeping Busy...

I'm still here. Quilting came to a sudden halt after I finished my Ghastlies (which is still being used even though Halloween stuff is tucked away until next October).

Much of my time from October until December was spent finishing my undergrad degree, and studying for the GRE. I applied to Grad school and was accepted into the Educational Psychology program. So, although I graduated in December, I am still in school. Along with studying, I managed to get a few crafts done though. I can thank pinterest for keeping my creative juices flowing. Here is a picture of one of my wind chimes I made (I am obsessed with wind chimes!). I have gotten a lot of small craft projects done throughout the house, just not much quilting.

Until lately...there are more babies being born, so more quilts have been getting done. The quilting bug has bitten me once again. Here is a peek at a baby quilt I did for a co-worker.

Plus... I have finally put together my quilting bee top and back! I have one quilt in line to be quilted for a baby shower this weekend, then this guy is getting basted and on the quilting table.

I am going to try to get back into blogging. For the few of you that actually care. :) The next few weeks may be busy though, I do my first 1/2 marathon on the 5th! Hopefully mother nature will get the memo that spring started before then. It has been VERY cold this month, my run last night was in the wind and 30 degree weather. Last year we were wearing shorts in March. This year I will be lucky if I am not wearing my winter running gear at the start of the marathon. I will share some of my projects with you soon! 

Bee There or Bee Squares

I joined my first virtual quilting bee back in March. Another member of Bee There or Bee Squares changed jobs and had too much on her plate so she found me to replace her. It works out perfect because this quilting bee is over in September, just in time for me to focus on the 12 credits I will be taking this fall while working full time and doing my internship. (yikes!) August is my month, and I am so excited to have these lovely ladies make me blocks to create this quilt that I am in love with! My quilt is going to be 60" square. Since I am adding 3 more color blocks, I am adding grey and more brown as well. Here is the plan for my quilt:

 I sure wish I had a fabric cutter to cut all these 2.5" squares! Here they are in baggies ready for my fellow BTOBS quilters:

I would love for them to add their own squares to the block as well, to make them even more scrappy. Since this is my first quilting bee I am have made signature blocks to go on the back of the quilt. There is a block to coordinate with the color of block each member gets:

 Here are my three blocks I have made, and I am going to work on the white blocks along with another quilt this month (maybe 2 if I can find time.) I can't wait to get these back and put this quilt together!

Square in a square in a square

I just finished my first set of blocks for my quilting bee: Bee There or Bee Squares.

Sandi choose Jenean Morrison’s California Dreamin' fabric, which is beautiful! This was a super easy block to make too, using Sandi's tutorial found here. My only problem was getting the finished block to be 9.5". For some reason my super great 1/4" inseam was not so super today. (I had to take apart my first block and redo it.) Maybe it is because I wanted to stay in bed and read all day on this gloomy and chilly day. I am reading my guilty pleasure: the Sookie Stackhouse novels because the newest one comes out May 3rd and I wanted to re-read the first 10 before I buy my copy. I am also really excited for the new season of True Blood this July. :)

Just In: Freshly Squeezed Blocks

After getting back from class tonight I checked my mailbox...waiting for me was a package filled with 36 very ORANGE crazy nine patch blocks! I was so excited to open the envelope and see all the fabulous work done by the 29 other quilters in our block swap. Here they are:

My plan for the quilt is to make smaller crazy nine-patch blocks out of the fabric I used to make my blocks (because I went crazy and bought like 5 yards of orange fabric!) Then lay them out randomly on a white background.

I can either make one large quilt, a lap quilt using some of the blocks on the back or I could make more than one. I was thinking maybe make a lap quilt and then also a baby quilt to sell, we'll see.

In other quilting news, I have gotten 2 rows of my mom's quilt finished for Mother's Day in the last 2 weeks. Two rows out of 14, with only 3 1/2 weeks to go, at this rate I might have the quilt finished for Father's Day. :)

A Blockwork Orange

I joined my first block swap on Flickr (man is that addicting!) a few weeks ago and had time to get my blocks done this week during spring break. The block swap is crazy nine patch blocks from the Oh Fransson! tutorial. They are so easy to make and fun too. Originally I was only going to make 18 blocks, with 9 different fabrics....but I went a little crazy! I purchased 20 different orange fabrics (wow!) and made 36 blocks. I have a tone of orange fabric in my stash now so it looks like I will be making a lot of quilts with orange in the future! But it works out because I would love to start selling....maybe on Etsy.

Penny decided to help me while I laid my blocks out into sets of 9 to cut....she thinks she is a great help with every quilt. I shot this picture as she was chewing me out, and then ran to get a toy. :)

 

And there are my blocks, 36 very orange, wonky blocks. I tried to really focus on getting my seams to match up with these blocks, and I feel that I am getting better! Looking back at the photo of my first quilt, some of the blocks on it are 1/4" off, so much for 1/4" seam allowance. I am so excited to see which blocks I get from the swap, a few of the other ladies picked some fabric that I wouldn't normally choose which will make this quilt fabulous; and maybe seeing the batiks up close on a quilt will bring a new appreciation to these fabrics.

So now it is on to studying for my final Tuesday and writing a couple of papers....spring break was not long enough! Although I did get asked to replace someone in a quilting bee, so I have that to look forward to next month as well as my mom's mothers day quilt! Something tells me my school stuff will be put off for quilting.