Pointless Quilter

This was hard to do--list all the projects I have started or at least have fabric packs or kits for quilts that need to be made.  This will make it really hard for me to go to a quilt show and buy something.  Ha ha!  That will never happen.  Anyway, I'm putting this list on the side of my blog and will mark off when they are done.  Do you think making the list itself is a good enough resolution? 

Well, now that the holidays are over, I can show everything I've been working on.  First off, my sisters and sister-in-law decided year ago to exchange ornaments each year instead of other gifts - however the ornaments must be hand made.  Here are the ornaments I made.  (Some of these are for my niece and nephews too.) Here are the ornaments I received.  The wood cut ornament my brother made and the wreath from my little sister.  My older sister made these wonderful family cookbooks (picture to come later) instead of ornaments this year. Here are some needle savers I made for my art friendship group ladies, Loose Threads.  I didn't get a picture of the wooden reindeer I made for my Material Girls. Here's the rag quilt I made for my step-daughter. And on to the stylish hats, my niece asked for hats for Christmas.  When asked what kind of hats, she looked at my sister-in-law and said "Stylish Ones".  Okay - so my mom knitted or crocheted...

Every year my friendship group has a challenge.  We usually decide in December or January what our challenge will be and then we reveal the challenges at our Christmas party.  Today was the day of the big reveal.  I gave each person a paint chip with 5 or more colors on it and the challenge was to make a quilt using at least  5 of the colors on the chip, we could add one more color and it must have at least one bead on it.  I took pictures of the finished quilts with the paint chips, however the glare from the camera bounced back on the chip so some are hard to see.  I belong to such a talented girls. This is Kathy M's quilt and her paint chip.  It was great that her chip matched the fabric line exactly.  Dear Rita B.  had the pattern, the material and just picked up her fusible to work on the quilt but at bowling that night, she tripped and broke her wrist/arm and it was in a cast for 8 weeks so she was unable to work on it.  We ca...

Putting up my Christmas decor today (still not done) and decided this cake plate needed a little runner to go under it so I pulled out my scrap therapy basket and pulled out some white and red 2" squares and started sewing.  This sits at the end of my counter.  Had a nice and quite Thanksgiving - just my husband and I but we did up the whole meal, even pumpkin pie.  Had it all again today.  YUM!  All I have to do now is put up my Christmas tree and clean house.  However, I needed my husband here to help me set up the tree and he took off this morning so I could decorate without him getting in the way.  Nice guy, huh?  Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday weekend.

I felt like I had to organize before I started any more projects.  So I took this (a box for each color, a box of Christmas fabrics, a box of batiks, and a box of novelty/other fabrics) and folded and organized and pulled out pieces that were smaller than a fat quarter, to this... And with all the scraps.... I cut up into 5", 3 1/2" and 2" squares for Scrap Therapy and this is what I got to add to all my other boxes of cut up scraps. So, am I crazy?  Or just organized?  Should I be really crazy and sort by color too?  I unfortunately don't have time for that.  Oh, if you need any squares of a particular color for your scrap quilts, let me know.  I have enough scraps to make alot of scrappy quilts. I will now start working on the guild's Opportunity Quilt.  I was asked to machine quilt this beautiful quilt - and I AM NERVOUS.  This quilt top is exquisite and it demands custom quilting...and they entrusted that to me.    I...

This is my custom built cabinet made by my husband and father-in-law.  I had a nice cutting table before but there was so much wasted space under the table, so after much research and discussions with my father-in-law, I asked if it would be possible to put kitchen cabinets back to back on a rolling base and they said sure.  One of the cabinets I wanted had all these flat drawers which I thought would be perfect for all my stamps and scrapbooking stuff - so my mother-in-law said, just get the basic cabinet and Al can custom build the drawers.  (Nice of her to offer!)  So after waiting for a sale at Home Depot for the ready-made cabinets, and the time for the men to make it--I finally have a finished cabinet.  I spent yesterday painting the trim around the edge and the flat cabinet drawers and then it was all about filling it up.  All this stuff was sitting on the floor and it started hiding my quilts on my rack and also I had about 4 or 5 of those plast...

This is the Lightening Strikes Twice pattern from http://www.scrap-therapy.com/ I wasn't sure about the pattern from the pictures on the pattern, but when the owner of the quilt shop where I take Scrap Therapy did it, I really liked it.  I love how I got rid of so many scraps for this quilt.  The only material I had to buy was the outer border fabric and the backing (which I got at $4 per yard.).  I think this is a pattern I might even do again.  Makes a good sized quilt and looks more complicated than it is. And here is one I really can't take much credit for.  I bought the blue work pattern when I went to Massachusetts a few years ago, meaning to make something for the beach house.  However my mother-in-law did a redwork pattern, liked it and asked if I had anything for her to work on.  Plus she wanted a new table runner for the the beach house table so I showed her this and off she went.  She did everything but the quilting and binding....

This is what I got on my trip to Nassau, Bahama this past week.  We, my husband and I, were there for almost a week for my step-daughters wedding.  I'm glad I can say I saw The Bahamas, but I have no desire to go back.  I did, with the help of my in-laws, find this fabric shop that sells these Bahama Hand Print fabrics.  At $29 per yard for this cotton poplin, these two small pieces were all I could afford.  I think I'll make a nice pillow for Kelly (step-daughter) with these fabrics and I'll embroider their names and wedding date on it as well.  It's perfect because their house colors are aqua and brown.  It's not that I didn't think The Bahamas weren't beautiful, because it was, but I am not a sunbather and my husband is not a touristy kind of guy so we pretty much didn't do too much except walk around the resort and drink.  It was nice the first 3 days because there were wedding things planned (rehearsal dinner even though there was no rehe...

We had our Loose Threads meeting tonight and we played with the color wheel.  Adena, the teacher among us, made little cards to label our blocks.  The blocks above are mine.  When I had them up on the wall, everybody asked me if they were trains.  I said no, it was a design I picked up from a scrapbook page.  However, looking at them all together they do look like a train.  Adena took then and will make a train quilt out of them.  Love that they will be put to use.  I would just have them in the pile of the other blocks from the other projects.  Here are the rest of the girls blocks.  Deolinda and Sara actually made complete tops/quilts with their blocks already.  (Deo's on the left, Sara's on the right.) Adena (original GREAT design), Grace (boomerange blocks)  and Anna's (own circle design) blocks.  (Oh yes, those are wine bottles in each of the shots.  We do imbibe a bit at our meetings.) And the best ne...