Here is Colton's awesome quilt. He has been waiting for-ev-er for it and I'm so glad to be done. I love the colors, they rock! But, sadly again, I had binding problems. Binding, binding, oh how I loathe thee.

I bought most of the fabrics from the quilt shop I took you to when you came. The backing I bought from a site called Fabric.com This is a great place to buy good, cute fabric. They have Moda, Amy Butler, Alexander Henry and Riley Blake (my faves) and, obviously, more. Plus, they have free shipping when you spend over $35 to boot! 


$35? That's not hard for me to do. :)

Colton really wanted me to take a photo with him "sleeping with his blanket". He's such a photogenic kid.


  We are finally getting around to sprucing up the children's bedrooms and replacing all brown doors in our home. I'm so thrilled to be finally transforming our ghetto home into something presentable. Though we have a long, l-o-n-g way to go. :)

What you see here is the "mystery quilt" quilt along from My Girlfriend's Quilt Shop. It was a week-by-week quilt but only had 5 blocks--so not too intimidating. This was my first ever experience with applique and is the reason I now despise the word. This, also, was my first time using embellishments and rick-rack--hate the stuff. The rick-rack that is. Will never use it agian. Ever. I could not get it to sew on straight for the life of me. I ended up sewing it on by hand and they are all still crooked! Evil things. 

Then again, I'm sure I'm going to have to eat my words when I come across another really cute quilt that I just have to make.  :)

Also, this quilt was a first for color bleeding. And it totally should not have happened. 

This is how it all went down.  :)

See the "Tis the seson to be giving"? The shop was selling this new kind of webbing that had that phrase already printed on it. All I needed to do was stitch over the perfectly written letters and then run the magical webbing under cold water and it would just melt away. Just like that. Easy. as. pie.

Amazing, eh?

Well, it would have been, if it wasn't for the fact that it wasn't magical. 

At all!

The stuff was super hard to get rid of.  It made the fabric stiff as a board and caused color bleed (though you can't see it in the picture)

You better believe I was crying.  :)

Anyway, I could go on for a really long time about all the woes that came to pass because of this quilt.

But I'll spare you.

You're welcome. :)

(I used fabric glue to attach the embellishments.)

I decided to give the quilt to my Aunt Jane and Uncle Mike. I lived with them for a space of time while in high school.  They mean great deal to me.

(For the quilting, I stitched in the ditch.)

Nobody knows the love that goes into quilts until you've made one. 

The mounds of thought, money and time, stitching and re-stitching, trying for perfection.

Thinking of your recipients the whole way.... of what they'll think, say, feel.

My Aunt and Uncle did love it. I was happy to see their joy.

They deserve it all.

This plaid fleece/flannel quilt is what I gave to Damon's oldest brother for Christmas this year. I decided I was going to make it for him a couple days after Thanksgiving. Yikes. I worked like mad to get it done and ran into a billion problems along the way, mainly involving running out of fabric more times then one ever should.

I really wanted to quilt it myself, to save money, but it was too thick.  I used polar fleece which made it impossible for my little sewing machine to get through. I gave up pretty quick and called my quilter lady. I love her, she saved the day!

I asked her to just do a simple meandering throughout and she added the loops on the border on her own accord. It's lovely! She got it back to me a week before Christmas. Plenty of time to do the binding. And I wold have pulled the binding off, without a hitch, but, I, awesomely, cut the binding half an inch too small. Awesome indeed.
On any other quilt it would not have mattered a single bit. But, because of the mamouthnuss of this thing, it was a living nightmare to get on. If it wasn't for time constraints and just being sick of spending money on this quilt, I would have gone out and just bought more fabric to make a new binding.
Anyway, I wrapped it up all pretty and I gave it to him.
I hope it liked it.


P.S. I have no idea why blogger is refusing to print all of my words in pretty font. 
Not cool.

Look what I found at the Cache Valley Visitors Gift Shop! It was just sitting there hanging on the shelf waiting for me, of course! And, by the way, I need to tell you, this shop is just lovely! I don't know why I haven't taken you there. Actually, I don't know why I haven't gone sooner. The workers said I could sell my own creations there too if I wanted.

We'll see.

The quilter made this from 1 & 1/2 inch squares. She did such a great job! I love it so much! 

 I've been planing to make a quilt out of 1&1/2 inch squares for some time now. So when I saw this little gem hanging in the shop I instantly knew this is the pattern that I was going to design my quilt after. It was fate. It was so meant to be. I'd been pondering for quite some time what design I wanted to do and couldn't come up with a single thing. 

See that? Gift shop to the rescue!

Here are all of my little squares. I'm happy to say I have enough to make my first block. 

Yippee!

One of my favorite things about the beautiful square I bought, is that all of the little baby squares are different. No two are alike. I don't know if I have enough right now to do that. But I'm going to try!

Also, look at these awesome boxes I got today while I was at the Book Table.

Lovely.

They were actually the storage boxes holding merchandise and not for sale.

But I really wanted them. So I asked if I could buy them, and what do you know?

Today was my day!

 Now I have two new boxes to put fabric in!

Excellent!

I think my craft room maybe getting a makeover soon.

Dear Sue,

I was thinking about what you said and you are right, I should post about my little sewing adventures. As small and insignificant as they may be, they are still mine. 

I made this 'Christmas Sampler Stitchery" to give to my mil for Christmas and hoped to make one for dear Esther as well, but, I don't know if she'll get hers for Christmas. This little ol' project took a lot longer then one would think at first glance!  

I believe it turned out and looks splendid! Though, I wish I knew how to piece together the lettering.

I really do despise applique. I don't think I'm very good at it. What I really need to do is learn how to

do the fancy applique where they do a tuck and a blind stitch.

Do you know how to do that?

Maybe we could learn together. :)

We make a great pair, you and I!

Oh, not to forget, do you love the meandering?

Guess who felt adventurous and took it on.

Damon.

It was all him. And. he. did. awesome!

Quilting this has unleashed the quilting beast in him and now he wants to 

quilt everything!

Awesome.

I'll be picking up some clerance fabric for him to practice on for our next

wifey and hubby quilting project.

See, quilting is good, it brings marriages together. ;)

P.S. None of this would be possible without you!

You gave me this pattern way back when.

Do you remember?

I think warmly of you every time I pull out my little Christmas 'Tidings Art to Heart' book.

With gratitude I thank you!

I'm going to make one of these for everyone that I know!

No one is safe, no one!