My Weekend

Got up early yesterday and met up with Lauren to go to yet another fabric thrift sale.  I got a few things for me, and lots of stuff for Megan now that she is sewing up a storm.  Then the three of us met up with BJ and Ros at 35th Ave. Sew and Vac for the black bag Friday.  It was my first time participating, but basically every third Saturday they give a little something to us and have a great sale with coupons.  The store is HUGE and I can't believe I have never been there.  It is really organized and had a great selection of fabrics. I bought too much and didn't even take pictures lol.  BJ also bought me a yard of fabric to replace the free yard I was to get from the kits we ordered together awhile back.  I picked out a cool orange fabric I fell in love with.  I bought fat quarters of the same kind of fabric in a few other colors.  We all went to breakfast before we headed back home so I could make it to the PMQG meeting at one.

 I heart this quilt.  This is Alyssa Lichner's Totally Groovy quilt from the Pile 'O Fabric Quiltalong.  I almost joined in, but had plenty to keep my busy so I didn't.  Now seeing hers done (and free motion quilted on her Juki) I wish I had done one too!  Love her colors, love the texture of it, WOW.  Alyssa shared this at the Phoenix Modern Quilt Guild meeting on Saturday.  There was tons of other show and tell (on the Phoenix Modern Quilt Guild blog if you want to see them) and we had a good meeting. I shared my tiny modern Lil' Twister.
Alyssa also designed our logo and this cool name tag.  This is as far as I am on mine so far.

 I won ALL these prizes at our meeting.  Jona gave us one of her apron patterns, Gina gave us a quilt pattern and the Warm Company donated a ton of different products for us to try.  It was really fun for everyone to win, not once, not twice but three and four times!

 That same night Kathy and I met up with some friends for the all Deaf band Beethoven's Nightmare.  It was fun to see them and see so many of my favorite local signing people!  Here I am with Paula, Tracy, Eireen and Miki.

 Today I baked Pumpkin bread, Colonial Seed Cake, Spaghetti sauce and watched the Packers.  Did a little bit of cutting and organizing fabric.  I managed to hand sew the red hexi flower below too.  Keeping up with my one flower per game!  I also graded tests..the day flew by and we are really tired tonight for some reason.

Arizona Huggy Bunch and Cal's Spring Mystery

 This post is picture heavy.  Here is the Arizona Huggy Bunch in action.  June did some hand sewing on her hexies.  And the rest of us sewed away.  Four of us were working on Cal's Spring 2012 Mystery.

 Here are mine and Kathy's first blocks.

 Mine with the pinwheel layout that I didn't wind up going with.  I thought it was too busy.

 Here is the layout I went with (below).

 These are BJ's layout choices.  She went with the pinwheels below.  We liked her fabric in that layout but Ros, Kathy and I all went with the other layout.

 These are Ros' layout choices.

 Samantha finished her first quilt ever!  She started sewing with us three weeks ago and is now up to quilting it.

 Here is mine coming together.  This will be for my cousin Ashley who is getting married this fall.

 Finally snapped a picture of Ros' block.  Ros helped me tons with my new featherweight (more on that later) which I had never sewed on.  I then switched to her featherweight...or was going to, but the switch was acting up on the light so I wound up sewing on her Pfaff (THANKS ROS!) which is an awesome machine.  Ros was also helping Samantha with every step of the way and so didn't get so far on her mystery as we did, but she will get it done in no time.  She is a fabulous host of our huggy bunch!

 Alissa showed us some blocks she had made.  She does beautiful work.

 Here is Alissa working on her paper pieced mixer block.  Now we all want to make one!

 She has to add the mixing bowl, but doesn't that look great?

 Kathy was the first one done, that has never happened before, so I told her that she has graduated from quilting school, lol.

 Here is Kathy's finished quilt top!  She is going to give this to her dad for a lap quilt.  He is Irish and the fabric is all about shamrocks and such so he will love it!

 And here is mine for my cousin Ashley and soon to be hubby Ches.  I hope they love it!

Orca Bay Kind of Day!

No avoiding it, today I had to figure out how to make my Orca Bay (aka Long Lake though I have had several people tell me I should call it Green Bay and that is growing on me!) work. My flying geese blocks were too big for the Ohio star blocks...so DJ and I started ripping off the wings and re-trimming (uh read that I skipped a bit of the directions and didn't cut them to size the first time around--UGH!) and then resewing wings and putting the blocks together. This was a painstaking process and there was much grumbling (just ask Ros and BJ since we sewed over there all day!). Eventually I decided I could just open up the tops and sew the middle seam a quarter of an inch and I was good to go.
Ros showed us her very cool fish quilt. BJ suggested the orange inner border and I think it really makes the quilt! Ros used scraps and made a backing for it that is great too. DJ really liked it.And BJ (show off LOL) proudly displayed her Orca Bay top which is complete sans borders. It is FABULOUS and BJ said it all went together super de duper well for me. This did not perk me up, but since it is her first Bonnie Hunter quilt I am glad it was smooth for her. Me thinks she reads the directions better than I do!

BJ made her borders today but didn't get them attached yet (I might catch up to her yet, HAHA!) She and Ros both worked on a block of the month from crafts.com or something like that. After seeing them deal with it I was really glad I didn't add that onto my to be done list for February!
Ros is doing hers in batiks.

She also made the bag on the right to replace the one on the left. She stores her plastic bags in there.
Ros' BOM blocks. Two for January and two for February. Somehow I didn't get pictures of all of BJ's!
Ah finally row one of Orca Bay comes together.
Row two was faster. I did this in rows because it was challenging to figure out how to lay it out. BJ helped with advice like the yellow blocks corners will point to the dark blocks, etc.

Row three was as far as I got at Ros. It really went slow for me, but it was a lot of forward progress.
DJ and I came home and I got another two rows on. Now it is halfway. WHOOT WHOOT!

I then took a break from the blocks and pieced the border. Unfortunately I did two halves backwards and DJ is currently helping me unsew them. I will get them back together and then if I still feel like it I will keep working on the blocks. I really want to get this one off my UFO list because I have lots of other stuff to keep me busy in February and I am impatient to get to it!

And Another Clue Done, Another Clue Done, Another One Bites the Dust...

I had several songs running through my head today while endlessly sewing Orca Bay clue five! The first one you may recall from Miss Sherri and Lambchop I made a few word substitutions but it goes like this "this is the clue that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend...some people started sewing it not knowing what it was and now they sew forever just because this is

the clue that never ends...." that little ditty is hard to get out of your head and since I sewed at Ros' today with her and BJ they didn't really want to sing it along with me...

I managed to sew several of these babies incorrectly and some even made it past my first quality control and got another black triangle sewn to them before they were discovered (nine of those to be exact) so I had to do a bit of unsewing and then I came home and resewed and cut thirty more triangles (counting is apparently not my strong suit, I had too many hst's and not enough triangles!) and whipped those babies together. So the next song that came to me was "Another One Bites the Dust!" that at least got the other one out of my head! Clue five is done WHOOT WHOOT WHOOT WHOOT. That is seriously one long clue (made longer by

the fact that I sewed 102 of them to the clue seven light triangle as I went along).

When I arrived home I was excited to see that my prize from the SewCalGal's Christmas Quilt Show. It is a really pretty quilty Christmas ornament from http://www.quiltedinclay.com/
It is the limited edition 2011 ornament which sold out, but they have some really neat looking stuff.

The above picture is from their website so you can see the detail, it is very sweet! Anyway, after finishing off clue five with not a whole lot of help from DJ and Bug (we were watching Hangover Two)...
I decided to lay out the pieces so I could get a sense of what this quilt will look like. I am thinking I am going to want to put yellow centers in the dark blocks as some others have done. I like it though!

I managed to sew up eight more light colored stars, press and trim them before packing it in. We are watching a few more movies this evening and chilling.

DJ made us French Onion soup (so good!) and I whipped up two drawstring bags for my knitting. I looked online and for 20 bucks I could buy one but for fifteen minutes of my time I could make one! I didn't like the size of the first one for my sock stuff so I hacked off the bottom for number two and it is perfect. I will be making more of these because I know Hannah is going to want one in purple. It makes a nice gift for a knitter. Been thinking about joining that Christmas all year group...this may be my first project for that. :)
So Orca Bay update: Clues 1-5 are done, clue six is in progress (10 total blocks done, all parts cut), clue 7-102 blocs done, 127 flying geese to go....it is getting there! WHOOT WHOOT, again, I can't help it!

Wishing I was Sewing!

I am wishing I was sewing...but life sometimes gets in the way. I was supposed to be teaching one leisurely class this semester (and still work my other two jobs) and then there were two. And of course, two different levels of ASL so two preps. Then as of this morning I was offered/begged to take on one more class, and yep you guessed it, it is a different level and another prep. I am so not a last minute person and I was so overwhelmed this morning! I have taught all of these classes before but there is a new revamped curicullum for the one level, and a supplementary book that I haven't read yet, the second level not too many things I have to change and the third level they cover some of the units but not all that I have done before. They don't use the supplementary book that I used to use. Boring you, sorry...basically in a nutshell I have my work cut out for me! Today I worked ALL day and am happy to say that I have things well in hand (for the first week anyway!) and tomorrow I will get some more done, but they I am rewarding myself with some sewing! See that RRCB? I need to get trimming some blocks...or see this SMM? My strip swap arrived (no pic yet) and Amy is getting way ahead of me so I want to get to more of it!

And since I haven't been sewing I will show you some stuff I was thinking about sewing the other day. My daughter wants a Christmas Tree Skirt and I would like a new one too. I like the pattern above though I need a degree ruler to make it so haven't started it yet. This is the pattern I made three of back in about 1992..funny, it is a Thimbleberries pattern back before I knew what that meant. Can you see that this was before rotary cutting? I made the patterns out of an old manila folder...and I had extra base blocks (which are aweful now that I really know how to sew!)

Here is a picture from my old journal of two of the skirts I made.

Here are a bunch of the Mickey Mouses I cut up to make potholders from. They are made from my leftover bargello strips. Finally found a use for those strips two years later! The last picture is last Saturday at Ros' place. This is the Arizona Huggy Bunch--I visited them to drop off some quilts to Ros and I really want to make time to go sew with them because they were having a lot of fun sewing up some Quilts of Valor!