Echino Top Finished!

Well, I sewed the 10 extra blocks onto the main quilt this morning.  It went really fast.  Yea!  Unfortunately I used more white Eiffel Tower fabric in the new blocks than I used in the old ones so the left side of the quilt is kind of heavy on white.  But it is probably one of those things that no one else would notice unless you pointed it out.  Which I guess I just did.

I bet no one would notice my daughter's head peeking out over the top of the quilt unless I mentioned it either.  I need to make her do more push ups so she will be able to hold quilts all the way up over her head for loooong periods of time.  You have to have good upper body muscle tone to be in a quilter's family.  :)  Seriously though, I usually take the quilt pictures around here, but I held up a quilt for someone awhile ago and my arms got tired fast.  So I have a bit of empathy.

I think I am going to skip the batting and use fleece to back this.  Has anyone done that?  Good results?  Things to look out for?

Linking up to WIP Wednesday.

Extra Echino Blocks Made

Today I finished trimming the 10 blocks that I will add to my brother's quilt to bring it from child to man sized.  It didn't take as long as I thought and was rather fun.   It didn't make as large of a dent the box of neutral colored scraps as I had hoped.  I need to sew more and use up all that fabric.  :)

My overlapping hexagon quilt has languished recently.  I was trying to figure out why I hadn't worked on it in awhile and I determined that it was because I work on it while I watch TV in the evenings.  My daughter and I finished watching the Wolfblood series and have moved on to watching To The Beautiful You, a Korean show about a girl who dresses up like a boy so she can go to an all boys school and be close to this high jumper she is obsessed with.  It is full of all the silliness you would expect, but the problem is that it is in Korean with English subtitles.  I don't mind that, but it makes it nearly impossible to work on English paper piecing when you can't look down for a few seconds at a time without missing what they are saying.  We are almost done with the series (everyone found out she was a girl last night!)  so hopefully I will get back to my English paper piecing.

So, any show recommendations - in English?  Bonus points if it only has 25 minute episodes so I can send my teen off to bed early.  :)

Linking to Scraptasitc Tuesday.

Echino Car and Neutral Quilt: Finished-ish

So a few weeks ago I had a really bad day.  Everything seemed completely pointless.  I knew I was just being crazy, but I also knew that I needed something to distract me from how totally blah life was until I snapped out of it.  So I turned on BBC's The Lord of the Rings (LOVE IT!) and started to sew.

I had been crushing on this quilt for a couple of weeks and decided it would fit the bill.  It would be low stress sewing (no matching points or exact cutting) and I could use up the small cuts of Echio fabric that I had been collecting.  I thought it would be fun to make a car inspired quilt for my mechanic brother, but knew it would take a ton of (expensive) Echino to make a full quilt.  With this quilt I could use what I had and fill in the rest with neutrals.  Lots of the neutrals were scraps from my neutral prisms quilt.  Sweet!

I pieced bits of the Echino canvas for the centers and just started adding fabric around them.  I finished up 20 blocks that day.  The only problem is that it is a little on the small side for a grown man.  (48 x 60)  But to make go from 4 x 5 layout to 5 x 6 I need to make 10 more blocks and that feels like a lot.

We'll see what I end up doing.  Maybe improv borders would be faster?  I know I need to finish it, but the I-must-make-that-quilt! itch is gone and I have other projects on my mind.  Ahhh....life is to hard when you have so much fabric.  :)

Have a great weekend!  I am linking up with Finish It Up Friday.

Best 100 Day Project Ever!

Last Wednesday was the kids' 100th day of school.  The younger kids had fun activities all day centered around counting to 100 and as part of the 100th Day festivities our 7 year old had to bring a project made with 100 of something.

This year we made a fun and fast garland with 100 paper circles.  (Not a ticker tape quilt like last time!)  All the kids wanted to make one and they were able to punch out the circles by themselves and count them out into 10 sets of 10.  I bought the 2" EK Tools Circle Punch.  It was easy for the kids to use and when we used it upside down, they could see if the hole was completely covered by paper.  After the punching, the sewing started.

I love the idea of teaching my kids to sew, but when it comes down to it I am just not patient enough.  This was the perfect project for them to sew all by themselves.  The garland is so forgiving.  You just have to sew kind of in the middle of each circle of paper and just keep feeding them in.  It was good practice for getting the feel of how the pedal works and how the sewing machine feeds the paper/fabric through.The 7 and 10 year old sewed their circles together independently and I controled the foot pedal for the 5 year old.  She was too short to reach and didn't want to sew standing.

The kids have hung their garlands in their rooms and they look so fun and festive.  I love projects that they can successfully complete themselves.  It's a win-win.

More stuff

From Facebook today:

Since church was canceled due to the snow (about a foot here) we had our own little Sunday School here. Usually anytime we try something like this (family home evening) it is an Epic Fail. I mean really, people end up yelling and crying, but this morning was awesome.

Colleen (7) did an activity from the Friend magazine about Jesus's baptism where we answered questions and looked up scriptures.

Kate (5) planned a lesson all by herself. It was the cutest thing ever! She carried a stack of materials to the designated teaching chair, arranged everything and started by holding up a map she had found and saying, "Have you ever been lost?" Yes. "You can use one of these paper maps to find out where you are. But it really is Jesus helping you." She went on to show us a path she had drawn leading to the Gift of the Holy Ghost, had us sing a song and draw a picture of something that makes us feel good (feel the spirit). I drew a picture of someone singing.

We ended with a hymn played by Emily.

Braggy posts are annoying and I don't want this to be one, but wanted to share our unusually nice Sunday morning so I would remember it. It really was a blessing.

--------------------------

Today Becca also got on the toilet and went poop all by herself.  We aren't potty training, though we have talked about it and asked her if she wanted to go on the potty when poops were coming before.  She was a mix of concerned that the poops "fell" (she is just concerned in general about pooping) and proud of pooping in the toilet.  And no, I am not going to start potty training her.  If she really keeps this up I will think about it, but my personal belief is that if you potty train them before they are three you will just be cleaning up accidents until they are three and I would rather just change diapers than worry about all that.

My book manuscript hasn't come yet.  There is no way on earth that it will be out in February at this point.  I think making it in March will even be a stretch unless we get it pretty soon.

I have dug out all of the professional pictures and am going to work on putting them in albums a bit each Sunday.  Last Sunday was sorting and dating.  This Sunday I pulled paper for all of the family pictures.  I'm not totally pleased with all of the colors.  I might buy more paper.  :) --------  I just went online and bought paper and more page protectors.

Brian and I have been going on dates almost weekly for the last 6 months-ish.  It is really, really, really nice.  I wish we would/could have dated more consistently earlier in our marriage.  But finding/paying/driving babysitters is a big pain.  It's just a bummer that you have to wait 12-ish years to have your own in-house babysitter when you could really use one when your kids are little.

Colleen and Kate play together tons.  Colleen's favorite game to play is school and she will "teach" Kate all afternoon.  

I have started telling Aleah that she can't read for an hour a day.  She doesn't really play with the Colleen/Kate crowd, but will water color, wander,  play the piano and do homework.  I wonder if it is just that age where they are getting too big to play.  I don't want her to completely cut herself off from the rest of the family.

Becca is insane.  She is in a take-all-my-clothes off, run all over the house and scream to get my way phase.

February Blocks for the At the Fair Block of the Month

Well, it is snowing here in Iowa and I have to say everything is much prettier covered in snow.  Before it started snowing yesterday, I went out and took these pictures of the February blocks for the At the Fair Mystery Block of the Month.  I had a lot of fun making them.  They came together fast and stress free, which was what I needed after dealing with the flu and a broken sewing machine earlier in the week.

 This is the block from Debuque County.  It is called State House.  Wouldn't it look great repeated for a whole quilt?  It measures 12 1/2".

This 8 1/2" block is one of my favorites ever.  It is so simple, yet it is still interesting and has great movement.  It was submitted by Clinton County and is called Balkan Puzzle.

I was able to track down the names for both of the block designs in Barbra Brackman's Block Base program.

You can find more information on the At the Fair Block of the Month Program here.  You can sign up at anytime and receive all of the earlier block patterns.  Sign up here.

You can see some of the January blocks people have made here on Flickr.  They are Amazing!

A bit of business:  gfpaloney, please contact me.  I need a new email address for you.