I'm a winner!

Yes, you read it right! And no, I didn't run the race I was planning to just in case you were wondering :))

BUT! Sandy @Quilting...for the rest of us had her third Podcast-a-versary this March so She was hosting a giveaway. She had 5 packs of Aurifil thread samples to give to 5 lucky people, and one of them was me :)) I was really happy when I got the email from her with the good news. If you're not a listener you must download her podcast, it's so much fun and full of information about quilting and creativity.

So here's the pack and I'll say below what's inside:

Sorry for the yellow pic, but it's raining outside and super dark inside :(

From left to right the pack includes:

Mako 12wt variagated  (3840)

Mako 28wt red (2265)

Mako 40wt aqua (5006)

Mako 50wt gray (5004)

Wool 12wt dark beige? (8324)

I'll probably use them to free motion quilt some pot holders or other small projects. I've never worked with threads other than 40 or 50 weight so it should be an interesting experience :)

Thank you so much for the giveaway, Sandy!

As far as my WIP-s go I'm marching along Easy Street again, started to make the 3.5" units for the blocks I'm missing. I'm making good progress, I have all the 4 patches and brick units done, and the pink/purple part of the flying geese. I'm making the purple/black&white flying geese today and then join the 2 kinds together.

I also have to make the May block for the Lucky Star BOM, but since I need black and white fabric for the background I have to finish the Easy Street units first to make sure I have enough b&w fabrics. I don't want to use up what I have for the BOM just to find out later I didn't have enough b&w for Easy Street. Does it make sense? Hope it does!

'Til we blog again! :)

Q1 Finish Along 2013 goals

Hey Everyone,

I'm happy you're back! 

I haven't been blogging in a while because I keep on marching through Easy Street. It's a long street to be strolling on, but I'm starting to see the end of the tunnel. I was stuck for a few days because I only have 1 kind of black&white fabric left and would need to make some patches with at least 2 kinds. Luckily I had my birthday this week and I got to order some fabrics from the Fatquarter Shop and hopefully they'll be here next week. Until then I keep working and managed to finish all the pieced triangles, and last night finally  all 9 block "B"-s! I have to say some of them gave me a hard time because I had to pay very close attention to which way  the patches go and the first block was ripped and ripped again maybe 3x by the time I got it right. AND by block #6 I realized I had to re-trim all my 4 patches because they  were a hair too big and I had to do a lot of easing while I was putting the blocks together. Now the last 3 was a lot easier to finish. All those things I can remember in case I want to make another one which may or may not happen in the future.

I also started to look through my quilting books and got inspired by 101 Fabulous Rotary Cut Quilts by Judy Hopkins and Nancy J. Martin. It's an older book, but the patterns moved me in a way I haven't been moved in a while. It'll be time to scan my newer fabrics and play along in EQ soon. Which takes me to...

As I was reminded on Twitter today is the last day to link up your goals to the First Quarter Finish Along hosted by  She Can Quilt. She has some wonderful stuff to finish and I can't wait to see her end results! If it's not too late  you should join us.  She has some cool sponsors and prices to give away at the end.

My list  is gonna be very long, but I was thinking to put everything I have out so I have all my UFO-s/VIP-s in one place, so just bare with me!

Chocolate pink monkey quilt:

Plain squares (the kitties are fighting over this one already)

Double wedding ring top for kitties

'N Blu

Craftsy "D"

Easy Street corner triangles are all done:

Set-in triangles all done:

Block "B"-s all done:

Some block "A"-s:

And the rest lined up, ready to sew:

Tote bag with no handles

I think I'll need to do an inventory of how much batting I have on hand. I have a feeling it's not gonna be enough for all the tops I have lined up. I decided to use wool batting on the Easy Street quilt since it's for me and I'd like it to be puffy. Might throw in a cotton batt also for good measure :)

Oh, if  only I could have at least 48 hours a day that would be grand! :))) I  have so many ideas in my head and I haven't even sat down to play with the computer designs. That's life, right?

Finally 2 bonus pictures of our babies:

Sleepy in one of his favorite drawers enjoying "nature"

Smoky

'Til we blog again! :)

Easy Street Part 4 and Part 5 finished

Hello again to all my friends!

I'm glad you're here. Hope everyone had  a  wonderful Christmas and got lots of presents!

My Santa came early this year  and brought me gifts from my Amazon wishlist. I told my Fiance to just pick randomly because I wanted to still be  surprised.

I ended up with a cut resistant glove and some books:

I was really excited to get them and flipped through them to see what's inside. I haven't had the opportunity to read them thoroughly yet. Unfortunately as some of you know our Christmas wasn't as planned. I got sick in the beginning of the week and was down until after Christmas. Boxing Day was the first day I could get out of bed  for the full day. I'm better now and last night was the first time I didn't wake up coughing.

Yesterday morning I did all the cutting for Easy Street Part 5 and had all my patches prepared for sewing from Part 4, and also  Part 5.

Today I sewed everything together and trimmed the blocks down and have them finally finished just in time to link up to Bonnie's linky party for Easy Street.

Part 4 blocks finished:

The units are sewn together and guarded by Mr. Sleepy's bunny feet:

Part 5 was also finished and trimmed:

And Mr. helper cat, Sleepy with  my half-finished ornament:

I'm glad to be all done before the new clue comes out  tomorrow morning!

'Til we blog again! :)

Easy Street Part 3 Finished!

I'm glad to report that I finished the shaded  4 patch blocks for Easy Street! They're not as scrappy as the other blocks I made, as a matter of fact not scrappy at all. I swapped one color from Bonnie's and I used pink/yellow instead of the aqua. Hope it'll still work at the end, I'll keep my fingers crossed!

I was participating in the Google hangout yesterday afternoon and messed up the cutting. I forgot to cut from different fabrics and instead I only used one. Mistakes happen, right? And what was a girl to do? Just kept going.

It was the hardest step so far since I had to do a lot of un-sewing and re-sewing to get the points close. They're not perfect, but good enough. For me at least. :)I'm thrilled to be done in time to link up to the linky party here.

I still have some Christmas cards to make, write and mail and also have to work on some gifts too. I better get my act together, I'm gonna have to make a plan! Do you have a strategy to get last minute things done? Let me know in the comment section!

Here's what they look like:

Stacked up with helper Sleepy taking a nap in the background:

And a close-up of the beloved helper:

You can find my earlier  blog posts for Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

I'll be back hopefully later this week with Christmas craft updates.

'Til we blog again! :)

Flying geese finished for Easy Street Part 2

Hello and welcome back!

Just a quick post to show off that my geese are flying now! :)

All neatly stacked up (yes, the oranges underneath are the 4 patches from last week):

And in formation:

'Til we blog again! :)

Shaded 4 patch tutorial for Easy Street Part3

So  this week we have to make shaded 4 patch units for Easy Street Part 3. I don't have the Easy Angle ruler so I tried to find some different methods to make the units without the special ruler. I was searching and found this fantastic video by Billie Lauder  on Youtube.

She's making her blocks larger so I had to do a little bit of math to figure out what size strips to cut for this step.

To make 2 units you'll need to cut:

• 2- 2" squares from purple fabric

• 2- 2" x 3" rectangles from black&white background fabric
• 1- 3.5" x 4.5" rectangle from aqua fabric (I'll use pink/yellow)

1. Sew the squares and the 2"x 3" rectangles right sides together, press. I pressed the   seams open.

2. Sew them together with the squares in opposite ends, press. I pressed the seams open again.

3. Put the 3.5" x 4.5" rectangle right side down possibly on a piece of fine sandpaper and draw a 45 degree line starting in the right bottom corner going up to the left by placing the 45 degree angle on your ruler on the bottom edge of the rectangle.

4. Sew on the drawn lines. Check to make sure the corner of the squares are not cut off. If something is off, rip the stitches and repeat the folding until you get the corners lined up. You can see I had to do some un-sewing too.

5. When everything looks good, cut apart between the 2 sewing lines.

6. Press and trim to a 3.5" square making sure you have the 45 degree line on your ruler lined up with the half square triangle. I pressed to the pink fabric because there was too much bulk to press open.

Ta-daaa! 2 blocks are done! Only 62 to go :))) (I forgot to trim mine before I took the picture so the dog ears are sticking out on the right)

'Til  we blog again! :)

Easy Street part 1 done!

As some of you know I'm doing the Easy Street Mystery Quilt Along  hosted by Bonnie Hunter. She had part 1 posted last week and with a lot of things going on I kind of fell behind.  I had the fabrics cut and in one of the evenings I've sewn the strips together. I had a little hick-up in the beginning as I forgot to check if I had a 1/4 inch seam allowance so had to re-sew about 15-20 strips :)

I had to do some cooking for someone which involved baking cheese  biscuits. Here are before and after pictures:

Recipe is in a different blog post here.

Friday night I started to sub-cut the 2-sies continuing on Saturday while listening to The History Quilter podcast.

Finally I got to the point to be able to chain piece them. Even though I made sure  I  make it totally scrappy, meaning not to put the same kinds of fabrics together I had to pay attention while piecing. And it happened. I managed to sew 3-4 units of the same fabrics. Un-sewing :)

I worked up until about midnight to get all of them cut apart and finger pressed:

I'm glad I started this project even though it sounds like "back-to-basics". I learned that I don't always have to pin religiously. I became an anti-pinner :) I was sewing a lot faster without pins and still managed to sew the patches together pretty nicely. AND the points are matching :)

Next step: flying geese. Yay! :) I'll be using my purple fabrics for those. Hoping to cut the fabrics at least and test out the method Daisy is using. I want  to cut my squares a little larger and trim it back to size. We'll see what happens :)

My helpers for this part were Sleepy  and Smoky:

Sleepy:

'Til we blog again! :)

Easy Street fabric choices & Chopsticks paper piecing

Some of you who follow me on Twitter might know that I decided to do Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street mystery quilt this year. I've never participated anything like this and would like to have it under my belt.  I'm pretty sure it'll be fun since I lot of people I keep in touch with are doing it. It'll be my largest quilt made so I'm looking forward to that too!

I was too lazy to take pictures of my fabric choices blaming the sun for not shining, but  now I got over myself and took some photos. I picked pink, orange, purple, and lime green for the colors, and haven't decided if I'll do black &white or just plain white for the background. Probably b&w, but I didn't have enough so I ordered some and they're not here yet.

Here they are all together:

Pretty pinks:

Fiery oranges:

Pretty purples (the one on the right is my very favorite):

And the greens:

 Helper of the day, Sleepy:

My cyber friend, Kristy @Quiet Play is into paper piecing and selling her patterns on  Craftsy. She asked for volunteers for pattern testing and I'm glad to help. She had 4  new ones coming out, I got the Choptsicks pattern to be tested. I think it turned out pretty nice despite the fact that I messed up the colors, but  oh, well :) Please visit her Craftsy shop, She has  some pretty cute patterns for paper piecing. I particularly loved the last one  She posted in her blog here about her  dream sewing room.

Here's how my chopsticks pattern came out:

Since it's only a test piece, I didn't pay attention to have enough of the same white background so it looks kind of scrappy. It served the purpose so  I'm not stressing about it.

I'm still working on the blue  and white baby quilts, one of the top is assembled and just finished piecing the backing last night. Pictures will be in my next post so stay tuned!

'Til we blog again! :)