I feel like I have raving to do...

So here's my story:

I am a member on Craftsy.com, the best website (at least IMHO) for taking online quilting/sewing/cooking/baking classes. They have awesome teachers, and once you buy a class you have access to it 24/7 and they never expire. If you have not heard of them, or have not taken any classes from them, I highly recommend them to anybody.

I signed up for quite a few classes and going through them slowly (you know a girl's gotta sew!). I get emails from them from time to time stating when they have sales, or they give out special offers. I got one of those a few days ago, letting me know that 2 of their classes were on sale, if I'm correct they were 50% off, both for $14.99. As I saw the class titles I knew I had signed up to both of them already, so just for fun I wrote back:

"That's a bummer, because I have both of them in the queue already... :)))" 

A few hours later I got and email from Patty who thanked me for reaching out to them and being an active member of the community. Talking about making me feel good! :) She explained to me that their goal is to reach out to members with offers that they think the member would be the most interested in. And since I have a ton of classes in my queue already, it's hard for them to offer classes that I don't own already. Ehem :)

She basically extended the offer and asked me which classes I would be interested in. I wrote back to her and named the 3 classes I most wanted to get (didn't want to be pushy and let her know that all of the ones I don't have already, LOL!). And also had a question which I think most of the quilting community would like to see, which is having the option to add friends on Craftsy to be able to see who is taking what classes and what projects they're working on. 

Patty put the 3 classes in my cart for the sale price of $14.99 each. I was stunned! Also She'd let me know that She will let the rest of the team know about the request of being able to make friends and they will consider it in the future.

I just wanted to say, thank you so much Craftsy team, you're doing a terrific job!

Disclosure: this blog post is my own opinion based on my own experience.

'Til we blog again! :)

Ready to sew the blocks

I'm thrilled to report that I'm done with all the units for Celtic Solstice Mystery, yaaaay! They are all sewn and trimmed, ready to be put into blocks. 

I just printed out the Clue 6 directions and will start to sew the blocks together.

Here are my Clue 5 units, which are the shaded 4 patch blocks that we also used in the Easy Street Mystery Quilt.

I got a lot of feedback from people that they liked the colors I picked. I can't wait to see this top all together!

I think I'm gonna have to make a list of my tops waiting to be quilted so I can go and buy the batting I need to finish them all. Exciting times ahead! :)

I'll be starting a new project with applique very soon with Gretchen from 120 blocks blog. We decided to tackle this together and I can't wait to start! I haven't decided if I want to do hand applique, or discover the machine applique world, or do both. We'll see what the future brings!

'Til we blog again! :)

Almost there!

Hello again my friends!
I am really glad you're back!

I just want to give a quick update about what I've been sewing the last few days while on vacation. It's Sunday night now and yesterday was the first day I left our house since Monday's grocery run. Does that say something? Also on Thursday we had a snow storm with 10" of snow so I thought it was appropriate if I were sewing all day for a few days. I had lots of food made before the snow hit and since it's freezing cold outside, I have a second fridge on our covered porch.

Stuffed cabbage, chicken soup, and lentils, all snowed in now :)))

Everything is white! Too bad it was a windy storm and not all the snow stayed on the trees :( It's not as pretty as it is usually.

I've been working away on the Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt. Since my last blog post I completed Clue #3 and Clue #4. While making all the small pieces I was thinking maybe next year I'll try to make the units twice the size and make less of them to see how that works out? Or after I see the reveal for this one I can decide if it would work with bigger units.

Clue #3 in the trimming progress:

And all the 25 pretty pinwheels:

Don't you just love yellow and orange together? I certainly do!

Now here are 120 4 patches for clue #4 before trimming:

I still have Clue #5 left which I am eager to finish as the next step is the reveal and I don't want to see it until all my units are done.

'Til we blog again! :)

Celtic Solstice Mystery Quilt progress

Hey Everybody,

Happy New Year!

Have you made your quilty resolutions yet? No? It's okay, I haven't either! I was never the New Years resolution kind myself. On the other hand I'd like to get some things done this year, which I think will go in another blog post. Right now I set down to give an update on my progress on the Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt I'm making hosted by Bonnie Hunter @Quiltville.

It all started with me being behind. That seems to be the situation lately a lot. Does that make any sense? 

So this means I didn't start in time because I was too busy to get things done for Christmas and last December was a little more work than I anticipated. On the upside I've been home for Christmas break since the 20th and now that the Holidays are done I have time to sew!

I picked out my fabrics which are following Bonnie's suggestions:

My greens:

Blues:

Oranges:

Yellows:

Neutrals:

I started to work on part 1 which involved to use the Tri-rex rulers. Have you used those? I had a fun time cutting even though it's not my favorite in the quilting process. My first time using the rulers which was pretty interesting. I had to figure out exactly how to position the ruler to get the point and the sides in line exactly. I worked it out after a few tries so here are my finished units for Step 1:

The second step was making chevrons. We were using the method of sewing the seam on the right side of the marked line to be sure the flipped triangle will be big enough which resulted in having to trim. In the trimming process with the first half I didn't pay attention to leave the background green part and only trim the white triangles so at the end my points don't exactly match up, but guess what? I will not start making them all over again because they took stinking forever to make!

Here they are all trimmed (Step 2):

I'm on part 3 in which were're making half square triangles out of yellow and orange fabrics. I'll post pictures of those when I'm done.

That's all for now, I better get back to sewing because Bonnie has the reveal out which I don't want to see until I'm all caught up!

'Til we blog again! :)

SPOILER ALERT! Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt top done

I've been slowly working away on the Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt I signed up for on Craftsy. The quilt came in different sizes and first I picked the 64" x 64", but then I changed my mind and made the 48" x 48" layout. I like the result a lot. I had a little booboo that I had to correct which resulted in multiple attempts to fix the problem. I think I had to take the top apart twice before I could put it back together the right way. Then I took pictures of it to post it on the blog, and after editing the first one I realized I still had a turn in it that I had to take it apart again. I think I'll name this one 3rd time is the charm :))

I think I will put borders on the top and bottom to make it a rectangle, I don't know why I like them better than being square. Maybe because our bed is a rectangle? Who knows!

Top #1:

Top#2:

Top#3, the final result:

Of course by the time I got to photograph it it became cloudy outside so the colors are truest on the second picture. I didn't want to edit the photos too much.

'Til we blog again! :)

Post card swap

I signed up to swap fabric holiday cards with some of my twitter friends. Sandi @quiltcabana arranged the swap and signed the partners. My partner was Kim, who I don't know I never talked to so it was a little hard to think of what should I make. I tried to research some ideas, but to be honest, not too many are out there that are using fabric. I was lucky Sandi linked a few websites to look up how to make them. I decided with a window look and pine trees background. I finished the edges with binding from pure lazyness. I didn't feel like taking my sewing machine out to do decorative stitching. I figured it's a lot faster and easier just make a binding and call it done. I did some free motion quilting on the fabrics to give it texture. I outlined the pine tree and did pebbles in the background. Also took the fabric as a guide to draw the pine branches that were printed on one of the fabrics.

I really enjoyed the process, got to practice my handwriting with free motion quilting. My practice piece looked really good, but when it came down quilting the real thing I guess I got sloppy. I had to pick out the first stitching line and start over. It doesn't look as good as the original one, but it'll do. That's the best I can do for now at least.

After quilting I ironed the white fabric on timtex and ironed heat'n'bond on the timtex to hold the front and back of the card together. I sewed the binding on the front and hand stitched down on the back. I used a fine line fabric marking pen to write the address and sender. The final size is 5"x7". I don't mind paying extra at the post office, but I didn't want to make such a small card. The writing would've been really difficult to do by machine.

It was a really fun project, I'll look up more designs now I know how to make it. Hope you'll try it, I enjoyed the process a lot!

Here's the card I made:

And here's the one I received from Kim just yesterday:

It's such a cute picture with Santa and the reindeer :))) I'm really glad I participated in the swap! Thank you so much Kim for taking the time and put this gorgeous postcard together!

'Til we blog again! :)

Bloggers Quilt Festival

Welcome back Dear Readers!

It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival again, hosted by the super Amy Ellis @amyscreativeside.com. This year I'm entering the Dresden Quilt I made for my friend's daughter's 1st Birthday. It's made with pink and white fabrics so I will enter it in the two color quilts category. If you really like the quilt I'd appreciate your nomination :)

I finished the quilt in August, 2012. It was machine pieced, hand appliqued, and machine quilted by me. The little cute pinwheels in the corners are 3-D which I'm really proud of :) I really loved making this quilt and even did a tutorial how to do the Dresden plates block and a perfect circle. The blocks are 12" finished, there are 2" sashings with cornerstones, and the borders measure 4". The finished size of the quilt is 48" x 60".

Here are the pictures I took, enjoy!

I had some "blades" leftover which I pieced into the backing

Close-up of the quilting on the back

The 3-D pinwheel in the corner

Thank you so much for looking and hope I'll see you quilt in there, too!

'Til we blog again! :)