Charity Quilt Update

Hello everyone! I've had a couple of busy days trying to get my Hands2Help charity quilts finished up. I didn't manage to get mine quilted, but I did get my mom's quilted. :) Here's how they turned out:

The first two quilts are for the Happy Chemo charity. The first one was a cute frog and lady bug quilt. I stippled in the middle of the quilt and then did a loop pattern in the border. The second one was a fun and colorful quilt with butterflies and VW bugs. I stippled in the middle, then did hearts in the first border and loops in the outer border. They are both 45" square. 

This last quilt is for the Quilts Beyond Borders charity. It's another one with the fun and colorful butterfly and VW bug fabric. They wanted these heavily quilted so I stippled the whole thing. This one is 45" by 59" I think...

My mom is going to put the bindings on and ship these off herself. She already has the bindings put together, so I bet she'll have these in the mail next week! :)

In the mean time, I'm going on vacation for the next 2 weeks. We leave on Tuesday night and won't be back until June 4th. We're headed out west for the Sasquatch Music Festival in Washington. We're driving out from Madison, Wisconsin, so it will be a long road trip. We'll see Mt. Rushmore on the way along with some other rugged scenery. On the way back we're stopping in Seattle and Portland and then spending a couple of days in Yellowstone before coming home. I hope my husband doesn't get sick of me in the car! (We have some books on tape and good music so I think we'll be OK - just gotta find some hand stitching now...)

In some other news... My husband and I will actually be moving to Portland at the end of the summer! Our plan is to be out there at the beginning of August. That means I'll be kept very busy over the next couple months while I pack things up and figure out what I'll be selling, donating or packing. If you have any moving tips (or tips in moving cats across country!!!) please send them my way. I'm sure I'll keep you all posted with the trials, tribulations and triumphs of the process. Happy quilting everyone!

Baby Shower Gift

Hello everyone. I hope you're all enjoying your month of May! I can't believe we are half way through it already!

I've been pretty busy with events over the past week. We had a visitation and a funeral for my grandfather-in-law, then I was the Matron of Honor in a wedding, and tonight we just had a baby shower. It will be the first great-grandbaby on my husband's side. I joked with my cousin-in-law that she's taking the pressure off of the rest of us to have a baby now that lots of us are married. :)

Anyway, I had been planning on getting this book:

and making the fish quilt from the front cover out of the pattern in the book. I thought I'd have until August to do this so I was going to put it together after our vacation next week.

Well, with the funeral it meant the mama to be was in town early and her aunt was throwing an impromptu baby shower. So, I put this together:

I didn't have a pattern, just the picture from the front of the book. I started it on Mother's Day night (Sunday), and finished hand stitching the binding on this morning(Tuesday). That is the fastest I've ever finished a quilt, so thankfully it was a baby quilt!!

I think it turned out OK, but not as nice as I would have liked. There were a couple small puckers on the back from the quilting, but not too bad. The other ladies and family all loved it. I think I should have used a lighter blue for the quilting, but I didn't have any.

So, just thought I'd share what I've been up to. Next on the list is quilting all of the charity quilts so that I can take them to my mom this weekend. I've got 5 to quilt in the next few days before I leave on vacation... And I still work and need to pack. Wish me luck!

Guest Blogger!

Hi everyone and happy Mother's Day! I apologize for being MIA on the blog for a while. This past week in particular was tough for me to balance everything as I had a family funeral (my grandfather-in-law passed away last week Friday) and I was the Matron of Honor in a wedding yesterday! So, please bear with me as I get my schedule back in order. :) I promise I'll get up some more posts before we go on vacation in a couple weeks!

Today, however, I am a guest blogger over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for the Hands2Help charity quilt challenge. Please head on over there if you'd like to see what I've been up to recently and for a great banana bread recipe. Happy quilting everyone!

Weightless Wednesday #10

Happy May Day everyone! :) This post is going to be a combined fitness post and a look at what I've been sewing lately. So, hopefully that's a little treat for those of you who stick around for these weight loss posts!

My husband and I have been very busy lately. His grandfather was recently placed in hospice care and he's been a huge help to his family in that transition. It means he's been very occupied and drained lately so our trips to the gym did not increase. We've been doing a lot of walking outside actually. That meant I did get a little sunburned on Sunday... :) But, he has been a huge sweetheart and actually brought me tulips (my favorite!!!) the other day in to my office. I have the best husband ever!

With our work outs I have managed to continue to stay on track. I didn't lose any more weight this week, but I maintained my weight at 151. We have determined that our weight lifting has helped us lose weight more than just doing cardio workouts. So, the most important thing for us to do is to get in all of our weight lifting sessions (3 per week). We have been very diligent with those and have gotten in some cardio when we are able. Tonight we plan to weight lift and swim, so it should be a good night!

Heaviest Weight: 180
Starting Weight: 175
Weight Last Week: 151
Weight This Week: 151
Weight Loss This Week: 0 pounds (but none gained!)
Total Weight Loss: 24 pounds

Now... On to the sewing! :) I put together the April Color Bee Shocked block. It's a HUGE churn dash block at 24.5 inches unfinished. I couldn't square it up because my largest mat is only 24 inches long! But, if I ever need a quick quilt top, this is the block I'll be choosing! It went together so quickly and you just need a fat quarter for each churn dash block - very convenient!

The thing I've been working on the most is the guitar quilt for our praise band leaders. We'll be giving it to them on Wednesday next week, so I plan to have it finished by Sunday. I have it all pinned and marked for quilting. I'll be stitching in the ditch around the guitar and some of its internal elements and then doing straight line quilting radiating out from the body of the guitar. Then I'll need to add some holders for a dowel for hanging, bind it, add the quilt label, and then it will be done! :) I'm very excited to give this to them.

So, that's it for me this Wednesday. What are all of you up to?

Weightless Wednesday #9

Hello everyone. I hope you're all having a great week! It's starting to look more like spring around us. We had our first real day over 60 degrees on Monday and today it's sunny again. I think mother nature might be playing a cruel joke on us since we've had rain for the last few weeks straight. Hopefully the sun and warmer weather continue to stick around!

This week I fell like I still didn't get to the gym as often as I should have. We have been very consistent in making sure we get to the gym for our weight lifting days, but haven't done as much cardio as we did when we started working out. We also haven't gone swimming in a long time because my swimming suit started to deteriorate (gross I know, but it was really old) a couple of weeks ago. I finally got to the store to buy a new one yesterday, so we should be back in the pool today. It will feel really good to get back in there. And - my new swimming suit was on super clearance, so it was only $18! Can't beat that.

While at the store I also tried on... BIKINIS! I've always wanted to wear one but never had the confidence to do so and never really had the body either. Now I'm really close to being able to wear one without turning heads for being too pudgy. My problem is none of the tops in the store fit. I've always had a larger chest, even in high school, so getting something where I'm not sticking out all over the place is going to be a challenge. If they could just make a bikini top that is very similar to a sports bra and get rid of the huge amount of padding and push up material in all of them, I'd be just fine. Any suggestions on where I should look? I'm thinking I might have more luck at Victoria's Secret? The bottoms fit just fine in regular sizes, which is what is really frustrating. Oh well, I guess such is life, right?

So, here's my break down this week:

Heaviest weight: 180
Starting weight: 175
Weight last week: 154
Weight this week: 151
Weight loss this week: 3 pounds!! - that was a HUGE shock on the scale (yeah weight lifting!!)
Total weight loss: 24 POUNDS! I'm so happy! :)

Thanks to everyone for putting up with my weight loss posts. I think I'll continue these until we leave for our trip, since it was my goal to get skinnier for that. That is coming up at the end of May and we leave on the eve of the 22nd. I'm also in a wedding a few weeks before that and have lots of quilting related things to get done on my plate. So, hopefully you'll see a lot more posts from me in the next month (or else I'm not working on my commitments enough!)! Have a great day!

Sewing Sleepover

Hello everyone! This past Friday night my sister and I headed off to my mom's house for a sewing sleepover! It was a lot of fun. We made a bunch of aprons together, so here's a look back at our night. :)

My mom bought my sister and I some fabric for Christmas with the plan that we would get together eventually to make some aprons. She actually brought me more fabric for Easter to use too! Well, after putting that plan on hold for busy schedules and really bad colds, we finally got together this weekend.

My sister brought an apron that she had received for Christmas for us to use as a pattern. It featured adjustable straps which we all agreed were just the thing we needed. No more tying a knot for extra long neck strings! My mom traced and cut out the apron pattern while I ironed all of the fabrics. She has a really nice iron so I didn't mind one bit.

My mother and sister decided to make their aprons with a ruffle at the bottom. I'm not so big into really frilly things, so I decided to do mine without the ruffle. We also all made different pockets on our aprons. My sister wanted one really large pocket on hers. I just wanted one for my left hand, and my mom made one that is a little shallower but is a divided pocket on the front.








Half way through our night of sewing we were distracted by popcorn. My mom's husband makes the best popcorn. Lightly salted with real butter and air popped to perfection. Usually I can only eat 2 handfuls because I just don't like the taste of popcorn very much. That night I ate half the bowl! (oops!) It was delicious.

We got to about 10:30pm on Friday and my mother and sister were both pooped. I'm a little more used to staying up late, so I sewed until about midnight. That meant that by the time I needed to leave on Saturday I actually completed 2 aprons! That also meant that my first apron was the guinea pig for how everything was going to work and be sewed together.



We basically made a single-fold binding for the straps (3 strips the length of fabric and 2.5 inches wide sewed together straight across to give us the right length) and another single-fold binding for the track for the straps - those were cut to 15 inches long and 4.5 inches wide. I sewed both sides the guide on to the apron at the same time. Those went along the armpit of the apron, and then we fed the straps/ties through each one with the center of the tie ending up at the neck position.



Here's our end result - and fully reversible:

These were a lot of fun to make, and super easy once we knew what we were doing! My second apron went together in just a couple hours - most of that time being for ironing. I don't have that one pictured, but it's out of more chocolate fabric. :) These were the first clothing items (can I call them clothing items???) that I've really ever made. I'm not going to count the awful pair of pajamas that I made in grade school... Yikes! So, I guess I've been nervous about clothes ever since that time and I'm very happy that these turned out so well! I think it's because my sewing skills have greatly improved between being 12 and 26. Makes sense to me! :)

So, what did you guys do this weekend? Get any sewing done? Is it nice outside where you live? We've had rain last week Sunday through Tuesday, sun on Wednesday, rain and/or snow Thursday and Friday, sun again on Saturday and now rain predicted today through Wednesday this week. Flood warnings abound in my area and my mom's sump pump was working over time while we sewed this weekend. Anyway, happy crafting!

Weightless Thursday? (#8)

Well... Apparently Wednesday came and went without me realizing I had missed publishing a Weightless Wednesday post! I'll be completely honest with you this week, we definitely struggled with eating right and getting to the gym. Just when I think we're on a roll we get complacent and think "I can afford to miss a night" or "this cheeseburger won't do that much damage..." Well, we survived the week, but just barely.

This week, I am hoping to do better. I'll still have days when I won't be able to get to the gym due to plans we made a while ago. And, unfortunately it has been raining here for the past couple weeks basically every day, so running outside has been put on hold. We have flood warnings all around us just like many other parts of the country. Thankfully we are on the 3rd floor of our apartment building, so it will take a while for us to be washed out of our place! :)

Even with our bad week, I did manage to lose a pound. I think that's phenomenal considering all the junk I ate! And, my husband lost somewhere between 4-5! He couldn't believe it when he got on the scale. So - maybe our bodies needed a re-set from all of the healthy eating and work outs? That's what I'm going to tell myself anyway, because I sure don't understand how we both didn't gain 5 pounds.

I've got 3 weeks until my friend's wedding on May 11th, so I need to keep going strong. Then we are going on vacation 2 weeks after that and I want to be in even better shape by that time. So - here's to another week on the "get fit" wagon!

Heaviest weight: 180
Starting weight: 175
Weight last week: 155
Weight this week: 154
Weight loss this week: 1 pound
Total weight loss: 21 pounds :)