Seriously Kimberly, the holidays are over!

I know, I know, the holidays are over and I need to get back to this blogging business. It is safe to say I took a small quilting / blogging hiatus; and it felt GREAT! I completely overloaded and overwhelmed myself this holiday season! Like usual, my crafting list was far larger than necessary and completely took over every ounce of free time I had. I spent many a night up until 3:00 am just trying to finish one of the many projects occupying my work space. I finished 4 bags (like those shown below), two purses (a lot like this one), a pillow (first talked about here), 10 potholders (with this fabric), and a Puppy (quilt) for Mr. Matthew.

(Liam is getting big! The little man celebrated 6 months on December 22nd!)

I managed to get some sort of photo before everything was shipped off, but it was always rushed and the lighting wasn't the best. I will try and post about each of these projects a little over the next week or two. In addition, this lucky girl won the giveaway on Lauren's blog (mentioned here) and received a new sewing machine from Santa (aka my Dad and Stepmother). I now need to get it out of the box and make sure it actually works and wasn't damaged in shipping. Come on Kimberly, get your butt in gear.

(This is officially Liam's favorite Christmas gift from Santa, a singing rocking horse! Although his Johnny Jump Up comes in a close second!)

Speaking of butts, I'm hoping to be shrinking mine this year! ;) I know, I know, not a weight loss New Year's Resolution... I'm sorry to tell you, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. This year I feel as though I'm not completely setting myself up for failure. My mother and I are tackling it together, we're taking it day by day, and I just posted about it on my blog so there's no turning back now!!! I will keep you updated as the mood strikes.

Now back to quilting!

This first bag is one I made one of my very good friend's daughter, Leah! I made her this quilt for her Mommy's baby shower way back when before she was born and now this little darling has gone and turned ONE on us (December 8th)! I used this tutorial for the bags and it was so simple, I ended up making four of them for the Christmas season.

Here is the little Peanut... she is getting so big!!! I love you Leah!

So as noted, pretty in pink:

Isn't it just adorable? I love this honeycomb pattern!

And this next bag I made for one of my Aunt's Granddaughters for Christmas. There is nothing more fun than pink fabric!

If you're looking for a fun easy pattern that takes just minutes to make, I would highly recommend this one! The pattern is flawless and the finished product, adorable!

Thank you for visiting everyone, I hope your holidays were fabulous and fun too!

Tree Skirts a Plenty

There is nothing that can put me more into the holiday quilting spirit than quilting multiple Christmas tree skirts... which is exactly what I did. Back in early October, I joined a quilting class being held after work on Thursday evenings. The task at hand, Forever Green Christmas Tree Skirts! I will start by saying that almost everyone in the class, excluding myself and the "teacher", was a beginner quilter. Some had never touched a sewing machine, thread a bobbin, ironed a seam or heard of a scant quarter inch... that didn't stop the fun!

This was quite an advanced project for such quilting newbies, but aside from the under-the-breath muttering, deep sighs, seam ripping, redoing, and numerous expletives, they really did tackle it like champs! I will start by noting that this is the most difficult thing I've ever made by a long shot, which may lead you to two conclusions: A. this was difficult and B. I'm apparently not one to step out of my comfort zone!

This tree skirt had multiple triangles (not my strength), A LOT of tedious paper-piecing (a first for me), some complex assembly (lots of little corners to match up), prairie points (quite difficult on the inside corners) and some pretty intense hand stitching along the back in order to bind the quilt. Despite the many hurdles and late nights, most of the skirts are mostly complete with the exception of a few (but honestly, as time-consuming as this project was, who could blame them?)

After the majority of the quilt was completed I began to help everyone with the second half of quilting, the most laborious part. I assisted in the assembly, cut, ironed and sewed on many a prairie point, basted to my back's discontent, and quilted every last one of them! There were 9 ladies participating in this quilting event and in the last week or two I have quilted 7 tree skirts, talk about an all time high for my poor Kenmore (also note the lack of finished projects in the last two weeks, this would be the culprit!)

So although I do not have pictures of all of them, and of the pictures I do have most of them are in a slightly uncompleted stage, I still wanted to share these beauties with you! At the end of the day, I am very proud of every single one of these ladies and their momentous accomplishment. They each deserve a pat on the back; this was not an easy task.

Simone's:

Laura's:

Sherry's:

Nancy's:

Sara's (note this quilt was quilted with a red, green and gold variegated thread):

Joan's (my mother):

and Mine:

Each Tree Skirt turned out very unique and diverse despite the uniform pattern that was used. Fabric selection gave each quilt a slightly different edge and a beautiful, distinctive finished creation!

Note to Readers: None of these tree skirts are being used as tree skirts! At the end of the day, no one could face cutting through them and creating a slice down the center and a large hole in the middle of their magnificent work of art! But don't worry, I think they make perfectly lovely Table Toppers!

Black Friday, Blue Skies, and Red Wine

This year, I had a wonderful Black Friday. My mother, Liam and I drove down to the Waterloo Premium Outlets and shopped for the deals of deals. We lightened our purses considerably (purchased a few purses) and had a very good time.

We spent the night in Geneva on the lake at a very pretty hotel. We took Liam for his first swim in a pool and thoroughly relaxed, dined, laughed and enjoyed ourselves. We didn't do a lot of waiting in lines and we just tried to enjoy the beautiful sunny day we were blessed with.

On Saturday, after room service (so fun) we made our way to Joann's for the shorter lines. I found some really adorable fabric and added quite a bit to my stash. For the first time in a long time I didn't even look through the remnants bin, I just bought what I wanted.

I'm not sure if the crosswords or the Eiffel towers are my favorite but they both called to me from the shelves!

I cannot tell you why but I loved this Rooster fabric, love, love, love!

And I thought this fruit was pretty darn cute too!

Someone very special has a mother who clipped this pillow (also pictured below) out of a magazine and requested one if I found some free time. As I've said before, there's nothing I like more than requests.

So while I was in Joann's I picked up some very adorable fabric and mesh. I heard that the very special someone is very interested in dinosaurs as of late. So once I get these Christmas Tree skirts out of the way, I will whip up this pillow and get it in the mail for Christmas. I'm pretty sure my little brother Matthew would appreciate one of these as well.

And lastly, I purchased some fabric for potholders, (again by request) how wonderful! I've only ever made one but I can't imagine they should be that difficult, only time will tell.

I also purchased Insul-Bright, which is the special lining that goes inside of potholders and provides more of a buffer against heat. The instructions suggest including a layer of Warm and White batting to absorb any moisture. I am slightly unsure as to where the regular batting would go in an oven mitt? Should I put it inbetween the fabric and Insul-Bright or inbetween the Insul-Bright and inside of the mitt? Anyone have experience with this?

Thursday = Quilting Day

This morning, Liam woke me up bright and early, we played for an hour and I thought about my day. Today is a Quilting Day! Every Thursday I attend a "Quilting Class" or "Quilting Get-Together" with a few of the women from work. At 4:00pm, we set up our machines on large tables downstairs, spread out, someone makes a meal, sometimes we drink some wine, we laugh (sometimes silently curse) and quilt. I run home and bring Liam back with me (my mother and I trade off quilting with playing) and we have a great time. We rarely filter out of there before 7:30.

We are all currently working on Tree Skirts for Christmas! Tonight I am demoing how to baste and machine quilt since I finally added my prairie points. I brought as many quilts as I could find, plenty of spare batting and old fabric for practice. Many of the women are first time quilters so this should be a lot of fun and quite a bit frustrating at times. I have offered to quilt anyones' tree skirt who doesn't feel up to the task, it is a daunting one! I will check back sometime soon to give you the full run down!

In the interim... Please go check out my long-time friend Lauren's blog Craft My Life Away! Tuesday was her 1 year Blogiversary and she is offering a fabulous giveaway in commemoration! Lauren and I met in college and both studied accounting, you could say great minds think alike. She has always been an avid crafter and amazing knitter. I did however introduce her into the world of quilting, and she has been an unstoppable force ever since!

Speaking of being back, I'm also back to Work!

Although NOTHING slowed down around here, I look every day for some "me" time to work on my outstanding projects. Speaking of my outstanding projects, here are a few that seriously need to be worked on. First there in this quilt I have named Pandora (the name speaks for iteself). This quilt needs to be ironed (it has sat around for WAY too long), basted, quilted and bound.
Next here is my fall quilt I started last year and never got the chance to finish, the quilt top is not fully assembled and therefore there is ALOT of work left on this one!
I recently started this quilt, inspired by this quilt and these quilts made by Amanda Jean at crazymomquilts. There is just something about green and pink that I absolutely LOVE!
These bean bags are a lot like the other ones I previously posted and deserve a post all their own, hold tight for further explanation later.
Here is a quickie of Liam's quilt which will absolutely have it's own post to come!Here is a smock I made for my little brother over the summer in anticipation for the start of Kindergarten, it deserves a post of it's own as well! See what did I tell you about my posts' queue, plenty to talk about!And lastly, since I am back to work I have also joined quilting night on Wednesday's at work. We are making a Christmas Tree skirt following this pattern. I really don't have much to post yet since we have only had two meetings so far. This is the centerpeice, and I will tell you that I was very hesitant to cut up my Christmas fabric (I absolutely love it) but I'm sure I will be very glad I did when I finally finish this adorable project. P.S. there's paper-piecing involved... not sure how I feel about that! ;-)

Beanie Bags

So I have to apologize because I haven't posted in a very long time and my last post was quite sad. I have been through so much lately but I am slowly recovering and that is the important part. So all of life's heartaches aside; I have some really wonderful news! I found out on my birthday (November 13, 2010) that I was pregnant. I am having a baby boy due July 19th, 2011 and I couldn't be more excited. I will be embarking on this beautiful adventure as a single mother and I have faith that with all of my family and friends everything will be just as it should! That said, I have done very little quilting. Between the morning, night and day sickness, the sleepiness and all the first time mother aches and pains; I have had a very difficult time fitting some quality crafting time in. I am trying to do a better job at setting aside time for all those things I enjoy soooo much! I am 24 weeks so I should be far enough along to get some serious quilting done. Tax season is also slowly coming to a close April 18th, so I should have some more free time on my hands before the little one joins us in this big, exciting world. This is a project that I completed before Christmas last year and I just never got around to posting about it. I created beanie bags for my nephew "Logan" and my little brother "Matthew". They were 3 and 4 years old and just beginning to learn and understand their names and the alphabet. I found the tutorial here for the entire alphabet, however I only used the letters they needed for their names. After I gave the beanie bags for Christmas the requests started flowing in. I think they're a great tool for children learning to spell their names. I think Matthew really found it helpful to have the colors go from red to blue, it gives little hints if they get stuck. I used a special stitch that my sewing machine does on the top to sew on the letters, this tutorial uses fusible webbing which I found very easy to use and relatively pain free!

I have now completed three sets of names for three other little boys. I shall post them shortly, until I have something more substantial to occupy my blog. I dragged back out my autumn quilt I had started before my birthday and I am slowly making progress. I need to get going on a baby quilt for my little kicker! I have the perfect fabric backing already picked out, I've had it for quite some time and I absolutely LOVE it!

Thank you everyone for all your wonderful comments and helpful advice, it has meant so much to me. I have learned that with the help of friends and family, I can make it through anything!