Someone bought my quilt!

Remember when I told you that I was making a quilt for the local community college's scholarship auction? Well, here's the quilt.

And the back. You can't see it very well, but I stitched down the cardinal in red thread, so there's an outline of a red cardinal on the back of the quilt. Cool, huh? (By the way, those white spots are lint...the backing is black flannel.)
And here's the best part....this quilt raised $280 for scholarships! Isn't that great?! I made a quilt for the auction last year, and it was a lot more work but didn't raise nearly as much money. So I was a very happy girl after this year's auction.

Here's something I just decided to do last night. It's a 4-patch stack-n-whack from the pattern 4-Patch Stacked Posies by H.D. Designs. I found the directions a little confusing, but I've done stack-n-whack before so I just went for it. After walking the dog and watching American Idol, I only had time to sew nine 4-patches, but I really like the way they're turning out. I've got the rest cut, so hopefully tonight I can sew them together in between loads of laundry. Oh, and the American Idol results show....can't forget that.

That's not all I've had up my sleeve for the past week or so... more tomorrow!

Look what I got!

Wednesday night was the end of the year meeting for my quilt guild. Part of the evening was the grand finale of the a quilting-themed scavenger hunt. Everyone who wanted to participate was given a list of items to find - one per month from September to April. So this is what I received... I was so excited. There are some quilting notecards, a yard of white, black & red fabric, a log cabin style pin, a spool of metallic red thread, a sewing machine picture frame, a yard of red fabric from Moda's new Prairie Paisley line (yeah!), another red floral fat quarter, a quilting-themed calender/mouspad combo, a couple of patterns, and of course the container! What a lucky girl I am!

Oh baby

It seems like everyone I know is having a baby in the next few weeks. Okay, not everyone, but three people. As a result, I have a marathon of baby showers to attend, followed by the actual births, for which I will probably send a gift as well. And me being me, I feel obligated to give something handmade. I know the expectant mothers probably don't expect this (or maybe they do), but nevertheless, I feel like it's something I should do. The problem is, everyone can't get a quilt. It's just not possible, folks. So here's what I came up with. Burp cloths. They're fast, easy, & cute. And they are something that every mom can use. I found the tutorial at ANewChelseaMorning through SMS.

So here are my gifts for shower #1, which was Saturday afternoon. I tried to post on Saturday, but blogger wouldn't let me upload any photos. Three hours before the shower, I just had the two onesies.

Isn't the back of this one cute!

I made these three burp cloths in about an hour, including picking out the fabric and pressing everything. Which was definitely the hardest part. Actually, the hardest part might have been finding cloth diapers in this town (I'm told the dollar store has them...didn't think to look there), but I bought the diapers a couple of months ago.

Here are a few more I'm making for another shower this weekend, for a very stylish & very small young lady. Now I just need to make some for my niece. She's 5 months old, and she has very few handmade gifts from me. She punishes me by drooling and spitting up on me. Hence the need for more burp cloths. I'm a bad crafty aunt.
I try to make up for it in snuggles and kisses when I see her though. At least I don't call her Stinkerella like her daddy does.

The nerdiest way to spend a Friday night

I'm sure all of you loyal readers out there (all two of you... hi mom!) are dying to know how someone who leads as glamorous a life as I do (yeah, right) spends a typical Friday or Saturday evening. Never one to leave my fans unsatisfied, I now give you the answer to your question.

That's right, I crochet. Or stitch down a binding or possibly hand quilt if I'm feeling chilly & ambitious (see the stuff to the right of the basket). Usually by the time the weekend gets here, I'm too pooped to do anything but sit on the couch, and these projects flow seamlessly into my weekend routine. Typically I will do one of these three activities while watching a Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Star Wars movie - I have a thing for movies (or books) that are part of a series. Love that. And depending on what kind of a day I've had, I might throw a nice adult beverage into the mix. Just one though... two seem to affect the results of my handiwork.

The crochet project I'm currently working I found here at Bella Dia, one of my fave blogs. It's fairly easy - just double crochet until your eyes cross. I did manage to screw it up - I didn't work on it for awhile, and when I picked it back up I couldn't remember exactly how to start a new row. So a few of my rows are a little short, but no worries, I just added stitches in the next couple of rows to even things out. It sort of looks like someone took a little bite out of the side, but I'll be damned if I was going to rip all of that out and start over. A couple of rows of edging crocheted around the whole thing will help camouflage my mistake. Yeah, sounds like a plan.This is my hand quilting project - my very first. I wanted to start with something simple so that I could concentrate on making my stitches even and not worry about quilting through thick seams. So I used a piece of cheater convenience fabric (this one's from Moda's Sanctuary collection by 3 Sisters), basted it together with a batt and backing, and went to town. I was pleasantly surprised that hand quilting is not nearly as time consuming as I thought it would be (atleast not the simple quilting I'm doing), but it definitely isn't quick either. However, as I said before, it's a perfect complement to my couch sitting time. And that's something I definitely don't want to rush.

Playing catch up

Well, keeping with the theme of only posting sporadically, here I am, over 2 weeks since my last post. Rest assured, it's been a busy 2 weeks or you would have heard from me before now. Alas, very little of it has been crafty, so I have very little to show you. Even so, I'll try to catch you up on what's been going on with me.

Longarm Quilting: Been doing quite a bit of this. Here's a particularly fun but time-consuming project that I finished last week. This is the Rosebud Lane block of the month that I did at the shop, and this busy customer was the first to finish the quilt. The original quilt (from the designers) had trees and animals and all sorts of cute little things quilted into it, so I tried to replicate that type of quilting as best as I could.

Taxes: I've been doing lots of that too, including my own. I'm so glad that April 15 is next week. (By the way, if you haven't done yours yet, I recommend this site. It's free if your income falls within a certain limit, but it's pretty inexpensive even if you fall outside the limit. I don't get a commission or anything for recommending them...I'm just a satisfied customer.)

American Idol: No matter how busy I am, I stop what I'm doing to watch American Idol. I was a little bored with last night's show...I didn't think anyone really picked a very good song. And my usual favorites (Carly, David C.) were just kind of okay. The people that I usually think are just "eh", I thought were a lot better last night. Including Syesha and even (it sort of hurts to say this) Kristy. And what was up with Randy & Simon last night? It was like a "Trading Places" moment. I wish Randy would go back to saying quasi-positive comments and leave the serious criticism to Simon.

Upcoming projects:

I'm working on this quilt for the local community college auction for scholarships. The auction is at the end of the month, so I've got to get going on this.

I've got lots of quilts to finish and several planned quilts that I haven't started yet, but I've been in the mood to crochet lately, so we'll see what happens. I've got a crochet project started already. I wasn't too sure about it, but then my aunt (who doesn't crochet or quilt or anything) came over last week and ooh-ed and aah-ed over it, so now I'm more in love with it. I guess I just needed someone else's stamp of approval (besides my husband's). I'll have pics tomorrow. And yes, I'm writing tomorrow in black and white so-to-speak so that I'll feel more obligated to actually take the d**n photos and post them.