An inventory and a VERY lofty goal

I miss my machine.
They said it should be
done in about a month.
So while it is gone, I have
picked up one of my
cross stitching WIP's.
I have a whole box of them tucked in Ziploc bags in my crafts closet. I keep my quilting WIP's in plastic Rubbermaid tubs in there too so I can stack them all together.
Today though instead of working on anything I decided to check what I have to work on. I am suddenly realizing there
are only 4 more months
of this year left. And while
I keep accumulating new
projects I am slow to get any actually done. The
"fresh and clean" is five
years old, the Autumn piece is about 3 years old, and the "Daughters Love" is over a year old.

They are all pretty large cross stitches. Sorry for the bad pictures of them, I just pulled them out of their bags and hoops to see where I was on them. I wonder if I should start on the one I am closest to finishing or the one that will take me the longest. Right now I have been working on the August piece, which is probably the furthest from being done.

I am doing a little better on quilts, I only have three right now and they were all started this year at least. So my new goal for the year is to finish all six projects before the end of the year. That way I can start the new year fresh and clean. It will feel good to have them cleared out of the closet. I like each of them so much and they deserve to be finished and enjoyed not sitting in a box for another year.

My quilts I want to finish are "spring rose" the pink and green one, "hopping along" obviously the frog one and probably the one I am closest to finishing, it will probably end up as a lap quilt, and "Pink Pinwheels" which will be for my daughters full sized bed. I am starting to wonder if it is crazy to try and finish 6 projects in under four months. But I think starting next year "finished" will motivate me (and hopefully keep me from starting anything new!)

"Spring Rose"

obviously I need to finish some more sashings

"Hopping Along"

I think the official title is Infrognito on the pattern

"Pink Pinwheels"

S.O.S. = Sewing-machine on Strike

So a little frustrated today, I had all morning to work on my quilt, and planned to sew a few more blocks but my sewing machine wanted to take the day off apparently. I think it is something with the bobbin, every 5th stitch or so was loose. So I spent most of my morning cleaning out the bottom of my sewing machine (ewww how does all the fuzz get in there!) and reading my owners manual for the first time (besides the very quick glance at it when I first bought my machine). I still have not fixed the problem though. The rest of my morning was spent fusing petals on and cutting out more petals.

Flower with mixed petals....

While cutting and fusing petals though I changed my mind on the lay-out, and am going to do mine a little different than the magazines. I think I like the flowers with the petals all from the same fabric rather than doing 8 different petals on each flower. I am not sure and will probably still use the ones I have already done with the mixed fabrics. But I think having it all the same shows off each fabric better.
Flower with the same petals....

Ones with different petals...

The very top pic is the blocks with same petals

Pinkalicous

I laid out my petals tonight for the pinwheels quilt, with the thought that I would count them to see how many flowers I could make. Well there was so many that I have resorted to just guesstimating (let the petals fall where they may)! I have 20 different fabrics, with about 15 petals of each, and each flower takes 8 petals so.....I have about 300 petals or 37.5 flowers (yes I had to pull out my calculator for that one). A full size quilt takes 56 flowers so I will probably need to cut a few more (about152 more petals) uuuggghhh :( The lighting wasn't that good at my dining room table, it made my pinks look orangey but I tried to divide them up into light pinks and dark pinks so I can alternate flowers on the quilt.

I cut some more petals tonight too while watching my new favorite kids movie "Coraline". Any mother who has ever had a sass-mouthed 6 years old tell them "you aren't my real mother" will appreciate the movie. And yes I am her real mother and have the belly and boobs to prove it! Anyways in the movie Coraline finds another world with a doting "other mother" who is perfect until she tries to sew buttons onto Coraline's eyes. At first I worried it would be too dark for my sassy 6 year old, but it's a semi-scary story told in a very cute/non nightmare inducing way.

Trying something new tonight

This is my first time at paper cutting, I checked out a book from the library after seeing some amazing ones online. I think the fairy turned out really cute, the moon wound up lumpy though from the glue so I will have to fix it before I hang it. It only took me 30 minutes to do and I didn't even have to read the directions (i'm a visual learner). Just copied the picture from the book, (I free handed it though, no tracing) and cut it out. I think I am most proud though that I avoided any bleeding fingers!

Family

I am home sick from work tonight, due to a bout of food sickness possibly brought about by husbands cooking. Anyway between swigs of pepto bismo I managed to sew some more squares together for the pink pinwheels quilt. This is only half way done for a full size quilt. To date this is the biggest quilt I have done. But I love all the little pink petals that have yet to be sewn on, you can just see the one I did in the top left corner.
Last night my sister came over. Her and my mom have never believed in the saying "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all". I think saying something nice might actually burn their tongues, or at least give someone else a heart attack. So I had just finished cleaning the kitchen, and she still found something wrong (the bamboo plant by the window didn't have enough water). Then on her way out she saw the little bluebird pillow I had made, and I proudly told her I just finished it. But instead of saying how cute it was she told me it was too fluffy for a door pillow. If I didn't already know that this is just how she is it would hurt my feelings. Instead I am just amazed how they never find something nice to say. I guess you can't change your family though, and have to just love them how they are.

There were directions?!

This is my latest fresh start. It's out of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine June 05 issue, it's called "Pink Pinwheels". And the little girl in me adored it at first sight, so I am making it for one of my own little girls. I have a bad habit though of looking at the pictures more than I look at the directions in all the wonderful quilt magazines. So my first mistake was not paying enough attention while cutting out the petals. Half my petals go one way and half go the other, so I divided them up into separate "flower" piles and will just say it was inspired by nature, no two flowers alike. My other mistake is in the picture on the left. Somehow during my frenzy of cutting I missed a selvage so now have the fabric name included in my quilt (but why would the call such a pretty pink "basic gray"?). We went to the quilt museum in Paducah Ky last summer (AMAZING!!!), and there was this gorgeous Amish grapevine quilt. The little note next to it said the Amish always included an imperfection in their quilts because only God could make perfection. Well the imperfection in their quilt took me twenty minutes to find (one tiny missing grape that didn't even look missing). But I like the idea that life is never perfect, so a quilt shouldn't try to be either!

Another confession

This little pillow (finished about 15 minutes ago) took me 3 hours + to make! Math was not my strongest subject, and I had to re-cut and re-rip every little seam in here at least twice. You wouldn't think it could be that hard. So now this little pillow is proudly hanging on my front doorknob (bluebird of happiness) where I know little hands will be yanking and tugging at it by early morn tomorrow. But for tonight it is a clean and finished project, by next week it may very well be a doll pillow or at worst a doggy's chew toy.