daily life · fabric · Mark Lipinski · quilting · stash busting

What Have I Been Doing?


It would seem that I’ve been really, really busy…given the obvious lack of blogging, but I don’t have much to show for where my time is going.  I have been being much more faithful about squeezing in some time on the Treadclimber, after I get home from work, before I prepare supper, and have lost ten lbs. since the first of the year.  I’m very happy about that, but I’m also where I was when I got stuck last year, and then discouraged.  I’m trying not to do that this year, no matter how slow it is coming off.

The dinner I am cooking tonight might not be conducive to weight loss.  Here it is before going in the oven.  Yum. I like some homemade pizza.

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I have been trying to prepare more of our meals in the evenings.  That eats up a chunk of my free time, along with the workout beforehand. It seems when I add a new activity, something else is sure to fall behind.  Right now, it’s the housework and quilting.  Isn’t is always the housework, though?  Dust…where does it all come from??

I have been doing some reading.  Even though I haven’t taken a single stitch in about a week, I’ve been reading about quilting.  My Quilter’s Home issue came, and my OBW book, for the upcoming class at guild.

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Mark has a pattern for a mini iron & crystal wand keeper, that I really want to try to make.  I’d like to make one larger, also, for my curling iron or flat iron.  There’s also a great scissor review in this issue.

I bought fabric for the OBW quilt.  I mentioned it in my last stash report, but here’s a pic.  I bought it from Knot & Bolts.  I think it will make a cool OBW.

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We aren’t supposed to start any of it til the class.  At the class we are doing the octagon version.  And once I break down and buy some new fabric, for any reason, that seems to be all it takes to get me started.  I will have confessions for this week’s stash report.  I bought another fabric that I thought would make a good OBW, but now that I have it in my possession, the pattern isn’t as large as I thought, so I’m doubtful that it will be successful, but I’m going to try it anyway.  And I’ll try the hexagon version with it.  I hope to work on it before I go to class.  After reading over the book yesterday, I was One Block Wondering in my dreams last night.

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And when I went to checkout, my cart told me I could get XX more yards for the same shipping price. (I’ll not tell how many yards til Sunday!) Well, I had already seen this cutie, and, promptly went back and added those XX yards of it to my cart!

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Love those funky little chickens!

I also read a book that I loved…Same Kind Of Different As Me.  I read it, then read it aloud for my DH.  He loved it, too.  It was a very emotional read, for me.

April will be an even busier month for me.  I have to travel to Austin, with my boss, for a few days, for the Texas Probation Association annual conference.  When I get home, I have some special company coming for the Easter weekend.  The next week, we are off to Lubbock for my son’s district golf tournament, and while we are there, my DH has an appointment with another doctor for his ankle.  Then, depending on how the team does at District, I could possibly be traveling back to Lubbock the next week, for regionals.  I am taking a short break from customer work, til my life slows back down a bit.  I have some quilts in queue, but they aren’t in my possession yet, and I think I will leave it that way til later in May, or possibly June. I haven’t even started the quilting on my 9P & Stripe quilt I have ready.  I have to find my limitations, and learn to work within them, or I might implode.

longarm quilting · quilt top · quilting · quilts · sewing · stash busting

Sunday Stash Report


Wow, I went a whole week between posts.  But it was a busy week with my day job, so there wasn’t much to say.  Not that I could post about, anyway.

I do have changes to report in my stash this week.  I busted 10 yards for backing, and it is just barely going to be big enough for my top.  I knew it would be close, but I really want to use this fabric for the back of this quilt.  It’s flannel, so I think there may have been a bit more shrinkage than I might have had with a regular cotton.

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As you can see, it’s a real tight squeeze on the sides.  I have plenty extra the other direction, though.  I will make it work!

I also ordered 8 yards for a one block wonder class I’m taking next month, for quilt guild.  I tried my best to find something suitable in my stash, but the only two that I thought would work, I did not have enough yardage.  So I had to order some.  It will arrive some time this week, but I’m going to go ahead and count it as incoming today.

So here’s my yearly totals.

  • Incoming Yardage to date: 8 yds.
  • Outgoing Yardage to date:  30.5 yds.
  • Total Stash Busted to date: 22.5 yds.
I also finished the binding on the memorial t-shirt quilt, and made the label.  I just have to attach the label and it will be completely finished.  I was able to use some of the scraps from the first quilt, made of his plaid cotton shirts, in the back of this one.
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I also made some good progress on one of my stash quilts today.  My Boston Commons top.
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Now, I have to decide how I want to quilt my 9P & stripe, that I made the backing for.  It is going on the longarm next! And it’s MINE! Yay!
Have a great week! Try to find time for something you love to do!
longarm quilting · quilt top · quilting · quilts · stash busting

Just Catching Up A Little


I hope everyone had a good weekend! I was going to do a Valentine’s Day post, and just never got around to it.  I also didn’t get around to my stash report yesterday, but it’s unchanged from last week, so no biggie there.  Thanks to everyone who participated in my thread discussion.  I enjoyed reading the comments.  I spent most of Valentine’s Day working on a customer quilt and/or playing with my new IPOD Touch, that my sweetheart gave me for Valentine’s.  My son gave me some candy and an ITunes gift card.  He helped me get it set up, and we went through his song library and transferred what I wanted from his list, and then he taught me how to get my own music.  There are times when it’s really helpful to have a teenager in the house. 🙂

The customer quilt is a rather challenging one for me, as it’s completely outside of my tastes, but perfect for the youngster who will be ending up with it.  Say hello to Spiderman.

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My customer wants “light custom” that includes some spiderwebs. Cross your fingers for me that my interpretation of that meets her expectations.

Of course, yesterday was the Daytona 500, so I watched that.  It’s always kind of a let down when those races that you expect to have an exciting finish, end under a red flag due to rain.  Congratulations to Matt Kenseth.  At least it wasn’t Kyle Busch one of the drivers that I can’t stand that won. 🙂

My son made a new discovery this week that tickled us both.  Starburst came out with FaveReds.  A bag of all the yummy “red” flavors, with none of the yucky ones in there.

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Hope you have a good week ahead! I need to go spend some quality time with Spiderman.

fabric · longarm quilting · quilt top · quilting · quilts · stash busting

Stash Quilting Report, 2-8-09


I used 2.75 yds adding the borders to my 2nd 9P & stripe quilt.  I had zero yards come in.

  • Incoming Yardage to date: 0 yds.
  • Outgoing Yardage to date:  20.5 yds.
  • Total Stash Busted to date: 20.5 yds.

This will be the next top of my own to go on the longarm.  I have some customer work coming this week, that will go first, however. I think I am seeing some crosshatching & some feather.  Not sure what else.  What do you think?  I even toyed with the idea of just doing a panto on this one, but I think I’ll stick with custom.  I intend to use this quilt in our bedroom, as our fall quilt.000_8157

embroidery · freehand quilting · longarm quilting · machine quilting · stash busting

Sunday Stash Report, 2-1-09


I used 1/4 yard up making labels this week, and 1/4 yard making guild name tags for myself and my friend.  So my official “out” for this week is only 1/2 yard.  However, I am plugging away on stash quilts I have going, and soon should have some big numbers to post.

YTD totals:

  • Incoming Yardage to date: 0 yds.
  • Outgoing Yardage to date:  17.75 yds.
  • Total Stash Busted to date: 17.75 yds.

I have border and backing fabric for the 2nd of my 9P & stripe tops, in the dryer as I type.  I pulled this  yummy Robyn Pandolph flannel from my stash, for the backing. My current plan is that this will be the next quilt of my own to land on the longarm.

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I’ve been sewing on my Boston Commons top, during my lunch hours, and have all the end triangles sewn to the 72 strips.  I have started sewing them into the big rows.  I am surprised at how quickly this is actually going together. Please ignore that I haven’t pressed the seams yet.  That is why it looks wonky.  It isn’t really.
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I also got the memorial t-shirt quilt quilted.  Here is a snippet of the freehand quilting on the back.  I will post a pic of the whole quilt after I get it completely finished.
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I have to say that t-shirt quilting is not my most favorite.  I feel like my machine is moving through sludge when I hit the shirt areas, and I had some thread breaking issues. That said, the quilt came out nice, and I know the family will love it.
My friend Betty and I needed name tags to wear to our guild meetings.  I loaded a small “quilt sandwich” on my longarm, quilted it up, and then used my embroidery machine to finish our tags.  They came out cute.  I finished mine out by just stitching a satin stitch edge around, in the lighter green thread, after I took this pic.
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Such a small project, but it still took me almost three hours to do these.  I enjoyed it, though.  And while I had my embroidery machine out, I made labels for two quilts that I made for my Mom, but gave them to her before I had the labels on.  She reminded me recently that I still hadn’t brought the labels to stitch on.  So next time we go to visit, I have some labeling to do!  🙂  One of her labels took 99 minutes to stitch out.  The other was almost an hour.  Embroidery is fun, but it’s not fast.  I love that I can work on other things at the same time, though.  Good job to my hubby for getting me the stand alone machine, rather than the embroidery upgrade for my Aurora.
Tomorrow starts another week at the day job.  I hope y’all have a great week!
fabric · pretty fabric · quilt top · quilting · quilts · stash busting

Stash Report, 1-25-09


This week my fabric busted is gifted fabric.  3 yards for a birthday gift to a guild member, the one who gave me that awesome reindeer ornament, and another 3/4 yds. to another recipient, and another 1.5 yds to another recipient.  But the last two don’t know it yet, so I won’t say who.  I did start that little applique block of the month, but I haven’t figured out how to count that yet.  I had to use bits of two fat quarters, but the rest I am using scraps.  I have a feeling I will be using the rest of those two fat quarters in the project, but will know more when we get the next block.  If I use more of them, then I will count them as busted, in a later report.  At least they are off the shelf.

So my report for this week is:

  • 0 yds. in this week
  • 5.25 yds out this week
  • 0 yds. in ytd
  • 17.5 yds. out ytd
  • total busted ytd is 17.5 yds

I have made some more progress on the stash projects I started right after Christmas.  I cut up some more of the fat quarters for my Gracie’s Star, and they are all ready to sew into blocks.

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I have these left to cut up.

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I cut my Kona white into these.

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Started sewing them onto these.

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I had to go ahead and sew one corner together, just to make sure it was going to work.

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I’m really enjoying my time spent working with these fabrics.  I love them!  I hope to enter this quilt in some shows.  At least some smaller, local area shows.  And I may even get brave and send it somewhere like MQS next year, to get some judge’s comments.  We’ll see.

longarm quilting · machine quilting · pretty fabric · quilt top · quilting · stash busting

Stash Report, 1-18-09


This will be another short post.  I’ve been busy, but just don’t have a lot to show for it.  I used 3.25 yards of stash this week in my guild project.  Year to date totals:

  • Incoming Yardage to date: 0 yds.
  • Outgoing Yardage to date:  12.25 yds.
  • Total Stash Busted to date: 12.25 yds.

I’m still going in the right direction.  Yay! 

I was coming down with a head cold earlier this week.  Friday and Saturday, I was not feeling so great.  I did get a customer top loaded yesterday, and today, I got all the SID done.  Joanna, these are scrumptious fabrics you chose.  I love them!  I’m going to enjoy looking at them while I quilt this. (Oh, don’t pay any attention to that snippett of football fabric you can see pinned to the leader…it’s not part of the quilt.  It’s just there so I have enough extra backing to work with it on my machine.  Thank you for adding that to make my job easier, Joanna!)

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I said something about ordering some more thread yesterday, and my husband told me that he was planning on buying me thread for our anniversary, which is coming up March 1st.  Yippee!  A gift I will love and love using!  A longarm quilter, or any machine quilter for that matter, can’t have too much thread, now can they?!  I’m sure looking forward to that shopping spree.

Have a great week!

freehand quilting · longarm quilting · stash busting

Stash Report, January 11, 2009


My stash report is very boring this week.  Nothing new in, nothing new out.  As I stated in my previous post, it was a stressful week last week, between my son having hives, and getting caught up in some stupid drama at work.  And tomorrow starts a new work week.  I hope it’s a better one.  I’m usually pretty good at keeping up walls, but occasionally let those down a bit.  The events of last week have me feeling it’s time to reinforce walls again.  I’m feeling in “retreat & retract mode”.

In the meantime, I’ll give you a sneak peek of how I spent 5.5 hours of my Saturday.  This cutie also belongs to my friend Betty, the owner of the previously posted Pumpkin table runner.

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fabric · quilting · quilts · sewing · stash busting

The First Stash Report of 2009


  • Incoming Yardage to date: 0 yds.
  • Outgoing Yardage to date:  9 yds.
  • Total Stash Busted to date: 9 yds.

And we’re off! A whole new year of busting that  stash has begun.  I’ve been working away on some new projects, and preparing to do some more work on some older WIPS. 

Stash busted that I am counting for this week is as follows:

5.25 yards finishing up the commissioned memorial t-shirt top, preparing the backing, and the binding. 

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3.75 yard in 30’s repros. for the Boston Commons quilt.

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I also got 4 more stars made for Gracie’s Star today.  I am not going to add this to my totals til the stars are all made.  This is a queen size top, but when I had the stars laid out on the bed today, I realized that I could easily make it big enough for my kingsize bed by adding a border.  So, I may do just that.  This one is going to use up some stash!

I got quite a lot of pressing done this weekend, too. In addition to pressing the fabric for the t-shirt top, and the fabric for my star blocks as I go along, I pressed 10 yards of backing for one of my 9P & stripes, I pressed 5 yards of Kona white for my Boston Commons, and I pressed the border fabric for the other 9P & stripe quilt.

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The white is a fabric I will likely restock in my stash after I use it.  It’s a good staple to have on hand, because when you need it, you need it now…and it’s not like I can just run out to a fabric shop and pick some more up. I try to keep some of both white and black. 

I ended up with 15 finishes for 2008.

  1. Jill’s fleece blanket (customer job)
  2. Julie’s fleece blanket (customer job)
  3. Wild Onion Jacket for Mom
  4. Megan’s fleece blanket (wedding gift)
  5. Harold fleece blanket (thank you gift)
  6. Commissioned Full-size log cabin for Parkers
  7. Carrie’s Pillow Shams
  8. Ribbon Taffy
  9. Greg’s Courthouse Steps quilt
  10. Teresa & Rick’s fleece blanket (wedding gift)
  11. Betty’s fleece blanket for Doug (customer job)
  12. Commissioned memorial quilt #1 for the Martinez family
  13. Pillow cases for my aunt
  14. Betty’s bleece blanket for Howard (customer job)
  15. Daddy’s Log Cabin

And my final stash reporting for 2008 was:

  • Incoming Yardage to date: 200 yds.
  • Outgoing Yardage to date:  120 yds.
  • Total Stash Busted to date: <80> yds.

I’m already having fun quilting away in 2009.  I guess that’s it for this week.  Can’t think of anything else!  Tomorrow will start my first full week back at work since the holidays and my vacation started.  It’s going to be hard to get back in the groove.  Have a good one!