Quilt Ready for Delivery No. 3

"Cars go Vroom" is the name of this quilt. Same format, different subject. Enjoy the photos!

Happy Quilting!

Quilt Ready for Delivery No. 2

Quilt No. 2 is called "Captain of the Team". I love the little shoes. I found the coloring page on-line, but they didn't look right. So, I got on line again and looked up the Converse logo and added the star on the shoe. Now it looks right!

Again, just like quilt No. 1 I've done lately, four blocks and a wonky piano key border. Kind of formulaic, but it works. Stay tuned for Quilt No. 3.

Happy Quilting!

Quilt Ready for Delivery No. 1

This is one of the "semi-mass-produced" quilts that I have been trying to complete for the now thirteen (yes, you heard correct: 13) babies that I need to create quilts for. Two of them are for a girlfriend of my daughter and she has done some of the work on them. The balance of the eleven are all co-workers that have had or are having babies. Must be something in the water.

This quilt is named "I <3 U" (or I heart you) and is for a co-worker's daughter  who turned 1 year old last month. OK, yes, absolutely, I am a little behind on the job, but they will be catching up here quickly as I finally got a fire lit under my quilting patootie. I had some issues getting started and finding inspiration; there has been a lot of knitting and then the remodeling efforts.

These are easy fast quilt tops for me to construct, even with "quilters block". Notice, however, that it is very similar to "Is There Enough Pink in This Quilt?" I do need to come up with something a little different or every little girl born to someone in my office will have pretty much the same quilt. I had the airplane idea, but I have to come up with something else new. Ugh, why can't I think?


Happy quilting!

The "Yet-to-be-Named" Quilt

I am slowly working my way through the blanket stitching on the airplanes of this quilt. This is the quilt that I mentioned the other day that will be for the baby brother of the recipient of "Bunny Bright". I have been through a long list of quilt names, but have not settled on any. How about "Flying in Formation", "Air Traffic Controlled", or "Come Fly With Me"? Do you have any suggestions?

 Some of these fabrics have been in my stash for years and have never been used. This one I remember purchasing with one featuring safety pins (which I cannot find) to make a sewing bag. But since the bag is long gone off of my to do list, I might as well use it on a baby quilt. I love fun and funky fabrics on baby quilts! (Note the carrot fabric airplane above!)

 This fabric is a left over from a baby quilt that I did for a great niece
several years ago. It made a fun and funky striped border then and now it is a fun and funky striped airplane.

This airplane is being flown by a turtle! He'll never break any speed records. Again, left-over fabric from a baby quilt of long ago.

I have not yet decided what I will do for the borders on this quilt. I do have plenty of fabric of some of the airplanes left, so I may do each side as a different fabric just to tweak up the level of fun on this quilt.

Happy quilting!

Project 2016 -- Florida or Bust: Bathroom Makeover - The Beginning!

This isn't a picture of my work. This is the inspiration for my planned tile job in the guest bathroom shower. I have several sheets of tile left over from my kitchen makeover so I found this design at my local Menards store which features the same size tile. I bought off white ("Biscuit") field tile and the tile with the diamond cut outs as trim. Now if I ever get to the point of installing them, I would be happy.

Unfortunately, something always goes wrong in "Remodel Land". I found that the tile that I was removing was attached with some kind of construction adhesive which meant that the tile was not getting removed very easily. In fact, when I got a little past this point, as I chiseled away at the tile, it was actually removing portions of green board with the tile and I realized that this was not going to be a quick tile job as I was going to have to replace the green board, too.

So, now this is what it looks like. I had to go right down to the studs to make sure that I will get a good end result. My trusty dusty brother-in-law will be arriving next weekend to help me re-install green board.

I have only installed dry wall once about 25 years ago and I do not want to rely on my memory on how to tape and mud joints. If it was any other place other than the shower, I might actually try to do it without experience, but a shower is not the place to earn your stripes. Water damage is not fun.

If my brother-in-law can just get me back to complete walls, I have no problem getting the tile up. After living in Florida where everything is tiled, I must have tiled at least an acre worth of tile in my life time.

Happy demolition!

Newest Baby Quilt

I was able to get another baby quilt top completed this week. I have named it: "Is There Enough Pink in This Quilt?" It is along the same lines as my other semi-mass produced quilts. This is for a "co-worker" in our Florida offices who has been a great help to me in my work. She is also the person for whom I knitted the cutest baby dress last summer. Wonderfully, I found out that there is yet another baby due in my office late in this year. I gotta get another job! LOL!

I am also working on another boy quilt that is not of the mass produced group. This one is for the newborn brother of the recipient of "Bunny Bright" that I put together a couple of years ago before I even started this blog. "Bunny Bright" was probably my very favorite baby quilt of all time and was one of the first quilts that I did using online coloring pages as patterns. I even used a set of alphabet coloring pages as the template for the title.

The new baby boy's quilt will feature airplanes and even has some of the same fabrics that are in "Bunny Bright". I will post photos of it later in the weekend when I have gotten a bit more accomplished on it.

In the mean time, Happy Quilting!!

Knitting a zombie: No guts, no glory | OregonLive.com

Another interesting knitted object turned up in my in box today! This blogger knitted her own zombie after reviewing a copy of Knit Your Own Zombie  a book by Fiona Goble. While I am not really interested in actually knitting a zombie of my own. I think that I wouldn't mind having the book -- just for the novelty of it.

ENJOY the article and Happy Reading!

Knitting a zombie: No guts, no glory | OregonLive.com:

'via Blog this'

Quilting Weekend

After my guilt finally caught up with me, I was able to make some progress on the languishing baby quilts. I got binding attached to all four of them and can now carry them back and forward on the train and work on getting the hand sewing done.

I also started doing the machine blanket stitch on another quilt. I would like to get two more put together and shipped off for quilting by the end of May. Once those are done, that will only leave me with 3 more to do! (Unless of course co-workers keep making babies, LOL!)

I also took a short trip to my local quilt shop and went straight to the sale rack (it is hard to ignore all the pretty colors on the way) and came away with a nice selection. Stripes are one thing that is always on the sale rack and I love to use stripes to make bias binding for my quilts -- the brighter the better. The owner of the store commented the prices were so good that she was paying me to take some of the fabrics!

Here is a picture of the stack of fabrics I brought home. I used the red and orange wavy stripe already in one of the quilts already. You can see it above on the second quilt with the basketball on it. Along with that I got a green stripe, a pale peach stripe, and an orange and yellow wavy plaid to use as binding. I also got some fun fabrics featuring carrots, gears and flowers. All for under $30.00! I love saving money.

Happy Quilting!

Very Slow Progress in the Knitting Department

Although I have a handful of projects on the needles, I just haven't gotten very much done in the last few weeks -- for several reasons: Project 2016 took a lot of my time and energy; visiting my family last weekend; extra work taken home for train riding fun (ugh!); a large dose of guilt that I shouldn't be knitting since I don't want to finish the 4 almost done baby quilts and just plain laziness.*

I still have about 4 inches of knitting to get my skirt long enough;



I have only gotten to the point where I begin the heel turn in my socks;





my scarf has gotten the most attention in the last week as I finally got around to plying more of the yarn that I dyed, but my shawl is languishing after a horrible train accident -- the train had a rough stop and I lost several lace stitches with out a lifeline (double ugh)!

*I have to tell you, that after writing this I was so wracked with guilt that I spent the next 2 1/2 hours trimming and squaring up two quilts and attaching the binding to one quilt. I will show you more on the quilts later.

Happy binding!