Sewing Satisfaction

It feels like it has been a very productive weekend!  And I was SO ready for some uninterrupted time at my machine.  It's been a loonnnggg tough week.  Ever feel like life is throwing a lot of fast balls at you at once?  This has been one of those weeks....very busy at work, my kids are both going through tough times right now, it's HOT (too hot for June if you ask me!)  Whew, I just feel "wrung out" as my grandma says.  Like a wash rag, you know?  So, Friday afternoon I told my husband that I had plans to sew all weekend.  Cause I knew that some time at the sewing machine creating things would help the world make sense to me again.  And just as I suspected, it worked.  And I got a LOT done.  Ready to face the world again, and ever so grateful for a kind and loving husband who supports me each and every day  no matter what is going on in his life.  Not sure how I got so lucky, but I'm taking it!

Friday night I came home and finished this block for my virtual quilt bee,

It's off in the mail to my bee partner tomorrow.  I had to email and ask her for more fabric last week, because I got confused which fabric went where when I was cutting late one night and cut the last piece of pink fabric into two 3.5" squares....oops.  She graciously sent me more and I finished it just in the nick of time.

Saturday morning, I headed off to the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild's Saturday Sew.  I have been to several of these and have so much fun and always get a lot done.  Friday night after finishing the bee block, I cut out the squares for the pink and yellow quilt in the picture below.  Saturday, I got the blocks all sewn together and finished the quilt top this afternoon.  Tonight, I got them both layered up for quilting.  They are for a friend's grandchildren, I can't wait to give them to her.

And are you ready for this???? I had all of these fabrics in my stash, so they will qualify for the countdown on the challenge.  Two more down, Yeah!  (well, as soon as they are quilted and bound anyway).  I also finished this tote (pattern by Anna Maria Horner called The Multi Tasker Tote)

The embroidery on the front is by Anna Maria too.  She has a whole design disk of patterns and projects.  Too cool!  Not a bad weekend, if you ask me.  Lots of time sewing, hanging out with friends, and realizing that life may have it's ups and downs, but there is good in every day.

Friday Night Sewing

I am looking forward to the Friday Night Sew-In tomorrow night.  I am trying to decide what I feel like working on.  I have so many projects I want to be working on!  The list is so long and I am paralyzed with indecision.  Crippled by it.  Do you ever get like that?  I come up to my sewing room to work a little and end up sitting in the chair just looking at all the projects I have going at one time!  Sometimes I even turn in little circles picking up one project, putting it down and grabbing another one.  I'm so weird sometimes!  So, tomorrow night I think I will start a whole new project.......I want to join in on the Crazy Mom Quilts Quilt-A-Long #5 so I think I will cut my fabrics for that and sew the strips for week #2.  (yep, I'm a week behind already!) I think I'll use this lovely stack of Nicey Jane for the quilt.  I just love the soft colors in this line of fabric.  And doesn't it match my cool retro phone????

My other option would be to start a new project with these cool orange charms.....

My friend Lisa (over at Vintage Modern Quilts) gave these to me and I have been dying to sew something up with them.  I have a few more orange and white fabrics to mix in with these, but I am still undecided on the pattern I want to use.  Oh, well.....I guess I'll decide tomorrow night what to start on.

If you are interested in joining me on the virtual sew-in, head on over to  Crafty Vegas Mom and sign up!  It's going to be a lot of fun and she's doing a cool give away to boot.  See you tomorrow night.

Creative Juices are Flowing

I am getting so much inspiration and information from the eCourse I am taking over at Kelly Rae Roberts site.  I have never done an eCourse before, but I have to say I'm really enjoying this.  She has put together some amazing information on how to nurture a creative side to your life.  There are some wonderful business tips in there as well.  But the really amazing thing is the sense of community that is forming between all of the participants in the course.  I am really in awe when I think about the people I have met since beginning to blog back in December.  And it seems that everywhere I turn I meet more people with similar goals and interests.  And they are all so friendly and so open to share knowledge and ideas.  It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside!

I signed up today for a Friday Night Sew In - its virtual!  How cool is that?  If you're interested in joining in on the fun, you can check it out here.  It's next Friday (June 18).

Okay, I have stayed up WAY too late every night this week, so I am bound and determined to get to bed before midnight tonight.  So, I'm signing off for now.  Busy, very creative activities planned for the weekend, so more posting to follow soon.  I'll leave you with my completed embroidery project....so fun and I think it's going to be very cute with a little cotton skirt for summer, what do you think?  I think I'll make a skirt out of Nicey Jane-Picnic Bouquet..I picked the colors for the embroidery from a cut of that fabric.....

Summer

I have been holding off posting because I didn't really have any new pictures to post about.  I can get hung up on the idea that I need to have pictures of projects I am working in order to write on my blog.  I think I sometimes forget that I started my blog for me.  As a place to document the journey that is my life.  And I love my life!  It is the "busy" season at my office and we are working long hours and it is stressful and chaotic.  We have a very short number of weeks to get a lot of work done.  There are deadlines and missing a deadline can be extremely costly so everyone is worried and snippy and occasionally there are blow-ups.  It is bearable to us all because it is short-lived and the rest of the year is a very slow and relaxed pace.  Shorter hours, no chaos, no blow-ups.  I have had jobs in the past that were like the summer is with this job, only all 365 days of the year.  This is better than that.

Soon, before I can blink, it will be the end of summer and the craziness will be gone and I'll have much more time to sew and create again.  That makes me happy.  Don't get me wrong, I am finding (making) time to sew even in this busy time.  I played more with my embroidery machine this past weekend.  (Anna Maria Horner has some new machine embroidery designs available from Westminster Fabrics.)  And helped a friend go "test drive" some sewing machines.  She wants to learn to sew and this makes me very happy.  And I gave a private sewing lesson on Sunday to a very new quilter.  It was nice and very rewarding and I think we both had a lot of fun......

Here's a shot of one of the designs I did on a simple white t-shirt....

I want to leave you with a very "summery" pic of my granddaughter taken several years ago on the 4th of July.  She had a new puppy and was giving him some lovin...she's 8 now and SO grown up!

Another project

A quick post tonight, because I finished another project in the Spring to Finish Challenge over at Tallgrass Prairie Studio.  I had listed three items in that challenge and was only able to complete two of them.  I just finished the Schoolhouse Tunic by Sew Liberated.  It was a lot of fun and it even FITS!  I have to admit I'm a little surprised.  I haven't sewn clothes for myself in many years (maybe 15 or 20).  I have sewn clothes for kids a few times lately, but nothing for me.  I am fairly short  and us short girls don't pull off tunics over jeans very well, so I lengthened the tunic and made it into a little short dress.  I have worn it twice since I finished it on Friday.  Yeah!

My other project I finished for the challenge was the quilt for my friends wedding that I blogged about
here.  I had also listed that I wanted to quilt a top that my husband had pieced.  I didn't get to that project, but I did get another top pieced on the quilt retreat I recently took.  Maybe I can still count that as a finished item.....and that quilt will definitely count towards the challenge that my husband issued earlier this year.  You remember, the challenge that started with my blog?  I hope to have that one quilted in the next couple of weeks and it will go on the completed list.  Cooking along on those UFO's.......right now I'm off to do my homework for the eCourse I mentioned last night.  Happy dreams, everyone.