It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It' beginning to look a lot like Christmas - over at SewCalGal. 

Nothing I love more, than a great blog hop, to get all our holiday juices flowing! We all know that Sew Cal Gal does it better than anyone , now don't we? Thanks for having us again this year. We love you!!
                                 :-)


 I would like to share this quilt with you.

Kind of bright isn't it? 

Nothing beats a "fun" quilt for the holiday season.

This beautiful pattern is Timeless Treasures "Springfield Stars".

It seems that they have taken it down from their website. I can't even find it in the archives!  :-(     Boo Hoo.

The original pattern was this beautiful pastel floral,

But I had this bright silly Christmas print! What is a girl supposed to do???

 You would never recognize this pattern now. 

:-)

This year was my year to use what is in my sewing room instead of rushing out and buying more fabric. You know the prices of cotton have sky rocketed...

OK, so I am not at 100% yet, but I am working on it.  (Baby steps - baby steps)

:-)

And I have to tell you, with those high prices, you don't want to waste any of your precious fabric. There was some waste with the flying geese units on this one, but did it go into the trash????   NOOOOOOOO  Remember those scraps cost the same as all the rest of the fabric, so hang on to em.

I've got some fun things you can do with them, coming up in February.

hint hint

But that is another post all in itself. I wish I could tell you more, but you know what they say... If I told you I would have to kill you!!  :-)  :-)

Just remember don't throw a thread away.

Really, I mean it.

Your gonna be very surprised... February isn't that far away!

So on that note, I want to leave you with this thought...

If I, a visual person, who finds thinking outside the box a challenge can do it, you can too.

So grab a pattern, something from your stash, and see what treasure you can create.

Oh yeah, be sure to show us. You know we all want to see,

it's that visual thing again! 

What are you waiting for...

GO...

SEW...

:-)

And have a blessed Holiday Season!

Now is probably not the time to ask ...

But I am going to anyway.

Last week I had a customer quilt to do, and she insisted that I use a white fleece instead of batting. She provided it all, and I did what I was told.  My question is, have any of you ever done this??? Is there a down side I should have known about??  My machine didn't mind it at all, and while it's a bit stiffer than it would be with an 80/20 batting, it seemed just fine! It would be a great way to make use of fleece when they have those fantastic clearance sales.

Don't let that "Murphy Monster Cat" deceive you, while she thought it was all about her, she was no help with this project at all!  Darn cat!  :-)

So, I would love to hear your input for the next time I come across this. If I ever do!

:-)
Thanks

Thanksgiving

I have entered my Harvest Pumpkin quilt in the "Weekly Themed Quilt Contest" over at the Quilting Gallery. You can click HERE to check out the entries and please do vote while your there. There are some beautiful choices!  Voting ends on at 11:59 tonight!

Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving!

Holiday projects underway!

                                              Whoop Whoop!! 
                         Can you believe it's not Dec 20th yet, and I actually
                              have my Christmas projects underway???
                                              Who'd a thunk!

                           With having some time off work for a change,
                                       I chose to make the best of it.
                              This week I finished 4, yes 4 projects.
                                         Happy Dance Happy Dance!!

                                                                               

This one was one of the most fun things I have ever done. A race track quilt. All machine embroidered and done in the hoop.

What makes it even cooler is the bridges/overpasses

 and the car wash that your cars can drive thru!

These are stitched into the quilt on one side and attached with velcro on the other.

That way when you want to store the quilt, you just release them and they lay flat!

How ingenious is that?

But it gets even better... Pockets in the bottom that you can store your cars in, and they button close.

Now, I must admit that this is for my son, who is almost 30. Yes you read it right, 30.  He is my racing son, who collects Hot Wheels and love the "Cars" movies. So I just couldn't help myself. Mr Moosestash thought it was really cute, if we had grand kids, but he was a bit confused over it being juniors! What can I say, if I have no grands, then I have to treat my kids like children. It's a rule written somewhere I am pretty sure!

I even found the perfect backing...

So if your interested, this is a My Fair Lady design. I saw her booth at the HMQS show in Salt Lake City this year, and WOW does she have some great things. Best yet, they are easy to stitch, no million stitch designs, and they go together fairly quickly. The 56 blocks in this, only took a couple of days to stitch out.

You have to see the fabulous photo albums for babies and the calendars she has.

 They will knock your socks off!

Now I am off to shop for cars... to fill the pockets with of course!

  Note my yellow-orange car in the photos. It's Grem from the new Cars movie.

You see my first car was a Grem... It was really cool! Purple, (wild plum actually) had a sun roof and  orange, green and blue plaid seats.
I bought it right off the show room floor for $2795.00 and my payments were $69.72 a month.     Now does that date me or what!!

Even scarier, is how I remember the details on the price and payments all these years later!

Ahhhh remember the days!

Gas was .25 a gallon too.

Now I am depressed!  :-)

Alexander Henry Love Affair

                                    You know I promised,
                                           and here it is
The secret to my relationship with that witty and wonderful Alexander Henry!  You all might think the "Can't Believe it's Not Butter Man", is the hottest guy around, but I beg to disagree. For me it's Alex, oh dear Alex!!  :-) 

I brag all the time about Alexander and his delightfully fun designs. After all, who else can come up with half naked construction guys, we all love, or those Northwoods Bombshells scantily clad, and in the same breath come up with those crazy Ghastlies?? 

While I wanted to be disappointed, that there wasn't some hunky "better than butter" like man doing the designing, I  learned that it's actually a collective team, Marc, Phillip and Nicole de Leon. We know they are truly gifted artists, but how DO they come up with those delightful ideas??













I of course can't seem to stop myself from doing something completely outrageous with them.
There are just so many fun things  you can do!

Heavy Equipment...

makes a great wonky log cabin quilt. What better than the hunk on it?









Or this shirtless guys can easily be added to a bathtub, and make a very special towel set for that someone special!!  :-)

Then there are those Great Outdoors Girls.  One of my boys favorites.  They have pillow cases made from them. Nothing like sleeping with those bombshells. But wait, boxers shorts came along, and I was making them for not only my boys but their friends! Do most moms have photos of the kids friends in under ware???  

Now if you make boxers for a guy, it's a rule that you make them for his wife too!  Which lead to this...

And yes wife is pregnant with twins, but with those hunky "Twin Peaks" boys on,  (not the goofballs standing with her) she was sure smiling! Or does she just think we are a bunch of idiots?????

It was all fun and games until youngest decided to make ME a commemorative memory quilt of the under ware rebellion for Christmas. He has never sewn and had never used my machine, which is not nearly as bad as living down this image...

Oh yeah, the great outdoors guy making a quilt. Something his friends will ha-rang him about, for years to come!  :-)








But you gotta admit, it is pretty good for a newbie quilter!
And it proudly hangs in my sewing cave.

                                                                          

The boxer rebellion was just getting started."All I Want for Christmas" Boys! Now that was a great gag gift at Christmas, for a friend of mine. If you stitch down the fly, it's perfect for us gals!

                                                                                                           Can you say hubba hubba??? These "Look of Love" boys have some potential. My coveted yard of it is still in my stash, awaiting for that stroke of genius project to do justice to it!

"Ready for Action" boys. My friend made a tote bag for a fire fighters wife from this. It was quite the rage in his department, I am sure!

"Wheels on Fire" was perfect for a memory quilt of my son restoring his race car. With "Phil's Drive In" as the backing.

Muscle Cars, made for a perfect  focus fabric for a BQ quilt for that racing son of mine. Yes, he is the one who did not want any quilts from me. He was kind of sick of seeing quilts everywhere, until of course he saw his new one with matching dust ruffle and pillows.

These girls have made for a Halloween that has never been the same for some guys. Boxers of course! What else  :-)

Astro Girls Pinups!

Safely tucked away in my fabulous fabric finds. I just may never use them but I do love to take them out and look at them.  Plot against my next victim, of some outrageous project!!  :-)

You all remember the tribute to the UPS Man. I never got any of that.  So sad :-(

So Alex, as you see, you have brought great joy to our household.

Now I do ask, what delicious things do you see in our future?

I am waiting!!

:-)

Love you! 

Behind the seams, oops I mean scenes!

I haven't been posting as often lately, but that's because I have been burning the midnight oil getting some projects done. There is so much to share, that I don't know where to start.

First off, I have not forgotten about my "Love Affair with Alexander Henry" post I promised. It's just getting a few finishing touched done on it!  :-) It will be ready for reading by the end of the week..

But until then, I have to show you what I have been working on!  :-)

I was asked to do some wall hangings to replace pictures at a rental condo on the ski slope at Keystone Colorado. What an honor for me! I started off with a pattern from Granola Girl that has been in my pattern stash for a very long time. We needed the quilt to actually cover the breaker box, so I lengthened it by adding the Colorado Rocky Mountain High. Just perfect for the location! In addition I used ultra suede for the foot prints and the soles and tops of the boots. It has a great dimension now!








Now on to our next project... Living room!
 Since it's ski season, Debbie Neese over at Images in Fabric  had the perfect patterns to use. I was able to jazz up the snow a bit with Angelina fibers, which was a fun thing to play with.  That's been in my stash for years, and I had yet to play with it.  Just why did I wait so long???? I really don't know!

In addition to the perfect patterns, Debbie gave an option of stretching it over an artist canvas or making a quilt. I choose the canvas, and let me tell you, I am delighted with the results. No more worrying about wavy wall hangings, sleeves and quilt hangers, binding!  Whoo-hoo!

I thought I would share the process with you.

First you want to find the center on all 4 sides of your quilt and mark them with a pin.

Then find the center of your canvas and mark it on all 4 sides.

With your quilt wrong side facing up, place your framed canvas, (canvas side down) on top of it.

Line up your pins with your marks on all 4 sides.

I found that these plastic top push pins are perfect for allowing you to get your fabric on the canvas and make changes to square things up easily.

Once you have all 4 sides attached with the push pins, you can remove your straight pins from the quilt. At this point I added more pins to hold down my quilt, being careful to flip it back to the front to make sure that things were straight. It is very easy to make adjustments since we are only using push pins at this point. 

I do want to make sure things are lining up nicely with my ruler before I start the stapling process.

Now the hardest thing about this entire process is the corners. If you flip your quilt top back a bit exposing the batting, like shown here

You can easily cut off the excess batting, so the corners will lay nicely. I know it's a bit hard to see, but I hope this helps you get the idea. We just want to get rid of excess so it isn't bunching up on our ends. Try to cut it so the batting just butts up to each other, at the corners.

Then we are going to start replacing those push pins with staples. I used a hand held Arrow Stapler. Not the kind you use for papers, but the heavy duty type they sell in the tool department. This is very easy to staple into so you don't need an electric one.

Staple up to your corners on both sides, then fold your fabric in, as smoothly as possible.

I like to use 2 staples in each corner just to make sure it holds nice and tight.

There you have it. All stretched and ready to hang like my 3 ski quilts are!

I do like the looks of these wall hanging's on the canvas. It gives it more of an art look, rather than just  a quilt hanging on the wall. Besides the benefits I already told you about above, I didn't need backing, just the batting and I didn't have to worry about what my threads looked like on the back or take the time to pull the threads to the top, when I was free motion quilting this!!  :-)  It is all nicely hidden by the canvas.

Now speaking of that batting... Have you heard of Thermore?

A friend shared this find with me. It is a very thin poly batting from Hobbs. So thin in fact that this package at the widest is only about 3" thick and it's a queen size bat.

It has kind of a weird feel to the touch, but it has enough grip in it, that your piece stays put, while you are quilting. Best yet, it quilts perfectly flat. It is heaven for table runners and wall quilts. I haven't used it for a bed quilt yet, and am not really that enticed to do so, but WOW, is this the best I have ever used for art quilts and wall art!!

It runs about $20 a bag at JoAnn's fabrics. I got mine during a buy one get one free sale. And you can never run out of must haves, for those 40% off coupons they love to shower us with!!

Am I right??

:-)