Much Love Monday

Can you believe that it's Monday again? Time does fly when you're having fun. I love many things today. After a very stressfull weekend, I love that I feel positive and hopefull. I particularly love this weekly reminder of feeling gratefull and loving your life from across the globe. Thank you  Anna, from Much Love ;)

I love that I'm almost off work so I can go home and see my cats, which I love, and do all sorts of fun, non work-related stuff.
I love that I'm excited for the new adventures ahead.
I love that I feel confident and gratefull for my life, even for the stressfull bits.
I love that friends have made me feel this way after a bit of a rough patch. I particularly love that this boost came from a friendship I no longer counted on.

I'm all greatefull and loved up today. How are you? :)

I've just picked up this great idea Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew had of creating a Quilting Tutorials page.

Since I have that Tutorial and Patterns page, I'll make sure I include this one in. Already you can find a lot of great and inspirational stuff, which is what the Tutorials and Patterns page is for me. I keep gathering the stuff I like the most so that when I'm considering a new project, I can just pop by and get inspired! And this will do it for me...

Quilts and Helping out all together as one

Once again, quilters are doing some good, while enjoying themselves in the process. Kate from Swim, Bike, Quilt and Aunt Spicy are teaming up to gather 100 quilts for those in need. They describe it perfeclty by saying: "Do you have any quilt WIPs, orphan blocks, flannel for receiving blankets, scraps, quilts you have made already that don’t have a home, a new technique or pattern you have been meaning to try, some great fabric in your stash that can be made into a quilt, or need an excuse to buy some new fabric?


Please join us in making and donating a baby or toddler sized handmade blanket or quilt (or two) to a child in need. The (largely online) charity quilt drive will officially run from November 15-December 15, 2010--Give a gift of love to a child in need in your community this holiday season!"

Anybody interested?

Work in progress

So with two quilts all bundled up and ready to go, I am currenlty sorting out the next two.
The next one is a square-patterned lap quilt and currently looks like this:

The other is a bit further behind, Nico is keeping an eye on in :)

But, before I left the house, it was looking more like this:

The seventh one, to be honest is a mistery even to me. I will keep it within the two patterns I've used for this collection but since I haven't even cut any fabric for it and I'm not even sure I'll have the time to do it, we'll just have to take it one step at a time and find out is this collection will have 6 or 7 Twinkles.

Moving along quite nicely... My very first Sew&Tell Project :)

This is the first time I've entered Amy's Sew&Tell at Amylouwho: random thoughts from a multi-tasker
Four down, three to go...



The front

The back

For this one I used the same purple fabric for binding, except this one turned out a bit wider, which looks nice. I realise my work is getting cleaner and cleaner, apart from the free motion, which is a great feeling. This is the more Christmassy quilt of them all, I'm a bit sad to part from it. I must say if it weren't meant for who it's meant for, I'm not sure I would! Fabrics by Amy Butler, moda, Ikea and a couple of others mixed in, just like the previous ones. It's a 40"x56" lap quilt.

I decided to just embrace it...

Yesterday was Free motion quilting day for me. I must admit I was stressed. Also, I broke two needles, still don't really know why, but i started experimenting with the tensions and apparently it all worked out.

I think the stress comes from wanting to do a good job, also quilting on the actual quilt is stressfull, I was so afraid to ruin it. At first there was a lot of frustration because what I was doing was not similar at all to some of the lovely work I see on all the blogs I visit daily. Also some arm ache.

But then I just decided to embrace the "free" aspect of it all, and decided to go with it.
The only thing I tried to do was keep it all round and even (not a complete sucess on either part). In the end, it was my very first free motion quilt, before that I had only tried doing this on scraps, it's completely diferent to manage a quilt, even if it is a lap quilt, it's still 40" by 60" or something similar to that.

I tried with gloves and without them (it's so much easier with them) I tried keeping my hands flat and I tried grabing the fabric and ended up with grabing on one end and straightening the quilt with the other so I can see where I was going, I find that if I grab on both sides I lose control.
I tried all speeds and even though a medium speed is more confortable for me, the top speed makes for a better result. Also I kept forgeting to push the presser foot down and so i had to redo the work loads of times. But I'm wiser for it. I hope ;)

The busy front

The back with the hexies

Originally I thought I would quilt around the hexies, but then I realised it would look weird on the front to have that inexplicable unquilted line. And this way, the hexies become much more a part of the quilt, not just apliqueed hexies. This was also an opportunity to enjoy the amazing abilities of my sewing machine. Even with all this fabric it didn't even slow down. Even when I got to the hexies, there were like 5 layers of fabric, because I decided not to trim the hexies because I like them to be bulky but in a good way.

Still, in my amazing ability to complicate the simple, I still thought I had ruined the machine on several ocasions. First, i've already mentioned the needles breaking, which is all very new to me.
Secondly, by the time I finished the quilting, I still had some energy in me to start on the binding, so I decided to sew the strips together. But when I did that the thread would get caught on the bobin holder., this hapened a couple of times. So decided to get "under the hood" also a very dangerous task for me. There was some lint, more than I thought there would be considering I've only had it for a week. Oh, and I also opened the top of the machine to clean the threads that had been left by the previous thread I tried quilting with, as I mentioned.
So anyway, after cleaning I was still geting the same results. So I tried taking the thread out and the fabric out and try a diferent thread on a diferent fabric and THEN I remembered the dog feet were down... And THEN I noticed my stich lenght was in zero... Also, since I changed everything I'm not sure what  exactly did that, but then it started working, and by the time I got back to the fabric and the thread I intended to use, everything was ok at last and so for today we have binding on the menu!

The purple worked so well on the last quilt, I'm going to use it again on this one. I just know she is going to love it :)

Baby steps...

So I've officially taken my first baby steps on free motion quilting. First attempt didn't go so well, wrong thread, had to change it, take out all the stipling I had already done (not easy!) and start all over. By that time I was a bit exasperated, also I had to come back to the shop, so I didn't do much of it. Here it is!


The free motion quilting only a true loved one could love ;)

Now I'm a bit worried, because I've noticed the first thread that kept breaking left some trails on my machine, up where the thread goes before arriving at the needle. I'm pretty sure that isn't ok, but although I can see it, I can't really reach it, so I have no idea how to get it of...And it's bumming me out!

Much Love Monday

Heart-shaped reef
Source: http://www.tripadvisor.com/

Yes, I know it's  Tuesday, but I really didn't make it this week, I do better on the next one. I just thought it was such a nice idea from Much Love and after the gratitude post, it just made sense! Unfortunately, my batery ended so i couldn't really post it... But I'm guessing it must still be Monday somewhere right?

So, things I'm loving...

My cats (always, you already know that)
Watching the rain fall down through the window while siting in my couch with a nice quilt on top
Planning for the future. It looks just perfect in my mind

Gratitude Monday

Today I poped by artsy-crafty babe and she has a sort of tradition of holding a gratitude friday and I just loved that idea! I loved it so much, I think I will try to establish a Gratitude Monday on Happiest when Crafting. I hope It's not going to turn out to repetitive, but some things you just can't be too gratefull about.

I chose Monday because I think it's the toughest day of the week and sometimes you just need that uplifting view on your own life to remind yourself that your life is pretty great!

So here we go. I am most gratefull for:

My health (I know I'm very lucky as I really don't do much for it)

My family (disfunctional yes)

My cats (Part of my family, really, but I just needed to make it clear)

My friends (Some people say they are lucky to get one or two really good friends. I actually believe I have like four or five really great friends, friends that I can count on no mater what and regardless of where life takes us and how many weeks go by without catching up)

My ability to enjoy the simple pleasures in life (I actualy realised this yesterday, it doesn't really take much for me to have a blissfull moment, simple things really, like a really great sunset or watching my cats sleep, looking at a finished quilt 100% done by me, the trees in Autumn, you get the picture) I hope I never lose it, even though at times I may feel to stressed to notice it.

In general, I feel really gratefull for all the protection I feel around me. I'm not religious so I won't call it God, but I know it's not random, I don't believe in coincidences, and you might call it luck. Call it what you like, I believe I, as well as everybody, am protected and it is up to us to see that and embrace it, even when bad things happen, or things you may percieve as bad, for me, are opportunities to grow and I do truly believe that they happen to you for you benefit, even if you are unable to see it at the time. And that's ok too...

What are you gratefull for?

I wish I could tell you...

...that I've done this out of pure creative impulse. That I just looked at this particular piece of fabric and thought, "how can I possibly makes this unique?"

Sadly, that isn't the case. The case is me not measuring it as I should, not being concentrated enough to cut out the piece of fabric I needed for the backing. As such, the backing was much much smaler than it should and I had no more fabric left. So I had to just go with it I guess.
And I think it worked out great, apart from the increased workload. It looks like a hexie pearl necklace across the back of my quilt. Love it! Also, I've missed the hexies!
I actually wish I had thought of this in the previous ones. And that I have enough time to do this to the ones that follow...