I know we got married 4 months ago but I still had some unfinished wedding tasks lingering...just waiting for me to finish them.  I finally made some good progress over the last 4 - 6 weeks.

1. Thank You Notes - I FINALLY got the last of the thank you notes written.  We were quick to get them out to our parents and immediate family members but once we got to extended family and friends we seemed to slow down.  Now, I don't know why I say "we" since Ryan wrote exactly 2 and I wrote the other 40 - 50, but either way we're done, LOL.
2. Vendor Reviews - I FINALLY went on Wedding Wire and The Knot and a few others to post reviews of all our major vendors.  They all did so great and I needed to make sure other brides out there would know who to pick in our area.
3. Leftover Stuff - I still have a number of things that I need to sell or give away or something, including: Video cameras, picture frames for table numbers, and a few other things like that (I need to go upstairs and see what is still up there)

The one major unanswered question though is still...

What do I do with my wedding dress and veil??

Last weekend on St. Patrick's day, while we were buying a boat...our good friends Josh & Carolyn were having a baby!  Everything went very well and mommy and baby were tired but healthy and happy.  We delayed visiting to try to make it as easy as possible on the new family.

As usual...I was a little late on making her baby gift so delaying the visit worked out perfectly.  I might have posted this a bit ago but here's the cute onesie I made for Makayla (both her parents ran cross country at Florida Tech and Josh is an assistant cross country and track coach at Florida Tech still.

Since I got Pernell's quilt done Saturday morning, we had time to take out the boat and guess who got to drive?

Friday night, while I was waiting for the Kansas basketball game to start...I started working on the quilting for Pernell's daughter's quilt.  I pretty much got all the quilting done so I was excited that I might have time to take the boat out on Saturday.  I also had a couple of exciting realizations:

1. This is the first time I have done machine quilting on a quilt top that was sewn by someone other than me
2. This is the first time I've used my quilting machine this year...yikes!

I have done some other sewing and plenty of projects on my embroidery machine but I hadn't actually done any quilts yet this year.  I was pretty nervous about stitching her quilt top since it was hand stitched and had a few imperfections.  When you put a quilt on a big quilting machine, if there are any imperfections the quilting will either hide them or make them MUCH worse depending on how bad the imperfections are and how good the quilter is.  Here's the quilt top:

As you might have noticed from my sewing expo photos, I have several projects that need to be finished and I’m excited to start working on some fun things for myself and for our house (too often I only make things for other people).  Of course I have to have a list (if you know me, you know I am obsessed with lists and spreadsheets) of what my sewing priorities are to see what I need to accomplish and when I’ll have time for more fun projects for me.  Well…one big sewing goal I had this year was to end the year with no unfinished projects from 2012 (or before).  In addition to that, I have some birthday gifts and other gifts I have promised people I would make.  I started by writing down all the gifts and projects with deadlines that I need to get done this year:

8:30am - 11:30am
On Saturday, I had one more class in the lovely Gammill studio about Pantographs.  In quilting, using a pantograph is where you take a paper that has a quilting pattern printed on it and lay it below the long arm on the table.  Then you use the laser light on the longarm to follow the pattern on the paper.  It allows a beginning quilter to achieve more intricate quilting patterns and helps make sure your quilting stays even and straight.  Here's an example of a pantograph pattern:

8:30am - 11:30am
Friday morning I tried to get up and workout but I was so tired from my full day of quilting that I just didn't make it.  I thought I'd try to go for a jog after sewing instead...I started bright and early with another 3hr class to make a quilt called "Tumbling Leaves/Ode To Autumn" with Nelly Vilekis.  The project uses a pretty cool technique to make curved leaf edges without having to sew curved piecing.  Here's a picture of Nelly's completed one that we were trying to make:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Unfortunately we weren't able to go downtown for the St. Patrick's day parade or other Irish festivities. But we did hear a guy playing some bagpipes...as we finally did a sea trial of our new boat!  Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pics on the sea trial (except of small things that we need to get the dealer to fix, lol) but here's us saying goodbye to the Bayliner (sorry it's fuzzy but it was too bright out to see my screen when taking the pics).

8:30am - 11:30am
I started off my sewing expo weekend with a class called "Back to the Basics of Backfills" taught by Lisa Snipes.  Some of the classes were "hands-on" and this was one of them.  Gammill hosted one of the sewing studios and had about 15 long arm quilting machines set up for us to use.

http://www.gammill.net/

If you don't know what a long arm is, you should see their website - their machines are incredible! I always knew I might want a long arm one day but sewing on these machines was like a dream!  Downside: the cheapest Gammill is around $9000, yikes.

The woman who taught the class, Lisa Sipes, was also awesome!  She has only been quilting and sewing for about 5 years and already she is an award winning quilter.  Check out her blog for some BEAUTIFUL work:

http://thatcrazyquiltygirl.blogspot.com/

The class was all about how to fill open spaces in the quilt but keep it interesting, techniques for doing a few specific types of backfill like pebbles, swirls, etc. After we talked about how to do some of the different back fill patterns, they showed us how to start sewing on the machines and just let us play around :)  

A couple months ago, my friend Doreen and I decided to register for The Original Sewing & Quilt Expo in Lakeland, FL.  So Wednesday after work, we loaded up all our bags and such into Doreen's car and headed over to Lakeland.  By the time I got home from work, packed and ate dinner, we didn't get to leave until around 8:30pm and Lakeland is about 2hrs away so we got there around 10:30pm.

The drive went smoothly enough but when we got to our hotel, The Hyatt at the Lakeland Center, they didn't have a room for us!  I guess the overbooked the hotel assuming that some people wouldn't show up and then they didn't have enough rooms.  We booked our room months ago but I guess they assign the rooms based on when you check in so when we got there they were out.  They sent us to a neighboring hotel which was pretty inconvenient but the Hyatt did offer to pay for that night since they didn't have a room for us.

Thursday morning we got up bright and early and headed over to the Hyatt where they stored our luggage for us until we could check-in to a room and then we headed to the expo.  When we got there, the first thing we had to do was check-in.  We got our tickets, shopping bags and neck wallet.  After we got checked in, it was time for a full day of classes!  Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time getting my phone to connect to my laptop so I'll post more details about the expo as soon as I get home tomorrow.  I can't wait to show you all the new stuff I learned and all the cool projects I'm going to work on soon :)