Earlier this year I made a cute "under the sea" themed baby blanket and burp cloths for our good friends Carolyn & Josh and their daughter Makayla. Recently, Carolyn mentioned that she'd like to have a small zippered bag for toys and books to take to and from daycare/babysitter and she'd love to have one that matched her stuff. So of course I was happy to make her one :)
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Once I got all that fabric organized and put away, I was finally able to get to the quilt machine, yay! First I loaded the quilt onto the quilt frame and used my Quiltak gun to baste down the edges (it shoots little plastic tags like the ones in clothing tags).
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. Over the weekend, Greg & Mel (and the posse) were here - more on that later. But while Mel was here, we decided to make some Valentine's Day shirts for the kiddos. We made one for Greyson that came out super adorable!
It seems like just yesterday that I was sitting at Nate and Kayla's New Year's Eve party, wondering what the year would bring. Ryan had mentioned the possibility of a "secret vacation" and I was excited but trying to make sure I didn't expect him to propose on the trip. As I started thinking more about it, I decided to look back and appreciate all that has happened this year.
Last week at work was very busy – we had a lot of drawings we had to complete and release and they were very big drawings (assemblies and installation drawings have a lot more detail and require a lot more work/attention than basic fabricated parts).
Aside from work, Ryan wanted to get the back deck fixed up a bit before we have a big party with lots of people over. His goal was to stabilize the deck and railing, pressure wash the deck and then repaint or restain the railing. The first night I worked late so he started pressure washing the stair rail. Tuesday night and Wednesday night, I pressure washed a few sections of the railing while he worked on fixing it. Ryan did a great job stabilizing the stairs and railing – they are much sturdier now. Granted – he almost broke his nose! He was hamming a cement block beneath the base of the stairs and he lost his footing, slipped and smashed his forehead into one of the stair boards. If he would have been any lower it would have smashed the bridge of his nose. Thursday night Ryan was going to pressure wash the backside of the railing (I couldn’t reach) so I went and ran some errands. Unfortunately, Ryan didn’t see that I called to tell him that I was going to run errands so he was just waiting for me instead of pressure washing. I did pick up a few goodies. I got candy for our trick or treaters, a trophy for the best costume prize and a few other small decorations. This weekend I did quite a bit of sewing and I got some of the house cleaned up, laundry done and worked on my wedding invitations. I wouldn't say I'm all caught up on everything but I certainly feel MUCH better now! First, I finished stitching the quilt top for Alpha Phi Red Dress Gala. Then I loaded it onto the quilt top and did all the quilting. And guess what? Not a single thread breakage from my quilting machine! I'm really happy about it but also still concerned that I never found out the root cause of the problem. I'm sure it will wait to break until I've got a big deadline coming up, LOL.
As most of you know, I have been working on an order for three quilts for quite a while now. Danielle contacted me in mid to late June asking about pricing and options and in early July she placed an order for 2 baby clothes quilts and 1 double sided tshirt quilt. It typically takes me 2-3 weeks per quilt once the designs are finalized. If I was sewing full time and didn’t have a regular Monday – Friday job to go to then I could get them done much faster than that. It ended up taking me a total of 10 weeks to complete the three quilts so just slightly longer than my usual 2-3 week estimate. But I learned a lot on this order and really improved my skills by tackling some new challenges.
Yesterday, I had a meeting that lasted most of the day so I wasn't able to get too much sewing done but I did a pretty good job today! I got all the shirts interfaced and finished the appliqued blocks.
After much frustration, mechanical problems and sleep deprivation...I finished Victoria's quilt just in time to mail it in time for her son's birthday party this weekend. I'm mailing it priority first thing in the morning so hopefully it gets there on time. And I hope it's everything she wanted it to be! Aside from some issues with my quilting machine, I had a really good time working on this quilt - there were numerous challenging blocks where I had to come up with some pretty creative solutions. I've already posted quite a few pics but here's the last few.
Here's a closeup of the meandering or stipple quilting: |