Sewing

Finished curtains for my mother's back door yesterday. Yay. One more project down. Only one million left to go. LOL. I have to count these little things other wise I would feel over whelmed.  On to a new project today. Hemming the wedding dress of a besties' daughter. See I don't just quilt. Haha. 

Reedly CA. Quilt show

Last Sunday one of my besties, Amanda, and I went to the Reedly Ca. quilt show.  Lots of beautiful quilts.  One of the things that I really like about going to smaller local quilt shows is there are quilts there that are made for beds.  Not just art quilts, which are beautiful, but quilts you actually sleep under.  Those are the kind I like to make.  A quilt that keeps you warm on cold nights or comforts you like a hug on a bad day.  I make them to be used.  

Here are some pictures of my favs. from the show.

This one is made from denim with patches sewn all over it. This must weight a ton!  I may do this with my collection of patches. I have been sewing them on a backpack for years and have run out of room on it.

Really like the colors in this one.  The picture does not do it justice.  And it was king sized.

It would be so fun to make a quilt with the US map on it for our travel trailer.  I could put a star or heart on each state that we have traveled to.

My goodness time sure does fly by fast.  Hard to believe that it has been almost 2 years since I have put anything on my blog.  I'm determined to do better in the next year.  I'll try to put up as many pictures as possible of the projects that I have been working on over my absence from my blog.

This is a quilt that one of my Besties and I made for her daughter, I call her my niece.  The young lady is currently in the U. S. Navy and residing in Florida.  I told her she would have to sleep on it instead of under it.  Made this one spring of 2012

This quilt has baby sea turtles.  I made this one for another one of my Besties.  Actually for her newest grandson who live near the beach.   This was May 2012

Ending The Year At A Run

It has been quite a busy year. I retired from my job working in a Jr High School Office this year. I thought retirement was supposed mean a slow down in your life. NOT! I have been busier than ever.A few of the things I have done this past year are, attending a retreat in Utah at the Handi Quilter Head Quarters to learn how to use Big Momma ( my HQ 16) better. It was so much fun. I met a great group of women there. Went on several trips with my wonderful Husband. Attended several car shows as a vendor selling my car themed quilts. Went to Illinois to help my daughter host a baby shower for her best friend. And of course spending more time with my sweet grandson. Wow the time just flew by.I am looking forward to more family time, quilting and adventures in the new year. But first I will post pictures from this last year.

Mike's Quilt

This summer my son ask me for a new quilt as his quilt from high school graduation was falling apart. So the question was what style and what fabrics. Think, think, think. I wanted to make something meaningful but simple for him. Something usable. While playing on the Internet one day I came across a link on my local quilt guild's site for jelly roll races http://www.bakersfieldquiltguild.org/sharing.html . Boy did this look like fun. So out to the sewing room I went. I collected fabrics from my shelves that represented memories of my son. Into the quilt went scraps from shorts I had made for him as a child (he is 30 years old now, goes to prove I never throw anything away. LOL) . Some of the themes were cub scouts, boy scouts, fishing, soccer, music, army, fabric from his wedding quilt, left overs from the quilts I made for his son, my grandson, and in between I place strips of muslin to record memories and important dates for him. I sewed the strips in chronological order rather than the way the video showed though. What a great way to express memories through quilting.

This is something I would be willing to do as a special order for others.

Car Quilts

I love going to car shows so what better way to enjoy them than to make car themed quilts and taking them to car shows to sell. So this summer I made quite a few quilts from car fabrics. My nephew Chase helped me set up my booth for the very first time. He's one great kid. This is a picture of the first quilt sold that day. Luckily I have fabrics to make another one just like it. All of the car quilts are quilted in a flame pattern that my Son-in-law drew for me. Totally original.
Here are a few of the quilts I still have for sale. The first one has a center of piece of fabric from Alexander Henry. It has an old fashion drive-in with girl car hops on roller skates. It is surrounded with hot rods flying the American flag. The outer fabric is red, white and blue flames. It measures about 72 inches square. A great gift for any patriotic car person.
This quilt is make with a collection of Hot Wheels fabrics. Didn't all car fans start out with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. It is about 72 inches square. Great gift for the person who still plays with cars or a kid just beginning to fall in love with cars.

Love this fabric. Chevy El Caminos. Have two of these, one has the outer border of checks and the other is the same except the outer border is flames.

Handi Quilter Retreat

Here I am all ready for my first day at Handi Quilter retreat in my new Vans tennies. They are patchworked. Officially my new favorite shoes.



Here I am picking up my thread kit. We learned to work with threads I would have never tried on my own. The teachers were great. I learned so many new techniques to help me with my machine quilting.
Here is our class picture. There were ladies, and a few men, from all over the U.S. and one from Canada.

1 UFO Down and 100 left to do.

At last my son-in-law Wesley's Spider-man quilt is finished! My daughter designed, pieced and stenciled the quilt top a few years ago. At first my daughter wanted to hand quilt it. That thought didn't last for too long. She is great at designing, picking fabrics, piecing, but she just does not enjoy doing any of it by hand. It was so big though that trying to quilt it on a regular home sewing machine just seemed impossible. The quilt is 92" x 102". Why that big? Because Wesley is 6'7" tall and very rarely finds anything much less a quilt/ blanket long enough for him. I've quilted large quilts on my home machine in the past, but boy does my shoulders and back hurt afterwards. So with the addition of "big Momma"( my HQ 16) to my sewing room this last year it was much easier to do. I quilted it with a spiderweb design in variegated black and red thread. Put the binding on it by machine also.

It was great for us to be able to give it to him today. Wesley is a huge Spider-man fan.

I think the red blocks with the stenciled spiders are my favorite part of the quilt. Jenny hand drew the spiders on freezer paper and made a stencil from it. She then painted them in with black fabric paint.

The back of the quilt is so soft. It is mostly spider-man flannel with red minkie fabric all the way around the edges.

Time Sure Does Fly

I can't believe it is already February! Where did January go to? It's true, the older you get the faster time flies. I didn't get much sewing done last month. We did get to take care of our very cute grandson several times though. : )

My wonderful husband did build me a new ironing center in my sewing room. I was using a regular ironing board. It was a mess because you just can't store anything around it neatly. And trying to iron a large piece of fabric on a regular ironing board is so awkward with one end wide and the other narrow.

What a mess!

I have always wanted a rectangular ironing board with storage underneath. So after looking at every affordable organizing system I choose to purchase 5 Closet Maid shelf units.

Then my wonderful husband cut me a top from MDF, 22" by 60". We covered it in 4 layers of cotton quilt batting and heavy canvas.

It is great! I love it. And it looks sooooo much better.

The Stockings Were Hung By The Chimney With Care

Well, Christmas is only 6 days away now and I still have several projects to complete. That's nothing new. What is new is our beautiful grandson's Christmas stocking. This is just one of the projects that I have completed in the last month or so.
This is a picture of my wonderful husband and I with our first grandchild, Brett. Brett was born in November of this year. Being grandparents is something that my husband and I have been looking forward to for years. And, Yes, it is as great as everyone says it is.

It seems to be baby season. My friend and co-worker, Debbie, has become a first time grandmother this year also. I made 2 quilts for little Noah. The first one is made from left over fabrics from his mother and father's wedding quilt. They live near the ocean and love to surf so naturally their fabrics have the ocean and sea shells on them.

The second quilt has fire trucks on it. Noah has many firemen in his family.

Well, time is really flying. It seems like just last week I found out I am going to be a grandmother for the first time and now the baby is almost here. Brett is due to arrived in the next 2 weeks. I have completed 2 quilts so far for him. One is a very cute panel with ducks and geese on it. I always did love the game duck-duck-goose.

The second one has a little cowboy and a little indian boy playing together. I made this one in memory of my father. He was a great cowboy. I bought this fabric a couple of years ago at a quilt shop in Las Vegas, the Christmas Goose. It is made by Moda fabrics.

My wonderful husband loves to go to Vegas, me not so much. But he will always take me to the quilt and scrapbooking store there!

My mom is a great mother and gardner, but she really doesn't like to sit and sew, but she made a quilt for baby Brett with the help of her friends. This is the first quilt she has ever made for her first great-grandbaby.

Here are a few of the quilts that I completed over the summer.


The first two quilts were commissioned to be make for a widow and her two adult children. They were made from the shirts of her deceased husband's shirt. As a little something extra I saved all the buttons form the shirts and placed them in a canning jar and added a bow made from left over fabrics.

This quilt was commissioned by one of the teachers that I work with. It was made from t-shirts from the whole family. "Strahan Family" quilt.

Graduation Quilts

Well, it has been quite a while since I have posted. This year has been soooo busy. When I last posted my BFF Amanda and I were working on quilts for some of our graduating 8th graders. Not our children, but students at the school where we work. We wound up completing five quilts to give to special students. Wow, that is a record for us!

I began making quilts for students at SMS in 2002. So far there has been 23 quilts made and given to students. We love giving these quilts to the students. We try to match the quilts to the kids or at least what we think they would like. The majority of these quilts were all pulled from stash, Amanda's, my daughter Jenny's and my own. The students all loved them. Most of them are just floored and don't realize that we made them just for them. We hope these quilts help them realize they are someone special and that even when times are bad making the good choice is always the best way even when it's the hard choice. Here are the pictures of this years quilts

Well, it is Sunday morning and I am getting ready to run to the grocery store. One of my BFFs, Amanda, is comming over again today to help me finish 7 quilts this weekend. It's one of the draw backs to being one of may BFFs. (like there is really just one!) We spent yesterday piecing backs, preparing backings and loading one quilt on "Big Momma". Big Momma is my long arm quilting machine that my DH bought me for Christmas last year. He is great.
My real life job is working in the office of a middle school. Every year I make a couple of quilts for graduating students who are special to me. I don't usually make this many, but we are giving it a try. I will be posting pictures soon.