Narnia

As it was snowing for the umpteenth time a couple days ago and wondering if spring will ever reach Northern Minnesota, I read that our first snowfall for this season happened on September 22, the earliest in 17 years.

You do the math... That makes 7 months of snow.

Add to it that in April we have gotten over 50" of snow, breaking the record for the snowiest April ever in our city, and you can understand why everyone is grumbling.

Narnia Duluth - where it is always winter but never Christmas.

It sure is pretty when it looks like this. In December.

In April, it isn't appreciated too much.

Last week schools were closed Monday and Friday due to the awful road conditions. The week before that the would have missed a day and a half due to weather like neighboring districts except our district was on "spring" break.

We are all kind of wondering why we live here. Including the robins. "We flew back here why?!"

Last Friday some friends shoveled out of the latest foot of snow we had received and we met up in our church fellowship hall for another Crafty Weekend. It was a good distraction from plotting how I might stow away in a friend's suitcase on her family's trip to the land of palm trees and Disney World.

I channeled my winter rage into sewing and I was quite productive (there was a lot of rage to channel)...

My first Quarter 2 finish! Anna Maria Horner voile Plus Quilt, backed with flannel, no batting. I feel like Linus his blanket - I find myself carrying this from the bed to the couch and back. This will be a nice weight summer cover up (if we ever get summer!)

Next up, I made 2 lunch bags from this Pink Penguin tutorial. I had made two more earlier in the week.

The red one was a birthday present for my sister, coffee pots are for me, the brown was just because I could! And the fourth one I gave to a friend before I got a decent picture of it! They are fun and easy to make, using up a bunch of cotton duck leftovers from other projects. I lined the inside with some oil cloth/vinyl I picked up at Hobby Lobby, making it easy to wipe up spills.

 

Then I made four of these cuties, the Puffy Pouch, another Pink Penguin tutorial. The plan was to make one for a friend's birthday and one for myself. Then two friends that were crafting hinted strongly that they would each love one.

I used a metal tape measure (thank you, Dollar Tree!) to do the closure instead of a "real" closure or Velcro as suggested by the pattern . While I love how they look, the tutorial is fantastic, and it was fun to make one, making four was not as fun! They are putsy with the pleats and they took longer than the lunch bags! I will probably make more in the future, but never more than one at a time!

Other things I've been working on during my days off and snow days...

Pieced together these random blocks. A top finish!

This baby blanket will be for an upcoming quilt silent auction. Just have to finish hand stitching the binding for another Quarter 2 finish!

This weekend we may get up to 60F! What a difference a few days can make! Looking forward to sun and melting snow! Dare we say Spring has arrived?!

This little guy will appreciate the warmer temps as he's been a tad chilly in his brand new spring haircut!

 

 

 

 

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Snow, snow, and more snow

This past week was our son's spring break. Or should I say, "spring" break. We started out Monday with rain/snow mix, then all that melted. But on Thursday Mother Nature played the ultimate joke. 40 mph winds with gusts into 60+mph and a foot of snow by the time it finally quit. Husband's job sent everyone home early that day and stayed closed into Friday. Yesterday wasn't nice, but it wasn't snowing. Until this afternoon. The wind is still howling and it is snowing again. We could get 8 inches. Good grief. Enough already!

Here's our yard at 10am Thursday and again at 1:30pm. It fell hard and fast. And so did my hopes of Spring.

{I fell asleep before I finished this post last night... Our kids got a bonus day of spring break as the closed school today due to the snow and poor road conditions. My son put on shorts and kept them on when he put his snow pants on and went out to play! Way to protest winter, kiddo!}

 

With the unexpected snow days it has meant some time around the sewing machine. I pulled out a pile of random blocks and other UFOs that I've made over the years and decided it was time to take inventory. And what a better way to hold myself accountable and get stuff done by signing up for Quarter 2 of the Finish-A-Long!

 

Here's what I want off the shelf and into use:

 

Random blocks using Tufted Tweets

A baby blanket

 

A baby blanket that was one of my first projects after discovering modern fabric. Look at those fold lines!

 

A voile plus quilt that I started on New Years Day 2012

Plus there's a low volume quilt that I have squares it for, and some of Sarah Watts' Timber and Leaf mixed with some other stuff that I'm not quite sure what it will become!

So that is 6 quilts... Hmmmm... Wonder how many I can knock out this quarter. A few more snow days and I might have them done!

 

 

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Some random stuff

Random Thing #1:  First off, I've been trying out Feedly and Bloglovin to replace Google Reader (RIP).  I think I'm going to land with Bloglovin (just wish they had a dedicated app for the iPad - hopefully soon!)

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Random Thing #2:  On Sunday morning I decided to make myself a necklace for Easter.  I had absolutely *nothing* else to do that morning before church.  Just an Easter breakfast the youth group kids were serving.  And a children's sermon to finish up.  And a son to get ready (and to keep out of his new found chocolate).  So I made a necklace out of some beads I had laying around, a brooch I found at a rummage sale, and some ribbon in my stash.  And lived in denial of the busy day that was ahead.

Necklace:  Check.

Son dressed for church:  Check.

Congregation served breakfast:  Check.

Keeping son out of chocolate:  Not so much.

Random #3:  Got my March Stitch that Stash Block done and mailed out:

Amanda picked this fun block and our bee mates made a variety of colors.
Can't wait to see it all come together!

Random #4:  Yesterday I finished up another project, a table runner for our dining room table.

FYI:  the candle will not be lit when the dried up palm branches are above them.  Safety, safety.

I love how the triangles turned out with the Oakshott, solid whites and off-whites, and some random black and white prints thrown in.  Any bets on how long until spaghetti sauce ends up on it?  I'm guessing the next time we have spaghetti.... :)

Random # 5:  Using my scraps from the above table runner, I made a little mug rug for my desk at work.

Makes me happy, especially with the cute mug my coworker got me for Christmas sitting on top of it! 

 Now to try not losing it under all the piles of papers...

And there's some random finishes!

Stitch that Stash

It's April 1. Anybody else reading the news and Facebook through a skeptical lens today?!

Since it is now April, it is my month for the Stitch that Stash bee!

Here's the block I'm asking my bee mates to make!

I stumbled across this block on Pinterest. Rachel (woodenspoon on Flickr) posted this picture with the cutting dimensions

After doing some pretty "loud" quilts lately, I've found myself drawn to some quieter fabrics. Add my love of texty prints that are often low volume, this block drew me write in! (Didn't hurt that I participated in a Flickr swap for text charms and they came in the mail the day I saw this block!)

Here are some of the 8 blocks I've already made!

 

Can't wait to see what my bee mates come up with!

 

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a BIG finish

I had to go look this morning and find out when I started my scrap vomit quilt.  It was the beginning of September 2012 when I first posted about it.  It was a quilt that I got off to a steady start but lost steam part way through.

Scrap Vomit - September 4

Scrap Vomit - September 15

It was stuck at 3/7th of the way done for an awful long time!

Then in January and February I tackled it again, soon getting the blocks done and getting the whole thing pieced together.

Scrap Vomit - February 25

Friday morning I decided today was the day to get the thing basted.  Let's move this sucker off the UFO list and get it on our bed!  I brought it to work (love working a church with all the tables to spread my projects out on!) and got it all basted up in the afternoon before heading home.

Basted!
Backing is Britten Nummer from IKEA and Robert Kaufman's Spot On - Small Spots in Aqua 

I spent a few hours quilting it on Friday. I had bought my first spool of Aurifil thread earlier in the week when a LQS was having a big sale.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  My machine just loved it!

Saturday was spent doing some more quilting and soon the binding was on!

I used Pat Sloan's way of putting the binding on by machine stitching it.  Usually I hand stitch the binding on but this is going to be used and plus it is so big!  I didn't think I'd be patient to finish it!  The only thing I did different was making my binding 2.5" and folding it in half like I usually do.  After sewing the binding to the back side of the quilt, you use a reverse blanket stitch to hold it down.  It worked so slick!  The Aurifil was 50wt and using it with the binding, it just disappeared.  (Print on the binding totally helped hide the stitch lines as well.)

For the binding I used this:

Scribble Notes in Black - Carolyn Friedlander from Architextures

Love how this binding looks... frames it plus it gets some texty stuff going on that I love so much!

One of my favorite things on a quilt is hand stitching.  Absolutely love how it looks, especially Perle cotton.  I auditioned my Perle cotton stash to my husband and we decided orange was the color to go with and it would go in the white squares of the B Blocks.

With aching fingers, I hand stitched away on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.   Woke up at 5am on Monday unable to go back to sleep.  Should I play Candy Crush or hand stitch?  Hand stitching won and soon all 24 blocks had orange stitches running through them!  I threw it in the wash and soon a wonderful crinkly quilt was emerging from the dryer!

Here's a shot of it on our bed.  I'm in love.

My husband is going to help me this weekend get some pictures of it outside.  There's no way I can wrestle this big thing, especially with all the mud that's showing up at the edges of the snowbanks. Hope the weather cooperates!

I think I slept with a smile on my face all night knowing this new quilt was keeping me warm!

I've noticed that after all the bright colors I've been working with lately, the pallet that I'm pulling for upcoming projects is much more.... calm....  low volume seems to be calling out!

Linking up...


Finish It Up Friday @ crazy mom quilts

Scrappy Explosion!

Wow... a lot has happened since I last posted!  January was a blur of traveling with family and then for work.  And honestly, what happened to February?!  I swear it just started!

Here are some of the things I've been up to:

For the Stitch that Stash Bee ...

January's block were a Churn Dash at the request of Deb from Simply Miss Luella

Next, I jumped on the instagram quilting sensation... the Scrappy Trip Along!

My son had been requesting a new quilt.  And he was quite specific in his requests:

1.  It had to have a fleece back

2.  It needed to be heavy

3.  It needed to be fluffy (high loft batting)

4.  It needed to be tied

How does a 9 year old have such specific quilting requests?!

The Scrappy Trip Along seemed to be the right fit for him!

There's always a furry helper when I'm doing layouts!

 Here's a close up of the twin sized quilt...

And here's the boy all snuggled up on the first night he got it, which happened to be a -20° that night.  Perfect timing!

He has used this every night, dragging it to my parents when he's stayed with them, and it often found on the couch as well!  I'm glad it is getting lots of love!

Next up was February's Stitch that Stash bee block, an Ohio Star for Kristan at Doodle Do Designs

Then it was time to finish up some UFOs that have been hanging around for far too long!
We had another crafting weekend at the church I work at.  It's such a great time to hang out with a fun group of women while we sew/bead/scrapbook our Friday and Saturday away!

I made a mini quilt using half square triangles out of blocks I've had sitting around for along time.

I couldn't bear to cut off the points and I was feeling to lazy to do setting triangles so I left the irregular edges.    However, I'm glad I didn't realize how long it would take me to bind the edges like this when I started out on this route because setting triangles would have been WAY easier!  A ton of work doing the inside angles, but I love how it looks!  Its new home is over the back of a chair in my office. So bright and cheery and fun!

Yesterday was quite productive day... I love Mondays:  my day off and I'm home by myself!  Love my family and being with them, but I also enjoy my Mondays of being home alone from 7:30am-4pm.  My time to recharge my batteries, quilt, clean, etc.  I got the house picked up some and also made it to the gym for a workout.  And I quilted and came up with a BIG finish....  My Scrap Vomit quilt top is done!  49 blocks that are made up of 49 squares.  2,401 2.5" squares later, we are well on our way to having a king size quilt on our bed!

Next up, the attempt to quilt it on my home machine!  It sort of gives me frights to think about, but I'm going to forge ahead!

2013 is off to a good start!

Linking up:

WiP Wednesday!