Laptop bag made.

Good morning all,

I think it is going to be a lovely day. It was already in the 60's when we got up. We had chances of thunderstorms this morning, but I think they have all gone south of us. It looks to be a lovely May day here in Missouri.

I made Kevin's laptop bag. I was trying to follow a pattern I found on the net and just having a horrible time with it. That was on Monday. So I just decided to quit working on it and think about it. When I got up Tuesday, I decided to just scrap the pattern and create my own. It took me about 2 hours to come up with this.My dh is very picky about not having anything that he considers 'girly'. LOL So even with my large stash of fabric, it took some looking for me to come up with a fabric that he wouldn't think was too feminine. LOL I figured this looked like a guy fabric. He told me before I started, no flowers. (grin) I lined the outside front and back with fusible fleecing. I had cut 4 pieces the same size. Two were linings and the other two were the front and back. I sewed about 3/4 of the way around with the lining and front/back, facing each other. Then I turned them right side out and pressed good. I had purchased a couple of sheets of 8"X11" thin foam at Wal Mart. I inserted one of these in each side, then finished sewing the seams. I put my walking foot on at this point. That thing is worth its weight in gold. (grin) I also sewed velcro on the outside front before sewing them together and put a large pocket on each lining side. Then I measured the laptop on the sides, only to discover that by the time I had them sewed together, it would be too snug a fit. No problem, I cut 4, 2-inch strips, the same length as the bag, ironed fusible web on one side of each pair, sewed them wrong sides together, turned right side out, and pressed. Then I sewed these sides to the front and back to make a tube, so to speak. You can kind of see one of the sides in this picture. I sewed the velcro in a different direction on the flap, so he would have more room if needed depending on what all he put in the pockets.

The flap is just 2 pieces of fabric with fusible fleece ironed to one side. (I use fusible fleece a lot when I make purses, etc. I really love this stuff.) Then I sewed around 3 sides, right sides together, turned and pressed. I sewed the flap to the back of the case, flipped it up and sewed again. I almost forgot. I also sewed the bottom seam twice to give it more strength. I haven't put straps on yet, because I wanted to see how long to make them. I think we are going to buy some webbing and use 'D' rings to make and attach the straps. Here it is with the laptop inside of it. It is a very good fit, and dh was thrilled with it. (grin) You can see the inside pockets. This meant alot to me, to be able to figure this out on my own. Kevin couldn't believe it only took a couple of hours for me to finish it. I had to work quickly because I was doing this Tuesday evening and wanted to be done in time to watch Biggest Loser. (grin) I also got the applique done on Mom's rooster quilt.

Yesterday I got all the quilting lines drawn on it, the button sewed on for the eye, all sandwiched together, and even got a good start on the quilting. Here it is, all ready to quilt. I took a closeup picture of the rooster, but the flash made it all washed out, so I will wait till I get it quilted to share that with you. I have been doing some spring cleaning. Feels good to open the house up again. Well, I need to go check on my baby chicks, then get back to quilting. Everyone have a great day. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

Working on Mom's birthday gift

Good evening everyone,

It has been a rainy, dreary week. We have had one day this week with sunshine. My dh said the long-ranger forecast has chances of rain each day for the next 10 days for us. I guess I will quit complaining since I might be begging for rain in a couple of months. (grin)

I am exactly half way done with the quilting on my niece's graduation quilt. I have 3 weeks to finish it. I hope I can get it done. I work on it in the evenings, but may have to bump it up a couple of notches. LOL This week I have been getting my mom's birthday gift ready to quilt. She wants a rooster quilt. I like to change things a little, so her background will be blues.

I wasn't sure how the paper pieced sun would look with the blues, but I couldn't make a blue sun. LOL So it is what it is.

Today I got all of the pieces for the rooster drawn and fused on. Here is a little closeup of the rooster. I have to take mom to the bank and grocery store in the morning, but I should be home by noon. I hope to get appliqued around each of the pieces, the quilting lines drawn on it, and get it sandwiched tomorrow afternoon. Mom's birthday is May 26th. Once I start quilting, I don't think it will take me long. I really want to have this done for mom's birthday. She has never really shown a great deal of interest in my quilting, but she loved my first rooster quilt. So I think she will really enjoy this one. Blue is also her favorite color. (grin)

Our chicks are feathering out nicely. I had hoped to get them moved out to the chicken house this weekend, but it is so cold, damp and rainy, that I think I will wait. I really don't want to stress them now. They have done really well in the house, so what's another week? LOL

Kevin got his new laptop yesterday. He loves it. Now he wants me to make him a case for it. I told him I would be glad to do it. He wants to use a thin foam instead of batting. I told him we would probably need to go to JoAnn's to get that. (grin) So looks like I might get to go to JoAnn's again this weekend. LOL Maybe I should take stock in their company. LOL

Well, I need to get back to quilting on Amy's quilt. Everyone have a good day and wonderful weekend. I probably won't be posting again till next week. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

Rooster Quilt Is Finished!

I finished sewing the binding on the rooster quilt this morning. I used black for the binding. I think that was the right choice. Even though I complained alot about this quilt, I am glad I did it. I learned some new techniques and my husband is thrilled with it. (grin) So it will hang in our home. Here it is. I really like the way it turned out.

Of course, you know me. I always have to share the back. I decided not to do any quilting on the rooster itself. I just quilted around it.

Now I am busy piecing a small, bright quilt. It is being strip pieced, so is coming along quickly. I am using up some of the fabric I bought half price at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago. I have never made a quilt using this technique either. So I am learning again. LOL This shows the pattern and the strips I am workng with. It will be bright, but I think it is going to look ok.
I haven't felt real good today. I think it is all of those nasty carbs leaving my body. I sure hope the cravings leave soon as well. Even all of the snacks I think of have carbs. (eye roll here) I knew this way of eating would be hard, but when I am eating low carb is when I feel the best. So I decided to just toughen up and do it. I also exercised today. I am thinking it must have helped, cause surely I wouldn't be so sore for nothing. Right? LOL

As you can see, I got my camera back today. I am going to try really hard never to leave it anywhere again. I was just lost without it. I will share a few pictures of Ava's party. The only guests were Jeremy's mom and grandma, Hazel and her family, and me. Everyone else had other plans. Ava with her Strawberry Shortcake cake.

I told you she loves bugs. Well, seems she loves snakes too. Our daughter says no snakes. Thank you Cath. I would have a hard time visiting, knowing a snake was in the house.(Shivers here) Here she is with a toy green snake. I didn't get many pictures of Ashton. He just doesn't like his picture taken and doesn't hold still long enough for me to get a good one. I can't tell you how many pictures I have of him with no head or the back of his head. LOL He was holding his mom's camera, trying to get a picture of me. Here he is actually posing because he wanted me to take a picture of this puppet.
Noah likes to have his picture taken, then he wants to look at the back of the camera to see it.
Ashton, Ava, and Noah all went outside for a little while to play, but didn't last long since it was only about 20*. Jeremy said he just wanted them to go out and play long enough to burn some of the sugar off that they had all eaten. LOL Here's Noah all bundled up. I didn't last long either.
Izabella is cutting teeth. Not just one at a time, but a whole mouthful at a time. She had moments when she just wasn't happy. She also had moments when she was laughing. You can see how my poor little sweetie was drooling. I believe she has one tooth in and about 4 or 5 trying to come in. She is also just on the verge of crawling. *************************** WARNING*********************************

Ok, those are my 'grandma bragging' pictures. LOL I have one more picture I want to share with you, but thought I'd better warn you all. If you are squeamish about rats, you might not want to look at the next picture. Our kids usually had pet rats. They actually make very good pets. Anyway, I had Ava's and Ashton's rats out sitting on my shoulders when Cath snapped a picture. They are so sweet. Really they are. The kids named them. They are called Pickle and Hamster. How are those for names? LOL Now if anyone is still with me, I guess it is time for me to get this posted. Sorry if you are squeamish. I just couldn't resist. LOL Before I go, though, I want to wish Joel a very happy birthday today. He is my friend, Teresa's youngest son. Hope he had a great day. Everyone have a good evening.

Complaints and a Triumph!

I am afraid this post will be alot of complaining, but also triumph! LOL I have the rooster quilt ready to machine stitch around the rooster pieces. Oh my, this quilt has been so hard. I did learn some new techniques, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I told you all about the paper piecing yesterday. I got all of the pieces of the sun appliqued together, after sticking myself numerous times. I'm not sure I did it right, but it is done. Then I got the sun sewn into the rest of the quilt. Whew!

Then came the rooster. By the time I got that baby done, I was thinking the sun was quite easy. LOL In order to have the rooster facing the right direction, I had to trace the pieces onto tracing paper with my black marker. Then turn this paper over and trace onto the fusible webbing. Each piece had to be carefully labeled because they go on in a certain order. Then I ironed the fusible webbing onto the back of my chosen fabrics and cut them out. It was hard to tell where one piece ended and the next began when I was doing the tracing. This morning, I laid the quilt over my ironing board, peeled the paper off the pieces as I needed them and began arranging the pieces on the quilt. I didn't realize how hard it would be to get all the pieces to line up just right. Move one and it creates a problem with another piece and so on and so on. I finally got it just like I wanted when Callie showed up. I grabbed her just in time and bribed her with treats away from my quilt. LOL I very gently pressed everything in place. It is not perfect, but it will do. This is a closeup of the rooster, but my camera washed it out.

Here is a picture of the whole quilt.

Another view. Now I have to machine sew around each piece. I haven't done much of this, so it will take a while, lots of curves and little pieces to sew around. I just figured it would be easier to use the machine than to hand sew with a blanket stitch around each of these. I also need to sew a black button on for an eye. Then it is ready to be sandwiched and quilted. I will hand quilt it. I love the way it looks, but it sure has been a pain to work on. If I ever do another one (very doubtful LOL), the rooster will be facing the other direction. I hated tracing all of those pieces then turning them over and tracing again so they would be going the right direction when fused on the back of fabric. Maybe I made this harder than it had to be. Remember, this is all new to me. If someone knows an easier way to do this, please share. (grin) My husband always says I make things harder than they need to be. Maybe there is an easier way, but I sure couldn't see it. LOL

It is a nice day out, about 41*, so I may take a walk with the dogs in a bit. They love walks and it is good exercise for me. Sorry not much else going on here today. I have spent the past 3 days working on the rooster. I think my next project is going to be easy peasy. Something I don't even have to think about. LOL Just sew some blocks together. Everyone have a great day.

Paper Piecing Woes!

Good morning everyone,

It is 22* and snowing. I had no idea we had snow coming in. I was piddling around on the computer trying to avoid all the boring stuff going on right now on the tv. I got up, looked out the window and was rather surprised to see the ground white. I will leave the tv on till after Mr. Obama takes the oathe of office, then off it goes, and on my country music comes. LOL I am just not going to waste my day watching all the wastefulness that is going on in Washington D.C. today.

I have decided that I really do not like paper piecing. It was not fun for me at all. So I doubt that I will have alot of that in my future. (Unless I get much, much better at it. sigh) The base for the rooster quilt went together very quickly, but it was just piecing and strip piecing, so no problem.

Then I got to the paper pieced sun. Oh my, your first paper pieced project should not be tiny little points like the rays on this sun. I had to rip out each of the first 8 pieces that I sewed at least once and some twice. (frown here) I was just about ready to scrap this portion of it. After all, does the rooster really need a sun? Then I decided to cut my red and yellow pieces bigger. That worked much better. My frugal self didn't want to waste any fabric, but I found that wasting fabric was better than losing my sanity. LOL So I got the sun paper pieced. Then promptly tore the paper off the back, which was not easy by any means. (sigh again) Did all this only to read that I was not supposed to tear the paper backing off yet. This thing is just not cooperating with me. So here is where I am at the moment on the rooster project. I am supposed to applique the center of the sun on the inside of the sun points and the background piece on the outside of the points. I hope to get that done in a bit. Then I need to decide how I want to do the rooster. I can fuse him on and use a hand blanket stitch around him. I can fuse him on and use a machine stitch around the pieces. Or I can needle turn all the pieces. Decisions, decisions. LOL Anyway, I will keep you up to date with what I decide to do. Here is a little table topper that I made out of charm pack of southwestern fabrics. Sorry I can't remember what the charm pack was called. Anyway, I think it turned out kind of cute and I'm frugal, don't you know. (I'm sure my kids call that cheap.LOL) Anyway, you see all of those half square triangles? Well, I saved all of the other halves. I sewed corner to catty corner on them, then marked a half inch over and made another seam. Then I cut between these 2 seams. So now I have some more HST to use, only these are smaller. I have some ideas for them, but haven't done it yet. I will in good time. I have had the quilting done on this for about a week, but just couldn't find the right binding. I interviewed lots of different fabrics, then I tried the black. Oh yeah, that was the one. I made a comment to my dh something like, 'I love it when a plan comes together'. Then I had to giggle. How many out there remember the show called 'The A Team'? That is the comment that Hannibal (I think that was his name. Can't remember his real name either, but remember he had very blond or white hair.) always said at the end of the show. (giggle) Ok, showing my age here. That show was probably in the 80's. It also had Mr.T in it. Anyway, sorry to drift there. The black was the perfect binding. My backing is pretty busy, but I also had trouble picking it for this project too. I'll show you anyway, but I don't think you can even see the quilting stitches. See, I told you you wouldn't be able to see the stitches. Oh well, my daughter helped me pick out the backing.

I thought I would share with you one of my favorite tools. It is the Fons and Porter binding tool. I just love this thing. It helps me to make the ends of the binding so smooth and looks so sharp. I bought it at JoAnn's with a coupon and it was worth every cent I paid. LOL I use it with every binding I put on.

I will be starting my sweet potatoes soon. I try to grow our own plants. Still doing it the way my grandparents did. LOL I will show pictures as they hopefully grow. Of course, I had to buy these sweet potatoes at the store, so I am sure hoping they will sprout and grow. It will be a bummer if they don't. I like to save my own sweet potatoes from the previous year to grow my plants, but didn't get any last year. In fact, our garden last year was a bust. I am sure counting on a good one this year. I will be sending my order to Jungs this Friday.

I am back. I paused to watch Mr. Obama take the oath of office. He was not my choice for president , but I will continue to pray for him to make wise decisions. I don't envy the job ahead of him. Our country is in a mess. Anyway, he is now our president and will have my prayers and support. I do not like politics, so this is about as much as you will hear from me.

I am now off to listen to some good music and work on my rooster. Everyone have a good day. I'll talk to you all tomorrow.