Never Enough Time

This week I was really suppose to get a lot done.  I finished teaching my 5th grade Math class last Friday so I had soooo much free time now on my hands.  Well, I guess I didn't get as much as I needed!  I did get:

•  Brooke's birthday present crocheted and mailed to her, that was project #1
• My denim quilt tied 
• One quilt square finished and another almost there
• My yard cleaned up for spring time
• lots of crazy craft ideas from pinterest!

I really need to:

• Bind my denim quilt
• Matt & Kamelle's baby blanket finished
• Finish the other block
• Scrapbook another 5-10 layouts

I did promise John that through the month of April I will put all the crafty projects away (except my DT scrapbooking).  We'll see how that goes ;)

Farmers Wife Heritage Quilt week #2

My "Heritage" quilt, I have really enjoyed finding blocks for this quilt.  Most of the blocks will be from my Farmers Wife Quilt book, but I will continue to look elsewhere for other blocks that represent some part of my heritage.  My goal is to work on and complete two quilt blocks a week, I am just starting so I know to begin with, they will take longer. I know that I should start with really easy, square block.

Today I was a little crazy and picked two very detailed blocks, what was I thinking!  Both blocks I worked with today had so many triangles!!  The material is just some random cloth in my stash, sorry I can't tell you where it came from.

First, you need to know my history, I was raised in a farm town in a valley in Colorado.  While my father is not a farmer anymore, he has been at different times in his life, and I was raised like a "farmer's daughter" would be.  This is a 6" block.

Block #32: Farmer's Daughter

My second block is called "Wyoming Valley" and well Wyoming isn't any part of my heritage, but Colorado is and I am from a Colorado valley.  These two blocks both shared many similar characteristics and went well together.

As you can see in the picture below, the block is not finished...... I messed up and sewed a few things the wrong direction.  It will be corrected soon and I will get this block finished.   Sorry about the unfinished block!

Block: Wyoming Valley

If you would like to see some really great blocks pieced together go here: http://craftsewcreate.blogspot.com/ this blog has become my inspiration

Denim quilt

Last summer when my brother in law came to visit, he begged me to make him a denim quilt.  In his prior divorce, his X took the denim quilt I had previously made for his family and he needed another one.  I was fine with that and put it together in 4 days.  Cut, sewn, tied and bound, it was quite and accomplishment!  After that I knew that our family needed another one also.  The one we have stays in the back of my car and it gets used at parks and games all the time.  When soccer season rolled around in September, I finally decided to start this blanket.  By the end of soccer season it was half way done and it got put away until now.... soccer season starts again next week.

The reason we need two is that sometimes I drive to the games and sometimes John drives and we randomly take different vehicles.  We forget to change the quilt from this car to that and so the easiest thing to do is to have two denim quilts, one for each car.  Yesterday I got this quilt out and today I finished sewing all the squares together.

The quilt is made of 6" squares, when sewn they are 5 1/2" square.  I made this quilt quite large, 15 blocks wide by 16 blocks long.  I wanted it to be big enough for the entire family if being used at the park for a picnic.  

Next week I will be tying the quilt together, the only step before that is stitching the two back panels together, a piece of cake!  I'll try to show this next week finished!

Scrapbook forever

This past week was my week to finish Hailey's 2010 scrapbook pages.  There wasn't a lot to do, but I did need to do at least 15 layouts.  I pulled out a few kits I had and used a few storytellers club kits.  My creativity was a little low.  Here are a few of the layouts:

This was the first day of school Aug 2010

Hailey's 8th Birthday!!!

My Birthday

Another one of my birthdays!

Easter 2010

Christmas 2010, preparing to move to Utah!

Building a Christmas Gingerbread house!

Quilt blocks#1

Today I did my first blocks!  I have been wanting to do this farmers wife quilt along for a while, but I want a king size quilt for my bed.

So when the local quilting store started a 1940's Block of the Month sampler quilt, I thought this would be perfect to combine the two and get my country sampler quilt!

This has taken me a while to start, just collecting the fabric, and finishing off a few other craft projects I needed out of the way.  Here is the collection of fabric I have to make this quilt.

I wanted the material to stay old fashion country style.   I also want to blocks to range from 6x6 to 12x12, so I will be changing the templates to many of the farmers wife squares.  I have to say thanks to starwood quilter for showing me how this is possible.

Here is our March BOM: It's called Comfort quilt and is a 12 x 12 block

This is my first farmers wife block, it's block #21: Contrary Wife

Infinity scarf

Just made a couple of different infinity scarves. This time I crocheted these, but I did up and finally finish knitting this one I started years ago:

I couldn't photograph the red one made for Leslie's birthday, but here is the thicker tan (wool) one and the fun blue one came from this site http://www.naturallycaron.com/projects/bellflower/bellflower_1.html

Storytellers March happening!

This month (and last) I had the goal to finish scrapbooking all of my kids 2010 photos. February took a large chunk out of the pile an so March was divided up into weeks. Last week was Abby's week. And, while I won't post them all or even a lot of them, here are a few.

This Easter page is created with the new Storytellers club March 2013 kit:

This vacation page is create with a no longer available kit:

Our Queens bath page is created with a unavailable 2010 kit:

This is made with a Feb 2013 kit, I love how it didn't have to be 'Valentiney':

Not sure when this kit came out, but it's 2012 I think:

Baby blanket

After making that blue scarf from this site http://www.naturallycaron.com/projects/bellflower/bellflower_1.html I really thought this would make a wonderful baby blanket. I have 3 sister/sister in laws all having babies in the next two months. One sells everything at garage sells, one doesn't want anything (she's having her 4th baby boy) and one would love and treasure this kind of thing. So guess who I made it for!

Brooke is having a baby girl an so I wanted to go with a soft yarn, soft color just right for a baby girl. This is what I came up with:

The picture of my foot there is so my mother could see how big the afagan was going to be.

It's spring!

We have had the longest snowiest winter that really needs to melt! My house is also north facing, so it tends to melt last.

I can't do much about the weather, but I can bring my moods up by adding color to our lives.

 One tip is get help (it takes a lot of little helpers :))

I saw multiple posts on how to create flowers out of coffee filters (thanks ointerest) and so I decided to give it a try.

First I dyed the filters in food coloring and water.

You can see how wet they are

 Next I cooked them in my oven 200 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

When this is all done fold the filters into quarters and cut a middle circle out leaving 1- 1 1-2 inches around the edge.

 On a 12-15 inch piece of tape fold the middle circle first and push on the tape.. Do this to two or three filters at once, spacing them out only 1/4 inch.

Then place the long strips on the tape, crinkling as you go. 

Roll the tape up, starting with the middle pieces (which will be the middle of the flower)

Create lots of flowers and hot glue onto a wreath.

Here is my outcome:

And here this is on my front door.

Here is the Easter wreath we just made for our entrance

Scarves galore!

For Christmas this year, I made over 25 of these frilly knitted scarves! The first few took about 4 hours each but after them I got the pattern down and they took about 1 hr 15 minutes. It's amazing what practice can do to your time.

The yarn is about 2 inches wide and so all you do is a very basic knit stitch back n forth. The instructions say to knit 6 stitches, but I like 7 or 8 to make the scar a little fuller. Most of mine were 7 stitches wide. Then you just knit the entire way, no purling, with a size 9 needle.


They were great to use as gifts and so much fun to make!