Updates as Promised

Okay, so I'm not done, but seeing as how it's 2:30 AM on Saturday morning, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

That being said, I have added some new posts to my quilting blog. You should go check out the cute quilts people have been making! And see the cute Cars quilt that I FINALLY finished for Marshy.

Okay, so it's not completely done, yet, but it will be. It's about 7/8 of the way bound. :)


ALSO! There are less than 2 weeks until the NEW MOON PARTY. I am so excited! It's going to be awesome. It's funny, but we've sold a whole bunch of tickets these last few days. It's starting to look like we might sell all of our tickets :) YAY! BUT! Tickets are still available, so if you are interested PLEASE give us a call 801-423-1876 or email me at coltonsangels@gmail.com.

More updates coming, I promise! :)

Late Nights

I've been going back in to work around 7 PM and staying until 10 or 11 PM lately.

I get a lot done, surprisingly.

Tonight I finished a hard quilt, and started to load another one on. It was at that point that I realized I didn't have the right color of purple thread! UGH!

I seriously thought I was going to be able to finish the whole quilt tonight. Instead, I have to haul my butt up to the SLC tomorrow morning to buy thread. AND I have to take the top with me because it is a weird color of purple and I don't want to buy 5 cones to have none of them work out. That would suck.

So, here's to another late night with not very much accomplished. Wish me luck for tomorrow!

It feels like FOREVER!

I AM SOOOOOO SORRY I haven't blogged in FOREVER! Life has been incredibly hectic lately.

I finally updated my quilting blog. YAY! GO check out some of the really cute quilts people have brought me!

This is my sweetheart puppy. He belongs to Mike's parents, but they are at Quilt Market in Houston and will be gone for a week and a half. They didn't want to leave him home all by himself for that long, so we are puppy sitting. Well...he's like 4 1/2 years old, so I guess it's really doggy sitting.
He's a little depressed I think. He curled up next to Mike on the couch and passed out. Poor little guy. I think he was a little freaked by the change. He's staying at our house, and he's never been here before.

Also, this is my carrots page for the BOM that Gracie Lou's is doing. It's really a page every two weeks, and it's for a really cute quiet book. LOVE IT! The carrots page was HARD. It took me an extra week to finish it.....all those stupid green things at the top. haha.

This is my sweet little cheeser, standing in front of Cameron and Lauren's quilt. He is so funny. He loves to have his picture taken. Every time I get the camera out he says: "Momma, Marshall?" he wants his picture taken all the time. I'll have to take him to get his picture taken in his Halloween costume....if I ever get it done.

Another one of these cute cheeser moments. I love this boy!

Also, in Marshy-land we have some happy news. He has been potty training for a little over a week, and now is going number 1 almost all by himself! We are still working on the pooping part of the training. Today at the shop, while I was gone BTW, he pooped and then tried to dump it into the toilet all by himself! Apparently he came running out of the bathroom butt naked yelling "GREEN POOP! GREEN POOP!" Poor Angel had to help him clean it up. I AM SO SORRY ANGEL! Hopefully we'll get to the point where the pooping will occur on the potty and not in the pull ups (which we call training pants, because they look an awful lot like diapers, but I'm tired of throwing away poopy underwear.....they are EXPENSIVE to replace!)

Quilting updates

Just updated my quilting blog. Again. It seems to keep getting away from me, so every time I go to update it I have like 5 posts to do!

Anyway, please go check it out. There are some really cute quilts on there. Some of them you can get patterns, fabric, notions, whatever for at Gracie Lou's. They have the cutest things! I swear, if I had unlimited resources, didn't have to sleep, and had all my time to myself, I would totally quilt all day!!

Also, I know that school is just starting (next week), but it's never too early to start thinking about custom made Christmas presents. T-shirt quilts make great Christmas presents, and you don't even have to do anything to get them! I will do all the work, you just provide the t-shirts. The quilts start at $14.00 per block. That includes everything needed to make the quilt: materials, labor, quilting, binding, batting.....EVERYTHING. Including FABRIC.

Referral Program

Starting immediately: Get a rewarded for each new client referral I receive from you. Details here.

One of those days....

Today is one of those days.

The kind of days when things don't get done.

Why? Because I'm currently re-reading the Twilight Saga. It is way better than I remembered it.

Anyway, I have managed to get a few things done. Several quilts, in particular. This one was my favorite. It took me a week, but it turned out so good!

Also, I've started working out again. UGH! It is so hard. Last night was the worst, because we had a bbq right before. I would've put it off, but I know that I have to be good. Besides, I have a work out buddy and she was already at my house! haha

I'm also working on a few other things, so we'll see how they all go. Does anyone else ever feel like they are stretched too thin in a million directions? It's not just me, right?

Also, preparing for court at the end of August. I'm nervous, but excited. Again, I'll let ya'all know how that one turns out.

Next week I hope to be done reading the Twilight books, so then I'll have more time to actually post things here on my blog. :D

Productive

I got a lot done at work today! I am so proud of myself. I put a quilt on, but didn't have the right size batting, so I have to go get some tomorrow. The batting place is closed on Mondays, which is kind of dumb, but oh well!

Since I couldn't quilt, I decided to get to work on the commissioned quilts I am doing for a family friend out in NY. I got all the pieces cut out for both quilts. Then I cut and attached the binding for Marshy's "Froggin' Saur Bankdie" so I can finally finish it for him! He's been using it without the binding on it, so it will be nice to be able to have it finished.

I stayed a little later today, and got most of 1 of the commissioned quilts sewn together, and pieces of the 2nd one sewn together. Tomorrow is Colton's Angels at 6, so I will stay at work, instead of going home, and hopefully finish piecing at least the first top together. I am hoping to have them quilted by the weekend so that I can have them bound by Monday! Yes, just a little ambitious. haha

Quilt Posts and Pricing

Updated my quilting posts here. There are some really talented ladies who have brought me some really beautiful quilts.

Also, there's a new pricing list here.

Fun New Game

Marshy discovered this really fun new game tonight. It's called "Put the laundry basket on top of you and sit there until Mom makes you go to bed." Fun, huh?!
If you look closely in the picture above, you can see his toes peeking out through the handle hole.

You can easily see his little fingers in this one, but his head is a little harder to see. It's right there above the fingers a few inches, though. He was practically bent in half! Oh to be that flexible again!

Which reminds me.... how is it possible that I can work out for 5 straight days, but the routines are getting harder instead of easier? Shouldn't they get easier the more you do them?? Seriously! Major pain tonight was what I experienced. OUCH!

Also, looked at an apartment in SF, and LOVED IT! Turned in an application. Hope we get it. The scary part is that they ask you how much debt you owe and what your monthly payment is. When you lump it all together like that it looks really bad. Good news, though, with Mike's nice paycheck, and my added income from quilting (and soon to be added medical transcriptionist income as soon as I finish the class in June), we have been able to make more than the minimum monthly payments (and we've been paying a lot in rent for where live). So, hopefully we'll get this place, and since the rent is a lot lower, we'll be able to pay off even more! Oh that would be so nice!! :) Fingers Crossed!!

Catching up

I feel like I have been neglecting my blog again! SORRY! It has been so hectic. Wednesday Mike was supposed to fly in on a 12:30 flight from Denver. It got cancelled at 11. They put him on standby at 2 PM, 3:40 PM, and booked him a flight at 5:05 PM. Yeah, there went my whole day. He made it on the 3:40 flight, luckily, so he didn't get home too late. Not like the flight from Denver is very long. Maybe an hour....as opposed the the 8 hour drive out there.

While I waited for Mike to tell me which flight he'd be on, I ran up to the SLC to purchase some needed supplies for my business. I knew I had a couple of quilts that needed kind of a teal/turquoise color, but I couldn't remember how dark the fabrics were. I took a wild guess and bought a medium tone. Turns out it was the PERFECT color for a set of bumper pads and baby quilt I am doing for a client. LUCKY!

After the trip to the supplier, I stopped by my parents' house to wait for Mike's call (I was late picking him up, because his plane landed 30 minutes early! STUPID!). They have been converting their home from regular power to solar power. It has been quite the ordeal. They had to have several trees removed from their front yard (1 because it was rotting inside out and was splitting in 2 and would have fallen on the house. YIKES!). They had a new roof put in, and were without any heat for about a week while they installed a new solar-friendly, energy effecient heating system. They replaced 32 of the 34 windows, upgraded the wiring system, and installed a whole bunch of mini skylights. When I went over they already had the water heater solar panels up, but the regular panels (the other 50 or something crazy like that) hadn't arrived yet. CRAZY! Fortunately for my mom, things are getting a little less hectic now that the workers are done ripping out windows and molding, and reroofing, etc.

These next few pictures I took the other day at work. Marsh was so tired.
Now that he sleeps in a big boy bed with a big boy pillow, he always has to have a pillow to take a nap. He has a little baby pillow at the shop, so I wrapped my UTES sweatshirt around it to make it bigger for him. He loved it, and now always wants to use my sweater as a pillow. Great!
I got a couple of quilts done this week, despite the wasted day on Wednesday. This one turned out super cute. I wasn't sure about it at first, but when it was finished I liked it. Funny how that is. Some of my best, and favorite, work has started out with me not liking it at all. Hmm. I also did a baby girl quilt and a baby boy quilt.

I won't be working on Monday. It's a holiday. I'm taking it off. Also, I can't promise to get a lot done on Tuesday. It's the inauguration. I will be celebrating. :D Seriously, though, I will try really hard to get a lot done on Tuesday after the celebrating is over....maybe. :D

Business Trip

Mike had to drive one of these

to Denver for work.

He is coming home on one of these.Marsh and I get to pick him up at the airport

tomorrow at 2 PM.
Needless to say, I won't be going in to work.

FINISHED!!

So,.....it's only like 4:20 in the morning, but I just wanted to get on here and exclaim my relief and joy that the t-shirt quilt is finally finished!!!

Pictures coming soon!

And now I'm going to go down some children's tylenol multi-symptom cold medicine for my cough so that I can get some sleep. Aaah. Sleep.

P.S. - Can you believe there are only 2 days until CHRISTMAS?! I can't!!! In fact, I'm kinda freaking out over here!!

More Quilt Pics

I just added a ton of quilt pics on my other blog. I think this one was my favorite one, though! The front is way cute. Go here to see more pictures of it.

Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt: Day 6

Do you see this?! It is the t-shirt quilt top. And it is FINISHED!!! Hooray!! I came home from work and my Colton's Angels meeting tonight, and busted the rest of this quilt top out. Finally! Now all I need is some cute minkee (which I will probably have to seam....the quilt is about 72 x 72) and it is ready to be quilted and bound. I even finished right on schedule with my timeline I drew up the other night!! :)

Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt: Day 5

Well, it's day 5, and I am still no further along than I was yesterday. I take that back. I have attached row three. Unfortunately I have discovered that the longer the t-shirts sit there, the more they stretch out. This explains why rows 1 and 2 are perfect, yet rows 3, 4, and 5 are off by about a half an inch.

Last night I unpicked rows 3, 4, and 5. Tonight I sewed row 3 back together. Then I had to unpick the first block again, and re-sew it. I finally gave up, and sewed it on to the row 1/2 unit. It is still off by a little, but what can you do? Once something has stretched out, you can't unstretch it.

I have decided that even though it is 10:45 PM, I am going to sew as late as I possible can. I also have to cut and seam a back for a different client's quilt. I will probably be up quite late, but it's okay, because I really need to get this all done, and my family understands.

My goal for tonight: Re-sew and attach row 4 to the row 1/2/3/ unit, and re-sew row 5. Hopefully attach row 5 to the rest of the rows. That would be so great to finish the quilt top tonight. We'll see.

My goal for tomorrow: Find the backing fabric so I can get this quilt ready for quilting!

Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt: Day 4

No pictures for today's progress.....or lack thereof. Apparently I used the wrong marker for my seam allowance, and am now having to unpick all of my third row of sashing. I have yet to see how badly the 4th and 5th rows are. I am hoping not so bad. In fact, I am hoping there are no problems at all! So, rather than finishing this quilt top today, I will be unpicking a lot of it. I won't get to sew on it tonight because it is already 10:45 PM, and noise curfew is 10, so I will be nice and not annoy the downstairs and next door neighbors with the noise of my commercial-grade sewing machine. :)

Hopefully I can get it finished tomorrow during the commercials for Chuck and Heroes! :)

Two more projects finished

Remember how I said I can't ever say no to another project? Well, two of them are finished! YAY!

I have 2 cousins getting married this month. They are sisters, and one is on the 26th and one is on the 27th. Not having time to shop for anything, and wanting to do something a little more personal, I decided to throw together these two table runners. I haven't decided who gets which, though.

This first one is Gypsy Rose by Joanna Figueroa, Fig Tree Quilts for moda.
I couldn't find any fabric from the line at the store, so I picked a similar color for the border. The binding and backing are the same fabric as the border, as well. See, I bought 1 1/2 yards thinking that would be just enough....turns out I really shouldn't try to do math in my head! I figured out that I would have so much left over, so I threw on a cute little 2 inch border.

This one is Fig & Plum by Joanna Figueroa, Fig Tree Quilts for moda.

Same deal with the border. It will also be the backing and binding, and I also bought 1 1/2 yards for it. UGH! At least they are done and now all I have to do is throw them onto the quilt machine at some point this week. I'm hoping to get all my clients taken care of by Wednesday so that I can do my personal quilts on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Monday of next week. Just in time for Christmas, eh?!

Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt: Day 3

Well, it's day 3, and I have made quite a bit of progress on this t-shirt quilt. I pieced together all of the rows, and began to sew the rows into the quilt top.
I would've gotten the third row of blocks sewn on, but it was already 11 PM and I didn't want to make the people downstairs madder than they probably already were (because my machine has the tendency to shake the floor if I go too fast, which means it is shaking their ceiling!)

I am hoping to spend tomorrow afternoon finishing this quilt top. Then all I need to do is buy the backing fabric on Monday, and put this baby in line at the shop for quilting.

This has been surprisingly easier than I expected. The piecing has gone by fairly fast, and I'm sure if I didn't have to keep changing diapers every 30 minutes that I would definitely have gotten more done. I pieced for 3 hours tonight, and I feel like I've accomplished quite a lot.

I am definitely starting to think that this is something I would enjoy doing again and again, for both myself and for clients. In fact, I am hoping to make one for my brother for Christmas (I KNOW! I am nuts! I know it won't get finished in time, so it will be more of a Happy New Years present, probably).

Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt: Day 2

Bought some more fusible interfacing: 6 more yards. That makes a total of 15 yards. Stupid, though, because it went on sale today. I could've gotten it all for half off ($7.50 instead of $15.00) if I'd waited. But how was I to know?

I finished fusing the interfacing to the t-shirts, and cut the remaining shirts out. Then I cut out all of my vertical sashing strips....all 30 of them....at 2 1/2 inches wide. I still need to cut out the horizontal strips. There will only be 12 of those, thank goodness!

I also laid out all the blocks and arranged them in a pleasing manner. I even started to sew the sashing on, but then I ran out of bobbin thread, and I didn't have a pre-wound one ready, so I am done for the evening.

I would have gotten a lot more done, except that Marsh had to be taken on another car ride to get him to go to sleep. He was snoring when we got home...so cute...and then he said "OFF!" when I laid him in bed, but he didn't wake up. He must have been dreaming.

Tomorrow, Day 3, I am hoping to get the sashing all sewn onto the blocks, and the quilt top assembled. I still need to buy the backing fabric. I haven't found anything that really jumps out at me and says "This is exactly what Nate wanted! BUY ME BUY ME!" I have a couple of options, but I still need to check a few stores. Hopefully I can get this sucker quilted by next Friday. That would just be awesome!

Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt: Day 1

So I am doing a t-shirt quilt for my cousin's roommate. He brought by the t-shirts this morning. There were 22 t-shirts, 2 button ups, and 2 polos. I am doing a 5 x 5 quilt (this means, 5 rows, 5 columns, for those of you who don't speak "quilter"). He wants minkee on the back, and a solid navy blue for the sashing.

I went to Joann's Fabrics after work today, and bought 9 yards of lightweight Pellon fusible interfacing, 3 yards of a solid navy blue "Quilter's Solids" fabric, and a Full size (because that's all they had) polyfill batting about 1/4 inch loft. It was only $34. Not too shabby. This took about 1 hour, because the Orem Joann's is always busy and you always have to wait for at least 20 minutes to get your stuff cut.

I got home, ate dinner, and proceeded to cut apart the t-shirts. Up one side, across the sleeve, through the neck, across the other sleeve, and down the other side. It took about an hour. Since I am only using 25 blocks, I had to pick which shirts to use. The polos were a little thick, so they were immediately disqualified. Fortunately, one of the t-shirts had enough of a pattern on the back that I could use it as well as the front. I ended up using 22 t-shirts (with 1 back) and the 2 button ups.

After the shirts were cut apart, I proceeded to cut out large sized pieces of the interfacing, place them on the t-shirts, with the stretch going opposite the stretch of the tees, and iron them on securely. I didn't buy enough interfacing! The 9 yards only lasted for 16 of the shirts! I have 8 shirts left. Fortunately, it is only $0.99 per yard, so I figure another 5 or 6 yards should do the trick, and not be too pricey. Ironing on to the 16 shirts took about 2 hours.

Then I centered and cut out the 12 1/2 inch squares from each of the 16 shirts with interfacing, which only took about 30 minutes. This is what I have to show for my work on this project:

Sorry the picture is a little dark and blurry. I left my good camera at work by accident, so I had to use my phone.

I feel pretty good about todays progress. He doesn't need it until the 27th, but because we are closed the 25-28 I have to have it done before Christmas. No big deal, right? Throw it on the stack of 50 bazillion other things I'm working on! :)

Stay tuned for more Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt! I will be working on it every night, hopefully, so I'll definitely keep ya'all posted on my progress. This is so fun, because I have always wanted to do one, but not had the time, and now I have to do one for a client, so it works out! :)