My Very First Tutorial!

It came to me one night. Actually, about two nights ago, while I was up late working on the quilt for my cousin (She loved it, by the way!). I quickly drew out what I envisioned in my head and picked out my fabrics. Friday I bought some of the notions I needed, and today I put it all together. I am so excited to share it with you!

Just call me CRAZY!

So today I went crazy. Crazy for quilting. Well, maybe not so much for quilting as from quilting. You see, I found out last night that the bridal shower on Saturday (yes, tomorrow, or rather, today, I guess) that I had said I was not going to, I was apparently going to. My mom called me and said they would be picking me up at 10 AM. This of course stressed me out beyond all else as the quilt I was making for my cousin was nowhere near completion. Well, that is what I spent today doing. QUILTING. Ugh! I am taking a break for a few days now. Everyone else's quilts can wait while I de-stressify myself.

This is the inner section of the quilt top, before the borders got put on. The hardest part was now complete, at about 11 AM Friday morning.
A close up of the blocks. They turned out really well. They look hard, but they really weren't. The hardest part was lining up the borders with the "nine patch" part.
The quilt top after all of the borders were attached. This was finished around 1:30 PM Friday afternoon. Marshy-marsh was running around the living room, Mike had just gotten home from work, and I was hurriedly trying to seam the backing fabric so I could run down to the shop to quilt it.

I did something stupid. When I told Mike his reply was "Well that's to be expected." Rude! True, but rude! haha. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to show off a little, even though I didn't have a whole lot of time to spend quilting this quilt. So, I decided to quilt the biggest border with the tiniest dang meander I have ever done in my life. Three hours later....the quilt was finally quilted. This was finished around 6 PM Friday evening.

By 1 AM Saturday morning, the quilt was complete. FINALLY! I did a tiny meander in the large outer border. Note: The border is about 6 inches wide. The perimeter of the quilt is about 180 inches. You do the math. That is a lot of dang little stitches. I am never doing a meander that small again. NEVER! I outlined the rest of the borders with squiggly lines, and outlined the blocks with the same squiggles.
Inside the blocks I attempted a new leaf pattern. If you know they are leaves, then it looks like leaves, but I'm sure to everyone else it just looks like a flower. Either way, it goes with the theme of the quilt.
In the green setting squares and triangles I quilted a tulip pattern. You can kind of see it here. I used a really pretty creamish-tan thread to quilt it, so it doesn't really show up too well because it is so light.
This is the backing with the binding. The corners are a little challenged. I suck at doing corners. But at least the look okay. Why is it that when I'm giving a quilt away the corners have issues, but when I do one for myself the corners are perfect? Figures.

Anyway, this is why my day was crazy. Here I have been up for almost 18 hours, and the quilt still isn't wrapped. I forgot to grab a box while I was at the shop quilting, so I am going to just have to wrap it in the wrapping paper. At least I had extra wedding-themed wrapping paper! I also forgot to grab a card, so I had to make my own. Ugh! What a day! What a day! I am ready for bed.

GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY!

Remember this?

So, I don't know who all will remember this show. I sure didn't. In fact, I had never heard of it, except for the cartoon version, until Mike brought it up one day last month. Then, tonight, he found it on Netflix instant view. Can you tell we love Netflix? We watch a lot of movies at our house now that we only get basic cable. Aaah, how I miss DirecTv and the plus package with the DVR.

The show was called The Tick. It starred Patrick Warburton as Tick. He is hilarious. You might recall him from The Emperor's New Groove (Kronk), Kim Possible, and even Family Guy (Joe Swanson). The Tick was made in 2001, but looks like something out of the late 80s, early 90s. It is hilarious! I have not laughed so hard as I did while watching the first few episodes tonight in a long while.

In addition to Patrick Warburton, it has Nestor Carbonell as Batmanuel. You might remember him from Suddenly Susan and Kim Possible. Liz Vassey as Captain Liberty, who has recently been a rather prominent "lab rat" in CSI on CBS. And David Burke as Aurthur, who has apparently been in a lot of tv shows that I have either never heard of or never cared to watch.

All in all, it is a pretty good show so far. You definitely should check it out at your local Blockbuster or Hollywood video, if they carry it, or on Netflix, if you have an account. It is definitely worth a view, and a couple of laughs.

Dexter!

So tonight I got some quilting in. Notice I said "some", as in a little, not a lot. There are several reasons for this.

Reason #1: My dear little angel-baby Marshy-marsh absolutely refused to go to bed when it was bedtime. 2 hours, lots of screaming, a tired mommy, and a very upset daddy later, he finally went to bed. WHEW! It was a lot of work getting him there, too. He is really strong for an 18 month old!

Reason #2 (the main reason I didn't do a lot of quilting): My dearest husband Mike has been craving this TV show we've been watching on Netflix, all day. Stupid "Dexter". It is so good.

Some of you are now asking yourself, "Why Dexter? Isn't it about a serial killer? How can that be remotely entertaining?" All questions I originally asked myself. And now, having seen the show, I can say that it is quite entertaining. Basically, it's like watching CSI, only backwards. What I mean is, it's like if Gil Grissom was secretly leading this double life in which he killed bad guys. I wonder if that's how they got the idea for the show? haha! That would be funny.

Anyway, some of quilt #1 got done. The rest of the pieces got cut out, and I joined the main part of all 9 blocks. That's a step in the right direction, I guess. Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow!

PSYCHIC

So I think Marshy-marsh is a psychic, because he was channelling his cousin today. Marshy NEVER sleeps with his hands behind his head. He sleeps on his stomach, unless he is in his stroller. Then, he always holds his puppy in one hand and his bottle in the other. That would be cool if he was a psychic! I wouldn't have to pay to call the phone psychics anymore (not like I ever did that, because I didn't. I'm just sayin...)

Family Fun...and diapers?

Now that I've got everything unpacked and out where it belongs, I guess I could start posting some of my family fun pictures from this weekend... So, here you go!
Grandma and Grandpa Hart (or as they like to be called: Nana and Poppa) brought this electric piano down on Saturday for me. My mom has had it in her classroom at school, but, she decided that should she ever decide to walk out and never come back she needed to take it home. Since they already have a newer model, they offered me this one. Of course I said yes! I used to play really well, so I'm hoping to brush up a little bit.
Marshy of course loves to push all the different buttons, but has to stop and pose once he sees me with the camera.

Marshall discovered Disneyland Mr. Potato Head (we bought it on our honeymoon almost 3 years ago) while we were unpacking. He likes to wear Mr. Head's hat on his head...
Also, not the only thing he likes to wear on his head. Sound familiar to anyone? He is definitely his father's son! Mike had to help him a little bit, but he got it on there for a few minutes. For those of you who can't tell, that is a clean diaper (emphasis on CLEAN)
And again, still playing with the diaper.... For those of you who have never met my husband, the tall guy in the green shirt who is sitting on the floor is Mike. The short guy in the blue shirt standing on his head is Marshy-marsh.
And again with the diaper! Really, definitely his father's son. He had a hard time keeping it on his head though...I guess he gets the clumsiness from me.
And here we are throwing the clean diaper that has been on his head away. Really, he put it in the laundry hamper. I'm not sure why he thinks the laundry is a garbage can. I find all sorts of trash in there when I do his laundry. Hmmm...


Marshy-marsh putting Mr. Head's hat on daddy's head. Daddy was such a good sport.
Being tickled by Dad. Marshy-marsh tried to "escape" but just got even more tickles.
And then he got put upside down! Marshy-marsh loves hanging upside down. He laughs and laughs and laughs until his face turns red...we aren't sure if it's because of all the blood rushing to his head or all the laughing, but he doesn't seem to mind.

Daddy fixing the hat so that it will stay on Marshy-marsh's head. He is always so interested in what Mike does. They are best friends.
Marshy trying to be like dad and fixing the hat. The yellow thing is a rubber toy that Mike fitted inside the hat to get it to grip to Marshy's head a little better. Of course, Marshy wants to know how it works, so he pulled it out and is now trying to put it back in.
He got a little high centered trying to climb over his airplane. He was stuck like this for a good 3 minutes. We aren't very good parents. We just sat there and laughed and took pictures. Oh well, it wasn't like he was in any danger or anything! He just got a little upset at being stuck, that's all.
He wasn't upset for very long, though, because he fixed himself and ended up kneeling on the airplane. Honestly, this was the first time I've ever seen him voluntarily sit on the thing. I was really surprised, and he seemed to really like it.
Well, he liked it until he got stuck and couldn't get off the airplane. Mom had to step in and save the day! (which is why there is no picture of him getting off...I was on camera duty).

We had a lot of fun playing together, and wearing different things on our heads. Well, Marshy did at least. I held the camera and took pictures, and Mike only wore the hat for a little bit. No diaper wearing for him! Oh how I wish I had that picture. I would post it here right now, even though he might get really mad. If anyone has a copy of that, I would really like one.

A Quilter's Progress...or lack thereof

It's been so long, it seems, since I've quilted. Not quilted on the machine, but actually cut out fabric and sewn it together to make a quilt top. I didn't really know how much I missed it until today. Even now, as I sit up well past my bedtime waiting for Marshy-marsh to finish his bottle so I don't have to wake up to a screaming baby who woke up to being soaking wet from falling asleep on his bottle, I wish I could quilt. If only the machine didn't make so much noise. If only it wasn't 12:15 AM. If only I didn't have to work all day tomorrow. If only Mike didn't have to go in to the office. But for all of these "if only"-ies, I would be quilting right now. You laugh. But it's true. Last August/September I stayed up all night (until 4) one night when Mike was out of town working on Marshy-marsh's halloween costume. It was so worth it!

This was the best picture I could find without scanning in his pictures from JCPenney. It doesn't have the adorable hat, but just imagine it with a little dinosaur hat. SO CUTE!! *note: when I made the costume, I thought I was making a dragon. Turns out dragons have wings....thus, he went as a dinosaur.*

Anyway, I would stay up all night, if I could, quilting. Even though my quilting station is not ideal, I would do it. I am currently using my counter as my sewing machine stand. I tried the folding table yesterday. That screwed my poor little Janome up so bad that it took me until about 1 PM this afternoon to fix it. It's all better now, thankfully. I really was quite close to throwing it out the window. And, living on the third floor, I can tell you it wouldn't have survived the fall.

I have made quite a bit of progress on my cousin's quilt! I'm so excited! I got almost all the pieces cut out (i'm working on the setting squares and triangles still). I even got most of the blocks sewn together. 108 little rectangles, and 72 half square triangles later, I have quite a bit sewn together.


This is kind of the layout of the blocks. Imagine the purple and tan along all four sides, instead of just the two, and you basically have what the block will look like.


This lovely green floral print is the fabric for the setting squares and triangles. I have the strips mostly cut out, but haven't actually cut out the rest of it yet.


This is a sampling of the other fabrics I'm using. The one in the middle that looks like a salmon in this picture is actually a really pretty tan.

This is the backing fabric. It matches both colors of lilac in the quilt top fabric, and also the darker of the pinks. It has a slight hint of green as well. I loved it when I saw it at the store today, so I just had to get it. Well, that and I needed it!

I would be a lot farther, except that Mike figured out how to hook the laptop up to the TV through the computer sound system we bought for the jukebox, and now he watches the Netflix instant view movies all the time. Currently we are watching Dexter. It's so interesting, and it pulls you in even if you don't want to be pulled in! I missed the first 5 episodes, yet I still am enthralled and want to know what happens! AAHH!! (For those of you who would like to see this Showtime original in its edited form, you can catch it Sundays on CBS, I believe).