A Proposal

It's been crazy around here! Lots of family stuff going on, lots of good, some bad. Last weekend DH and I ran away from home, and spent the weekend someplace cooler and calmer. On our way back to town, our future son-in-law bought us dinner and asked our blessings for him to marry DD#2! We happily gave them, and last night was the proposal :-)

He came down to Tucson to propose, (he lives in the greater Phoenix area), and proposed in our backyard.

The answer was obviously a yes!

The engagement ring, which DD#2 wanted to be a sapphire and it is, with a couple bonus diamonds on either side.

So, now we have two weddings in the works! The newest proposal (DD#2) will be the first wedding, December 8th of THIS year! DS the Younger and his fiance will be getting married in our backyard on March 14, 2014. It is wedding central around here!

I haven't even turned on a sewing machine in a couple weeks, but I did get two big quilts pin-basted. Thrice Broken Dishes is a quilt I started for DD#2 last year, but never finished. I will try to get it finished for their December wedding. I have a pineapple quilt that I planned to make for their wedding, but there is no way I could have it made in time. I'm hoping first anniversary! At least by finishing Thrice Broken Dishes they can have a quilt I made on their bed, and I can take my time on the quilt I really wanted to make them.

One Down, Two to Go!

I've finished one of the quilts I needed before the end of the year! Granted, this is just the baby quilt, and the other two are queen/king sized, but still, a finish is a finish!

This baby quilt is for baby Austin, due to make an appearance in November. Austin's mommy is a daughter of a good friend. I opted for a scrappy binding, which I think is a perfect complement to the scrappy top. I quilted with swirls, which gives the quilt some great texture. I had such a good time quilting the swirls, I think I will quilt swirls on Easy Street too.

The next two quilts I need are Easy Street and Thrice Broken Dishes. Tops are done, backings ready, I have batting for both, I just need the time to pin-baste them. I ordered some thread to quilt Easy Street with, but it's on backorder. I have everything to quilt Thrice Broken Dishes. I need Easy Street for early November, Thrice Broken Dishes for December. I am hoping to pin baste one of those this week, but it's very unlikely I could pin baste both this week. I do, however, have enough pins to do both, because I just bought some extra pins. I even have a plan on how to quilt both quilts. Time without toddlers under foot is what I am lacking.

If I manage to get any time in the sewing room this week, I hope to start cutting out DS the Younger's wedding quilt. His wedding is in March, and that quilt isn't even started yet! I have two other big quilts I know I need for next year, so it's a lot of big bed quilts for me for a while.

Squirrel!

Squirrel! is what we say around here, when someone has gotten way off topic, or off track. There are a lot of BIG things going on in my life now, and I have dozens of extra tasks to do everyday on top of all my regular stuff. I am going through one of those times where I feel like I'm spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere.

Here it is September, and I have three quilts that MUST be finished this year. All of those are now tops, (and one I'm actually quilting on one in 20-30 minute segments of time), but I am still just frazzled. Last weekend I decided it was time to pause the chaos, and go chase a squirrel.

 

This baby quilt has been pin basted for months, and I decided I was just going to finish it, even though another baby quilt is one of the three quilts I need to finish. I spent a couple days freehand quilting fans on the quilt, and it just felt good to sit there and quilt a while. I still had a ton of interruptions, but I did have some time to just enjoy the rhythm of moving the quilt in a regular pattern. Today during the twins' nap time, I decided to take the time to machine sew on a binding, and I have a FINISH! I really needed to finish something. Sure I have other things that NEED to be finished, but this was a quick finish, and that's what I needed most, just a sense of accomplishing something...anything!

This is the backing for the quilt. I had picked up the border fabric with all the animals on it at a thrift store when I was working on the penguin blocks. I thought it would be a fun border. I used all of it on this quilt. The animal fabric on the back was all that was left from the thrift store piece.

So, my to do list is still ridiculously long, but this quilt is done!

Easy Street Borders

Easy Street is a quilt top!!! I got the borders sewn on today. I had enough red to do the red/purple/red inner border I wanted, but i didn't want to sew the borders on individually. Mitering would have been perfect, but I've never done that, and frankly, I am too stressed over other things to try a new technique right now. I decided run on borders were good enough. I did consider cornerstones, but opted to not do that either. It was the easy way on this Easy Street quilt. The outer border I added has a jazz theme to it, so kind of a Big Easy feel to it. This fabric was in my stash (DH has a scrub top out of the same fabric) and it happened to have all the colors of my Easy Street quilt in it. I had several people think it was too wild for a border, but I love it.

I'll take a full on pic tomorrow, when I have quilt holders available.

Thrice Broken Dishes

I managed to get one quilt top together this holiday weekend, but barely have started borders on the other I was hoping to get finished. This quilt top we are calling Thrice Broken Dishes. It is a Twice Broken Dishes pattern, but if you look closely, the blocks are laid out as one big Broken Dishes block. The greens and blues are pretty scrappy so it blends in quite a bit, and there is a big brown diamond messing up the design a bit, but it is there.

This was one of the quilts for which I was making piano key borders. The quilt made from the leftovers of this quilt, will also have piano key borders. This quilt is for DD#2 and was supposed to be finished last year. Hmmm, I'm hoping for this year!

If I get any sewing time tomorrow, I'll be working on the borders for Easy Street. Once I get that quilt top done it's a quilting marathon for me. I have three quilts that MUST be finished this year, and I am running out of time!