Maniac Monday

Maniac Monday is back. I am hoping this will help me to stay motivated to get things done. I have way too many UFO's to continue buying fabric for no purpose. So with the Maniac Monday list I can set goals for myself for the week and see if I have made any progress. I want to get this goal of blogging often again into my blood stream before school starts back up for me on September 17th. I only have a few semesters left of my Associates Degree in Family History Research and them all of my time will be mine again. I am no longer babysitting on a regular basis, only hit and miss, maybe once or twice a month. So, I want to lay the ground work for some good personal habits. 

What does my list look like:

Below is the list of the four projects I drew out of the "hat." As I finish one UFO, I will move onto the next in line. Why four? I have no idea, just sounded like a good number. HA HA!!

1. Finish the Kaleidoscopic Kites top, formerly known as the Larger Rainbow Disappearing 9 Patch.

I have to add two more rows to the bottom edge and I will stop there and call that a good twin size. I will be donating to our local food bank for Christmas gifts.

2. Start and finish the Kaleidoscopic Kites RS Baby Quilt top.

This one is not on the list, but because I am trying to finish UFO's, I have decided not to leave other UFO's in my wake. I will just sew these blocks up into a top also. I have about 37 blocks left over, so I will be making a baby quilt for my church. We give new babies a hand-made quilt and I am the one that is lucky enough to be doing that now. I love making baby quilts. Such a quick little project.

3. Work out a plan for my Lori Holt Farm Girl Vintage 12 inch blocks quilts.

I made all of the blocks in the book so now I need to figure out how many quilts I will make out of them. Next thought will be who will get them. I am sure I will keep one for myself. 

4. Work out a plan for my Kaleidoscope Paper-Pieced Saturday Sampler quilt.

I am not sure how old this sampler is. I did this these blocks from a local quilt shop. I have some of mine made and the rest are just in kits. My daughter was doing it with me and got frustrated. So she gave me all of her blocks. I need to decide if I am making a huge quilt with 24 blocks, two smaller quilts, or moving her fabric into my stash. I love the blocks though, they are so beautiful!!

5. Round and Round Quilt Along.

I have gotten to this point. I need to add a few rows of alternating four patches and white strips to the top and bottom. I was so close to having this one done, why did I stop?! I don't know. I am sure I will be saying that a lot. 

I am not sure how far I will go this week, but this is my plan for now. 

TTFN

Manic Monday~9 Getting a Lot Off My List

 I have had a busy few days. My dad is a volunteer firefighter. His group had a BBQ/Auction this weekend. He asked that I make a quilt to put in the auction. So being me I made two. They are very simple quilts. I bought two fabrics that had sections in them. I cut the sections apart, added sashing, and then put them back together. I added just fleece to the back with no batting. 

This one went for $65.00.

This one went for $65.00. Not bad. I paid about $45.00 for the fabric for both of them and the fire department made $140.00. I love that!!

I made more quilts for my church. We had a Humanitarian Night. All the ladies got together and put together backpacks filled with school supplies for our local schools. We tied quilts for a local Food Bank. We also made stuffed bears for a hospital nearby to give to hurt and sick kids. This bellow is one of the quilts laid out on my bed before I finished the top. Now I need to get the binding on all of them, wash them, and drop them off.

I had taken a picture of my two blocks all finished and stacked before I made the top for Double Delight. I wanted to added a picture here for the fun of it. That right there was a lot of work. I have it sandwiched and have started the quilting. I needed to stop for the above quilts. I am hoping to get back to it soon.

In my PQA group we did another fabric swap. These are becoming really popular. We have more planned. I received the fabric and finished cutting the strips for our fall set. I still have to cut the patriotic set. But I thought you would like to see some of the rows laid out. 

Here they are all rolled up and tied with a  ribbon. HA HA they look so beautiful!!

One of my favorite flowers is in bloom in my yard. It is a Trumpet Plant or what we like to call a moon flower. We love them and they are huge. Almost the size of a dinner plate. 

I hope your day goes well and you get  a lot accomplished!!

TTFN

Maniac Monday~8 It is a Top!!

Since Wednesday I have spent a lot of time in the sewing room. I have enjoyed myself so much. I have missed the process. The vision I see in my head of what I think my project will look like. The multiple identical steps. The seemingly hundreds of little steps until you get to the part were with each seam the whole thing starts coming together. Then before you know it the top is a top. It is a quilt!! I cuddly blanket that many naps will be taken under. How exciting!! I love this quilt. I am not sure about the colors but I love that I can look at this one and say, "Yeah, I made that!!" I am not sure if I need to add a border or leave it as is. I only have orange fabric left. What do you think? Should I add the orange or use the orange as the binding? I am leaning more for the second idea. Thank you for stopping by!!

TTFN

Maniac Monday 7~Pets and my Finger

I am having one heck of a time with a few changes and I think that is partly why I am having a hard time staying up on my blog. For Christmas my husband bought me an iPad Mini. I love it. I can use it anywhere. I quickly learned I could not blog from it though. To keep under the amount of space my pictures use blogging I always edit my pictures in a different program before I upload them to Blogger. Well I can't use the program on my iPad. Well that was ok I still had my laptop to do that. Well then about after 3 weeks after Christmas my laptop died!! Oh I was so MAD. Now what. So I found an app I could use on my iPad to edit pictures then an app to blog from. I was a little fussy so I stopped using them. So off and on I have used my daughter's computer. She will be leaving soon and I need to find a more permanent way to store and edit pictures then to blog them here. So I have been using a small older laptop my husband used awhile back. It is SLOW!! Oh I am frustrated. But I am going to figure this out. I miss blogging. So I am going to stop fighting it and teach myself a new trick or two, ha ha!! Do  you have a process of how you blog? I would love to hear how you do it.

 On a sad note we lost another pet last night. Here is a picture of him from yesterday while I was holding him. He was a huge gray cat that we got from a sister-in-law. She had rescued him at another sister-in-laws house about 6 years ago. He took him and he has been a great cat. We got him fixed when he was young and shortly he started acting weird. I took him to the vet. We found out that he was one of a lucky few that get "sand" like calcium deposits inside the bladder that block his urethra and cause urine to back up. We had to buy him special urinary health cat food. The vet told use he would always have that problem and it might get worse. Well I believe that is why he passed away. He was my DD#2's cat. He slept with her and just loved her. We are all very sad and hurt. Losing pets is so hard. This makes 5 pets in 6 years. Our Boston Terrier is getting up there and we will lose him soon also. Hug your pets!! Tell them you love them for me.

With help from my quilt group we were able to donate 5 pet beds to a local shelter a few weeks ago. (How fitting these two pictures are together.) Anyway we are saving all of our fabric clippings and scraps. I then sew two fat quarters together and stuff them. The shelter was so happy to receive them. I hope to be back next week with pictures of other fun things that I got to work on.

I have not been able to do very much sew because I did a very bad NO-NO!! I was at my sister-in-law's house sewing a few weeks ago. I had moved the sewing machine petal more to the back of my foot because  my nephew was crawling under the table. I got up and walked away from the table. When I came back I was talking and not watching what I was doing. This is what we think happened. I put my hand inside the machine to move it and at the same time stomped on the petal because I forgot that I had moved it. Well the machine took off because I had not turned it off, who does that! And the machine ATE my finger. ATE it! Like a hungry monster. I will show you the after pictures first then at the bottom is what it looks like with the need stuck in my finger. The arrow shows where the needle went in. I had to cut my nail back because it went through the nail. OUCH!!! It hurt so bad when they took it out. But I am fine now. Just tender when I bump it. 

I this one you can see where it went in and then back out.

Turn away now if you do not want to see what the needle looks like stuck in my finger. That spot of blood is all the blood there was. 

Turn away now if you do not want to see it!!

DO NOT DO THIS!!!

 TTFN

Maniac Monday 6~Long Time No See~Picture Heavy!

So after a very busy 7 weeks plus two weeks of just relaxing I finally feel like myself again. I have had so many things back to back that I just kept trucking with my mind set on the next big thing. What needed to be planned next, what was my part in those plans, what were the deadlines. Finally from now until the middle of September I can just roll with the small bunches and enjoy the summer. There is only a few birthday parties that I am not in charge of, one holiday, 4th of July, and a few small town quilt shows to go to. I can handle this. 

Here are a few pictures to show what I have been up to!

Old Fort Boise Days is our small communities summer celebration. It was so fun! Here is our float we put into the parade. You can see my daughter and a niece. All of the quilts you see are mine. The one standing up is the quilt we raffled and the quilt show. We made about $75.00 on it. 

The PQA Quilt Show went so well. We had 67 quilts. For our first quilt show that makes me so happy!! Here are a few pictures of some of the quilts we had and some of the fun ways we hung them.

 One of the things we had was some art made out of just a piece of fabric wrapped around a board. It is a cool way to show off beautiful fabric!!

I also made two wedding cakes. One cake for practice and let me tell you my family and extended family was very happy!! Yummy cake!

 Then I made second on for them for the wedding. HA HA on the day we were setting up for the quilt show! What a busy day that was. Here is the cute couple. I made a very small cake for them to cut up and feed to each other. 

 At my church we just had a craft night. A very large group of ladies got together to make a bunch of fun seasonal crafts. I was in charge of making quilt tops that we could tie. I was able to bring 5 and we tied 3. I still need to bind them. (sorry the colors are off a little but I will take better pictures when they are done)

THEN...We got a new kitten. My husband found it at work and was afraid it was going to be killed with all of the big equipment moving around there. So we went and picked it up. She was about 3 weeks old. We had to bottle feed her. now she is all grown up and feisty!! But she fits our family and we love her!

Now just a fun picture of me. I love that I am able to do what I have done. Now time to get back to quilting for me.

TTFN

Maniac Monday 5~Trip Around the Rainbow

I have been working hard to get a few projects to the next step. I have finished the top of my Trip Around the World quilt. It is a huge quilt. I LOVE IT!! I love rainbow anything so this quilt is a visual feast for me. I am going to work at getting this quilted this week.  

HA HA It was a very windy day. Look Chompie is in the picture also.

My daughters are holding the quilt up for me. As you can see they are standing up on the very top of our picnic table. That shows how big it is. Their arms were getting tired of holding the quilt so they had to take a rest.

TTFN