15 minutes

What can I get done in 15 minutes of ironing and cutting ?

Pinwheel blocks and 2.5" ironed open. 

 Cutting those strips into 4" chunks.

 15 minutes of sewing produced 10  squares ready to be ironed and cut into triangles. Also produced my 4" chunks of strips put together into 4 pieces.

  15 more minutes of ironing and cutting













 I hate it when I make a mistake, take a look at the purple and brown pieces.. one is a pinwheel and the other are flying geese of sorts. :P time to get the ripper out and put the pinwheel back to together correctly.

Finished up ironing these pieces and I do not know what I am going to do with the yet.. border on  a quilt perhaps, or a coin quilt. hmmmm Choices galore.











Now to see what else I can do in 15 minutes.. Have the egg timer all set up..

Happy stitching.

Kevin the Quilter

Kevin is doing a block drive, you can find all the information to it here.
Just click the link and lets see how many blocks this wonderful quilter can gather.

These quilts will be QoV  ( Quilts of Valor) quilts.

The block drive started on March 2nd ( and I am just now hearing about it) and ends June 1st, 2014.
Each quilt requires 30 blocks according to Kevin, Oh and he is offering a prize as well.
A gift card to Missouri Star Quilt Company. I love their products. :D and their daily deals are fantastic.
And now he has even more prizes that have been offered to him for this unique and special drive he is holding. 

So Hurry on over to visit Kevin and see what he is up to.
He has all the requirements listed, you will need to read through to find them, or scroll down to the bottom of the blog posting.

Best of luck Kevin, May you have more blocks than you need to accomplish your goal!!!!!!

Its a Saterday, time to start a new week

Well nothing much has happened over the past week. Been thinking a lot and sometimes it comes down to, what I need to do, what I have to do and what I have done.

Not much done, Have a lot I need to do and have a lot I have to get done.

I did get 2 blocks done for my Mom's quilt, however, I put the blocks together all wrong. :P lol
It is what happens when you do not have the original block set up by the machine so you have a reference.

Dang it, I need to find my camera again.

Discouragement this week has been profound for me. Making stupid mistakes, not sorting fabric correctly and putting into the correct bins, attempting to cut some fabric and find out 1) its not the correct one, and 2) cut it out all wrong. Bad Tammy, lol.

Oh well time to slow down, take it easy and put everything back into perspective. Hopefully within the next few days I will have improvements to post about. :D

Like getting fabric sorted and put into the correct bins, like cutting out and putting blocks together CORRECTLY..

What have you all been doing this past week? Sewing, crocheting, knitting, hiking, biking, staying warm for my northern friends, walking, jogging, etc??


Until next time
Tammy

Free Motion Quilting or FMQ.

So, I have been thinking, and yea this can get scary and can get me into trouble every now n then.
But I need to learn some new skills and one of those is free motion quilting, I can do some simple patterns, like stitch in the ditch and meandering, but to really bring out some blocks you need to highlight them with stitching.

Your quilting skills depending upon your skill level can really enhance a quilt pattern or basically take away from the blocks you just spent hours on putting together.

Now to begin this journey, I will attempt to learn from Leigh Day over at The Free Motion Quilting Project. Using some of her techniques I am going to try and enhance and practice my free motion quilting.

 First project that will be my first attempt at something other than meandering or sitd (stitch in the ditch) is my sister's table runner, it has these wide open triangles that are just screaming at me to do something with.

See what I mean, I have quilted the other parts of it using sitd method and it has the binding on it. But I don't feel like it is finished.





So this is to chronicle the steps I am taking to learn something new. You can do it how ever you feel comfortable, its not a race, I am hoping I can help someone else in taking those furtive first steps that are usually scary to do on your own. Lets try this together.

5 in charms

I have these charm packs I bought with no thought as to what I was going to do with them. Since I have scrap batting from previous projects, these charms will be sandwiched together and practiced on.

ruler, fabric, frixion pen

First thing I did was grab my 6.5 in square ruler, you can use what ever you have on hand to do this. Put it at 4.5 in from one edge of the fabric as shown in the picture. I grabbed my frixion pen and began marking.

Now I do have the 4.5 in square ruler, but its in the dining room and I didn't want to go grab it. lol
I will grab it and show it to you the next posting.

a marked charm square

Here is the marked charm square. I think I will start with Leigh Day's 1st tut, in her 365 days of fmq, which is located here .
I really like the frixion pen, should I mess up on marking a piece of fabric I can iron it off, it just disappears.



Like all things you must test it on a piece of scrap fabric.




Lets see how well I do on my practicing this morning. Check back later today to see how it goes.
What are you doing today?
Happy crafting.
Tammy

All Roads Lead to Home

This lap quilt will be going to my Cousin Charley. He is a truck driver, and he was diagnose with cancer this year. He has completed all his chemo and radiation treatments and we shall find out next month if he is in remission or not.


I had to revamp how I wanted to do this but I think he will love it anyways. I will be putting on the house block "Home Sweet Home".
This is being made out of Batiks in the D9P or disappearing 9 patch blocks. With roadways going all around it.

Thanks for looking and happy sewing.. Anticipation for Friday's clues is mounting.. :D

Oct. 5, 2012

 So last night I posted on my Damsels Creations FB page, " I am really bummed out right now and have been for a long while. Something I wanted to do really badly for my cousin. And I'm unable to do so. So that is why I have not been posting anything. sorry for the let downs.. sighs.. Hugs, loves, and many blessings to all my fans.. Hope fully soon I will be back at it again." 
And its true, my cousin's kids were suppose to send me some signature blocks, so that I could make him a lap quilt called "All Roads Lead to Home". I left the blocks with the girls on July 4th, 2012, and here it is Oct. 5th, 2012, and I still do not have the blocks. I'm disappointed in the fact that they have not sent them to me, although they said they were going to. Its had me pretty bummed out for a few weeks. I really wanted to get it done in time for Christmas this year. Now I don't think I can do it. Not without hurting myself in doing so.

But today is a new day, and here is how I am going to start my day, first up breakfast. 

 I like my toast lightly toasted and my eggs over easy, with a little bit of pepper. Once they are cooked and onto a plate. I had a small pinch of grated cheese. YUMMMY. Along with my favorite beverage.

Then we take stock of what needs to get done Whether it is cleaning house ( which is always the case) sewing related items, crocheting related items, lets see how much I can get done today. 

 My sisters table/dresser runner that needs to be finished ,that goes to her bedroom set, the top is done for her quilt, just need to sandwich and quilt it.

 The b/f Queen size Jelly Roll quilt, that needs to be hand quilted. Gonna quilt it in Baptist Fans. Cross fingers.

 My neighbor wants a receiving type blanket crochet for her great grand daughter. It should have been done back in June. Been to hot to crochet. So we have 27 rows done in double crochet. and have about 28 more rows to do.

 My former sis n law loves pink, and she happens to love the pinwheels that were done a month or two ago. So lets combine them together and see what we can do. I know I need 120+ pinwheels for her Queen sized quilt, This piece is her Dresser runner, I need to figure out pillow shams also.

 and I need to clean up around my sewing machine, it is a MESS..

I will report back this evening or in the morning with my progress, lets see how much I can get done today. :D