Who Doesn't Like Snowmen?

I was going through some pictures of  projects that I had completed for Christmas 2012.  My good friend, Char, showed me a pillow she had completed for one of her Christmas presents for her family. Loved it! Check out her pillows on her blog at Char's Crafty Creations.  I needed to make this for one of my daughters, and then I needed to make different ones for my other daughters. Crafting is a viscous circle, you see a project you "need" to make, then you "need" to make more because you "need" to make many for many people!!

Frosty Friends was made for my friend, Gail, and Welcome Friends & Flakes was made for my youngest daughter, Monica.  

Merry Christmas was made for my "middle" daughter, Jennifer, and Let It Snow for my "oldest" daughter, Sarah.  These patterns are both Crab-apple Hill patterns.

My friend, Char, and I had first seen "Let It Snow" at a quilt shop early in the fall and went on their waiting list for the pattern.  They had this darling pillow on display with coordinating fabrics.  Loved the fabrics and their pillow, so we bought the fabric.  Quilter's Motto regarding fabric:  Buy it when you see it, or it won't be there when you want it.!! Their pillow was much more detailed, and we wanted it!!  Waited, and waited, and waited.   So, as we waited for Let It Snow; my friend showed me her Merry Christmas pillow.   Loved her pillow, so I started to work on this one. Still waiting for the Let It Snow, I made the other two with patterns that I found along the way.

Finally, late Oct., early Nov. the pattern comes in.  My husband and I make the 50 plus miles round trip to the quilt shop and I finally have the pattern in hand.  The pillow pattern is not included??!!!  So, anywho, I winged it, and I am happy with the outcome.  

Now...of course, I want all of the snowmen pillows that I made for gifts.  Will I ever make these for myself, hope so.   My daughter's seemed to love them, so what more could a "mom" want?

Have a good crafting day and hope you'll visit me again. 

Sharon:-)

THIS AND THAT

It's a this and that day!  It's also a cold, freezing rain day along the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio.  So, it is a good day to put down some ramblings.

UFO'S:  No, not in the sky.  The ones that are lurking in your closet, drawers, under your bed, under someone else's bed.......maybe never to be seen again.  

I have been "actively" quilting for a little over 15 years.  I don't have many UFO's, cause I have this problem;  when I start a quilting project, I usually have to finish it.  It may take me a couple of months, but I don't start on something else until it's done.  Now, I may throw a table runner or a small wall quilt in there, but mainly I don't have to many unfinished items. 

My biggest one is the one above.  I just need to pull out my fabrics (I found my missing pattern) and start piecing it.  I will enjoy sewing it, once I get it to my sewing machine; but just thinking about the paper piecing and the applique and the embroidering that needs to be done, makes me not pick it up to work on.  I like all this, as I said, I just need to get it to my sewing machine.  My husband's sister is visiting from Florida this April..........I really would like it done by then.  Doable, right?

My daughter wanted to take this fall class for a wall quilt, so she persuaded her mother and our quilting friend to take the class with her.  She finished quilting hers, my friend and I still need to do that.  I am thinking when it get's closer to fall again,  then I will get it quilted.  I have a small quilt for my online quilting group, should finish that in a couple days for the February challenge.   I have fabric to make my youngest daughter her "sock monkey" quilt.  I have a collection to make a quilt for our bedroom.  And, I need to make a baby quilt by the middle of April.  I guess my collection of UFO's isn't that bad.  Okay, I have had my daughter's sock monkey fabric for 5 years (she will be 31 in May, it's doable, right?)  Somewhere down the line I'll get these pictures posted.

CRAFT ROOM ORGANIZATION:  I have this spare bedroom that is my craft room.  My son hung a metal pegboard, painted it white, and I have re-organized it for the 3rd time.  It's getting there.  Every few months I work on organizing my fabric.  Well, my daughter gave me a dresser (lime green, goes with my purple walls) to organize my fabric.  So, I get my fabric out of those containers that were stacked in my closet, carefully stuff that fabric in those drawers, no organization there.  

So, my daughter gets this old large dresser from her husband's uncle last week. Her fabric now is all folded, fat quarter style, by color in her drawers.  She looks thru my fabric stash yesterday and says something to the sound of "not much order here, huh"?  I get the last laugh for now, we have the same taste in fabric (for the civil war theme now) and all I have to do is pull her drawers open to check out what she has, and borrow some.  She has to search thru my drawers. hahaha

Oh, and she has more UFO's than I do too.  Her niece, my granddaughter, is waiting for her bed quilt that her Aunt started like 3 years ago.  The top is done, I have offered to quilt it (we are both hand quilters) and get it out of her UFO's. She already made her other niece's quilt (and she's been using it for 3 years) and the girls share the same bedroom.  Oh well..........

But my daughter did give me a finished top to quilt that she made.  She started this a year or so ago, and it isn't what she wanted.  So, she asked if I wanted it?  Sure do, I like it a lot, and I have just the place to hang it in my family room in the basement.  Right now it's living on my design wall!

So, what and where do your UFO's live?

Thanks for reading my ramblings..........hope you'll visit again.

Sharon

Current Work In Progress

I should say, one of my current works in progress, as pictured on my home page, is almost complete. As mentioned previously, The quilt is The City Stitcher Quilt Collection designed by Janet Miller.  I have one more house block to make and join to the other 2 houses in the row.

                                                    This house is named the Sturdy Brick

                                     
                                                      and this house is the Apartment House

The last house block is called the Town Hall.  At the moment, I can't locate the pattern.  I recently cleaned my craft room, and put it somewhere to work on it later.  The more I organize my room, the more I can't find anything. LOL

The rows consist of 3 house blocks each.  Top row, then each side row is attached to what is referred to as the "green".  My green represents a park like setting of flowers with stone sidewalks connecting the pathways.

The birds are embroidered; I added more and different kinds of birds than what the pattern called for.  I happen to enjoy my backyard birds, and felt that my quilt needed to reflect that.  I felt the Apartment House needed a park bench, so I drew a park bench for the residents to enjoy the birds and the park:)  Sometimes you need the unexpected thing to add zing to your project!!

Oh, yes, the houses are all paper pieced.  I had never really understood this method, or thought that this is something that I could do.  But, my friend showed me and my daughter this quilt hanging in one of the quilt shops, and she wanted us to do this as a project together.  My daughter fell in love with it too, so that began our by-weekly craft night, for the next year.  Many fun road trips looking for the right house fabrics.  I think we can all say, this project has added a lot of fabric to our "stash".

Tress, appliqued.  I can't remember that I had ever done anything like this before either.  On the whole, I like doing applique, a very relaxing thing to do in the evening.  This quilt has a little bit of everything, and I think I would really like to do this again, but all in a civil war theme.  But, I don't really need two quilts basically of the same thing.  I do have the wall space in this house; it's something to consider when I get all the other things on my list done. LOL

I didn't want to end up hand quilting the whole thing at one time, so I came up with a way to hand quilt each individual block, leaving enough fabric to each side of the block to attach them in the back.  It came out pretty cool.  Had I known that my outcome would come out so good, I would have chosen to have all my quilt house block backs the same fabric.  But, since the quilt is going to be hung on the wall, it wasn't important to me to have each back match.  I was trying to be frugal, so I used the background fabric from each house to match the back of that house.

In between working on this quilt, I also had a chance to complete some smaller wall quilts and table runners last year.  This year so far, I have completed 3 doll size quilts (2 were presents for my granddaughter's), and one was for the online small (doll size) quilt challenge.  Because I joined this on line quilt club in mid-January, I just finished this quilt today.  It measures 16 inches x 22 inches.

This is a Kathleen Tracy pattern from her book, Remembering Adelia.  She has a blog. titled Sentimental Quilter, and a group you can join to complete her small quilt challenges each month.  Check her out, I found her site by accident, joined her Small Talk Quilt Group, and have had a ball ever since.  Try it, you'll like it!!!

 I'll be shopping this weekend for the February challenge quilt fabric.  I think I have some work to do to get caught up and complete in the next 2 weeks.

Ah, I wonder where I put that missing house block pattern.....................................

Sharon

Queen of The Seam Ripper

Queen of the seam ripper!!  I had thought about making this my Blog title as this is how I view myself a lot of the time when working on sewing projects.  But I have always been intrigued with the word "serendipity" since watching the movie titled "Serendipity.  John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale were the stars in this 2001 movie.  From then on, I thought I needed to use "this word" somehow/somewhere in life.  So, that is how I chose Serendipity in Quilting.  

I have been busy the last few days working on a project of a small quilt.  As soon as I can bribe my son (that usually consists of a Dairy Queen Blizzard, or my friend with lunch) I will include a picture of the finished project.

This is the year of "the old dog (me) trying to learn some new tricks.  I have never joined anything of anything on the internet, just been a lurker.   But, a few weeks ago I was browsing a few sites just looking for some ideas or doll quilt sites to make a couple of Valentine quilts for my granddaughters.  Their ages are 6 and 9, live out of state, and both got American Girl dolls for Christmas.  So, what better for gramma to do than make them quilts for their dolls.

So, in my lurking, I found this really great site about making small quilts and it even had a small quilt club you could join on line.  So, I decided this was a good time as ever to get involved in something I truly love to do. I enjoy all of my crafts, but I think quilting is my most fulfilling.  In this on line group, you are given a monthly challenge to make a specific small quilt, if you choose.  Then there is a site you can post your completed quilt for that month.  Having others appreciate your work is also very rewarding.  

Now I have to go look up my son to see if he is in the mood to be bribed.  Please check back, I am hoping in some small way that I may have a short cut or idea that you might find interesting.  Or you may have something for me.

Thanks for stopping by,

Sharon

Brand New To Blogging

I'm here with a good friend (at least she was before this blogging thing started tonight) trying to figure it out.  Not sure how to add my favorite blogs......well just everything.  I wanted to name this blog "A Work In Progress" because it all will be a work in progress.  It was already taken, so there must be "a lot of works in progress" out there. LOL

The picture of the quilt above is my current work in progress.  It is The City Stitcher Quilt Collection, designed by Janet Miller.  I have one more row of 3 house to attach.  My daughter, Sarah, and my above mentioned friend, Char, are both working on their version of the same quilt pattern.  We have been meeting one night every other week for the last year to work on our quilts while watching "The Big Bang Theory".  Even my son, who lives at home, drops by from his domain in the basement.  He likes us!!!!  He really likes us, we are cheap entertainment!!!!  Hahahaha!  It's a lot of fun and we laugh a lot!

So, thank you for dropping in, hope you'll leave a comment or two.  If you know how to add blogs that you are following to a blog, please let me know how.

Bye For Now......... Sharon