I'm Back!

I'm back from the land of cheese! I actually didn't bring any back with me but I did bring back fresh-picked blueberries!! As I type, I have a batch of blueberry muffins in the oven from the site Our Best Bites. These gals are amazing :) 

My vacation was nice and relaxing and I got to spend tons of time with my family. The place we went to was Jellystone Warrens. The park is a great deal for large families since the minigolf and waterpark/pools are included in your camping rates. We stayed in a large villa so I was able to bring my sewing machine along!!

My new favorite travel companion was the following: 

 This book is awesome since you can't find all shops when you google. You can also plan out your route depending on if there is a quilt shop you want to visit. My favorite new shop is Olive Juice Quilts. They are located in Lacrosse/Onalaska, WI. They have a great selection of fabrics and are in an awesome cottage. I bought the following kit and pattern from them. Yeah yeah...I know his chin is a little messed up and I don't have his eyes on yet BUT you get the idea :)

  I stopped on the way back as well and got this pattern and some great fabric.

My other buys from shop hopping around were the following charm packs:

 I am planning on working through the book "3 Times the Charm!" and these will be perfect. One of the shops I stopped at actually had kits for some of the patterns in the book which was very cool.

While camping I finished up the quilting on my Halloween wall hanging. I just did some straight stitching across with black thread and then the binding is just the backing of the quilt folded and pulled forward.

Whew!! I also started and finished the quilting on my Lorax quilt.  I will post pictures of that shortly since I just finished up the binding. I did not bring my Beginner's Quilt-Along fabric with me so I will have two weeks to catch up on this week. The Craftsy block of the month blocks have been neglected too. Once Quilts and Vines is over I'll get back on track!

I hope you are all doing great out there!

Angela 

Under Construction

This page is currently under construction. Please visit http://sdquilters.blogspot.com/ to view my current blog. I plan on making a move over here at the end of the year :)

Thank you!


AMS

Vacation Time!

Hi all!

Just a quick note to let you know that I will be away for a bit. I will be back in August.


Take care of each other out there!

Angela S. 

Weekend Update 7/15

I am in the mood for cooler temperatures! I finished a winter wall hanging and have a Halloween wall hanging all pinned and ready to be quilted. 

 

All quilted and bound!

 I had purchased a kit and cut out the pieces a long time ago and finally got to working on that again this weekend. I am only making the 8x8 size but the kit I bought looks to have enough of the batting to make at least 2 more 9x13 holders so that's nice. This particular carrier is a table runner and carrier all in one instead of just the carrier. I think that it will work really nice so then you have basically a really large pot holder to put all of the hot food items on and you don't need to worry about hurting the table. 

An 8x8 casserole carrier

 I also started on a beach towel dress. The tutorial that I am following is here. Beach towels were on clearance at Target and this one came with a matching bag to I think its going to be really cute to wear. I have all the shirring done and just need to add straps now. The fabric did not shrink up as much as I was planning so i did have to make some other alterations so that it didn't look too big on me. 

Beach towel dress

On another note - Quilts and Vines due date for quilts is August 4th. I have a few things quilted and bound but none of them have sleeves or labels as of yet so that will be my main concern for the next few weeks!

Keep cool out there!

Angela 

Quick Hits

Here are a few of the things I have been working on this week. Also notice the Shop Hop flier. It sounds like a great time AND when you go -  you get 'free' fabric :)

The band Boston is playing at the Jackpot Junction Casino on Saturday night so this could be an awesome girls weekend!

I made a 'Twin Zip' in the large size. Its not shown on the pattern but adjustments were not hard to figure out.

And the other side of the bag.

Block 6 for the Beginner's QAL - The Calico Puzzle

This is a charity doll quilt that I made completely from scraps that were leftover from my first sampler quilt.

 I am working on a few other things this weekend so stay tuned!

Angela

Weekend Update 7/8

 This week I worked on my Quilting Gallery Beginner's QAL block, the Friendship Star. I have made at least one of these before and I liked it then. Just a few half-square triangles but nothing too complicated to get the look.I made sure to fussy-cut the red fabric so that I had a different cat in each corner.

Block 5 - Friendship Star

A few weeks ago I had picked up the Bridget's Bagettes kit from Heirloom Creations. The kit had enough included to make 3 bags, one in each size. You probably could have made a few of the same size if you wanted but I thought I had better just try them all for the first time. These bags are just awesome and Terri is able to prove once again that zippers are not scary! I had thought that working with vinyl would be difficult but with a walking foot and some tissue paper it ended up not being a deal at all.

I also made myself a make-up bag this week using one of Atkinson Designs older patterns. The Cash and Carry pattern was the first time that I learned to put in a zipper. I had taken a class on it from Heirloom quite a long time ago but the directions made much more sense this time around :) The dimensions of the pattern were obviously made for a wallet or classes case of somesorts. I needed a larger bag so i just adjusted the measurements as I saw fit. I got a couple of fat quarters of fabric and the zipper from Heirloom and had this cute little bag a few hours later. 
 

This week will be busy with both guild and Sewtopia meetings but I am working on a few other projects that I hope to post about soon!

Have a great week!

Angela

Sewing Studio Tour

I have been working hard on cleaning up my sewing room and here are the results! Of course I have to show you where I started in order to really appreciate how much things really changed :)

The mess before the big clean

and again....

Chief wondering what in the world I am doing

So here are the after pictures!! With the help of my husband I actually hung a few things up on the wall - gasp! I really like having the sewing table against the other wall now so that I have easy access to the window. My husband also helped me create a movable design wall. It is fairly small in size but should work perfectly for me. The best part is that it is made from an old wall hanging and a flannel backed tablecloth from Joann's that I got 70% off. Woohoo

New organizing bins for fat quarters and BOM projects

Sewing space - look the cork board from the floor made it to the wall!

Cutting and ironing station

New wall art and a space for magazine

Design wall :)

I hope you enjoyed the tour - things like this always seem to be a work in progress so if other changes are made I will let you know!

Have a great rest of the week!

Angela

Weekend Update 7/1

Hello July!!

The first day of July means that the Craftsy.com new block of the month video is up! July's theme is the Dresden plate. I am so excited to make a few of these blocks. I will post as soon as I get these finished.

This weekend I  put together my Quilting Gallery Quilt-Along blocks. I was previously a week behind so now I am all caught up. This quilt-along is really put together well. It seems like their plan is to build on skills that they have taught you the previous week. An example of this is that the week 4 block uses techniques from both week 2 and week 3 as far as cutting and piecing.

Block 3

Block 4

I was out of town for a bit last weekend and the below was my fabric haul. My sister-in-law was kind enough to get all of these goodies for me from her mother-in-law's garage sale. She said that each bag should have about 2 yards of fabric in it! There are a lot of fun fabrics in here so i am thinking that I will be making up some doll blankets for Quilts and Vines soon. Pictures to come on those :)

This weekend I also kept out of the heat by going to Freeman's Quiltfest. I was able to attend a great presentation on 'upcycling' from a gal who is not even a quilter! My husband was along with me and thought that is was really interesting as well. The show had a theme of 'First Quilt, Last Quilt'. It was really amazing to see how far people have come in their quilting choices both in fabric and in pattern. Some people seemed to stay exactly in the same color ways and others went in total opposite directions. The featured quilter there was Phyllis Schrag. She is a quilter in my guild and it was amazing to see so many of her quilts. She also brought along my favorite quilt of her's which is a wedding dress and man's dress shirt turned into a beautiful bed quilt. It is simply amazing and I want one...oh well!

In addition to Quiltfest, I started a clean-up project for my sewing studio -- before and after pictures will be here soon! 


Stay cool out there!


Angela