Saturday

July Client Quilts

All things considered, I quilts quite a few client quilts this month. With a summer filled with fun, vacations, a holiday, and gardening. I am very surprised that I had the time - ha!

For the quilt shop, I quilted a Lori Holt Vintage Holiday Christmas truck quilt and a Glow-in-the-Dark Halloween quilt. It was so funny to see the halloween quilt on the machine - I went to close the door of the sewing room before going to bed and all I could see was the glow from black and white checks on the fabric. It was so cute to see. 



I also quilted a charity quilt for my Sweet Sundays church quilt group. The ladies in the group like to make strip-pieced (string) blocks to sew together. It allows them to use up lots of scraps. 


One of my co-workers at the quilt shop asked me to quilt her Christmas quilt. I used a pantograph that had partridges and pears on it - a perfect match!


Summer feels like it's slipping away from me way too quickly. I wish I could slow things down.

Friday

Quilts on Etsy - Finally!

I finally posted some of my quilts on Etsy. I've avoided the whole thing for a very long time because it's so time-consuming to do. On Sunday I took photos of 5 quilts. I hung the quilts outside, I laid them on a bed with the overhead lights on, then with the curtains pulled wide open to be photographed indoors in natural light. What a production. 

I also had to iron out the fold marks before I took the photos. I did set up the ironing board and iron on the back patio since it was such a beautiful day. 

Once I reviewed and cropped the photos to my liking it was time to write up detailed descriptions. The size, colors, patterns all needed to be written down. After I finished uploading 5 quilts, 5 hours had gone by. I was done for the day. It's too nice outside and my garden needed tending. 

I proceeded to pick some pickles to crock.


Monday I got up with the intention to make the pickles and finish uploading quilts onto my Etsy account. I am happy to report that I got 9 more completed and I spent another 5 hours getting it done. At least I am getting faster. Ha!

 The pickles are in the crock fermenting nicely. And I still have more to do but I am taking a break. 

Here's what my Etsy site looks like today:


I am hoping to finish all the entries on Etsy by next weekend. The moral of the story is don't let them pile up. As soon as I know I want to sell it, list it! 

Sunday

Summer Days

I love summer. It's my favorite season. I will spend afternoons napping on my hammock in the hot sun. It's one of my favorite places to be. I find it hard to stay in the house and do anything in the sewing room. And I struggle with deciding whether to attend sew days. Summers are short so I don't want to be indoors however, I love chatting with the ladies in my sewing groups. It's definitely a conundrum. Since it was supposed to rain, I did go to the Saturday Basement Quilters group sew day. I decided that that's where I will work on items for upcoming arts & crafts fairs. So I completed a bunch of flannel baby blankets and burp cloths while I was there. 

It felt good to get all of these done but it never rained. I would have rather been outside all day. 

Speaking of outside...

I was weeding my vegetable garden when I came across this:


Yes! That is a baby bunny. I am certain there are two babies nestled together, possibly three. I didn't want to disturb them too much so I spent very little time checking them out. They are hard to see as they are deep down under my lettuce patch but isn't that the point? 

My neighbors do this thing they call "Wine Down Wednesdays" where they invite all the neighbors to come and sit in their yard. All you have to do is bring a lawn chair and your own cocktail and you're welcome to hang out. It is great fun to sit and chat and it's a little something to look forward to each week. We have decided to make it an opportunity to try new cocktail recipes. This week we made Moscow Mules and wow, were they good.

Wine Down Wednesday

The recipe is so simple, just 2 ounces vodka, 1/2 ounce lime juice, and 4 ounces of Ginger beer. Just put the ingredients in a mug full of crushed ice with a slice of lime and a spring of mint. I didn't have any mint but I knew our hosts from WDW had some growing so they kindly gave me some mint. The drink was perfect and I will be making them more than this one time. Yum!





My roses are looking so lovely these days. I paid $3 for each rose plant at Wal-Mart and they are hardy and growing without much care.

Wednesday

A T-Shirt Quilt

My friend Audrey asked me to make a quilt for her grandson. He is a high school baseball player and she attends all his games. She gave me his jerseys and a few t-shirts to make a quilt for his birthday in August.

I am happy to report that I finished the quilt way before the August 16 deadline. Phew! I love when that happens. 


I cut all the blocks the same size and laid them out on the floor. It was hard to get all the number nines down in a way that scattered them around. There were an odd number of blocks that made it a challenge so I just took the ones with lots of blank space and cut them in half to make two blocks into one. It worked out nicely, I think.


Sewing the blocks together took no time at all and I got it on the longarmer the same day. I did take two days to quilt it since I used a pretty tight quilt pattern.



I machine bound the quilt once it was done. I like the sturdiness of machine binding as well as how quick it is to do. And here it is all done:



I hope they like it.