Sunday, March 31, 2013

Fun Fabric Photos & a Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter Weekend!  Look at these yummy Easter-ish Oakshotts that I won in a giveaway a while back ..



Thank you and a shout out to Todd over at This Guy Quilts for these! I love his blog, and esp. his recent quilt top, Scrappy Speckle. He is an amazing quilter. And he has a very talented dog, Heidi, and you know I love a blog with a dog. :) I have never tried Oakshotts and look forward to sewing with them!

And a tiny thank you to the wee formerly-homeless leprechaun who visited us over St. Patrick's Day and left his mini-shopping cart behind for photo ops. ;)



Wow.. the printer needs a good dusting now that I see it in pictures. Yikes.





I almost hate to take the fabrics out of the little cart and use them.. they fit so perfectly and look so yummy that way.

Happy Easter, and thanks again, Todd!

xoxo

Saturday, March 30, 2013

A New Member of the (extended) Family..

I'd like to introduce you to Maude.  Or as her official birth certificate says, "Mauderately Messy". :)



She belongs to my bro. and SIL in Nashville, and I want to go visit her so badly!  Isn't she the cutest?  So sweet.  She is a 4 mo. old Old English Sheepdog. She's already weighing in at 30# I think.. she will be a big girl. But isn't she adorable?

It all reminds me of the day we brought Buster home.  And A. was only three. Time sure flies.  His KG year is almost over!



Love at first sight..



The eyes say it all.



And then they grew!




And grew...



And grew some more..





Which is so much fun.. but I still miss these little faces. ;) And wish time would slow down just a teeny bit.




One more photo.. of Maude.. What a cutie.. she will be twice as big in no time!  She looks like a little stuffed animal. *swoon*



Happy Easter Weekend!  Have been sewing on the stuffed owl and she is turning out super cute, but I can't show her yet.  Here's a little peak, though. ;)



Thanks for reading while I went on about the furry people in my life. ;)

xoxo


Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Ollie the Owl

Remember how Donktober last year over at Missy Mac Creations inspired me to break out the Reuben by RicRac pattern that I had and give it a go?  And thus Reubenita the Donkey was born?

Well, when I saw the blog hop coming up over at SewWeQuilt called 'It's for the Birds', I remembered that I also had this pattern.  For a quirky stuffed owl.

Meet Olive the Owl.  This might be the perfect time to break out this one and try it, too.



Here are a couple pictures of Olives that were made by the pattern maker that I found HERE, at her Etsy Shop. It's a Freddie's Friends pattern.




Pretty cute.  Might make a good birthday present for a little one year old that I know...

So what do you think?  I've narrowed it down to either Olive or a lap size quilt top using some fabric I have with some bird print in it..  But Ollie is kind of intriguing. Trying to figure out what fabrics to use for her...

Here's the blog hop button if any of you would like to check it out.



I'm going to have to start on her soon so she'll be done before the hop as it's right before Quilt Market.  

**edit**She has been started.  Cutting her out right now.. using some Mary Engelbreit fq's that I had leftover from making SWOON. Mostly the light colors..


Stay tuned for the blog hop in May where she will make her debut. ha! I'll also let you know how it was to work with the pattern, and in the meantime, I may post some sneak peek pics.**

Oh, that's another thing.. I thought joining in the hop would distract me from my uber excitement and zillions of questions that I keep emailing Beth with about Quilt Market. I don't want her to decide that I'm loony and uninvite me before I even get there. ha! 

Speaking of Beth, check out her new pattern Taking Names (remember all of the swap blocks that I kept posting pics of?) ..the pattern is done and will be available for purchase very soon, if not already. So cool.


I can see a couple of secondary arrangements that I'd like to try in there, too.  So many possibilities. 

Now that the BOMs are caught up, I need to go and figure out what fabrics to use for Ollie so I can give you the bird in a few weeks. ahahaa JUST KIDDING. Not THAT bird. The cute softie one in the pattern. :) (that joke was for the birds!)

Happy Thursday!
xoxo



Links: Crafty Soiree, Commercial Break Thurs., Catch a Glimpse, Freedom Friday, Sew Crafty Angel, Really Random Thursday, Farm Girl Friday, Do Something Crafty, What's Shakin'
Monday, March 25, 2013

Blocks of the Month & Bloggy Things

Lots of playing catch-up this weekend.. 

First, with the March Blocks of the Month.

Sugar Block Club, and the Riley Blake Mystery Block of the Month. I love how the stripes make a broken square around the SBC block.





The Riley Blake one is called Simplicity and is a simple churn dash.  



I love a churn dash, and first made one when I made A's sock monkey quilt when he was two years old.  Time sure flies. It's still one of my favorites and I even had it as my profile pic for a while.
~~

~~
I was so excited to discover that I had these three yards of Summer Song that I have had for forever, and had forgotten about before I ever picked up the fq packs at Tuesday Morning.  It was fun to have new prints that weren't in the fq packs. :)




I should have plenty to get through both block programs and in the end should have enough matching blocks to make into a quilt.




I've also been reading all over blogland about Google Reader going away, which was in the back of my mind but I hadn't really given it that much thought.  Until this weekend--when I went all 'Y2K panic' and decided to get with the program, so I finally checked out Bloglovin'.. and found out I need to paste a code here to 'claim' my blog. Which makes it sound like my blog is just floating around out there somewhere.  So here it is. Which, it turns out is just a link to follow my blog over there?  

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

There it is.  Claimed. Then I decided to add a social media button set, and that led to joining google+ and that led to creating a FB page for my blog, and before I knew it, I was knee deep in making sure my blog doesn't fall off the grid if Google Reader actually does go away.  I wasn't kidding about my Y2K blog panic! ha!  I've worked really hard on my blog, and I love all the blog friends that I've made, and I certainly don't want to lose anyone, and at the same time, I don't want to lose all of the blogs I follow either.  

The good news is: 

Bloglovin' is super easy to use and you can transport your entire Google Reader list over to it, without even doing this whole claim your blog thing, which I didn't figure out until later. But I guess has to be done in order to manage other things there. Like if you go to your profile and click on My Blog, it won't show up unless you have 'claimed' it. 

And you don't even have to go over to Bloglovin to read the blogs you follow.  They send you one email a day with all of the most recent updates in it.

I also checked out Feedly b/c I read some really good things about it.  It was super easy to transport my Google Reader list over to that, too.  And you can customize how it's organized on the screen, etc. Now my reader list is in two separate places.  It should never get lost. :) I feel much better, and totally prepared now with my Google Reader list backed up and then backed up again. Short of an apocalypse I'm good to go. :)

And the social media button set up there in the sidebar, I had been meaning to do that for a while.. and I found a super easy site! All you have to do is plug in the urls of each one, and it generates a code for you that you can paste into a gadget. So easy! I found it here. Okay you probably all already know about that site, as I am always the last to know anything, but if that's something you've wanted to do and haven't done yet b/c you're intimidated like me, that's a super easy site!

But just when I figured that out, I went and joined google+ which I hardly know how to use, and started a fledgling FB page. Oh well. I'll have fun figuring those out. I figure it will all come in handy at Quilt Market.



And Yay! Blocks of the Month!




Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo





Links: BOMS Away Monday, Design Wall MondayLinky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, Show & Tell Tuesday, the DIYdreamer, WIP Wednesday, WOW-wip, We Did It Wednesday 
Friday, March 22, 2013

Broadway Quilts, Market, Sheepdogs, and Quilt Shows.

Last weekend, prior to the whole family coming down with the worst case of allergies mixed with colds ever, we were able to do a couple of fun things.  On our way to my inlaws in Santa Rosa, we stopped, as always at Broadway Quilts. *swoon*  I could really just live there.

This time, I was talking to Lisa, who works there, about Beth going to quilt market for the first time, and the owner of BQ, Gery, is going to be there too, so we were chatting all about it, and then when I went to pay for my three little fq's, Gery handed me an envelope with my name on it..  ??  First and last.  They don't know my last name there.  And how do they even know I was coming in?  I live two hours away.  It was all very surreal.. I opened it up and it was a gift cert. from BETH, who had known I was on my way to the inlaws, and called ahead and got me a gifty for helping her with market.  BEST. SURPRISE. EVER.

Then Lisa admitted to me that she had literally just been talking to Beth on the phone before I came in.. so SNEAKY.  Here is Lisa from BQ with her BOM that she's teaching.  She is soo nice!



This is Gery, helping lots of customers.. I will be looking for her in Portland..



I say this all the time, but really, if you're ever in Sonoma, you have to stop at BQ!!  You will feel like the mother ship has called you home.




See that quilt in the above photo.. the one on the back wall there?  I got that pattern, along with a Comma jelly roll.. thank you, thank you, Beth!!  I'll be making it, sometime this summer.  Some other things to take care of first.  It's called Finnelopy by Valori Wells.



My hub doesn't even mind loitering in BQ. That's how cool it is.  



There was also a little quilt show down the street that we stopped in to see.  Buster would appreciate this one.  So cute!



Lisa from BQ made this one.  Yummy dresdens. I love it!



This one was from the late 1800's.  I love it!  It was my favorite.. because of the history.. the little squares were about one inch.  So cool!



We also went to the Sonoma Wine  Country Sheepdog Trial or something like that.. where people compete with their border collies herding sheep.  My FIL is really interested in that sort of thing. It was gorgeous out there.  People come from all over to compete.  I think the judge was from Ireland this year.  And I got to play with the zoom on my camera.

















It was a beautiful day with beautiful scenery.. we didn't stay too long.  We did stay long enough for the raffle, though, in which we won a toy for Buster. :)  



The dogs actually have to heard the little group of sheep through various gates, etc.  And the handler guides the dog with a whistle, or voice commands.  Smart dogs.






Anyway, not much sewing going on.. we all ended up getting sick, and then just when we thought we were better, we weren't and A. came down with an ear infection and has missed five out of the last seven days of school. :/  Today is the first day I can actually breathe, hub is not quite there yet, and A. is on antibiotics, so hopefully  we're on the upswing.  It may all be partially due to this, this beautiful view out our bedroom window of what covers the pergola over our patio.  Every year when it blooms, along with everything else blowing in the air, our allergies get soo bad!  To the point that we are thinking of having it removed.  It is so overgrown that the stalks of it are actually cracking the wood on the pergola and the roots are messing with the sprinklers.

It's a love hate relationship!! Ugh!

I haven't been sewing, except for  these tiny pics of blocks that I printed out on transfer paper, transferred to muslin and sewed onto this shirt that I made for Beth.  Maybe that counts? ;) She finally got her booth assignment.  It's really happening!


I need to get to work on my March BOMs.  I'm so behind!  

Happy Weekend!
xoxo

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

St. Patrick's Day Fun & Winners

The luck o' the Irish..
l

was with someone this weekend.. well actually just this morning, b/c we were gone out of town, and sick to boot, all weekend. :/


But we weathered that storm, and so last night, Mr. KG made traps with his dad to catch a leprechaun.. which had been our plan all along.. they just got delayed a bit over the weekend.


There are his three traps in the dining room, next to some gear things I got and haven't hung yet..  That trap in the middle is pretty sophisticated.. but the one on the right there.. I couldn't even figure out how to use it.. so it makes sense that the leprechaun would have to "get caught" in the one down there on the end.


Here is the leprechaun (found a Lego leprechaun man!) holding a sticky note with directions to the treasure.  I wish I had remembered to set it all up before it dinged into my mind at one a.m., as I had an appointment bright and early this a.m... grr.. ;)  Good thing I remembered at the last minute after they went to the trouble of making and setting the traps.

The trap that snared him..

..and the treasure hiding behind the couch.. I wasn't so creative so late at night with the treasure's hiding place was I.  Oh well.  Oh yah, and apparently the leprechaun that was caught at our house used to be homeless b/c he pushes his treasure around in a shopping basket.

(of course the treasure is all chocolate-hehe .. someone has to share with mommy and daddy..and a  small $ for his piggie bank to save. He is learning to save $)


Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Oh, yes, and the luck of the Irish was also with:

1.  Sunny
2.  Pia
and
3.  Kevin

Congrats!!  You've won my Blog Hop with Giveaways party so generously sponsored by Mad About Patchwork, Fat Quarter Shop, and Skye Reve Fabrics!!  I will be contacting you soon.

Hooray!  Hope you all had a great weekend.

xoxo


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