Friday, November 16, 2012

Confessions of the Pickle Quilt


I must confess!!  I love this quilt...BUT...I also hate it!  I will explain.  In our family at Christmas, we have a pickle that gets passed around each year.  The only catch is if you get the pickle you have to bring a gift the next year for the next person that gets the pickle and it has to be a handmade gift.  The last two years I have made a quilt for the pickle gift.  Last year (2011) was this quilt.  I had the top all done and I started the quilting and halfway through I realized there was trouble, so I tore out ALL the quilting, redid the pin basting and set to quilting again...More trouble!!  I had to rip out the quilting again!  So I redid all the basting again and quilted only to realize I had the same problem!!  The backing as supposed to be a soft almost like minky fabric but I bought the end of the bolt and it was woven wrong.  One half of the quilt quilted beautifully and the other half was horrible.  I had to take just the quilt top to show whoever got the pickle.  My cousins boyfriend got the pickle and asked for the quilt to be longer. Our family is on the short side so I had only enough fabric to make a quilt for a short person!  And to make matters worse I would not have enough binding fabric either!  Off to Joann's to find more fabric.  When I got there it was all gone, so I tried to order it.  No luck, they told me it was not longer being made!  The top stared at me and taunted me every time I went into my sewing room.  I spent the last 10 months trying to find more fabric to match something in this quilt and in October, finally,  I found it in the red tag bin!!!  And the best news of all is the boyfriend is now my cousin's husband and their wedding colors match the quilt.  The pickle quilt is now also a wedding quilt for them.  Congratulations Tina and Lenin!!!!
Thank God no one was home when I finished this quilt cuz there was some crazy dancin' going on to this awesome song and now all the blood, sweat and tears and a few choice words seems worth it!

This is the feature fabric my mom in law chose and it is sooo true!!!

Other quilting confessions...
I almost never use pins
If it doesn't match up, I fudge it till it does
I am afraid to try free motion quilting even though I have had all  the tools for the last year
I love my Accuquilt Go cutter!
I always put my binding on by machine
My sewing room is always a mess
My Ipod is my favorite quilting tool
I am a self taught quilter and I do things wrong but in the end the quilt looks good so it doesn't matter, RIGHT!  Sure,as long as a pro isn't looking at your quilt
The best advice I was given when I started my first real quilt:
"Remember Only God Is Perfect
Our Quilts Don't Need To Be"
This is on my wall and has kept me sane for the last year


Linking up to finish it up Friday with crazymomquilts
and
Can I get a whoop whoop! at confessions of a fabric addict

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Four things that made me smile today.........

These kids of mine...

This song- Colors by April Smith  If you have a TV then you've probably heard parts of this awesome song!!

These dogs of mine...They love to chew on golf balls and my Boston Terrier is afraid of the vacuum!

And the one that made me smile the most...Women in their 70's talking about learning the dance to this SONG  This one takes the cake!!!!

What made you smile today?


Thursday, November 1, 2012

Releasing the BEAST!!!!

This little beast is finally getting released from all restrictions from his surgery today!!!  On September 20th he had a bone tumor removed from his fibula (the bone that make the "bump" on the outside of your ankle- you can see his surgery quilts here) and has been restricted to walking only for the last 6 weeks.  He told me he "just wants to run!!!" so that is what we did in the doctors parking lot when we were done with his appointment.....


Then he had to race his little sister!!

He won...now we can all work off all the Halloween candy we've been pigging out on!!

I'm linking up with Live a Colorful Life for Really Random Thursday!