Quilting Stuff

Even though I haven't posted much about quilting, it doesn't mean that I've not been busy sewing away. Below are many of the projects that I've been working on over the last couple of weeks.

The below log cabin type quilt is from the June 2008 issue of McCall's Quilting. It's the quilt called Caribbean Blue. My quilt is completely made from green, blue and teal batiks.

Closeups of the quilt
The next couple of photos are house blocks from Bonnie Hunter's quiltville.com Happy Scrappy Houses. My yahoo group (Redthreadquilters) is doing a scrappy houses swap. Many of us will be making these houses in sets and then we are going to swap them so that you end up with lots of different houses from all over the country. Below are examples of two of my sets. The first one is from leftover fabric from my Orange Crush quilt and the second is an example of my fabric love, very bright and bold fabrics. I also had to add a little Scottie dog in the window in honor of my dogs.

The next quilt is a graduation gift for my niece. She just graduated from High School the end of May. If you check out this post, you will see that I made a similar quilt for my other niece who graduated last year. The only difference is the fabric. The below quilt is made from all batiks that I've collected through online swaps.
And last but not least is my Orange Crush quilt without borders. I still need to add my borders but wanted to share how it has turned out so far.

My Baby is growing up

Even though I'm very proud of my little girl, M., I'm kind of sad that my baby is growing up. It's hard to believe that yesterday was her last day of Kindergarten and she is now a 1st grader (Just in case you are wondering why in the world she was in school until the end of June, it's because of a teacher's strike last Oct/Nov. Instead of getting out the end of May we ended up going to school until June 26.) M has grown so much during these past 9 months of Kindergarten. She started school not being able to read and now she can read to us. She made lots of new friends and adored her teacher. She was sad to have School end because she loved going there everyday. Her teacher's comment on her last report card was that "She is happy all the time and always has such a positive attitude towards school." I'm so glad that her first year of school was a positive experience and that she has gained a love of learning.

Below are photos taken on her first and last day of Kindergarten. She even looks a lot older. Congratulations M on doing a great job in Kindergarten and I hope you do just as well in 1st grade and beyond.

Mean Mommy

Look at this cute and innocent little face. E is now at the age that she doesn't like it when I tell her no. Instead of throwing a major fit, she now tells me all about her frustrations. The latest is "You're a mean Mommy and I don't like you anymore" The first time you hear that it's kind of hard to handle as a Mom. I just say to her that "I'm sorry that you don't like me, but I love you"after those comments. She is now saying to her sister that "You're not my sister anymore" so I'm not the only one she gets frustrated with.

This weekend she was in rare form especially on Saturday. Her morning started off bad when I said she couldn't have a cookie for breakfast. This of course made her mad and she said she was going to "bite me" because I was being mean. I told her go ahead thinking that she was just blowing steam and didn't really mean it. I guess I should never underestimate her because she did come at me with her mouth open with the intent to bite my leg! Later that morning she was still angry at me because she had to stay in the car with her Dad while I ran quickly into Walmart with her sister (had to buy flowers for her dance recital later that day and she couldn't come with us). Her Dad was trying real hard not to laugh at some of the things she was saying. He wrote a few comments down for me and thought I would share.

"Mommy is not being nice. I don't like her anymore"

"I told you I am messing me up" (I think she was tyring to say that she's mad)

"I am gonna check mom out because she is a failure"

Nothing like a 4 yr old telling you that you're a failure!

Later that day all was forgiven because I got big hugs and lots of "I love you Mom". I guess I wasn't that bad after all.

Dance

Last night E had her Dance Recital Dress Rehearsal. Her actual recital will be this Saturday. She will be doing only one ballet dance. I tried to take a few pictures of her last night in her costume, but she wasn't too cooperative. This was the only photo I got of her prior to her dance. Hopefully on Saturday when she has all the makeup on, I can get a few better photos. Later I figured out why she wasn't looking so happy. She wasn't feeling good and Mommy didn't realize it until after I went back to the dressing room after her dance. I just thought she was still kind of waking up because she took a little nap this afternoon. She was running a fever by that time and later that evening she got sick all over the car. Poor thing. Even though she wasn't feeling good, she did a great job and went on stage (with no tears) and did her dance.

Congratulations M!

M has been in gymnastics since she was 3 years old. Now at 6 she is becoming quite the little gymnast. So far she loves it and rarely never complains about going to the gym and is always happy to go into class. This past year she has been on our gym's precompetition team or the 1st level for the precompetition teams. On May 31 all the girls on both levels put on a little show for family/friends to highlight all the skills that they have been working on throughout the year. M has been recommended to go to the next level which will mean more hours at the gym for her (and for me). Starting next week she will go about 9 hours a week and that will continue throughout the next year. If she continues to do well, she will then be able to start competing at a level 5 the following year. This summer will be a true test to see if she still really loves it. So far she is excited about moving up so I'm hoping that excitement will continue even when her practices are 3 hours long in the very hot summer. We are very proud of her accomplishments!!! Enjoy some photos of her show:

M and her blue team coach. M just loved her and she is one of the main reasons why M has enjoyed gymnastics and why M has done so well. Unfortunately, this is the last year she will be her coach until M is older and in the higher levels of competition. She is the gym's competition team manager and mainly coaches level 7 and above.

Orange Crush Update

I kind of left you hanging about the Orange Crush quilt since I haven't posted in over 2 months. Sorry about that. Life has a way of getting in the way and posting here hasn't been a priority for me. I have been working steadily on the OC quilt and am now trying to finish step 6, the final step. I have about 1/4 of the quilt top sewn together now just need to finish, hopefully sometime this week. I will now post photos of all the steps of my quilt up to the step 5. You will just have to wait a little bit more to see the final quilt.

Step 2 blocks

Step 3 blocks

Step 4 blocks (step 1 blocks are the 4 patches in the corners, I forgot to take a photo of that step before I sewed the block together)

Step 5 blocks

Sneak preview of what the final quilt might look like.