I'm speechless!

...not really!  I'd like to thank all the little people...oh wait!  I AM the little people!  I would sincerely like to thank my friend Mary over at The Tulip Patch for awarding my humble little blog with this...

And honestly, I DO try to be stylish...I AM a hair stylist, after all!  But not on my blog.  I really didn't imagine that anyone other than maybe my mother (Hi, Mama!) would ever care to read about my adventures in quilting.  I am SO very grateful to my followers for reading and giving me feedback with your comments :)

There are a couple of rules that go along with this award.  The 1st is, I get to pass this award on to 8 of my favorite "stylish" blogs.  And 2nd is, I have to share 8 things about myself that you may, or may not, know about me.  And in the hopes that you will stop at each of these links and skip over the 8 boring facts about myself, I will start with the links...
and the awards (in no particular order) go to...

Sandy @ Sandy's Sew Clever
Victoria @ She's Crafty
Grandmama Jane @ Grandmama's Stories
Natasha @ Joy of Quilting
Andrea @ Millions of Thoughts
Miranda (and Charlie) @ Miranda and Charlie
Erin @ My Patchwork Life
Vera @ Seams to Sew and Quilt

I "follow" roughly 85 blogs (yes, I counted, and yes, I read new posts everyday!) and it was really hard to single out just 8...I love them all!  These are just SOME of my favorites and they ALL deserve this award, too!

Ok, so I guess there's just one more order of business...

1.  I've been a hair stylist for almost 18 yrs now and I absolutely LOVE my job, although, it does cramp my quilty style occassionally.

2.  I'm "mom" to 3 beautiful, talented, extraordinary, funny, etc...children...who are not exactly "children" anymore.  At 20, 18, and almost 15, they are almost grown.

3.  I am married to the "Love of my life" who has 4 kids of his own.  I call them my "bonus" kids.

4.  I have NEVER won a giveaway in blogland.  And I've entered A LOT. 

5.  I have an addictive personality (self-diagnosed, of course).  But because of this awareness, I have chosen to make my addictions of the sewing-kind.  Also, puzzles of just about any kind, but mostly numbers.  I love math and I suspect that's why quilting is SEW appealing to me...lots of math in quilting :)

6.  My very 1st job was at McDonald's.  Which I am oddly kinda proud of...not even I know why.  I encouraged each of my kids to apply there when they were old enough, but none would :(

7. Both my girls are also hair stylists.  The oldest has had her license for 2 years now and the younger will test for her license in May.

8.  I can solve a Rubik's cube.  I keep one on my station at work and will occassionally ask someone to "mess it up" for me.  I love love LOVE coming into work and finding it "messed up".  And I cannot leave work until it's "fixed".

So there you have it.  Be sure to check out the links above and to those of you who have wandered over from The Tulip Patch, WELCOME!  I would love to get to know ALL of you so leave me a comment, click on "follow" and if you have a blog, let me know so I can follow you, too...there's always room for more on my reading list ;)

I survived...

...the holidays, that is!  But just barely.  Right after Christmas, we had company.  Our sweet friends from Mexico, G and Cesia came to spend the New Year with us.  They got here on friday and by monday, I had the flu.  Boo.

BUT while I was aching and chilling, Cesia was working on her first quilt.  She wanted to learn how and I wasn't going to let a little fever keep me from helping her.  She made a baby rag quilt out of flannels and it really was the CUTEST thing and I've waited to blog about it because I didn't get a pic of it before they left on thursday morning.  She promised she would take a pic and then left it at her parent's house on her way back to San Luis.  So I'm still waiting on that pic...but I'm so proud of her, I just had to brag.  So, Cesia, now it's a lot more than just me who wants to see that pic...just saying.

Before Christmas I was working on a commissioned quilt that I hope to show pics of soon.  So, so far I guess this is the most boring blog post EVER.

Oh, wait!  Ok, so after the New Year and our company were gone, I decided to make a few handmade gifts for Christmas.  Oh, I know Christmas is over, but who's gonna say "no" to a handmade gift?  As most of you know, I'm a hair stylist in my "other" life.  I found this tute by accident one day, and just KNEW I had to make these for my girls at work.

It's a case for your flat iron! 

I have a case that I paid WAY too much for and have thought several times, "I could make that."  But I wasn't crazy about the design.  then I found this cool tutorial.   This one is different because...

...it has a flap that holds your cord, nice and secure.  Now I can pick it up anyway I want and my precious (and very expensive) CHI doesn't fall out.  Genius!
I did change it slightly, though.  I wanted the seam that is made by the pocket to land in the middle of the case, so I shortened the width of the pocket by a 1/2 in.  I also did not want to mess with trying to line up bias tape on the front AND back and just "hoping" that I'm catching both.  So I made my own bias binding and sewed it on the same way I would machine sew a binding on a quilt.  If the stitches showing on the inside of the case would bother you, you could just hand-stitch the binding down to the other side.  I also went ahead and quilted the body of each case.  It doesn't seem right to put batting inside an item (insulated or not) and then NOT quilt it.

I almost finished a Christmas gift for a very dear friend...didn't quite get it quilted, but here's the top...

I found the pattern at the Moda Bake Shop and bought a kit for it from the designer Natalia over at Piece N Quilt.  I'll post finished pics later...you know, when it's finished.

And just a little side-note...I've been wondering lately...How do you suppose God was able to create the whole world and everything in it, without making a huge mess?  My sewing room is a disaster area!

A new quilter in the family...

So, last week the guild had our annual Christmas party. I invited my daughter to come with me...she didn't really want to come until I told her there would be food :) We played a game called Fat Quarter Frenzy. Each person brought 3 FQ's to play with. One by one, FQ's were thrown into the center of the table (the pot). At the end of the game, whoever still had a FQ in their hands got to keep the whole pot. So guess who won the whole pot? That's right.
She won 21 fat quarters. Of course, my friends were all asking her what she might make with all this new treasure. As of 2 hours earlier, she had no intention of ever going to a guild meeting and now she was the proud owner of a whole lot of fabric.

So on the way home...with no prompting from me...she announces that it might be cool to make a quilt. I know, RIGHT?!

When we searched for quilt patterns (I'm thinking beginner friendly), she really fell in love with the dresden plate. She wasn't totally convinced until I told her that it might be kind of advanced and that I haven't even tried to make one yet. Well, that did it. Determined to make a dresden quilt, I told her we really need to practice one first...

We used this tutorial

I wanted her to practice quilting too. Color me impressed. She free-motion stippled over the whole design. And did an amazing job!  I coached, but she made every stitch by herself.

On her practice piece, I gave her the challenge of quilting her name over and over.  On her finished pillow cover, she signed her name in the corner.

I think I might be the proudest mom in the whole world right now.

A little something extra...

I feel so guilty when it takes more than a couple of weeks to finish a baby quilt.  I know I should get over this, but I'm not sure how.  I can make one of these bears in just a day or two.  A quick easy project that actually seems to get more oohs and ahhs than the quilts.  I've thought about just making the bears, if I didn't enjoy quilting so much :)  So baby Jude is getting a little something extra to go with his quilt.
This is my 2nd finish for this week.  Wow.  When I look at it that way...
Cool.

Jude's quilt

My finish for the week. This baby quilt is for a sweet family at my church who had a baby back in August.  I know, I know...another one that's 3 months late!  I have joked with his mom that my goal was to get it done before he went off to college...mission accomplished!  The family is moving to Asia, so my real deadline was before they leave.  This is also the quilt that I was thinking about posting a tutorial for.  It's really just a combination of a bunch of tutorials that I have found helpful throughout the www.  So I haven't decided if the www NEEDS another tute out there.  To be continued...

Hopefully not the ONLY thing I finish, but most likely.  We have a very busy week ahead...annual Christmas party tonight for the guild, work wednesday-saturday (I constantly have to remind myself that I DO have a regular job), Ladies Christmas Tea at my church AND my 5th anniversary with my hubby on friday and celebrating that anniversary on saturday.  So for those of you who just KNOW you should be getting a quilt from me any day now...just KNOW that I AM working on it!  Not sure if I'm gonna make all those Christmas deadlines, but I haven't given up yet!

Sewing Challenge

Check out this new website!  I entered my Christmas quilts.  Be sure to check out ALL the projects.  There's some pretty good ideas for Christmas gifts.
Have a blessed day!

A Tale of Two Quilts

Remember this quilt top?  I didn't give an explanation of it in my last post, so here it is...

We had an auction planned for Sunday Nov. 21st at church to benefit our Awana program. I usually just donate a haircut to this auction each year, but this is the first year that my husband and I are "Commanders" of this ministry.  When someone mentioned how cool it would be if I could donate a quilt for the auction, I thought, "that's a GREAT idea!"  Why not?  I have made a couple of quilts using this pattern and knew how easy and fast it comes together.  And how popular those quilts turned out to be, so why not?  I knew I wanted to just make a lap sized quilt and planned to make the top on tuesday and quilt and bind it on wednesday (my weekend)...plenty of time before the auction on sunday, right?  With this pattern, I like to wash it before giving it, so...

I love the crinkly, quilty softness of the raw edges on all those circles.  And then I looked closer...

Most of the blocks looked just like this.  But there were 2 blocks (same fabric) that looked like this...

In hind-sight, had I used a tighter stitch, I probably could have avoided this particular "disaster".  But it is easier to navigate those curves with a slightly longer stitch AND as I said before, I have made this pattern before...twice.  I felt safe washing it.  After the initial shock and devastation subsided a little, knowing the auction was only 3 days away, and I would be working all 3 of those days, I needed to figure out what to do.  Try to repair this one?  Give up the idea of an auction quilt all together?  Or start over?  I went through some of my favorite quilting blogs looking for inspiration (and comfort).  I found this tutorial at Cluck Cluck Sew.  It was one of those "someday" quilts.  I decided "someday" was today...well, tomorrow.  It was 1:00 am and I had to work the next day, so I decided to get some sleep and start fresh on thursday...ok, it was already thursday, but I needed sleep.
Morning came WAY too early.  I woke up at 4:50 am.  Unable to will myself back to sleep, I got up and started making new blocks.  By 8am, I had 22 out of 30 blocks completed. 

I had run out of the Kona white and knew a trip to the fabric store would be my lunch break.  I got home about 4:30 and went back to work.  By bedtime, I had it loaded on the frame and knew sleep would not be a problem this time.

I know I have mentioned before just how much I LOVE this frame, but when I got the quilting done on this quilt in just over an hour (my lunch break on friday), I fell in love all over again. 


No straight lines, just meandering all over.  The 1st quilt took about 2 1/2 hours to quilt without the frame...just rolling, re-rolling, and maneuvering it through the machine...what a pain! 

Sorry for the blurry pic. I forgot to bring my camera to the auction so I snapped this with my phone.

All in all, I'm glad I decided to make a new quilt.  It was a long week, but it was for a good cause.  And I will definitely be making more of these blocks.  I am so grateful for all you crafty quilty people out there who share your creativity and talent online.  Thank you!