More progress on Sophia's quilt

I spent about an hour last evening sewing together more patches for this quilt.

While I wait for the postman to bring me the novelty fabris Janet sent me, I noticed that I hadn't used many music fabric prints. I headed to the fabric storage room and dug out fabric that have musical instruments on them. I will fussy cut them tonight and add them on to the quilts.

Now that I am close to having these tops done, I can cut the fabric for the back and start to stamp them. On the back of one I will put numbers and on the other I will stamp the alphabet and colors. I want to get these pin basted this weekend so I need to get started on the stamping tonight. I have about 23 days to get these done.

Loretta, I have no idea how to put the accent mark over the o in your email address. How about you email me at paltier at rpj-aps dot com so I have your email address so I can contact you in case you win the fat quarters? Thanks! Patty

I Spy quilt and what I think of Microsoft

I worked on Sophia's I Spy quilt last night and got this much done. I am expecting a package of novelty fabric from Janet any day now and those will be needed in order to finish this quilt.

Now my rant about Microsoft. I come in this morning and I get this message that my desktop sticky notes file is corrupt and I have a choice of hitting the ok button which makes them disappear forever or hit ok for help. I hit ok for help but no help comes up. I have a love/hate relationship with this type of issue. You can't get a hold of a human being at Microsoft or even get a hold of tech support. I tried going thru their website, but I don't know the answers to some of the questions they are asking and if you don't answer them you are dead in the water. If I knew the sticky notes feature was not reliable, I would have not used them. If they are not reliable, then Microsoft needs to go back to the drawing board and fix it or scrap it and not put out junk. And the world wants to go all electronic! There is nothing like a piece of paper and a pencil!

Oops! I did it again!

I wasn't going to buy any more fabric, but oops I did! When I was in Dover on Saturday to install the drapes, The Material Girl was having their 4th anniversary sale. Fabric, books, and patterns were 20% off, but if you cleaned off a bolt or bought 5 yards you got an extra 20% off - that was 40% off not an additional 20% after the first 20%. They had the Habitat fabric I had my eye on so I bought three five yard pieces, cleaned off two bolts, and then bought half yard and yard pieces of the rest.

The piano key and large scale musical notes were clean off the bolt pieces. I bought a 1/2 yard of the other two for a music quilt I need to make next year for a fund raiser.

The floral with the black background was an end of the bolt. I bought a yard of each of the other pieces.

Speaking of installing the drapes, the mother asked me if I would help her strip the wallpaper off her kitchen and paint the ceiling, walls and trim. The baby girls are now entertaining themselves by picking and ripping off the wallpaper in the kitchen! The wallpaper is old so no real loss. I guess I will be doing this re-do after the holidays.

Mom and Bubba chillin' in the backyard this weekend. Bubba has gotten big and he still has his spots.

The drummer in my nephew's band is having problems with the zipper slides on his Beato drum bags. (FYI the Beato drum bags with the gold lettering are Chinese made and the ones with the white lettering are made in the USA. I am dealing with the Chinese bags.) So of course I was asked if I could fix them - ugh! The bags are too old for Beato to do anything about, so next step was to get new sliders for the zippers. The zippers were fine it is just the sliders that are breaking. So here is my shout out to Stan's Sewing Supplies for having all the info on their website to figure out what size sliders I needed. I ordered the sliders on Friday and received them on Monday! This is not my first order with Stan's and they are the solution for all you custom zipper issues. I have received nothing from Stan's for this endorsement, they are just a great company to work with and I wanted my readers to know this in case they have a zipper issue. Here is how big these #10 sliders are

I took the bag apart just enought to expose one end of the zipper so I could get the slider on. It must had taken me a half an hour of messing around to get the slider on and to be able to start zipping. I put some silicone on the zipper to try and make it slide easier. I had to hand sew a stop at the end of the zipper I had loosen up, but it is fixed and I am glad to had this job done. Unfortunately the drummer had a couple more bags with zipper slider issues so I will end up fixing those too, but I learned a lot from the first one so the rest should go faster.

Don't forget to leave a comment on the September 12th post for a chance to win a set of fat quarters.

Lots to report and the re-do bedroom giveaway!

I ended up going to see my nephew play, because the friend who was going to come over for a binding lesson had to cancel. Apparently if you machine quilt for too long on her machine it overheats and melts some of the plastic gears inside. What the heck?! Added comment: I will post what the service person finds once she gets her machine back. Maybe there is something else other than machine quilting for hours that contributed to the problem.So she couldn't finish the machine quilting and will have to wait two weeks to get it back from the repairman. She has a Husqvarna. Here is my nephew playing with Colin John. After the first set I asked Michael if he knew all the songs they played and he said he only had heard two of the songs, all the rest of the material was new to him!

Here are the drapes installed. They are short enough to clear the baseboard heaters. I only made one set of tie backs and the mother asked for another set for the front window. I have enough fabric leftover so that is not a problem. The tie backs are installed high so the babies can't reach them.

I worked Saturday and Sunday on the I Spy quilts. Here is where they are right now

Gosh I made their names BIG! Claire's is sewn together, but I think I want to add another row along each side to make it a bit wider. I haven't started sewing Sophia's together yet. Oh, I have to have these done by Oct. 9.

And now the giveaway. As you all know I have been working on the re-do bedroom for a while now. Well, it is as done as it can be at this point in time. I still have to solve the water issue before I can install the baseboards and I have to wait until I save a little money until I can buy the closet doors. I have a room upstairs that also needs closet doors so I want to buy both sets at the same time so when I get my brother over to help me install them, we can do both at the same time. I will eventually move in the bed frame. It rained or threaten to rain all weekend so I could not spray paint the metal bed frame. The shelf along the west wall still needs some primping. I installed the door on Sunday - not an easy job to do by yourself! I ended up having to plane the top of the door because it was sticking and would not close. But it is installed with new hinges and a new door handle and I am a happy camper!

Here are the befores and afters - then I will talk about the giveaway.

Now the giveaway. The winner gets a group of fat quarters that is inspired by the rooms colors. I am feeling pretty generous so I will probably throw a few more goodies.

You have three chances to win! 1. Enter a comment - come on I need some love. Let me know what you like or don't like about the room. Do you have a question about how I did something? I started this project about August 1 so you could always go back and see what I was doing.
2. Become a follower and leave me another comment saying you became a follower.
3. Post it on you blog about the giveaway and leave me a comment saying you did this.

I will draw a name Monday morning, September 19. Thanks for stopping by!

Thank goodness it is Friday

I sat down to catch up on Project Runway and worked on pieceing the names for the I Spy quilts. I did get one done. I used Red Letter Day in the pink and gray stripe. The name came out rather large so I am thinking I may change the layout of the quilt a bit. I was suprised I finish it as tired as I was.

Tonight one of my quilting friends is coming over so we can put the binding on the baby quilt she has been working on. My nephew is playing tonight with an older long time local musician, but he doesn't go on until 10 P.M. and I have to get up very early Saturday to get my haircut and then head to Dover to hang the drapes so I don't think I will be able to see him play tonight. I may stop at The Material Girl quilt shop in Dover as they are having an anniversary sale. 20% off fabric, books, and patterns plus if you buy 5 yards of more or finish the bolt you get another 20% off. I wish I could go today, but I have to work. I sure hope there is something left tomorrow for me!

Have a great weekend!

How I design

Many of the quilts I make are designed in my head. I go right from the concept in my head to fabric and then the design wall. On occasion I make a quick sketch. Here is my sketch for the I Spy quilts. I spent some time last evening playing around with the lettering. I need to go over to Tonya Ricucci's blog Lazy Gal Quilting because I need a visual on making the letters a and r.

I will leave the giveaway open to anyone who would like to send me a novelty print for these I Spy quilts until Friday, Sept. 9 - see my post on 9/2 for details. I will announce the winners on Monday along with a new giveaway to celebrate my re-do bedroom being as done as it can be at this point in time.

What cute novelty fabric

One of my blog buddies sent me some cute novelty fabric for the I Spy quilts I am working on. There are Mardi Gras masks, Bob the Builder, LSU tiger, and shopping bag fabric to name a few. Thank you Glen! All of these will look great in the I Spy quilts and they are fabrics I have never seen before.

Another blogger buddy from the Yukon is also sending me some novelty fabric scraps. I will post a picture when I receive them.