A quilt for Gabby

I made this quilt for my neighbor's daughter Gabby. It was a kit so it took very little time to complete.

Miss Eve and Her Quilt

She loves her quilt!

Secret Sisters are back!

Well, today I got my secret sister package in the mail from Jennifer, aka White Buffalo, a woman in the FiGuMs group. These ladies are all so generous! I got 3 fat quarters, Chocolate!!! a skein of yarn, a crochet hook 2 spools of thread and an adorable picuture frame. ...the pic below says it all:

Baby Quilt

Well I have just finished a baby quilt that I made for my neice. I made it entirely with fabrics I got at the new quilt shop in my area, Evergreen Quilting. I am so very excited to have a quilt shop so close to home! Here are some pics of the quilt! It only took me about 4 hours to complete after I had the washing done (mind you this was spread out in 20min - hour long spurts over several weeks). The part I liked the most about making this quilt is that I did not have to put any batting in it and therefore I did not have to quilt it as heavily as I would have otherwise. The first photo of course is the entire quilt. The second one (below left) is a close up of the moon quilting I did, and the third one (below right) shows the super soft fabric I used as backing. I think it's called Minky or something of the sort.

Stuff I've been doin'

I feel as though I have neglected my little corner of the internet...but life gets in the way sometimes.
Here is my entry for a rotary cutter contest I was in for the Fairy Goddess Mothers...My theme was the "Quest for the Cure Gunslinger"
Ready? Draw!

Feburary Goddess Girl

Ok so I have been working on another Goddess Girl for my Fairiegoddessmothers quilting group and FINALLY got her finished. I would have had her done MUCH sooner had my cat not pissed all over my fabric stash! I am sorry but I can't help being vulger about it. She really really made me mad at her and fortunately for her I am not the sort to resort to violence (allthough it SERIOUSLY crossed my mind).
So anyway...here is the block for Feburary...the theme was love.

Eve's Quilt

Well, it's finally done! Quilted and bound. D-U-N DUN!
Brian did a great job picking out the fabric, designing the quilt and doing all of the piecing. When he finished he gave it to me and I added the borders, quilted it (in a 4inch grid) and bound it.
We bound it in red, and it is a little hard to see in the photo, but I assure you it is sharp and totally completes the quilt.
We hope that Eve will enjoy crawling on it and later when she is bigger, snuggling up under it.
Oh, and just for fun, here is a pick of the Kiddo at Christmas (I think she was somewhere around 3 weeks old at the time).

Secret Sister Swap

Well I have finally managed to get my camera and computer together again. Here is a picture of all of the wonderful stuff that my Secret Sister, Dreamspinner, sent to me for the FairieGoddessMothers 'Book Beside My Bed' Swap.
Fortunately for me my Sister was reading MANY books at the time.
I received fabrics that represented several books including the new Harry Potter, Wicked (one of my favorites) and the other two are picture here. I have not started reading either of them yet but they are at the top of my list. I also received some 'bling' as I call it. A little 'R' shaped pendant studded with 'diamonds' I think I am going to put it on my rotary cutter. :)
Oh and then there is the yarn and knitting needles and clip. I guess I am just going to have to learn how to knit! I can crochet my pants off but knitting is a whole new world. I think partly because I have my hands trained to crochet and they have a rather hard time trying to break that pattern when I pick up the knitting needles. I think I'll need to ask my pal Leafy about the best place to start on that since he seems to know a great deal on the subject (you know, published author and all of that).
Oh and I can't forget the chocolate rocks they are good. Well, were good we ate them all :)
So as you can see this is a very generous and kind group I belong to.

So Tired - Rant

Well I am very very ready for the week to be over.
On Tuesday night DH and I went to bed. He couldn't sleep. Kept hearing a noise. I heard it but I didn't care enough to let it bother me. After he tossed and turned for an hour and a half he got up to investigate. Went to the basment and discovered it was the sump pump trying to engage (but failing) he also discovered 4 inches of standing water in our basement. Yay. Guess what I got to do all night? Well no, we didn't bail out the basement - there were probably 500 gallons of water down there. I got up and went down...put on some sandals and stepped in...Water up to my ankles. I waded over to the sump pump to see if I could get it to trigger. Reached my arm down up to the elbow and fiddled with it. It was at this point that I noticed a wonderful SLIMY texture coating my skin. My best guess is that it was varnish left over from the previous homeowner who had used the basement as a woodworking shop. Sooo...we finally decided that there was nothing that we could do that night and unpluged the pump so the motor wouldn't burn out. We removed the wine bottles from the bottom layers of our wine racks. We had already lost 4 bottles of wine but fortunately it was our homemade wine and not one of the really expensive bottles we had purchased.
We jumped in the shower (got smart and brought the grease cutting kitchen soap with us) and scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed. Finally the hot water gave out so we went to bed slightly less slimy than before.

We spent Wednesday morning at the hardware store and replacing the pump. It looks like we are only out a few hundred bucks. The pump was only about 80 plus a few other supplies. The big loss was the home winemaking equipment that we won't be able to use again. That needs to be nice and sterile so I don't think any amount of washing will get the equipment clean enough for my tastes (besides, would you want to drink it)? So we'll replace the equipment as we need it. The biggest headache is going to be cleaning up the mess down there. We had lots and lots of cardboard boxes down there and they are all soggy and shot so it's gonna be ugly. Oh well it is what it is. At least now (Friday) the house has stopped smelling like varnish.

Now I am just exhausted from work. I really slacked off on Monday and Tuesday, and I know it. But I am paying for it now playing catchup. That wouldn't be so bad (I am catchin up with all of the data entry and filing) but I have had my head bitten off on no less than 4 occassions today by tenants (I work for a Property Management group) who seem to think I am the one who is at fault when their power goes out and want me to snap my fingers and fix it. Oh yes what a lovely day...Not only the power outage (which usually means about 20 or so extra calls) but we had a building that had raw sewage back up into it thru the floor drains, sinks and toilets! YUK! I understand this is aweful disgusting gross and unnacceptable but I CANT FIX IT FROM HERE!!! Not only that but that king of problem is out of the scope for our regular building maintenance men - they have to call contractors out and contractors TAKE TIME to get there. Of course for most of my tenants YESTERDAY isn't fast enough.

Ok I am done ranting and actually feel a little better. Now if only I wasn't so darn tired!
Well, back to the filing I go!

One more star

Well I finished another feathered star on Sunday...I guess 18 hours of football is good for something right? Sooo here it is...looking much the same as the others, just with different fabrics. Last night I cut the fabric for Star #4 and have started piecing that one too. I just hope I don't get distracted like I did with this one and forget all about it for months on end. As before here is an overall and then a close up of the fabrics...The block looks slightly distorted because it's not on a totally flat surface.

Hand pieced feathered stars

Here is the first feathered star that I made. The second pic is a close up of the fabric.
It went together surprisingly fast but I think that is because I was so eager to see it done. Below are pics of the second completed block. I will post pics of #3 when I finish it.

Baby Quilt?

Well, yes it is a baby quilt. This is the quilt my husband designed and executed for our niece, Eve. Let's just say her parents aren't the pink and yellow sort...But this one we know will be used and not just stored away in a cedar chest. I only hope that Eve come's to love it too.

Did I also mention that Brian is the one who did the cutting and sewing? This is his third quilt and I must say he is getting pretty darn good at it.

Winter Fairy

On a typical Northwest day here in Washington some years ago my brothers and I were playing on Christmas day. We had opened our presents and downed a lot of candy and we were killing time between opening our gifts and going to Grandma's for dinner.Well that day my brother got a microscope for Christmas...boy were we having fun putting everything we could find under there and looking at it.Of course it wasn't long before we took the thing outside and started putting leaves and bark and all sorts of stuff in it...It was my turn and I had a nice brownish red leaf I wanted to see up close. I put my eye to the scope and just as I was getting ready to slide the leaf under a snowflake landed on the bed! wow was I excited to see a snoflake magnified. but not as excited as I was when I realized that it was no mistake it landed there.Upon taking a second look (for my eyes couldn't be trusted) I saw the Winter Fairy Goddess bringing life to the first snow of the year. Sure enough when I looked back up it had started to snow!I have preserved that memory and placed it on the block you see in the picture today.

Brian

Most of you already know that Brian just passed the P.E. exam...Woo Hoo. Now we are waiting for his liscence...I am so proud of him!

Projects

Woo hoo! ok so it looks like I have figured out how to post a pic from the web...just not sure how to make it work out of my pic folder. Hopefully it will work better from my home computer since that is where I will be uploading from usually.
Anyway this is Harley Quinn the Fairy I am working on from the FairyGoddessMothers group. The fairy template was created by our Listmom Linda Pool (she has some good books out too - you should check them out if you are interested in quilting). Harley is still a bit of a brainchild but I have started to think about what her backround is going to be....I am starting to lean towards having her sit on a windowsill looking into a courtroom (throne room). I have some fun embellishments I am going to add too. I have some little jingle balls to hang from her hat and shoes and a couple of 'juggling balls' to put around her too. Next step I guess is to figure out how large to make the quilt itself so I can start drafting the backround.
Ok well, that's all for now I suppose...I'll post some more pics later tonight I hope - this is assuming I can figure out how to make it work.

Just some randomness

One of the Yahoo groups I belong to is the FairyGoddessMothers. It is a quilting group for people who have a love of fairies...that would defenitely be me. On top of that the ladies there are all a great support network. Plus we have lots of fun and encourage creativity and imagination. I'll post a pic as soon as I can figure this darn thing out...so far all of the pics I have tried to upload tell me 'your picture was not uploaded' Of course it won't tell me why...Sooo eventually I'll figure it out...

First Real Post

Ok,
So here I am feeling kinda weird talking to the internet...but this is really for me...not the rest of you. I figure that I can give this space to friends and family that want to check in on me.
So...hopefully this will be a space for me to post my current projects and what not along with those fun little 'life moments' like chopping off all of my hair and getting a bad dye job...
So... see ya'll around.
~Rachael