Mom's new fabrics

Mom's new fabrics, a photo by DukeSaysSewWhat.blogspot.com on Flickr.

It's my last full day in Texas with my parents. jack and I will have stayed 13 days when we depart for WA state ( home ) tomorrow. It's been great to have this time with my parents! Mom and I did some fabric shopping and I've taught her EPP. We sat in front of the TV last night for 4 hours commenting on the dresses both on the red carpet and during the Oscars! We loved Angelina's but what was up with that stance with her leg out?!

I'll be back to normal blogging in a couple of days! I hear my friend, Deb, is having a give away so I'll get the details and tell you more...

I miss Duke! (oh, and my husband, lol)

Kris

EPP at Plano, TX skate park

EPP at Plano, TX skate park, a photo by DukeSaysSewWhat.blogspot.com on Flickr.

Hello (or should I say HOWDY!) blog land friends! Jack and I are having a great time with my parents here in Texas. We have been touring skateparks both outdoor and indoor. Yesterday's adventure was for Jack and I (off alone cause mom had a stomach virus and dad was worn out from a game of raquetball with jack) to find The Quilt Asylum in McKinney and then Eisenbers indoor skatepark in Plano. What fun we had! That quilt store is AMAZING! I took lots of pics for another post. They are swooning there, too and had a beautiful swoon quilt on the wall. I bought some fabric my local shop doesn't carry. I could have stayed for hours! We spent the next 3 hours at the indoor skatepark where I worked on a new rose star...when I wasn't taking pictures and videos of Jack skateboarding into a foam pit. Before long he was doing front flips off his board into the pit. It was a great day. When the scream-o bands started playing, I could only hang in for about an hour before my ears were bleeding.

Tomorrow night I am sending Jack and his Pop (my Dad) to a Dallas Maverick's basketball game. Who hoo!!!

My husband and older son are visiting a college campus so Duke has a sitter tonight. She is texting me lots of pics of Duke which I love! ...out on a walk, eating his dinner, curled up on the couch... He IS surviving without me!

Kris

Fabric Winners!

We're off to Dallas tomorrow!  I've decided to take along my rose stars for some hand stitching at my Mom and Dad's house.  Mom is a crafter, too.  In fact, she said she has already saved the JoAnns coupon for this week.  LOL!  I also plan to visit some of her local quilt stores which I have never been to before.  Fun!

Would you look at how close I am to finishing this one?  I mean seriously?!  Once the kids walk in the door after school it is CRAZY here and not much sewing gets done.  We are usually off to the skate park - pronto!  There is about 1.5 hours of daylight left so no time to waste.  :)

Happy Valentine's Day by the way!  This precious wall hanging came in my "Love in a Box" gift this month!  There were also some gummy heart candies but those are, um, gone!  This is so adorable and so perfect for February!  You can read more about the Love in a Box Care Package group I am in here.

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Thanks to everyone who left a comment for the Fugly Fabric Give-Away!  My youngest son Jack, drew numbers 7 and 13.  Paskiaq and June D.....you are the winners!  I've just sent you an email asking for your address.

Duke met Olive at the dog park yesterday and boy was he smitten!!

It was really funny to watch!  There were lots of dogs at the park but he only had eyes for Olive!

Hope you have a lovely Valentine's Day!!

Kris

Duke makes a new friend

Happy Monday Morning!  I'm a bit slow going this morning due to Downton Abbey being a 2 hour show last night that I didn't start watching until 11:00pm!  I'm not complaining - I LOVE THAT SHOW! 

Thanks to all of you who have expressed interest in the Fugly Fabric.  I am enjoying reading all of your comments!  Jack will be helping me draw the winner tomorrow. 

Well it turns out Duke's fancy chevron scarf has drawn him more attention at the dog park, this time from a new friend, Yeagar.

One look at us and he came barreling over to say hello!  I instinctively bent my knees not knowing if I was going to be taken down with a big dog hug or what?!

Here they are after a swim!  The scarf!  It got wet!!

A game of chase is a must for Duke.  He loves to be chased!

Hours later I found him here, relaxing on my bed.

Poor guy was worn out and needed a nap!

I was able to mail off the "love in a box" value quilt on Friday after my last minute fabric pen purchase. You can read more about the quilt here.  As I mentioned the first pen turned out to be the washable pen kind, so I ran out for this pen at the last minute.  I "set" it with heat, too.

I didn't get any new projects started this weekend as baseball try-outs, a basketball game and a High School dance all happened Saturday. 

My Senior Mitch and his date.

It's vacation time for us!  The kids have a mid-winter break next week. We are heading out of town a few days early.  We'll be visiting my parents in Dallas.  Yay!  Jack started packing last night and the first three things to go in his suitcase were:  Dominos, a football, a skateboard.  Priorities!  My hubby will stay here with Duke.  How will Duke survive without me?  My  husband tells me he paces by the back door whenever I am gone.  Poor guy!

In closing, I wanted to link up to a beautiful blog I stumbled across.
Love this colorful blog! mamacjt you have some beautiful creations!



I'll be back with the fugly fabric winners tomorrow!

Kris

Fabric Give-Away!

Better late than never I've joined the party!  I am loving all of the link ups and wanted to throw in a sweet deal of my own!

Remember "Let's Make a Deal"?  Well I have something behind Door #1 and Door #2....and here is the deal - all you have to do is become a follower of my blog and leave me a comment saying you are a follower!  How easy is that.  I will pay the postage and all are welcome (international included).

Ok behind Door #1 which I am calling the "Girly fabrics"

There is an unopened 2 yard cut of flannel, a large piece of pink heart fabric, flannel love Mommy and Daddy fabric and three of my more favorite scraps - just because I wanted to make it super sweet. 

I think they are fun fabrics!

These certainly aren't FUGLY but they just aren't something I can use much as I have two boys.

So - on to Door #2 - which I am calling the Christmas Fabric (original yes I know!)

Are you ready to start a Christmas project?  Then this is for you!  My very first quilt was a patchwork Christmas quilt and I bought LOADS of fabric and cut it all up!  So, I have lots of these squares and decided to share some with you!  The snowmen and the dogs are larger pieces of fabric.

There are probably enough squares here to make a baby sized quilt.

For my dog loving readers, a little doggie love!  Flanders, Archie, Sammie, Katy you know who you are!

So there you have it. Become a follower or tell me you already are one in comments and you can tell me which Door you would choose and I will see if it is still available should you be the 2nd place winner!  If you are the 1st place winner of course it is yours!  I will draw names on February 14th.

Kris



Sending The Love...Quilt

EDITED TO ADD: I'm having a fabric give away and some of my favorite scraps from this quilt are included!  Details here.

Duke may not be thrilled, but I am!  I finished the "Love in a Box" quilt that I last blogged about here.

The deadline as mentioned is February 10th and as I write this the quilt is in the dryer.  Made it!

This quilt is being given to my friend Laurie, who started a "Love in a Box" care package swap with a group of her friends.  If we wanted to show we cared about someone we gave her our name and address, and she organized the list for us, telling us who to send a care package to the next month.  It's a way to spread some love amongst friends!  This is our first month, and I got Laurie - - yes the leader is my person the first month!  Something special is in order, don't you think?

Value quilts may just be my new thing.  I first read about them on the blog Sew Katie Did and she has a great tutorial you can read here.  One of the things Katie says is that if you aren't happy with your quilt it probably has to do with the values.  I think that's absolutely true!  So thanks Katie for the great tutorial.

I used some fancy buttons in picnik to play up the values a bit for this picture.  Yep, values do catch the eye don't they?

As the theme is "Love in a Box" I got the idea to add some fun stitching to some of the blocks, randomly, so that they would show through on the back side of the quilt as a sprinkle of boxes.

Using brown and green thread I picked boxes at random.  (Changing out my thread and bobbin - not so fun!)  But I'm hoping it will add a nice dimension to the quilt  - we will soon find out!

This is what it looks like on the back.  I noted the boxes for you with HERE above.

Jolene at Blue Elephant Stitches was the inspiration for black and white in the binding.  You can see an example of her use of black and white bindings here.  I went with scrappy and added in another fabric also.

So next, on to sewing on the binding. I sewed it to the front of the quilt, then wrapped it around to the back and still sewed on the front of the quilt.  I read about that on redpepperquilts and here is her tutorial.

I also left some batting to fill the binding, though I did trim it down some.  What I forgot to do was change out the bobbin color from white.  Oh well, next time I will remember that step.

What I DON'T do is "all that math" to get the binding to join up.  I just leave a long tail, eye ball it, open it to sew, fold it back and keep on sewing.  Look at this closure!  Wow!  I got really lucky this time.  :)

Lunch time!  I took Jack and his 4th grade teacher some chocolate shakes today.  Decided it was "kiss up to the teacher day".  He loved it!  (They both did)

Never having labeled a quilt I went to Amanda Jean's blog where I remembered her having written about that.  Here is her tutorial on her blog crazymomquilts.blogspot.com.  That's a fabric pen and I used a stabilizer on the fabric while writing it, then removed it.

My favorite fabric in this quilt is the red/pink/white fabric and it was added on the last day before sewing! 

See the school bus?  Laurie is a teacher so I'm excited about the buses, scissors, and cupcakes throughout the quilt.  Darn, I forgot some margarita glasses, Laurie!! 

Before it was washed.

Duke tested it out and yep - it's perfect for getting sleepy under...

I am so thrilled to have finished something that I think I might finish something else real soon!!  :) 

EDITED TO ADD: Well the quit came out of the dryer in great shape with the exception of one thing...the label did not have any writing on it!  Oops!  I'm off to the fabric store to buy the right kind of fabric pen that is permanent - not washable!!  :)

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts!

and

and

Kris

(Behind the scenes...)

A teenager woken from his nap to hold up a quilt for a picture!

Love in a Box

Happy Fabric Tuesday!  I should be quilting this quilt but I didn't want to pass up a chance to say hello with Heather and Megan over at Quilt Story!  I've been posting snippets of this quilt from Flickr the past few days.  I've almost finished it!  It's my February gift to a friend as part of our "Love in a Box" swap.  It started with Laurie having a bad day and another friend telling her she was going to send her a care package (wasn't that sweet?)  Laurie decided to share the love by collecting names of her friends who wanted to join in the fun of a monthly care package which she is calling "Love in a Box".  All you had to do was send her your name and address and she would organize the list. Our names were placed in alphabetical order by first name and you simply send a gift by the 10th of the month to the person below you on the list.  The next month, you drop down a name, and so on!  Well what a nice thing for Laurie to organize - don't you think?  Guess who I (Kris) got for the first month - - Laurie!  The rules are simple really, don't spend more than $10-12 and mail it by the 10th. It can't be something for the kids, either.  This is love for a friend! 

I had this fabric already!  So I didn't spend any money at all!  I wanted more red for Valentine's Day, so I swapped out a few of the half square triangles with new ones from my ever growing fabric stash.  Do you just love my design wall?  We happen to have lots of duct tape in the house right now (as you know if you have been reading previous posts about Jack's duct tape wallets).

By the next morning, it looked like this.  Ugh!  I need a big empty wall but there isn't one in this cozy little home of ours. 

Yesterday I gave it one last good ironing before making the quilt sandwich.  We live in a very old home and it has one of those ironing boards that opens out of a door from the wall.  The wooden leg drops down and presto - you have your ironing station.  Love it.

My older son Mitch took this picture.  Duke couldn't figure out what I was doing.  At first he tried to stand behind the quilt with me but after some coaxing - he was model ready!

Here's Duke showing me what part of the batting I needed to trim off.  Got it!  Thanks Duke!

I spray basted the layers.  Duke didn't care for that part.  He took off running out the back door.

He has since inspected it and let me know it's ready for quilting! It's the final countdown now to finish this up.  Is it the 10th yet? 

And speaking of Valentine's Day, I wanted to close with a picture of the Valentine's Day box that Jack (left above) made yesterday using his duct tape and scissors and a cardboard box.

It is a skateboard box!

Wish me luck on finishing up my "Love in a Box" gift for Laurie! I may not be making a quilt every month -  Laurie deserved something extra special for organizing us!!

PS - Next time I will post about the Love in a Box that I received yesterday!  I just love it!!!!

Kris