In The Zone...

A lot of times when I'm piecing a quilt - I get "In The Zone" - no not the diet type of "zone" - really in that "zone" where nothing else matters, I'm just sewing along minding my own business and having a blast.  Now, I'm not sure about you, but when I scrap quilt I really go to town and get in the "zone".  I pay no attention to what fabric plays best with another nor do I get all "matchy, matchy".  This photo goes to show you how "in the zone" I was yesterday!

Do you see those blocks I've "tried" to circle above?  (ok - don't laugh at my rather childish attempt to circle the blocks using photoshop - I'm still in the learning stages in that program - my 14 year old son is still trying to teach good old Mom the basics!)

Those 3 blocks particularly that are going horizontally across your screen - notice that they all have the same middle "light" fabric going through them?  This was not intentional and was an accident!  If I wouldn't have been so deeply "in the zone" I would have never placed the blocks with the same fabrics in the same exact location of the block so closely together in this scrap quilt.  Oh well now - they are pieced together and that's the way they are staying - another incident in one of my quilts that will be left there to humble me a bit!  They still look good, but of course their location is near the top of the quilt at this point - right where they stand out!   Not going to let it bother me though - just wanted to point out how easily things like this happen and really - what does it matter - as long as we are having fun during the whole process of making a quilt! Right????

Here's my project I am working on today - I'll probably finish this top today.  This pattern can be found in the August 2011 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine.  It's called Weaving The Rails and is designed by Kathie Holland of Inspired By Antiques Quilts Blog (which by the way - if you do not follow and read this blog - you are really missing out!!!)

Here's a picture of the quilt in the magazine!

And now to show you the finish of the Katie's String Star Quilt - but first, do you know how hard it is take a picture of a quilt top when a little fur ball just has to mess with you?

This is Bella again striking a pose for you.  She really should be a model - Don't you think?

Regardless, I gave up trying to be all fancy and getting this quilt top spread out nice and flat and un-wrinkled for you to see.  Every time I had it near perfect, she nose dived right into it!  So, I left it like it was after a quick fixing and tossing a treat in the cats direction and snapped a picture quickly!

Here is a corner picture for you so that you can see the border fabrics.

In other news, I'm still cleaning and re-organizing my new creative life.  For those of you that don't know - I spend my creative hours in my basement studio and office.  It can be rather dark and dreary down there sometimes, so I'm brightening things up a bit and reorganizing my stash.  I've torn out old shelves and installed new, gone through books and magazines and dug into rubbermaid totes that have long been forgotten about. Here's a photo of my newly cleaned and organized wool cubbie:

It's nearly finished and organized, just a few more pieces to sort through and I'm calling it done!

Also, I cleaned off one of my inspiration boards in my office and look at my two little munchkins:

Are they not cute?  This is my daughter Ashley when she was 3 1/2 years old - this is her soccer photo.  My son is on the right and he was 4 - nearly 5 in this baseball picture.  They truly are my inspiration and their little photo buttons will remain on my inspiration wall, but I've moved them from the office location to my studio so that I can look at them a little more each day! I miss them when they are gone all day at school.

Give your kids a hug today - they grow up so quickly - my little munchkins are now 13 and 14 and I cannot believe how quickly time has flown!

Just a little curious....

I received a sweet email from a person the other day and she's really had me thinking on a subject.

What is your favorite source for hand or machine quilting patterns.  This person specifically asked me for sources for hand quilting patterns to use on a quilt that is a reproduction style quilt using several mid to late 18th century reproduction type fabrics. Oh - be still my heart - my favorite style quilt!

I love to hand quilt and seriously wish I could do so on every quilt I make. But time being as valueble as it is in the design word - I'm lucky if I get to hand quilt one project a year! I highly recommend this book:

This is Quilting Designs from the Past written by Jenny Carr Kinney.  I love this book and many times I just flip through it and read - just to do it for inspiration!

I also have a pretty hefty size collections of plastic stencils:

(this photo courtesy of the Minick and Simpson Blog! Which by the way if you follow this link, they have done a nice write up on quilting stencils!)

And then of course:

(this photos is courtesy of the Tim Latimer Quilts  blog - I do have a nice collection of old antique cardboard templates I won on ebay also - but I was to lazy to dig them out just to photograph them!  My sewing storage area is under massive clean up and reconstruction and it would take me a day just to find the plastic tote containing my treasures!)

I also like to look through my collection of quilt museum and collections style quilt books.  Those with really good photographs, I can sometimes see just what type of quilting they did "way back then"!

  So - What is your favorite source of finding hand quilting patterns?

What is your favorite source of machine quilting patterns?  (This is something I'd like to learn to do more of, I'm not the greatest machine quilter and tend to leave that up to a longarm quilter!)

If you would rather not leave a comment here on my blog, feel free to email me also!

sewunique7@aol.com

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of my Katie's String Star finished quilt top!  Right now - I need to get back to my sewing machine - I'm zipping through a ton of Rail Fence Blocks this afternoon!  Such fun!

It's a border kind of day and other distractions!

I'm nearing the finish line on my Katie's String Star quilt!  Look -

I just have to trim the edges of the quilt up and add the 3 outer borders and I'll have this quilt top completed today!

I just love looking at each of these stars!  They are all so different and "sew" scrappy!  I've chosen a neat stripe print for the middle outer border, so I'm really excited to see how it turns out.  

This pattern can be found in this book on page 153:

Or you can find it in the May/June 2004 issue of Fons and Porter magazine - page 83!  (see what happens when I clean out all my magazines - I find things I new I had - just didn't know where they were stashed!

I've been a little distracted this morning while blogging....

It seems my dear sweet Bella is trying to learn how to use my computer!

Have a good one!

A "Pieceful" Sunday Of Stitching

I found the above photo on Pinterest this morning and fell in love with it. Tasha Tudor is a favorite person of mine. This photo made up my mind of how I will spend my quiet Sunday afternoon. Enjoying the peacefulness of quietly stitching in my favorite chair with my family in our living room all enjoying just being together on a quiet low key day.

I'm off to get our Sunday Dinner put together so it can start cooking in the oven. Then I'm going to put my Jammie's back on and relax in that great chair of mine with bits and pieces of fabric!

Enjoy your day!


Tara
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Hoarding Quilting Magazines & Jibber Jabber

In an effort to prove to my children that I am not a hoarder (they are starting to give me a complex!) - I've been going through all of my quilting magazines and purging them.  I have such a huge collection of magazines - It's actually quite ridiculous!  I have my favorites - current magazines and older ones that no longer exist.  As I go through them all, a little here and there, if I find projects or inspiring pictures that I might like to do in the future, I remove those pages needed, place them in plastic sleeves and put them in special binders and toss the rest of it in the recycle bin.  Any magazines that I have not destroyed with my ripping out of pages will be donated to my local quilt guild, so that they may sell them at their upcoming quilting show.  A few also - the special ones - I'm saving for my Aunt - but only if there are projects in there I think she would be really  be interested in making! (I still have to find a spot to store those magazines for my Aunt so that we can deliver them to her when we visit her again, later this year!)

There are those magazines though that I refuse - absolutely refuse to get rid of.  Some are picture above, those very early copies of Quilter's Newsletter magazine that I lucked into finding on ebay last year!

These are a few more "oldie but goodies" I refuse to get rid of.  I'm not hoarding them - I'm collecting them my dear children (if you are reading this - and I know you do read Mom's blog - Thank you!)  

Along with purging no longer wanted magazines - it's been a little crazy in the quilting room!  Strips and squares are flying everywhere and I'm having the best of times!  There's even a little Dear Jane block shown in the basket above - the little booger was giving me a devil of a time, so it's taking a break in the basket until I've re-gathered my courage to attempt that one again!

The cutting table is still a mess - but it's all good!

Here's another little corner of my quilting room.  Wonderful quilting books I love to look through every now and then!  My favorite items here are momentos from my children when they were babies.  My daughters first pink gym shoes are on the left and the little cow was my son's most favorite toy as a baby!  How sweet!

The Snow's A Comin' & I'm A Quiltin'!!!

Anyone that knows me - knows that I can't stand snow.  Oh of course - it's all pretty at first and I love to get out and play and romp in it with my kids and I love to sit and hand quilt or piece in my living room all nice and snuggly warm while watcing it snow outside - but I can't stand being cold (kind of sounds a little dorky after just saying I like to play in the snow!) and I can't stand other drivers on snowy roads.  Common sense and driving - are not so common around here anymore and I like to play it safe and just stay home and hibernate.

The stinky part about this snow storm coming today - my Dear Jane group meets tonight!  If it gets to yucky and the roads get to bad - I'll just have to miss out on tonight's fun.  Better safe than sorry!

  With that all said and off my chest (LOL) - I'm hibernating in my Quilting Kingdom today - as I typically do!  Here's a little peek at what I'm up to!

This is Katie's String Star Quilt from the Fons and Porter book titled Scrap Quilts: Best Of Fons and Porter.  I do know this quilt pattern was in one of their past issues of the magazine also - but I'm just not good enough to be that organized to tell you what issue!  I love piecing this quilt so far.  The biggest challenge is stopping to think before pressing the seams - they are all going every which way and to get everything lying nice and flat - I've had to clip a few seams here and there.  And I've already made a "boo-boo" while piecing this quilt together, I just saw my mistake after this photo uploaded.  I'll just call that my "humble" block, for this chick is not in the mood to play froggie today and rip seams.

And of course in my normal random, crazy and zany way of working - there is more than one project rolling around my studio!

I'm working on a Weaving The Rails quilt designed by our favorite blogger and scrap quilter Queen - Miss Kathie Holland of Inspired By Antique Quilts Blog fame.  This pattern was in the August 2011 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine.  Love it!

Wait, there's more.....

Here I'm laying out and working on making a reproduction of an old antique quilt in one of my quilt history books.  Yes - it's going to be a red and white quilt - all though the idea of doing it in blues and whites keeps popping into my mind! Just working on a few details to get this pattern all figured out!

Then if I'm really bored or we get snowed in really bad and I cannot get out of the house (oh gee - wouldn't that be terrible - NOT!)  I've got all my works in progress neatly cleaned up in their cubbies.  We've got the Dear Jane Quilt, The Stars and Sprigs Quilt, a quilt design by Sue Garman - the name of the pattern escapes me, tons of moda "fun" rolls of fabric to develop new interesting quilt patterns and my Cotton Club blocks to keep me entertained.

Start your engines ladies and gents - let's sew the day away and enjoy ourselves!

And I leave you with this...

Just a cute picture of one corner of my Quilting Dungeon.  I've recently did a little remodeling and cleaning up of my work area and this is one of the "cute" fun areas I created!  I love old vintage looking sewing goodies - and of course my fabric stash displayed in baskets!

Have a fabulous day folks - my day is off to a great start and I hope yours is too!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you and your family!

I hope you have a safe and happy holiday and a wonderful start to 2012!

I've been hiding out in my quilting castle, finishing up projects and hoping to start the New Year working on new designs.  The following pictures are not the best - I'm a terrible photographer using my cell phone!  But these will give you a little taste of my finishes this past week!

And here is what I'm still in the middle of working on!

Lot's and lots of scraps have been used up, yet I still feel that I've not made a dent in my large scrap basket.  Oh well, it sure is fun digging through it all!

For those of you that have not been to our website the past month, please take the time to stop by when you have a moment.  We are having our end of the year cleaning out sale and all fabrics are on sale!

www.sewuniquecreations.com

Enjoy!

P.S. - for those of you that are curious and waiting for an update on my hands after my carpal tunnel surgeries (thank you so kindly for the emails!)  My hands are almost back to 100%.  I still have a bit of scar tissue I'm working to loosen up, they still itch a bit around the scar and are hardly ever bothersome now.  I'm done with physical therapy, but continue strengthening exercises and massage at home. My scars look great!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I miss posting here on my blog and chatting on Facebook and will be back soon. I've had to take a little personal time - completely intended - to spend quality time with my family, alone time with myself and muddle a bit through some ongoing and new medical issues. But all will be better soon.

I just wanted to say how thankful I am for my family and my friends (in person and internet buddies!) You all mean so much to me!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Tara
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!!!

Bummer...

Well, I'm all bummed out.  I'm missing Quilt Market and Festival in Houston.  Many of my friends are there and they are being so great and texting updates and photos so that I can join in on the fun from a distance!  LOL

Above is a photo from my very first quilt market back in 2000 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  That was a fun booth.  I won the best New Exhibitor Booth award that year.  My husband did so much work constructing all those wood panels for that booth and my kids were wee little toddlers then.  We traveled as a family to market and really enjoyed that time together.  During the day I would work the show and hubby would take the kids to local events and things, the zoo, shopping, etc.  We really had fun there.

I'm watching blogs and FaceBook to check for all the updates coming in - it's only making it worse on me - but I can't help it!!!!!

That's ok, I'll get over it.  In fact, I think I'll start planning my Spring Quilt Market booth right now!  That will perk my spirits up!  Spring Market will be in Kansas City, Missouri this coming May 2012!  We are super excited to be going back there for our 3rd market visit to this great location!

Off to plan my booth............