Thread Breaking

My thread has been breaking while sewing if I go fast. No clue why. I got the last of my rectangle strips sewn together though.

I still need to sew my squares together. I have to draw the diagonal lines to sew on before I can actually do some sewing.

I don't have as much time to sew as I used to. LOL. Now it's only during Alex's naptime or after he goes to bed.

Before I had him I could have sewn whenever I wanted or all day if I wanted to, but not now. Got a little one to take care of. :)

Been a while

I do have a bit of that quilt I started finished. Well it's still in pieces, none of the rows are together LOL.

I need to find my seam ripper because I accidentally sewed together pieces I shouldn't have. But looking for it will have to wait until Alex is in bed.

ETA-I looked around on the kitchen table (where I keep my sewing stuff) and no luck. Would suck if I'd lost it cause that'd be the 2nd one!

Gotta Get a Marker

I've gotta get a fabric marker to draw lines. I did have a light blue one somewhere, but well I don't think it will show up very well on my darker fabrics plus I can't find it. LOL.

I used pencil on the two yellow colors, but it won't show up on the rest of the fabrics. So gotta buy one of those marker things.

Need Quilting Help

So I was looking at the directions for cutting the black (magazine said to buy 1 3/4 yards black.

And then it wants me to cut 2 (3.5x87.5 strips), 2 (3.5x78.5 strips), 2 (3.5x75.5 strips) and 2 (3.5x66.5 strips)

Umm you can't do that with only 1 3/4 yards!!!!

And the only way I know how to cut like that is to cut across the fabric instead of from selvage to selvage which is weird to me. I always cut selvage to selvage, never along the length of the fabric. So why would we do it for this?

Quilting Update

Bought the fabric on 2-19
Started ironing on 2-20
Started cutting it on 2-21

Made first cutting oops on 2-21

I thought my medium yellow was actually my light yellow and cut it as my light yellow. Oops! I should be able to fix it though. And hopefully we won't have to make a run to the store for any more!

Last night we bought another lip ruler for me. The ones at WalMart didn't come in a long length (like 24 inches?) so the one I have is like 3x18 inches. I normally fold my fabric in 4 anyway so it still works for me.

I read somewhere that it talks about folding in half for a beginner quilter and I was thinking, do cutting boards come in that size? And the rulers?

New Quilt, Alex Update

So I picked a new quilt to make. I haven't finished Alex's winter quilt yet either. Bad mommy!

That's it. At first glance it looks really difficult but its not at all. You take a medium and dark strip, sew them together. Then for the square of it, you just overlay the correct colors on the corners and sew them on to make it into a bigger square and voila! That takes it from the square on point to a normal square that you can line up with the rectangles.

I love the 3D look of it too. They actually show an example of it in the magazine where it looks like a view of the downtown of a city.

Now my only problem...I was looking for my cutting stuff earlier. I found my rotary mat and the rotary cutter...but I can't find that clear thingy that you use to cut straight lines! Which means I can't do any cutting yet!

It might be in the closet with Alex's crib and that would be a pain because I'd have to get Eric to hold the crib up so I can get to the back of the closet.

Speaking of the crib, Alex is now in a toddler bed. :) The first night he like freaked out when we put him in it so we drove around until he fell asleep and put him in bed. He's done well ever since then. He seems to be getting better at actually staying in bed too and not falling out. If he fell out he'd just play in his room and eventually crash on his floor. LOL. It's definitely low enough for him to climb back in it. Heck he climbs onto the couch in his room!

He's 19.5 months old now. :) Sneaky little guy too at some times. We just one day didn't hear anything out of him and went and checked on him in his room and found him standing on his couch! And he kept doing it LOL. He doesn't know how to get back down though so we have to rescue him each time he climbs up there.

Question about Quilting

Okay the quilt I'm making for Alex will look like this.



Now if I wanted to quilt around the outside of each "diamond" that is in the quilt, what would be an easy way to do that? I don't have a longarm so it is harder for me to do nice designs when I quilt.

I think the way I did it last time is I went around the whole diamonds and just turned the quilt as I went and then when it got to where I couldn't go around each diamond anymore I just started doing the diagonal lines.

I want to quilt

I want to work on Alex's flannel quilt. It's my closest project to being done. The only problem is the dining room table is in Alex's room. When we put up the Christmas tree we moved the dining room table into Alex's room (after we took it apart) and by the time we put the Christmas tree in the box, Alex was already asleep so the dining room table is stuck in his room until he wakes up tomorrow.

I've been playing Everquest a bit lately. I'm kind of irritated with the game. See I haven't played since Dec 2005, and before that I had like 8/10 expansions. Now there are 12 expansions and the levels go to 75. Before then it was only 70. They changed the way that monsters con to you. Like white is the same level as you, then dark blue, then light blue, then green. Now it's white is the same level as you, then dark blue, then light blue, then green, then gray. Now you get experience for green when before you didn't. Like a monster I've heard to kill, which might have been dark blue a year ago is now light blue so its probably not as good experience. Since I haven't played in a while I have no clue where to take my character and level her up now. My enchanter was powerleveled up to 45. Higher level people took me on groups with them and I got experience that way, and I never had to cast spells, so now that I do need to cast spells I can't because I haven't built up my skills.

I started trying to knit something earlier. Just a simple washcloth. I want to work on my quilting darnit! But I can't do anything about it until tomorrow. :(

Still Here

I haven't written or read in quite a bit but I am still alive! I just lost my urge to quilt for a while there. And since the week or so before Christmas we had the tree up in the dining room so we had to take down the dining table, which is where I had my sewing machine which has meant no sewing even if I wanted to!

I know I have quite a few blogs on my list but I can't remember the site to read all the blogs in one place. :( I reformatted my computer and probably had it bookmarked and can't remember the URL now.

ETA-bloglines.com!! I found it! Did a google and looked at an article that had the url.

Quilting Update

I still have 3 or 4 projects in progress, depending on what you count as a project. I have the trip around the world top that needs quilted. I have the homeward bound to union square blocks that I need to do something with. I scrapped the blocks from the homeward bound quilt that had all the triangles, so now I have to find something to do with the rest of the blocks. I have the flannel quilt for the winter for Alex still in progress, and I still have the quilt for an hour project in progress.

When my mom came down last Friday I went to WalMart with her and picked up some more black thread because I was low, low enough that I could see the spool! I sewed more on the project after I got the new thread (still using old thread though) and I have 16 of the 20 blocks done. Only problem now is that Alex grabbed the cord to our iron and pulled it off the ironing board and the top seperated from the bottom and Eric doesn't want me using it, so we're going to buy a new one. But the parts to the last 4 blocks haven't been ironed so I'm 4 blocks short of a top right now! And then I still have to keep sewing on them.

So the no iron issue is why I haven't been doing any updates.

Quilt For An Hour Project

I have 10 squares completely sewn. I have 8 more that I have in pieces and still need to sew, but I'm running low on black thread, the white on the spool is showing. And then I have 2 squares that I need to put together but I don't have parts to any 2 complete squares! I don't know why either! I could swear that I had 20 sets of squares and all that stuff but now I don't, I only have 18 so I have to make more HST's to complete my squares.

ETA: I found the missing pieces, turns out they were behind me where I hadn't looked. *sigh* But I do have all 20 squares now. Only 10 of them are sewn together, and once I get more black thread I can keep sewing.

Khaki Quilt?

Eric has two pairs of khaki pants that have started to get worn so he isn't wearing them anymore. I had an interesting idea to make a quilt out of the pants. I also asked him if he had any of his old work shirts that he can't wear anymore. Because I think it would be interesting to make a quilt from his old khaki pants and his old work shirts.

I have no clue whether a khaki quilt would be tough to quilt or not. Or whether I should just sew together squares of khaki and then just sew a back to it and not put any batting in the middle or just do like a vertical line, horizontal line, maybe the diagonal lines and leave it at that.

Or maybe I can just make a small khaki quilt.

Alex and Mommy Pics, Quilt Pics

It's hard to take pictures of Alex and I because he likes to grab at the camera and get really close to me. And excuse Alex drooling, he just got tooth #6 in today.













5 of my quilt an hour a day blocks

My Living Room

is a mess!

I had my quilting stuff on the floor and when Eric and Alex got up, Eric just left it on the floor so Alex has been playing with my fabric pieces. LOL

Sewing Machine Not Working Right :(

I'd been working on Alex's flannel quilt for a bit, then my bobbin ran out of thread.

So I loaded it with white just to play around with something, it started sewing all funky.

When I got on the machine tonight, I pulled out the bobbin and replaced it with a black bobbin (top thread is black)

I started trying to work on my one hour a day quilt project that I hadn't worked on in a while and the thread was still skippy feeling. So I tried switching out the needle for a new one. Still skippy feeling.

It seems like I got it sewing just fine on one piece of fabric, but when I try to go through 2 pieces it gets pissed at me.

When I look at the threads it looks like one of the tensions is off on the threads but I haven't touched the tension at all. So I don't know what else could be wrong. :(

It also just felt different when I was trying to sew with it.

I thought maybe I had put the tape on the feed dogs and that messed it up so I peeled the tape off and still didn't fix it.

ETA: My machine is cheap so if I needed to replace it I could...but it costs like $80 to replace and I don't have $80 available to just go buy a new machine. I'd have to layaway it or something until the next paycheck. I just hope its something like the tension!

Looking for pattern

Okay I was going through my blogs the other night and I saw a post that was talking about copyrights and had a picture of a quilt. I think it was called like baro box or b something or other. It looked like a square, that had a bigger square around it, then a bigger square around it. And the squares were set a certain way so it looked like they were offset but it was because two colors were used in the quilt.

I don't really know any other way to describe it. I'd know it if I saw it!!!

ETA: BENTO BOX!!!! I did a search for box, copyright, quilting and the first post that came up was the one I'd been looking at!

Alex Entry

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Alex said he wanted to write a message to everybody who reads my blog. He says hi.

Haven't Been Around

I haven't been in much of a quilty mood lately. I tried to do some of the union square blocks for my quilt but I'm just not liking them. I do like the homeward bound ones so I want to do something with those but I don't know what yet. I mean I want to stick them into a quilt but I'm not sure if I should just put borders around each square and then sew those squares together or what.

I haven't worked on Alex's quilt in a bit. Having the flannel squares not actually matching up with the color plan on my paper is making it hard work to make sure I have each triangle where I need it. So I'm just matching triangles up and sewing them together.

I would be sewing right now but I'm waiting on the company that is delivering my nebulizer for my asthma.

I'm not sure if I wrote about it here, I think I did, but one weekend I had to go to the ER because my inhaler wasn't helping my asthma attack. Got put on prednisone there.

And then last Wednesday I had to go to my Dr because I was having a bad attack and my inhaler wasn't helping again. I just got Alex up, got him dressed and walked us both to my Dr's office. It's only a 5 minute walk so it wasn't a big deal to just gather him up and go. I got to my Dr's office and told them I needed a walk in because I was having a bad asthma attack. I got called back to the little room and the Dr came in, listened to my lungs, had the nurses give me a nebulizer treatment and then prescribed me an inhaled steroid (asmanex) some antibiotics (I'm not really sure what for), and a nebulizer to use when my asthma attacks got bad enough that I needed it.

I would have called Eric to come home and get me but I know the ER copay is like $100 (my visit on that one weekend will cost us $400) and it would have been a 30 minute drive for Eric to get home and then another 10 mins to get to the ER. So I just walked the 5 mins to my Dr's office and got it taken care of like tons quicker than the ER would have done.

It does seem like my asthma is getting somewhat better with that inhaled steroid but I'm still needing my inhaler too much.

Like I bought one on insurance on Aug 18th, bought one again Aug 28th (off insurance) and then bought another one like Sept 5th (off insurance again) On insurance they cost me like $6 max, off insurance they are $18 each. And you know an asthmatics asthma is bad if they're using a 200 dose inhaler (use 2 puffs each attack, so technically 100 doses) in 10 days! Or like my second one was 8 days! That is BAD. When I was first diagnosed I could have an inhaler for months without having to refill it.

For my asthma right now I'm taking claritin (I have allergy induced asthma), asmanex (inhaled steroid), albuterol inhaler and my nebulizer, both as needed.

Boy that seems like a lot of meds for my asthma. But I'm sick of not being able to breathe.

My "Twins"

Told ya I have 2 LittleFoots! Left one is Dave and the right one is Darryl. As you can tell Dave has definitely been loved on a lot. :) Darryl is the one we're keeping in good condition.

How can I fix him?

I have this dinosaur named Dave, you guys might better know him as Little Foot from The Land Before Time movies. I've had him since I was 4, so 17 years now. As you can tell he has been loved alot. I also have a dinosaur named Darryl (also Little Foot from The Land Before Time movies) but he is in better condition, he hasn't been loved and chewed on by me. :) I'd like if I could fix Dave so that Alex can play with him if he wants to. I'd let him have Darryl but Little Foot was released by Gund in 1988 to JcPenney from what I know and they aren't made anymore, so it'd be hard to get another one if he played with Darryl too rough.

This is Dave



And this is what he's supposed to look like in new condition




Now as you can tell Dave has been very well loved by me but I'd like to try and fix him so his stuffing stays INSIDE his neck and doesn't come out when he gets played with.

Does anybody know what I could do? I think it would work if I could find a brown color that matches him closely and make him a little elastic "neck" that covers his neck and has elastic at the top and bottom of the neck part. But the wear on him goes below his neck to his chest some.

And I don't know how many times my mom and I have tried to stitch him back together to keep his stuffing inside him :)