WIP Wednesday

Somehow the weeks just keep speeding by and I feel like I have nothing to show you guys.  I took a little break from sewing this week to start to spruce up my sewing space.  Well I painted a shelf anyway.  I'm hoping that once it is hung I will have a place for some of my go to quilting books, precuts, and a few special treasures I like to keep in my space.  I'm also planning to hang some art on the walls-I have all of the tags from the precuts I have used in the past and I'm thinking a little shadow box or mosaic of them would be kind of cool.

So the shelf is actually a light aqua color-it's a little hard to tell in this bad iphone photo.  The color is Tropical Surf by Glidden just in case you wanted to know.  I was inspired to paint it light aqua by Camille's hutch.  She actually used a different color but when I was at the store I was afraid that shade would be too light and gray against my pale off white walls.  So I went with a color that had less grey and was a few shades darker.

In sewing news I did finish my Complications Quilt top.  Well maybe, it is done with the exception of the boarders which I decided to leave off.  Right now it is roughly 62 by 73.  I am thinking about adding a little more to two of the sides just to make it a little bigger.  What do you think?  Big enough for a lap quilt or does it need a little more?

The last tidbit of fun news here is that after a long search I finally found a bag of these chips.

I had been wanting to try them since the first commercial I saw.  Not a big fan but at least now I can stop looking for them in every store I walk into.

That's it for me this week.  Head on over the Lee's to see what everyone else is up to.

WIP Wednesday

I haven't had a ton of time for sewing lately but thanks to an extremely loud upstairs neighbor who makes it difficult to sleep I have managed to fit in a little bit of sewing time.  And while I should be using that time to get caught up on my mystery quilt I am thisclose to finishing the  top of my Complications quilt and so that has been winning out the fight for my time.

Last night I managed to finish up the last section I needed for the quilt.  It has one really big glaring error in it so I am debating ripping it out.  What do you think?  With all of the little squares and the way this quilt was put together in pieces I don't think it will be overwhelmingly obvious once the whole thing is together.

Once that section was done I joined it to another smaller piece I had worked on earlier so now this quilt top is in 4 large chunks and they just need to be joined together.  I am still debating if I want to add the boarder or not.  In my mind it would be 2 1/2 inch squares and alternate between the prints and a solid.  I was thinking Bella Snow but my conflict is there is no other solid in the quilt and the blocks in this quilt run together on purpose.  So what do you think?  Add a border?  Skip a border?

That's it for me this week be sure to head on over to Lee's to see what everyone else is up to.  Happy Sewing!

PS-If you are looking for the giveaway post you can find it here.

WIP Wednesday-The Best Laid Plans

Well I'm back from vacation and I need another vacation to recover.  You know those weeks you have where anything that can go wrong will.  Well that about sums up my vacation experience.  Between taking my husband to the emergency dentist and getting a call from the alarm company that someone had broken into our apartment it was anything but relaxing.  I should mention I had no cell service where we were so the call about the apartment was over 24 hours later when I heard it.  Luckily they didn't actually get into the apartment and nothing was broken or missing.  But it did freak me out a bit and I knew I wouldn't relax again until I had checked on things myself even after a kind neighbor took a look around for us.

I thought this week I would have so many good things to share with all of you.  But in reality I didn't sew at all while I was gone.  Turns out I assumed there would be an iron and ironing board at the rental and I was wrong.  So no way to press seams means no sewing.  Honestly though with all of the other craziness going on I doubt I would have been able to relax enough to sew a stitch anyway.  I did manage to lay out my Complications quilt all together to figure out my last section.  I now have a plan for that also so hopefully I will be able to add this one to the completed list soon.  It is still a favorite of mine so far!

One highlight of our vacation and the only thing we did outside of being on the lake was a trip to Rosemont Winery.  It's an old family farm turned winery in Virginia right on the North Carolina boarder.  Really its in the middle of no where but it was a great little side trip.  There wines aren't bad, I tend to like the sweeter wines so those of course were my favorites.

Be sure to head over to Lee's today and see what everyone else is sewing.  I know I can't wait to check them all out and get some more inspiration.  With Complications coming to an end and my dread of the mystery quilt I am suppose to be working on (don't worry mom I'll try and catch up by the time you get home) I'm already getting a little antsy to find my next project.

WIP Wednesday-Prevacation

So have I mentioned yet that next week I'm going to the lake on vacation.  Ha Ha just teasing you guys I know you are all tired of hearing about it already but I am super excited to spend some time unplugged.  The only bad part about this is that I won't be able to check email, flickr, or look up great sewing tutorials.  But the good news is I should have plenty of time to sew with few distractions.

This week I did manage to make a little more progress on my Complications quilt before moving on to other things.  I am hoping to get some stuff cut out and have a good list of projects together to take with me to the lake.  I want to avoid taking too much so a well thought out plan is what I'm counting on.  But with only 2 more days until we leave I'm not sure how well organized and prepared I am actually going to be.

Here's what I'm planning on taking with me:

• Complications
• Wonderland Baby Quilt-100 Quilts for Kids
• Sewing Machine Cover-Swap
• Market Tote-Swap
• Mystery Quilt-just so my mom won't be too mad that she is waiting for me to open that 3rd envelop

That is the plan anyway-but I have a few other things on my "wish" list so I guess we will just have to wait and see what actually happens.  After all there is floating in the lake and jet skis and fishing to think about too.

If you haven't heard yet the next round of 100 Quilts For Kids just opened.  You can read more about that here.  What are you making?  I have a Wonderland quilt top that I made up for this project almost 2 years ago-that's embarrassing that I am planning to finish for this round and then we will have to see what other goodies I can come up with.

If you haven't voted in the threadbias wallflowers quilt design competition yet be sure to check that out.  If you want to vote for my Mama's Wagon Wheel Design even better :) and thank you.  There are lots of great designs though so head on over.  I love when contest like this get a lot of response because it lets the companies know that we are interested in seeing more of these events.

Head on over to Lee's to see what everyone else is up to this week.  And I will see you guys after the 21st unless I manage to sneak in one more post before I go.

A little sewing

So I should be focused on getting all of my chores done before we head off to the lake for a week.  There is laundry to do and dusting and all kinds of other things but today I stole a few minutes for sewing.  I should be working on my mystery quilt so my mom doesn't get too far ahead of me since we have an agreement about not opening the next step until we are both ready.  But the thought of all of those HST's just wasn't working for me so instead I thought I'd try and make a little progress on my Complications Quilt since it is sitting out in the sewing room and just begging to be sewn together.

I managed to get this chunk of the quilt sewn up.  It is actually the bottom of the quilt.  I've been jumping around a little based on which blocks I have done and how much time I have to sew.  Since I only had about an hour today I went with a section that I had most of the blocks finished for.  I had to make another little churn dash block because I had used the one I made for this earlier in the quilt.  I've been just working in different pieces here and there to fill up the empty spaces.  I actually only have one more section a little larger than this to make and I will have the top finished.  I'm debating now if I want to add the boarders or if I want to just leave it like this with all the blocks running together.  I think the boarders add a bit of calm and bring it all together but I'm just not sure yet which way I'll end up going.

You can read more about this quilt here and here.

It's Complicated-WIP Wednesday

I have started and stopped this post so many times today.  I don't know what I want to say, I don't get overly personal on here very often but sometimes I wonder if by not sharing more I'm being dishonest in a way.  So hang with me if you will and I'll try not to go on and on but maybe share just a little bit.

Sunday night I managed to finish up my Swoon quilt top.  I was excited about the finish because its been a long time coming.  Once that top was done I decided to go back to working on my Complications quilt.  Honestly, I picked it up and put it down about 5 times before finally just walking away and going to watch TV instead.  I really like the part of this quilt that is done so far.  You might remember I am putting it together in chunks and so I don't really have in mind what the entire quilt will look like.  I think I was feeling frustrated because while I love to quilt I typically follow a pattern.  I'm not very good at just thinking something up and pulling it out of myself and into a tangible form.  I like to have a plan and I find it frustrating when that plan changes.  Okay-yes you can laugh out loud now, I understand that plans rarely work and that part of life is adapting and modifying the "plan."

I was really struggling though with what to do next.  See I'm not particularly fond of all of the blocks in the original quilt.  They are all lovely and I don't mean to detract from what someone so graciously designed and then shared with me.  I am grateful because I don't think I ever would have made this quilt without that starting point.  But I just don't want my quilt to be exactly the same.  Of course it never would have been because of the difference in quilting, fabrics, and just general thought process but I was having a hard time with giving myself permission to do it differently.

Then on Monday as I was sitting in my sewing room crying listening to the news reports about Oklahoma and just being mad in general about how much hurting there is right now in the world I felt silly.  Here I was being super hard on myself because I couldn't figure out how to do something with a quilt, because I couldn't just make a choice about what to do next.  Here I was getting frustrated with myself and wanting to put the quilt away again when there was this going on in the world around me.  So while this quilt is not only complicated it is also forcing me to learn.  Not only techniques but about myself.  So maybe in the end I will have a beautiful quilt or maybe not but at least I will have learned along the way and I guess that is what matters.  After all if we aren't learning then what's the point of the experience.

Thanks for stopping by to visit and for listening.  Be sure to head over to Lee's and see what everyone else is working on this week  Hopefully you will find something that makes you want to learn more.

Edited to Add:  Looks like there is no link up for WIP Wednesday today.  Thanks for reading a long and be sure to check back next week.