I'm Blaming Bonnie!

Goodwill Shopping - Need I say more?

~QB29

Design Wall Monday - 2/14/2011

First up - my picture from Saturday's Christmas Quilt-A-Long showing the 2nd block. Don't worry, I did get more done than just this 2nd block - I pressed quite a number of triangles, sewed (and subcut) the 4 1/2" inch units and added a number of triangles :-).


Do you see the diamonds? While playing with the units for Star Struck, I realized they made diamonds when 4 were arranged in a different manner :-). This is a put-away-for-later idea for a scrap quilt, but I thought I'd share with you anyways.


Head over to Judy's to see more Design Walls!

~QB29

Friday Night Sew-Out

I had a Friday Night Sew-Out tonight at a friend's. She and the other two ladies paper crafted

Jen's notebook - she takes the black and white composition books (on sale for a quarter right now!) and decorates them:

Jillian's Happy Birthday banner (sorry for the poor angle) -- her grandma turns 75 in the next few days and they are having a special party to celebrate. Jillian used the Cricut to make a cute Happy Birthday Bannner:

while I worked on hand quilting my Bonnie Quilt. I got six fans done. Tonight was my first night doing Baptist fans and so far I am enjoying them. Of course this is a small quilt (wall hanging), so I'm sure that helps.





We also ran to Walmart to get supplies and stopped by the dollar store.

~QB29

Super Simple Fruit dip and craft night with friends

Take thisAnd this


And you've got fruit dip!

Add some fruit and you're good to go :-). A friend's invited me over tomorrow for a craft night. Some other ladies from church are coming as well. We're going to order pizza and everyone's bringing a side dish. I'm bringing a fruit tray (minus any kiwi, though I was tempted to get it to add some more color to the tray, lol.) I think I'm going to work on hand quilting my Bonnie Quilt. With school going on, it's just sat in my sewing room since I finished the top. I'll be attending a retreat in the fall that Bonnie's coming to (not as a teacher) and I would like to be able to show her a finished project. So I guess I better start quilting!

~QB29

My fun afternoon/evening .... and my mom sews

Look whom my mom and I babysat for a few hours today.... Isn't he getting big? He's almost 19 months now! His big brother had a baseball tourney.

Also, my mom sewed for me. I'm working on a Bonnie Hunter Star Struck quilt for my dad and brought up several squares/strips to make the blocks. She wanted to sew for me, so I all I had to do was "match" the small squares to the rectangles. She even got into the matching with me on the last set :-).

My mom sewing:


2 of the ones she worked on. I had all the strip sets made. She just added the corner triangles. I even got her to do the bonus triangles :-).




The stack that she did:

All for now :-)

~QB29

~QB29

My Bonnie Quilt

In all it's glory, but not a great picture, here is "My Bonnie Quilt". I finished piecing it this morning. For some odd reason, I actually got up with my alarm. Usually it takes 4 alarms and an hour to wake me :-(, lol. So I used that extra time to finish adding the purple and to cut and sew the brown border. The purple has more red in it than the picture shows.



~QB29

dishwasher blues

Well, the good news is now I know WHY you don't use dish soap in a dishwasher. No, it wasn't me, it was my roommate. A few weeks ago I noticed the mat by the sink was wet, like someone had dropped a pot of water on it. I assumed my roommate had had a mishap with some water, no big deal. She mentioned to me a few days later that when she had run the dishwasher, some water had leaked out. I had noticed soap "stains" at the base of the dishwasher and realized that's where they came from. I thought, hm, is the dishwasher broken? I told her we'd just keep an eye on it next time the dishwasher ran. A last second thought caused me to ask her what soap she used ... ta da, that's the problem! She used regular dish soap. Apparently, she's not used to dishwashers. I showed her where the dishwasher soap was and let her know to use it and only it from now on.

Fast forward to today. My kitchen needed mopping and sweeping and I thought to wipe off the soap stains from the bottom front of the dishwasher. Of course, that leads me to loading the dishwasher with a couple of plates in the sink and that's when I noticed it ... standing water! Yeah, from the dish soap incident - neither of us eats at home that much. I unloaded the dishwasher, mopped out all the water, and wiped down the insides. I then googled. Apparently, using dish soap can cause this issue. So I decided to run a test run. Within a few minutes there was lots of bubbles in the bottom of the dishwasher, from the remaining dish soap in the pump. I know, an icky thought! From what I googled, I saw that adding white vinegar would help. So I've got an empty dishwasher running with a cup or so of vinegar, waiting for bubbles, water, or nothing. I'm aiming for the nothing. To be safe, I'm babysitting from the kitchen table, lol.

If all goes well, we'll say that was the issue. Then I'll be heading to walmart for a few things I need around here.

I had hoped to finish piecing the wallhanging I'm making from Saturday's workshop, but at this point that's not happening tonight. I took my 16 blocks, laid them out 4 x 4, and added a 1" purple sashing/inner border (totally inspired by Bonnie!). I need to finish sewing the top purple border and then add the bottom purple border - the bobbin ran out of thread and I ran out of time to deal with it this morning. I have a brown that I'm using for the outer border. I think it frames it nicely. I'll probably do a 3" border, maybe 4". It will be around 27" - 30" square. I need to check how much I have of the brown, because I want to use it for my binding as well. Since this is "My Bonnie Quilt", I think I'm going to hand quilt it using Baptist fans, like she does a lot. It will go up on a wall in my sewing room when finished.

So far so good - guess that means I have to mop the floor completely on my own, lol.

~QB29

Bonnie Hunter Workshop - Friday

I had an awesome time this weekend. I met Jill, Linda, and Cathy at Jennifer's guild in Indy. The QGI was hosting a Bonnie Hunter weekend! She spoke at the monthly meeting (which I missed due to a clueless moment getting off the interstate) and two different workshops - one on Friday and one on Saturday. Jill and I stayed with Jennifer's mom, Carol. Jennifer followed us there so we could chat ... I think we kept her up too late, lol. It was rather late by the time we went to bed. We did get to ooh and aah over Carol's quilts - she's does great work!

Friday, Jill and I got breakfast at Denny's before heading to the workshop. We sewed away, working on our blocks. We all got at least one block made. Here are our blocks (borrowed from Jill's Webshots album - a digital camera withOUT a memory card is as good as a digital camera withOUT batteries. I remembered the batteries, but the card was (and still is) in my laptop)

Mine


Linda


Cathy


Jill



Jill and I were about the only people that did not order the boxed lunch. We ran out to eat when the boxes were delivered. We decided that we were not that hungry, but then we spied a Baskin Robbins! Jill teasingly asked if I wanted ice cream for lunch and I told her I was game :-D. She treated me since she was a day late wishing me happy birthday last week. Linda's expression was priceless when we walked in with our ice cream. I think the rest of the ladies wondered where their ice cream was. And in one of my many red moments, here I am:



I ended up getting to two whole blocks sewn. I did get lots of partials put together; they are in my bag waiting for some sewing time this week.

After the workshop, Jill and I checked out a nearby quilt store, Quilts Plus. They are in a strip mall type of place and have two or three of the spaces. They have lots of fabric, which is very beautifuly displayed. I did buy 3 yardages - 1 yard of a paramedic fabric and 1 1/2 yards of each of 2 different stripes that I can use in baby quilts. The stripes were sale/clearance - 30% off. The paramedic fabric is for a couple at church who just had a baby. Both mom and dad are paramedics. We then hit JoAnn's to buy some plastic totes that were on sale before heading back to Carol's. If I think about it tonight, I'll add pics of my purchases.

Once back at Carol's, the three of us headed over to Jennifer's for a cookout. Jennifer graciously hosted all of us for supper. Her kids are super cute and made me miss my Bubby and Bubba :-(. We had a good time. Her dh grilled for us and we had some homemade gaucamolee! After we ate Jennifer showed us her sewing room and her longarm. It's always fun to see other's sewing rooms.

I'll post about Saturday later this week!

~QB29

Weekly Quilt Goals

1. Assemble "My Bonnie Quilt" wallhanging (16 crumb/heart/star/letter blocks from a workshop with Bonnie Hunter)
2. Cut/piece top for gentleman at church (housebound due to Alzheimer's)
3. Add border for lady at church (#2's wife, housebound caring for him)
4. Piece baby boy F quilt (paramedic theme)

~QB29

Bonnie Hunter

Just under 11 hours to go :-).

~QB29

Goals for week

1. Finish quilting Ian's Quilt
2. Bind/label Ian's Quilt - parents will be back in town coming weekend
3. Bind/label Bubby's Dino quilt
4. Cut sashing strips for Pink/Brown SBS blocks
5. Cut strips for Bonnie Hunter workshop
6. Cut fabric for baby Adam's quilt

~QB29