His, Hers and a little Princess

I've been so busy.  The wedding finally came and went this past weekend in Los Angeles...you know, the one that I gave up pizza and tots so I didn't look like a whale.  I did manage to lose some weight...but not the pound a week I was hoping for.  But, quite honestly, I didn't work out as much as I should have.  So, oh well.  Back to tots and pizza.  I really enjoyed the pizza I broke the trend with.  We ordered some while doing arts and crafts for the wedding down in LA, and it was rather tasty.  However, I broke my tots fast today at breakfast, and it was a little disappointing.  I guess that is a sign that I really don't need them.  Oh well.  I think the one thing that helped the most with losing weight was this stupid bite guard that I am being made to wear 24/7 for the next three weeks.  I lost the most weight in the last week than I did over these past 5 months.  Who knew, if you would just make it impossible for me to eat, drink and talk, that I would finally drop some pounds??

Anyways, I have been so busy crafting away the past few months.  I kept it a secret from all of you (five or so) people out there, but I made "his and hers" quilts for my sis-in-law and new bro-in-law as gifts!  As they are two of the five who read this, I didn't want to give away the surprise, so I didn't blog about the journey on making those.  But to recap, the piecing went together really quickly.  I did hawaiian fabrics using the Planeterium pattern in Elizabeth Hartman's book, The Practical Guide to Patchwork.  Hers were in shades of turquoise, pinks, sages, and yellows and featured sea turtles, her favorite.  His featured prints with "woody" cars (which he loves) and colors of turquoise, royal blue, red and teal.  Even the quilting went well....a simple stipple in variegated thread.  The only bummer stitching them was that my machine decided to crap out while doing the binding.  Fortunately, we took Estelle into Meissner's Sewing Center to receive a tune up right before heading to Europe.  So while I drank beer and ate waffles, Estelle was receiving the love and care she needed to keep on going.  I also decided to pick up my mom's Bernina when I was in the bay area after the trip, so I went and had her serviced as well.  I decided mom's machine shall be named "Betty."  In case you aren't picking up on the reference, all my machines are named after actors from the "Golden Girls."

I like the outcome of both....each unique but they look very similar.  I think the couple was happy with them too.  Hopefully, they will take pictures of themselves wrapped in the quilts, but until then, let me present the His and Hers quilts!!!!

"His" Quilt....front

"His" back

Stipple technique....getting better, eh?

"Hers" quilt front

"Her" quilt back

Aren't the sea turtles cute???

I also worked diligently at finishing my first "princess" themed quilt.  I was asked my my coworker to make a Disney Princess quilt for his daughter who is enamored with the Disney Princess characters.  My lack of girly characteristics made this quilt a bit of a stretch for me since I do not own a lot of pinks and purple fabrics.  So I purchased some cute pink/purple prints with castles, crowns, and unicorns on them to go with the Disney Princess fabric I found online.  I used a cute pattern I found on Faith Jones' blog, Fresh Lemons Quilts, called Nancy's Cabot's Antique Tile.  It went together really quickly and I found the quilting to be fun too...simple loop-dee-loops across the horizontal width of the quilt.  I was told by my co-worker that his 4 year old daughter loved the quilt and hasn't put it down since.  I brought it to work to give to him, and I think I may have even gained a couple more customers from the quilt!

Sofia's Princess Quilt

I had fun with the cute Loop-dee_loop quilting style

I decided to try to whittle down some of the stash that I would start quilting a "rainbow" of quilts.  My next quilt would predominantly feature red fabrics.  The following quilt will feature oranges.  Then yellows....etc.  I would like to get the stash down to a more manageable pile so that I can start quilting what I want to quilt....and not necessarily the random fabrics from mom's stash.  I started working on the red quilt....a modified log cabin design.  So far it is coming out really cute.  And, i was able to dive into a ton of this off white muslin that mom had four or five yards of that I had no idea what I was going to do with.  It looks great with the reds and I cannot wait to see how the quilt turns out.

Back to trying to organize the craft room and quilting my way through mom's stash.  Let me know if you have any crafty requests....I would love a new challenge!

Happy Crafting!!!