My First One!

Could it be? My first attempt at free motion quilting? I assure you that while I've been silent on the blog, I certainly haven't been idle! As you can see, I finished the Nemo quilt top and have started quilting it with my brand spankin' new free motion quilting foot set for my Jenny. I'll show you some of my other finishes later...the Brown Bag Quilt, my log cabin quilt (hand quilting project from last summer), quilt top for a little boy set to arrive on June 1, and a few string and crumb blocks that I'm not sure I like. Life is busy though and I'm off to bed. Tomorrow will come all too soon!

All Kinds of Updates!

First of all, thank you to all of you who are praying for my friend. He's doing better than could be expected, but he has a long road ahead of him. As of Sunday he'd had two surgeries on his legs, and was facing several more possibly this week. It's going to be a while before he can walk again, but doctors are cautiously optimistic that while he may not be back to 100% after he's recovered, he can at least be in the 90% range. Hopefully I'll be able to visit him and see him this week (one time he was in surgery, the other time he was asleep).

Second, I finally have some stash usage to report! Stash Report 10:

Used this week: 3 yards
Used year to date: 4.1 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 8.8 yards
Net usage for 2010: (4.7 yards)

I'm still not in the black, but I finished a quilt top and pulled a backing. Plus then I'll have to bind it, which will use up the last of those fabrics. Want to see my finished quilt top?

It's the Brown Bag Quilt top, and I finished it Saturday morning while my husband was playing basketball with some friends. I'm rather happy with how it came out:

It's a bit of a bizarre angle on the picture, but you get the idea. It's a crazy quilt in that the fabrics in it are all rather loud...but I love the effect! My husband was surprised at how...not horrible it looked when I finished it. I'm still unsure of how to quilt it, and I still have enough of the fabrics left to need to figure something out quickly. I'm backing it with a piece of one of the sheets I bought a few weeks ago (it's big enough to fit the quilt and I'm running out of time, so that decided it!), so maybe I'll cut it somewhere and add a piano key strip (like the borders) in there? I've got too much of the fabrics to just use them as binding, so that's probably what will happen. Wahoo!

I also started playing around with free-piecing Sunday night. I'm waiting for batting to arrive for the BBQ (haha, not barbecue!), so I started on another project: a doll quilt for a very special little girl whose family just moved away. She wanted it to be kind of beachy, so my first free-pieced thing ever (possibly for her doll quilt)  is this little guy...yes, I found Nemo! Or rather, I made him.

He isn't perfect, but I think he looks pretty good considering he's my first attempt at free-piecing! The tail is a bit big for the body but I like him anyways. :)

What do you think? I'd love some feedback as my husband doesn't know much about free-piecing...

Prayers, please

A college classmate/colleague of mine was in a car accident last night. He should have just gotten out of surgery a few minutes ago, and hopefully we'll have more information on his condition soon. From what I was told, his legs were crushed and the doctors expect him to be in the hospital for at least a month. Please pray for his healing, and that he'll have full use of his legs back soon. We're all very worried about him, and hope that more information will come out soon.

Holy Cow! or Stash Reports 4&5

I feel more and more like a busy busy bee as time goes on, but that's kind of the way of things. I missed my stash report last week as I was in Belgium on a trip to go to various sites from the Battle of the Bulge. It was a fun trip, but absolutely NO sewing or fabric purchasing happened. This week, however, is a different story.

I went thrifting with my husband on Saturday and found a vintage Singer sewing machine for about $90. She was in really good condition, considering her age - the machine was still black, and had a lot of the gold still on it, although it was cracked. I'm working on de-gunking the metal latticework on the stand - it's going to take me a couple more hours, at least a hundred more Q-tips, and vinegar. The one part I've finished looks AMAZING, though, as most of the paint is still intact. I will share Sasha the Singer as soon as she's cleaned up and ready for pictures!

I also bought an old set of sheets at one of the stores...about $5 and I got (based off of the measurements of each of the pieces) 6.33 yards of fabric! It's a nice print - white background with orange flowers on it. They aren't cartoon flowers either - they're much more realistic. I lucked out too - the set consisted of two 29x30" pillowcases and two duvet cover-type "flat sheets." So in essence, I got four pieces of fabric 29x30 AND four flat sheets! The sheets will be saved for backings, and the pillowcases will be cut up and used in quilts. I'm a happy girl!

Saturday night I pulled out the fabric for my Brown Bag Quilt. I've currently cut half of it, so I'm counting my usage for now as 1 yard of fabric (as it was 2 yards of fabric to begin with). I'm adding some fabrics too but I think I might use some of the chunks of the rest of the fabric to piece the back. I've kind of planned out what this quilt will look like, but there are still some bits up in the air!

So, without further ado, here's the damage done:

Used this week: 1 yard
Used year to date: 1.09645 yards
Added this week: 6.33 yards
Added year to date: 8.83 yards
Net used for 2011: (7.7355)

I still have some time to make up the difference - there are 11 more months to quilt like a fiend! Now if only I could find the time...

Prague!

Prague was amazing. We had perfect weather too - it was in the 40s and 50s the whole time, and sunny. It was good to just...put everything down and just enjoy it. We had a few mishaps getting there (the map we had for Prague was just for the walking district/downtown area, not for driving into the city, plus no GPS because we use our phones for that and didn't want to use international data) but we made it safe. We walked around that first night without a camera because it was already dark and we just wanted to enjoy. We wandered from about 6 pm until 9, when we realized that we needed to get some dinner and went to a Kobe Sushi and Grill. Not very Czech food, but then again we live in Germany and the foods are about the same. The Kobe was AWESOME - I had Sushi Menu 1 (8 California , 6 salmon, and 6 octopus rolls) and my husband had the Filet Mignon. He said it was just about the best steak he's ever had. The sushi was fantastic - I had a bad sushi experience a while back and this was my first time eating it since then and it truly was wonderful. I loved everything about it. We also had the Chocolate Cream Cake and the white cream cake (don't remember what it was called) but they were also amazing.

Saturday morning I woke up to this view out of the hotel room window:

Pretty amazing, huh? The camera went with us on Saturday, and it was a beautiful day to have it. We walked around for (we estimate) 18 miles on Saturday - 9 hours straight of walking, with only breaks at mealtimes.

This is only a selection of the pictures we took (after all, I can't really show you all 105 pictures that we took between Saturday and Sunday!), but I love them all.

These are the prettiest bars over a window I've ever seen, and they look rather quilty to me:

Streetcar Cafe:

Even the manhole covers were pretty!

This poor guy couldn't catch a break - I found him in a dumpster. Poor knight!

Astronomical clock:

My husband wants to live here someday:

This is what happens when the astronomical clock tower strikes the hour - these guys come out to say hi, and then the trumpeter sticks his head out of the top on all sides and plays a little tune:

The entrance to the Charles Bridge:

I felt bad for this statue lady, to suffer the indignity of having a gull standing on her head:

I'm not sure why I love this picture so much...the only way I can describe it is that I feel the picture. Does that sound weird? Maybe the repetition of the windows is appealing, or...I don't know...but I love it.

View from the palace on top of the hill at night:

LOVE the color combination, the detail on the building, and how it just glows:

Evil nesting doll:

Creepy marionette stores were everywhere. I could just imagine those little guys grabbing you as you try to leave...ugh.

View of the square, with my future house (haha):

Death by nesting dolls:

A dementor escaped from Azkaban!

And finally, proof that I got over my biggest food aversion: food that looks back at you. Meet Carlos the Crawfish and Karlov the trout.

All in all, the trip to Prague was awesome. It's a beautiful city, we had beautiful weather, and walked well over 20 miles in one weekend. We were both sore and tired by the end, but made it out alive. We had fun, only spent money on food, lodging, admission to the Jewish Synagogues, and tickets to a show at one of the several Black Light Theaters (we saw Faust, and it was bizarre and mind-bending knowing that there were multiple people on stage that we legitimately could not see, even if we wanted to). No knick-knacks, just a lot of window shopping. We got to go into a Cartier, Gucci, Prada, etc. in the fashionable shopping district. And my hubby and I both agreed that while the stuff was nice, it really was no different than cheaper but still good quality stuff you can get at the less expensive places. So in the end, Prague was awesome. And I hope you enjoyed my pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Stash Report Week 3

I finally used some fabric this week! I know, it isn't much, but I made a block (12.5" square) for Quilt Dad to expand a quilt top made from the results of a bee he had been in. I'll upload pictures tomorrow when I get all of the Prague pictures off of the camera...by the way, Prague is AMAZING, although almost running out of gas on the way back and then getting a flat tire in one of my BRAND NEW snow tires makes me not happy. Did I mention it was a brand new tire? As in, put on the car just a week before Christmas? Brand spankin' new? Oh well, I had my wonderful husband there with me to keep me safe, and I got to see my first flat tire get changed. I knew how to do it, but he did it so much faster, and we got home safely. :) Thank you, honey. You're the best!


Used this week: 0.09645 yards
Used year to date: 0.09645 yards
Added this week: 2.5 yards
Added year to date: 2.5 yards
Net used for 2011: (2.40355 yards)


Pictures tomorrow...and bed for now. I'm a sleepy girl! And while you're at it, check in over at Judy's!

Stress, and a (hopefully) fun weekend coming up

Life has been stressful this week. I'm doing inventories, which takes a lot of time. Yesterday and today I had 8 hours of classes. I'm also helping a new couple get settled in (they've been here in Germany since this past Friday). My husband's on a business trip - he left at 3:40 am this morning and won't get back until a little after noon tomorrow. I miss him. :( This is the first time we've been apart since his long business trip that ended in November. At least it's only one day!

I found out today that I'm going to be changing jobs on Tuesday. I'll be going from my current staff job, where I'm only responsible for me, to a leadership position. I've trained for this job, and I knew I was going to have it at some point, but this is really sudden. I got the job ahead of a co-worker who technically had seniority over me too, which is confusing. I just don't feel ready in the least. I feel woefully inadequate, and not in a way I can fix between now and Tuesday. The problem with this job is it's going to potentially take even more of my time. Now, I'm lucky and have an understanding husband who also works full time and has no problem with helping out. After all, our hours are almost the same at work. He's usually the one that does the laundry because I hate it and don't think about it as often as I should. He's also a fantastic cook (and yes, ladies, he's taken, so stop drooling!) and is good at making me smile and feel loved. But we're going to have even less time for that now, let alone for me to get some quality time with Jenny the Janome. I'm really stressed over taking this new position, so when I got home from work tonight (alone, boo...) I treated myself to some fabric therapy. Just a bit of playing with fabric. Just being around fabric is calming. Does anybody else feel like that? That when you're stressed fabric can just soothe the frazzled nerves?

I know that this won't be anything that I can't handle in the long run. I know that I let myself get too comfortable where I was, and that I need to let myself stretch outside of my comfort zone. I know that no matter what happens I'll always have God, my husband, and my parents to love me. I could totally fail and fall flat on my face and they'd still love me. And knowing that is helping right now.

On the bright side, my husband and I are going to Prague this weekend. We're going to see the sights, especially the Charles Bridge, which was on a list of the top things you need to see in Europe while you're there. So we'll play around the city (and I'll hopefully get some pictures for ya'll to take a virtual European vacation!) for a few days and then come home and I change jobs. *sigh*

Thanks for letting me vent, and your prayers would definitely be appreciated for the next few weeks!