Dresden Challenge

The official quilt.

 Earlier this month I finished my dresden quilt for the Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild's dresden challenge. I started working on the dresdens for this quilt back in May I think. I made one or 2 dresdens at a time in between working on other projects. And slowly but surely this quilt was made.

 

Isaac likes it.

 I'm not much for making a quilt without a purpose. I enjoy quilting but we already have plenty of blankets for TV watching etc. But we needed a new quilt for our guest bed so I decided this challenge was perfect for guest bed. It is a full size quilt and is by far the largest quilt I've made. It was difficult to work with so much fabric but I got it done :) I used a sheet as the base for my applique on the top and as the back. Simple is good for me.

I chose to do raw-edge, flat dresdens in various sizes in a random layout. It evolved a lot from the much more structured plan I had in my head when I started this project. I love how it turned out. I did all of the quilting myself. I'm pretty proud of that. It's not perfect by any means but I think it's the best quilting I've done so far so I'm pleased. I bought a quilting frame in large part to quilt this quilt. It will come in handy for quilting other quilts in the future too. I used a design from the free motion quilting project blog. Can't remember the name at the moment though.

 

Close up of the quilting.

He deems it cuddle worthy.

It doubles as a great fort!

So now this quilt is on our guest bed bunched on the couch where it was thrown after the photo shoot. It has already been used once by my father in law and it will be ready for my mom when she arrives in a week and a half. It will get lots of use and it makes me happy every time I walk past the guest bedroom. All in all a quality project.

This one is for you Bridget...

So Bridget wants people to blog more. I get that. My excuse (not that I need an excuse not to blog) is that at the end of a long, often hard day the last thing I want to do is tell the world about that long hard day. I know that it is cathartic to some people to write about their day. I'm just not one of those people. I've never been much of a journal keeper because I end up looking back at what I write and feel stupid.

I do however want to start blogging more about my quilting. I would really love to make my quilting into a business. I feel like blogging about quilting would help get my business out there. Problem is that all of that requires a lot of time and commitment. I don't have enough of either at the time. I would really love to get things started now but having an Isaac makes that difficult, really difficult. I'm sure having another child or two will make that even more difficult so for the moment I'm working it all out in my mind and biding my time. Hopefully it will be sooner than later that I take the leap.

Until then I'll be plenty busy doing a lot of this...

My boy loves him some dirt.

 

And rocks.

He's been "helping"us do some decluttering.

  A few weeks ago I was feeling like our home was just so cluttered. We have so many things and we are blessed to have everything that we need and so many things that we want but it was just taking over. It's no good to feel like you're outgrowing your house when it's plenty large and there are only 3 in your family. So we've been sorting, donating, recycling, and trashing lots of things. It feels great!

My new quilting frame. Now that I'm getting the hang of it I like it :)

Dress up time

Yesterday I decided to make myself a new dress. I've been wanting a new dress for a while now but couldn't really find anything I liked or if I did it was too expensive. Recently I came across a couple of tutorials on Pinterest. And I found one that seemed fairly simple It is a T-shirt, elastic and fabric. I won't go through all the steps. If you're interested check out the blog.

I had a few little problems, pretty much because I haven't sewed clothing in years. When you measure and sew your elastic, try it around your waist to make sure it is the correct fit before you sew the skirt to it. That will save you some time unpicking and resewing. Basically just think things through. I sewed this after Isaac was in bed and I just am not thinking right in the evening. I think if I hadn't made the stupid mistakes I did that it would have taken me around an hour to sew. Mistakes and all it took me closer to three hours. Stupid mistakes. but I like how the dress turned out and I think if I sew clothing in the future I won't make as many mistakes.

So I'm happy and I relearned some things. And I can't really complain about a $10 dress. Now I have something fun and new to wear to church today.

1

His new toy from Brad and Amy. He was more interested with the buttons and cars than with riding it around.

And this is the first birthday cupcake. He thought it was really weird when everyone was singing to him and then when we set the cupcake in front of him it took him a few seconds to decide what he was going to do with it. I gave him a taste of the frosting on my finger then he went for it and devoured it.

The fact that he is 1 today is pretty amazing. In the past year he's gone from a baby I didn't know to a baby I often wished I didn't know (sorry it's true) to a baby that I'm excited to get to hang out with everyday! The first 7 months were HORRIBLE and so SLOW! But since he decided to be a bit independent the time has gone so fast and he has just been a delight. I love to watch him play and discover things. He is walking like a pro now and it's just the cutest thing to watch him toddle around. He is such a big boy!

He has 3 teeth now and is working on three more at the moment. He loves Ray Ray and Daddy and Mommy and his friends. He likes to give hugs and cuddles. He quit nursing cold turkey a month ago and is just a big boy using sippy cups now. He loves his books and will have me read the same one over and over. He loves to skype with Pop Pop. He loves my phone. He likes swings. He is so sweet.

He got several fun presents from friends and family. We got him a bucket swing that we are going to hang on the tree in the back yard, a blowup pool for the summer, and a fun movie that we want him to have. He doesn't watch movies yet but we hope he likes this one when he does start watching them.

We love Isaac so much and our life wouldn't be complete without him. He is such a sweet boy. And he's 1 today! Happy Birthday Baby Boy!

The past couple months

So I have totally fallen off the blogging wagon. It's the last thing I want to do when I have some time to myself. But Isaac has been doing so much in the past couple months I feel like I should write it all down.

He has just become so independent and that is AWESOME! He loves to crawl all over the house and get into anything and everything. We've installed some child locks on cabinets and started moving things. But pretty much if he can't hurt it and it can't hurt him he can play with it. That's my no fuss parenting haha.

A few weeks ago he started trying out a word or two. His first word was dog; he really loves ray ray. And yesterday he tried out the word "done" at the end of his breakfast. It's really cute to see him figuring things out. He nods his head a lot. If we ask him if he's done eating he gets a big smile and nods his head vigorously.

Every week we bake with a few other moms from church and their kids and Isaac is starting to play with the other kids or at least try to keep up with them. It's really fun watching him develop into such a confident social guy. Last week at church a 2 year old was following him and sat right across from him on the floor and they started touching each others hair. It was pretty cute.

He is FINALLY taking good naps. And it's heavenly! I know I can count on an hour nap in the morning and a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon. I can get some things done and have some me time that is consistent and that alone has made things better.

People ask me if I can believe he's 10 months old and I say yes and no. The first 7 months were the most horrible, slow months of my life but the past 3 have flown by and been so fun. I love little Isaac. I loved him through the horrible part and I love him now. He's just so much more fun now and I finally get why people think being a mom is the best. It pretty much is.

One week, one thing: Art Gallery Scraps Quilt Top

Art Gallery Fabrics generously offered scraps of their beautiful fabrics to people on facebook. I was lucky enough to see their post and get my information to them in time to get some scraps sent to me. I received the scraps in the mail about a week ago and have been working on this quilt top this past week. I am thrilled with how it turned out! I loved working with these fabrics! They are beautiful and feel great! I love this quilt top. I hope to finish this quilt up this week (my little boy came down with a cold today though so that will be dependent on how quickly he recovers I think). While I was working on it I found myself thinking of my cute 4 year old niece so I think this quilt might go to her. Her mom welcomes that idea because, I'm told, she constantly tries to snatch her mom's quilt. I think this quilt will like its new owner.

And just in case you're wondering if you should really be that careful with your rotary cutter, the answer is "Yes. Yes you should." While I was cutting charms for a swap I got a little too into the cutting and sliced my thumb pretty bad. Luckily it took a little while for it to start bleeding so my fabric wasn't ruined. Also lucky is that the cut wasn't vertical because it was pretty deep and if it had been vertical I'm guessing I would have had to have stitches. So now I have yet another quilting battle wound. Totally worth it!

Bee crazy!

I finished this baby quilt. I has the top made a few months ago. My quilt guild did a dot fabric swap last November and I decided to do some bento box blocks with them. I think it's a super fun baby quilt. I did a simple stippleish quilting on it. I like it a lot more after the quilting than I before. Not sure who this will be going to yet; I have a couple pregnant friends so I assume it will go to one of them.

I decided to jump into the world of online quilt bees so I've been working on a bunch of blocks for these bees the past couple weeks. The first 6 blocks are for the 4x5 bee and the other is for We bee modern too. I'm really loving making the bee blocks. It's fun to be able to do something new every month/quarter and learn some new things. I'm addicted to the online bees :)

For Jessica

For Jenn

For Pam

For me

For Em

For Julie

For Heather

I really loved the simplicity of this block and I started working on another project with this block today. More to come soon.