Today I...

...finished hand sewing a binding on a commission quilt and delivered it. Any day you can check something big off your list it's a good day!

Backing and quilting

Here's a shot of the back of the black/white/green commission I'm working on. The block is a signature block from the baby shower. The backing is Riley Blake.And here's a photo of me quilting it. It's simple loops, but I love it anyway. I'm almost done with the quilting. I gave up when my thread mysteriously broke, even though I had changed the needle. It probably has something to do with the fact that many of the non-white fabrics are mystery fabrics, including home dec weight and flannels. It sure makes for an interesting quilt, though. It will have lots of texture for little fingers to explore.
It's actually quite bright in my sewing room, though you wouldn't know it from this photo.

black and white and green all over

I'm doing another commission. About a year ago there was a baby shower where the guests were asked to bring pieces of fabric which would be made into a quilt. The baby just turned a year old, and I'm putting together the fabrics (along with some white) which will be given this coming week. Yowza. This is a really quick deadline. The top is done, though. Now I have to piece a backing (which includes a signature block) and quilt it. I'm hoping to do all of that and get it bound tomorrow so I can hand sew the binding on Tuesday. Did I mention I'm also teaching a daytime class all week? And I've been sick? At least that seems to be on its way out, after three weeks of feeling awful. Life sure is busy, isn't it?

How does a sewing machine work, anyway?

Check this out! It's originally from Wikipedia, and blogged from Deborah's In a Strange Land blog. I could never wrap my head around this concept, but this shows it beautifully!

6 Hour Quilt

And when I say six hours, I mean start to finish!
Here's a closeup so you can see the fabrics better.
This is one of the Valori Wells sewing card patterns, though this particular one is not listed on her website. The fabric is from the Fun Flowers line by Lakehouse fabrics. Of course, we have it at Quilting Adventures. Did you have to ask?

Today I have awful laryngitis and taught one of my beginning classes. We soldiered through, but it was rough. I have a lot of classes coming up this month.

Camping!

No sewing to show today but my family did go camping for the first time this weekend. Photos!
Campfire!
Beach!Dead horseshoe crabs!Tent!

Paul McCartney

Ohh, it's been a crazy summer, hasn't it? I'm so glad that school has started. It give me time to sew! I don't have photos of everything I've done in the past few weeks, but I'll take and post them soon.

One thing we did in August was go to see Paul McCartney in concert! The day before we left, I found a Beatles t-shirt at Target, but it was in the toddler section. So I got the biggest one I could and made it into this little dress for Molly. If I had had more time and more fabric (don't we all need more of both of those), I'd have made it twirlier. The shirt has Ringo's drum kit on it. The skirt fabric is gray with white polka dots. Here we all are. My friend and quilting student Carrie joined us.
Here's Sir Paul! Yes, he's the tiny speck in the middle of the stage. Thank god for giant video screens.
How irritating are these small photos, anyway? I need advice, fellow bloggers: how do you deal with photos on blogspot? If I upload straight to blogger, I'm worried that I'll run out of space. So I upload to Flickr and then link, but they come out so small. What do you do? I want it all: larger photos hosted somewhere else so I don't have to worry about running out of room. Any advice?

Winner!

I'm happy to announce that the winner of the giveaway is Julia of Julia's Sew Sweet and Special Occasion Clothing for Children. I'm sorry for the delay in getting the choosing done. I went ahead and entered the people in who had left a comment after the deadline. I didn't have as many entries as I thought. It's funny, I see a lot of people who come to the blog, many who come multiple times, but not as many entered as I expected. I know part of this is my inconsistency in posting. My excuse for that right now is summer. Once that's over I expect to be doing a lot more sewing.

I also wonder if I need to leave different types of messages. I feel like this blog needs a little more personality. I would love to include the occasional rant about general world views. But I would still want my blog to mostly be about quilting and sewing.

Regardless, I gotta do something. I want more readers!

Anyway, leave a comment if you'd like. I'd love to hear what you have to say. I'll leave you with photos of a baby quilt I made years ago. I think I posted it once before but it may be my favorite quilt.

Time to celebrate! Let's give something away!

A few days ago it was my girl's sixth birthday. I love her to pieces. We went to the Cheesecake Factory and they fancied-up a sundae for her.In honor of her birthday and this being my 100th post (and the fact that I have fewer readers than I'd like), I've decided to do a giveaway! These five cute Riley Blake Boo to You Halloween fat quarters could be yours!
You get an entry for every one of these things you do:

1. Make a comment on this post (bare minimum)
2. Follow my blog
3. Include me in your blogroll
4. Mention my blog in your blog

If you're already following or have me in your blogroll, that counts! Just make sure you let me know in your comment how many entries you get based on the rules above. I'll close the entries Tuesday or Wednesday. We're going out of town later this week, so I'll pick the winner by random draw either just before I go or right when I get back on Monday.

One more Molly (as a puppy) photo for good measure.

time flies like a banana

Photos!

For the Minnesota Road Show (which went fine, I think), I have a couple more samples to show. First is Ric Rac Rendezvous. It's a table runner to show off rick rack.Also, Posh, a wall hanging. Both of these patterns are from Maple Island Quilts.I also have the Raspberry Ripple purse. This pattern is from Melly and Me. It's not from the Minnesota Road Show, by the way. I think I forgot to show it when I did it a couple of months ago. Anyway, Melly and Me are out of Australia, and I'm not sure but I that their version of fusible fleece might be a little less stiff than ours. This baby has some heft! But I love the colors.Here's my round robin. Remember this one? It started out as just one strip with the wavy lines in it. My friends all added the rest of the rows. You'll be able to see a lot of our round robins at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in February.And finally, Molly had her birthday party today. She had a Beatles party, so I made a yellow submarine cake. Those funky things in the water are her candles.

Little, purple, cute!

Lots of projects going on now. I haven't written lately because I've been so busy! I haven't forgotten about the giveaway, though.

In Molly news, she got her first sewing machine. It's purple! It's pretty loud, but it is a real machine, with a real bobbin, so it meet's Mama's requirements. She's sewing together the pieces that were part of the shop display for our Scrap Therapy classes, which I'm no longer teaching.This Saturday at 2 pm, the Dumbarton Library is putting on a small production of The Little Mermaid and I was recruited to make mermaid costumes. This is an in-progress photo, but you get the idea. They're done now, and I'm pretty pleased, considering I did two start to finish in a couple of evenings. Ugh -- please ignore the disastrous state of my sewing room!I finished another bag for the Minnesota Road Show. I hope you're coming if you're in the area. It's only ten bucks and half is taught by me! This bag is Zippy Strippy by Atkinson Designs. It's not technically part of the road show, but I'm incorporating it anyway.And finally, I'm doing a project for a friend who I recently unearthed in Australia. It's been ten years since I've seen him and I'm so excited to make something that's not a required project. I was lucky to find some Australian inspired fabric. I'll post a photo when it's all done. This photo some of the quilting when I was just starting. I love pebbling.What I did was layer the print below the black, then I quilted most of the spaces, but left a few unquilted. Then I cut away the black layer to reveal the print below. I'm going to couch some yarn over the grey straight lines.

Z is for Zipper

This little quilted bag is from the book Fat Quarter Fonts by Terry Atkinson. The bag is called Z is for Zipper and it was super easy. It has the letter a appliqued onto it. It's a little hard to see the letter here because my fabrics were both so busy, but I think it's cute.
The bag is lined with the letter fabric. The zipper was pretty easy to install. The only downside to it is that the seams are unfinished inside. I think if I did it again I'd do it with french seams.

The sample is from the same book as this quilt and is for the Minnesota Road Show coming up at the shop. I'm teaching it again this year!

Pointy points!

I have a quilting group that meets monthly to do show and tell and chat with each other. We're called "The Other Women," which is a name one of the members came up with because she's cheating on another sewing group with us. Anyway, we did something new this past Saturday; we had a mini-class. We learned a different type of paper piecing, where you stitch with the fabric on top of the pattern instead of on the wrong side of the pattern as in traditional paper piecing. I'm not sure which I like better. This is easier in some ways, but takes more time in trimming because you can't use the Add a Quarter ruler (which I highly recommend if you do paper piecing).

Aaaanyway, I made a pattern called Emily's Star. The pattern is by Lynn Graves of Little Foot, Inc. So far I've made four blocks.My poor camera. It has a hard time with colors. You should know that all the backgrounds are blues and all the stars are various shades of red and orange. They're actually quite striking, not that you'd know it from this photo.

Look at the pretty points!
In family news, we got a Prius last Saturday. I've only used about half the tank of gas so far. Yahoo!

Oh, and in honor of my upcoming 100th post, I'll be doing a giveaway. I have no idea what yet. Stay tuned!

Commission T-shirt quilt

I've been working on a commission t-shirt quilt. It will be a graduation gift for someone finishing high school. I like the way it came out (though I have realized that I have undercharged by quite a bit). This photo shows the quilt finished except for the binding and the label. I'm embroidering a label right now. I'm not sure if I'll be happy with the way it's coming out because I'm using one strand of floss and it looks kind of choppy. If I'm not happy with it, I just hand-write the label.
This is the backing fabric. It's a blue paisley in the Good Earth collection by Alexander Henry Fabrics. It's quilted in a variegated green with a meandering pattern. I meandered right over the t-shirt motifs. It seemed to work fine except for when the image on the t-shirt was especially thick. Then I found that my thread kept breaking unless I slowed way down.

We're also attempting to paint the master bedroom this weekend, which involves removing an especially ugly wallpaper border. It's going to be a busy one!

So this happened

Yeah. It's my daughter's latest craft project. It's alpaca wool felted around a lump of soap. I think it looks more like something the cat coughed up, but her little hands made it, so... yeah. It smells the way you'd expect a wet alpaca to smell. The idea is that the soap gets embedded in the felt and comes through as you use it. So, of course Molly wants to take a bath with it now. Lovely.

And here's a glimpse of my latest contribution to the row round robin I'm in.It's 3:22 a.m. and I can't sleep. I'm really happy because I got off a video call a while ago with a close friend who I haven't seen in a long time. He lives in Australia now, which makes timing a bit tricky, but we slipped into conversation as if it had been only ten days since we last talked instead of nearly ten years. The internet is a wonderful thing. Now I want to send him something I've made.

hodgepodge

The Quiltathon is over! There is still time to donate if you'd like (please do -- this link will add to my goal), but the work is (mostly) done. Here's a shot of most of my team, including Becky, Michele, Allen, Mary and Deb. Only Coni is not in this shot (sorry, Coni!).
We worked Friday night from 10 pm until 1 am. We got quite a lot of work done, though it's hard to quantify because we were working on three different quilts at once. Here's an arty shot of Allen's hands quilting one of the rows!
So far I'm in the lead as far as individual donations go, but the next person is really nipping at my heels. I really want to be the person with the most personal donations. So, if you've been thinking about it, or if you were one of the people who asked me, "what can I do?" while I was going through treatment, here is your chance to help!

I've also been making more tooth fairy pillows. I decided, after much harass--... er, encouragement, from my fellow quilters, that I should charge $15 instead of $10.
Lastly, I'm working on a commission piece. It's a t-shirt quilt for someone who is graduating high school soon. I have framed all the shirts in a green batik and am working on what to use for the background. Here they are on a solid, but I think we'll be going with something more lively. I do like how the one batik ties them all together, though. T-shirt quilts can be tricky because they don't often have a consistent color to them.
I'll be taking more commissions as time goes on. If you know of anyone who wants a t-shirt quilt made, let me know!

Please help!

I'm participating in the Quiltathon for Massey. As you know, I recently went through treatment for breast cancer. The shop I work at, Quilting Adventures, is hosting a 30 Hour Quiltathon to raise money that will directly benefit support groups through the VCU Massey Cancer Center. All the money raised goes to them, and the quilts that we make will be auctioned off by various groups, also with that money going toward cancer support.

Please follow this link and donate to this great cause. My team needs more donations to win! You can search for me (Cheryl Schenck), and donate to Team 9. I'm also on Team 16, but I'm focusing money toward Team 9 since it's the one I started with.

If you want to stop by, you can do so all weekend. I'll be quilting tonight from 10 pm to 1 am (the shop closes at 9 pm, so don't try to stop by then), and also on Sunday from 3 pm to 6 pm.

Thanks!

fan mail!

I've been making more tooth fairy pillows. Molly took hers to school for show and tell and to gymnastics and I have about 12 to make now. I'm charging $10 each, which covers my materials and also pays me some for time. It's a number I feel comfortable charging (much more and I'd feel guilty, much less and it probably wouldn't be worth it). I've been cranking out teeth tonight. Here are a couple more pillows. The red one is flannel. I'm also experimenting with tooth fabrics, because I only had a little of the Michael Miller home dec white that I used originally. So now I'm making teeth out of bamboo corduroy and NuSuede. The bamboo is slightly off-white, so I'm only using it for pillows that have no white in the background fabric.I also got a note from one of Molly's classmates. It is SO cute!