Blog Tag

I was tagged in blog tag by Amanda from the Fabric Engineer.  

HERE ARE THE RULES:

• every tagged person has to tell 11 things about themselves

• the person who tagged you asked 11 questions, answer them

• ask 11 questions for the 11 blogs you're going to tag (the people you tag should have less than 200 followers)  

• mention the blog that tagged you, but don't tag them back.

So 11 things about me.
1. My favorite food is Italian.  I just love spaghetti and meatballs as well as pizza and would be more than content to eat that every single day.  
2. I absolutely LOVE fountain Pepsi.
3. My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.
4. My favorite color is red with black being a very close second.  
5. My favorite TV shows are Love it or List it and House Hunters.  Yes I really enjoy looking in "other" people's homes to see how they have decorated and live.  I find this fascinating!
6. I love taking Sunday afternoon naps after church and a big Sunday lunch.
7. I have 4 sisters.  
8. I have naturally curly hair and would do anything to have nice straight hair.  Go figure.
9. I enjoy watching movies and hand sewing binding on a quilt.  
10. The only Christmas tradition that we have so far is my kids get 3 Christmas gifts each in their "Santa" bag because the wisemen gave Jesus 3 gifts.  Hopefully we will develop more as the girls get older.  
11.  I haven't slept through the night for an entire week in over 2 years.  I wish my youngest who is now 18 months old would sleep through the night!

The questions I was asked:

1. What is one of the best places you've been to?  Mackinaw Island with my husband.  I have not actually traveled very much.  
2. Where would you like to travel to, even if not possible at the moment? Italy.  I have always wanted to go there and have pasta and pizza!
3. What's the best thing you've made?  Chicken Tortilla Soup in the slowcooker.
4. What do your family/friends think about your blogging? They have been very supportive and think it is pretty cool.  
5. What else do you like to do in your spare time other than make stuff? Watch movies.
6. What's the last good book you read? I haven't actually read that much lately.  The last book I read was the Berenstain Bears "Bedtime Battle" to my oldest daughter.  
7. What's on your "to read" list? I still would like to read the Quilters series by Jennifer Chiaverini and catch back up on the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich.  
8. What's your real job? Controller (accountant)
9. Would you choose it again? Why or why not? No.  What I do does not provide any real good.  I either make rich people richer or rich people poorer depending on the month.  In addition, once you are an accountant, everyone asks you tax questions, which is okay, but I do have other interests:)  
10. How many places (different towns) have you lived in since you were born?  1 - Michigan
11. If you weren't living where you are, where would you live?  Maine.  I have always wanted to go to Maine.  From all the pictures I have seen it appears to be very beautiful and it reminds me of a "slower paced" life, which I crave.  

I'm also only tagging one person and the lucky individual is Lisa at Hilltop House Creative Works.  Here is my list of questions for Lisa:

1.  What is your favorite holiday?  
2.  What is your favorite Christmas tradition?  
3.  What's your real job?
4.  Would you chose it again?  Why or why not?
5.  What is your favorite part of the quilting process?
6.  What is the next project you plan on working on?  
7.  What is your favorite fabric line of all time?
8.  What is your favorite movie?  
9.  What is your favorite food?  
10.  What are some of your other hobbies besides quilting?
11.  Where would you go on your "dream vacation"?

Happy Quilting!

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New Blog Look

I have been working with Lena at Simply Fabulous Blogger Templates to give my blog a much needed face lift.  I think she did an excellent job at capturing what I wanted to portray.  I also again wanted to thank my amazing sister in law for taking pictures of some quilts for me.  She did a really great job as well.  So what do all of you think of the "new look"?

Linking up with Plum and June.

Happy Quilting!

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Finished Quilt Samples

Last Friday I was able to quilt up these samples with just a couple of my favorite quilt designs.  I am having someone do a "face lift" on my blog and I wanted some "quilting pictures" for her to include in the blog banner.  As a result, I created a couple of samples so far.  Here is a picture of the quilt sample before quilting:

Here are some pictures of the sample with the wavy quilting:

Here is a picture of the wavy quilting on the back:

Here is a picture of a sample with the double loop quilting style:

Here is a picture of the double loop quilting on the back:

I can only take credit for the very first picture shown at the top, my wonderful sister in law took the rest of them for me and she also did "edit" the first picture for me as well.  Didn't she do an excellent job!  You can certainly tell a difference between a "lamen" like me and a "professional" like her!

Also this will complete Items #5 and #17 on my "100 Day Hustle List".  Yea!!!

I am linking up to "Finish it up Friday" at Crazy Mom Quilts.  

Happy Quilting!

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The 100 Day Hustle Update

MY TO DO LIST:

1. Make 15 to 20 quilted bibs for craft show, which are excellent practice pieces for trying new design on the long arm 
2. Make 15 to 20 burp clothes for craft show.  Ended up not having time to do this.  Big surprise.  
3. Make baby girl quilt for craft show.  Started to do this but my long arm started to act up so I ended up ruining it and it became a practice piece.  
4. Make baby boy quilt for craft show.  This piece became a practice piece to "fix" the long arm and I ended up practicing my feathers on it.  
5. Make a quilt for my sister in law to photograph for me to use as "new banner" pic to update my website.  In Process.
6. Make myself a Halloween table runner.  Bagged this for now.  I do have the pieces parts and will do that sometime this winter.  
7. Finish my mother in law's quilt that she started.  How did this get on my list?  LOL.  In process.  
8. A Craftsy Class called Machine Quilting Negative Space by Angela Walters
9. Make a "Family Tree Quilt" for my mother in law for Christmas with my sister in law.  
10. Make my husband a coffee quilt per his request because my youngest daughter got a hold of the ink pen and inked his current deer quilt I made him before we were married, so now he wants a new one that is coffee themed and has flannel on the back.  Talk about picky!  
11. Christmas stockings for my daycare lady's family as Christmas gifts this year.  
12. Christmas stockings for my parents to hold their Christmas gifts.  
13. Christmas stocking for my daughter's kindergarten teacher.  (I am going with a sort of theme this year, so hopefully these are easy to make.  I intend on purchasing Camille Roskelly's pattern to make these. 
14. Melia's petal pocket pillow  Changed my mind and going to do for next year.  Want to give to the girls together and Mae has decided to use "everything" in her crib to stack up and try to escape.  This currently terrifies me, so I may wait another year when the girls are older.  Melia would have really loved it and could have used it since she is a such a hoarder and literally takes EVERYTHING to bed with her.  
15. Maelyn's petal pocket pillow  See Item #14.  
16. A baby quilt for my new niece or nephew after it arrives in late November.  
17. Long arm quilting samples to show customers.  I want 3 samples of 3 different allover designs.  In Process.
18. Christmas table runner for me and my mom.
19. Baby girl quilt for a family friend. 

Well it appears that currently, only one item is completely crossed off, but I think at least I am tackling my rather "large" list and making some headway right?  Sorry I didn't include pictures.  The number list function in blogger continued to get screwed up when I tried.  Don't worry, I will try to figure that out for the final posting!

Hooking up to The 100 Day Hustle at Kelsey Sews.

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Quilt Samples

I am very excited because I found the most "perfect fabric" in the entire world to make some quilt samples to show my future customers.  My sister in law is "photographing" these quilt samples for me so I can forward pictures on to Lena, who is going to give my blog a much needed "face lift".  I am trying to get my blog to better represent me plus I want my facebook page, my etsy store, and my blog to all be matchy matchy.  I can't help it.  Is anyone else have a case of the matchy matchy syndrome?  I blame my mother.  Anyway, since my computer talents only take me so far and I really don't have the time or the energy to want to learn this new task (I would much rather spend it quilting!), I decided to hire it out to a talented designer such as Lena.   I am very excited to see what she comes back with, but I will hopefully be rolling that out to all of you by the end of November.

Now back to the "perfect fabric".  My favorite colors in the whole wide world are red, white, and black.  I have loved these colors for years.  I wanted to do my bedroom when I was in high school with these colors, but my mom wouldn't let me.  She doesn't believe in black furniture.  Good thing I am the "boss" in the house now!  Well when I was searching the internet for inspiration for my blog face lift, I found fabric by Sweetwater called "Mama said Sew".  Talk about perfection.  This fabric screams me!  I love how you can find so much inspiration from fabric.  The fabric also has a more modern flare with some cute "sewing phrases" printed on them, which I thought was really cute!  So I purchased two jelly rolls from the Fat Quarter Shop, which you can purchase here.  Isn't it so pretty!

I decided to make some extra large placemats to show off a couple of my quilting designs.  I haven't actually had the time to quilt them up just yet, but will do that this coming Friday.  But for now, here is a sample of the placemats unquilted.

I made them the same because I wanted to show customers how different something can look with different quilting designs on them.  I can't wait to show you the finished project next week.  Until then thanks so much for stopping by.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday link party hosted by Lee at Freshly Pieced.

Melissa

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