Blooming and Napping...

My husband and I made a trip out to Zion, Utah as we are known to do every once in awhile; just to get away. While we were there we noticed how "green" everything was and against the desert landscape, sandwiched in between brown dirt with rocks and the occasional green patches of native plants, was the most vibrant pink poking its head out to be seen. We just had to pull over and take pictures of it.

Aren't they just amazing?! The only 'color' out there was this (there were a few very tiny little lavender and yellow meadow flowers too), but these just screamed out! It was a wonderful day of walking, talking, great fish tacos, coffee, and just enjoying nature with no city lights or large buildings. We drove back later that evening and confirmed further that we need to move somewhere out of the main city at some point. School first, then moving.

As far as our newest family member, she has a few things down very very well: (1) crouching by the bottom step of the stairwell to jump at your feet and hang around your ankle (she has quite a grip), (2) jumping (as opposed to clawing) her way up to the top of furniture, (3) she can scratch and/or bite through at least two layers of skin in less than 2 seconds (you actually don't even know it has happened until you start bleeding), and lastly, (4) napping. I have left out things like eating, pooping and meowing for the obvious reasons. As like children, she is most angelic while she is sleeping...

She is just hysterical. Her sleeping positions would make me wake up in a giant knot and not being able to move for at least an hour. My husband recently made a video of her sleeping with her paws over her eyes, and as he lifted up her paw you could see her eyes closed, then the paw would just go back into position. Here is a still of the video. I have to find a way to put this on my blog border.

On that note, goodnight and I am off to quilt.

Single Girl continues...

I have started to sew all the blocks (well, into actual blocks) and have begun sewing the blocks together. It is coming along fairly well, until my Janome had to go to the sewing machine hospital. Seems as though you cannot leave the spool you winding bobbins with on the spool holder as the end will sucked up into the side vent and wrap itself around the gears and the belts. It was so ugly when they pulled the side of the machine apart, but a few snips and pulls (no damage) left me smiling on the way back home with my baby.

So here is one block of the Single Girl quilt, yet as I am sewing the blocks together I can't say that the circles are 'butting' up against each other as they are supposed to. Later I read on a blog that it is easier to sew them together with a zipper foot, as the side of the regular foot gets in the way and pushes the fabric to the side. Oh well, it is what it is; it's not perfect, but I did it all on my own.

The circle edges and the seams are lining up fairly well, and overall, I am very pleased with the way it looks. SO much so, that I am starting to cut out the fabric for the South Pacific themed Single Girl. As soon as this is sewn together, I will start sewing the other one together. Once I get to the hand quilting for the grey Single Girl, then I can take it to work and do it over lunch (hopefully keeping my hands busy will also stop from the eating so much). Here are the fabrics for the other quilt waiting to be traced and cut.

I wake up every morning and go to bed every night seeing these little slices of heaven waiting for me to turn them into their soul's purpose--motivation!!

Ooo, it was like Christmas this week!!!

Well it started with receiving my quilt labels in the mail the other day, and they turned out fantastic! They read, "Quilt made by Mary "Bunny" Martin-jarofspools.blogspot.com."

They have six different colors, in Fuchsia, Teal, Purple, Orange sherbert, Grey and Lime. Here is a pic with them attached and printed on a yard of fabric. The colors are so vibrant, and they were printed so fabulously. Again, it was Spoonflower that printed them and the cost was $18 plus shipping. So easy!

I opted to cut them out with scissors as opposed to the rotary cutter and ruler method. You can either put them on with fusing, or sew them down on the edges. I may even have enough of a border to sew on some fabric along the edge and just applique them on at some point. The original tutorial by Jaybird suggested to leave a 1/4" margin around each one to have room to fold them under, but I had a difficult time as it was just getting them designed at all! Thanks to one of my budding Marketing students at the college, Annie, she helped me get my design into print.

 I cannot imagine that I will actually get to use all of these; that would be a lot of quilts! I will probably have to order more labels due to changing my blog address or something before getting through them all. Hopefully, I will have one quilt done soon so I can put one on. The blank space allows for me to write in the title of the quilt and when it was made. The first one will go on my Valori Wells Quilt that I hope to have done this weekend. ; )

My second gift this week, was my beautiful Echino-Extra Wide-Madrigal-Oxblood fabric! This has to be some of the most gorgeous fabric I have ever seen, and when I saw it on Judith's Needles and Lemons blog who was using it for the back of a quilt, I just knew I had to have it!

So here it is in all 6 yards of glory! I plan on making this the whole quilt top and embellishing it with Perle 8 cotton in different colors, some beads, and sequins. I plan on outlining the flowers and highlighting the print all together. Then I will use the thickest batting and tie it. I can't wait to start on it.

Isn't it just dreamy?! It will take quite some time to decorate it, but it just seems to be calling for some nice hand embroidery and a little sparkle. The fuchsia buds on the vine will be in a matching floss done with French Knots, and the birds will have some sequins along the back. Not sure how much of the big blue flowers I will do, but it will work itself out I'm sure. I will keep you all posted with the progress.

And if that wasn't enough...I also received by Perle 8 cotton for the Single girl quilt! It is a wonderful steel blue color, #932 I believe, and it will be used in the pattern given by Denise Schmidt for the quilt. I was going to go with a dark grey, but I thought, hey what the heck--it doesn't have to match! I decided to pick up the blues in the yellow circles as opposed to going with the obvious grey or yellow options.

I love that they gave it to me in the box. It was like opening up a box of chocolates (I refrained from licking them), but it was so hard not to. So many projects, so many presents, and a whole weekend to do them. Woo-hoo!!

Still here...

Well, I am still here but have been VERY busy with school, work and quilting (story of my life). I am diligently working on my Single Girl and thanks to the P.I.G.S. night out at Sew Obsessed in Henderson, I got a good chunk done (well, in between alot of laughs, pizza and root beer). Hopefully I will have my Single Girl quilt top done this week to post for all to see, but I have to say, these curves were tough to piece and even harder to butt up next to each other! Yikes, Denise Schmidt!

So what could I possibly add to this long laundry list of things I am juggling now; quilt labels! Thanks to Jaybird Quilt's tutorial on how to get fabric quilting labels printed by the yard, I have decided this is the way to go! Here is a sample of what I have come up with, please let me know what you think. They will be printed in orange, purple, lime, and fuchsia just because I LOVE jewel tones. Jaybird suggests using a service called Spoonflower for printing as it is only about $18 a yard, but for those of you that want to try your hand at fabric design, that is really what they do!

So here is the draft version of the label:

It's hard to tell, but this will be a rectangle about 2.5" by 4.0" that I can fuse onto my quilt or stitch around the side. The middle part will be left blank to allow me to write in the title of the quilt, the date and whether it was machine or hand quilted/pieced. I am so excited. I have only labeled one quilt and so many tutorials tell you that it is so worth the time and effort to add a label (it's about time). Thank you to Jaybird for all the advice and the great tutorial and when they arrive I will update with a pic!