Playing catch up

Just on my blog posts really, I've been keeping pretty busy, so here's photos of what I've been up to:

 

I participated in my first Quilts of Valor Sew In with some ladies in my guild.  I was only able to stay for half the day, but it was a lot of fun and I look forward to contributing again in the future.  My machine is the unmanned one at this table :)

 

 

Tried my hand at the disappearing hourglass, a mini of course, look at how tiny this thing is!

 

Treated myself to the Tri-Recs ruler so I can work on this awesome wall hanging I got from Connecting Threads.  So far I have everything ready to sew it all together, and the ruler made the cutting so much easier.

 

Thomas decided this was where he was going to lay at that moment, and nothing phased him for 30 minutes.  It was his spot.

 

I modeled my 2nd Snapshots block after my own machine, I may or may not keep it that way, I'll wait til we make the other blocks.  I do have plans to alter the vehicle block to look like my truck, and will change the teapot into a cocoa mug (I just have no teapot association at all...)

 

#fqssnapshots blocks one and two

 

And finally, John and I have been getting out into the sunshine, it's been great to get some walks in.  Today it was only 30 degrees, but the last couple weeks it's been in the 50s.  Weirdest winter, and I so wanted snow on my birthday last Wednesday.  But I settled for a delicious homemade steak dinner (which I made, my mom and I share a birthday so we had dinner with mom, dad, and my sister at my mom's house).  I actually had a really fabulous birthday!  Hard to go wrong when it starts with a foot massage.

 

And here's some happy cats:

 

Pillow Talk

"My kitty!" Thomas is telling me

Ahhh, sunshine

 

Have a happy day!

~Brandy

September Activities

Welcome back!  Oh man, this last month has been busy busy busy at work.  I am the National Rodeo Secretary for the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, (aka college rodeo across the USA) and the beginning of the school year has a lot going on for our office.  I kept thinking I wasn't getting anything done because of how very fast the month went by, but I actually accomplished some sewing!  One thing I practiced was getting into the habit of going to my mom's house every Wednesday to work on the quilt my Grandma Linda asked me to finish, and I'm so happy to report I've nearly half the blocks together already!  Here's an idea of what I started with:

 



And sadly I don't have a progress picture, but I will remember next Wednesday to have my mom take one of me working on it.

 

We had the Walla Walla Valley Quilt Festival mid-September and I volunteered for a few hours Saturday at the front door.  I had a blast hanging out with Lianne (our guild president) and one of the other girls who I just can't remember her name to save me.  John and I walked around Sunday for about 2 hours examining all the amazing works.  Here's my quilt hanging up, and my block challenge on the wall with the others, there were some really creative blocks:

 

I'm on the bottom row with the black background

 



I also participated in the APQ Pillowcase Challenge Sew-a-thon and using some fabric from Grandma Linda's stash made this awesome pillowcase:

 

This is made using the "burrito method" that is a free pattern on APQ's website (link above)

 

My amazing piecer: the 1954 White

 

Ta-da!

The most exciting thing was you could enter at some of the sponsors websites and win fabric to make more pillowcases, and I won!  I received an email from Shannon Fabrics a few days ago, and I plan on donating all the cases to children in Walla Walla, hopefully the children's ward at the hospital.

 

I have been so fortunate, won 4 drawings in 2 months now!  Can't wait to pay it forward in the upcoming blog hops.  By the way, I'm participating in not only the Black Cat Crossing, but also the T'was the Night, yay!

 

Here are photos of the items I won from Carol's drawing at Just Let Me Quilt:

Two yards (!) worth of solid and two fall panels

 

 

 

And then I received the package from Sew Lux Fabrics who I had won a $50 gift card from:

 

Ooo!  What an unexpected surprise!  I love presents within presents.

 

It really struck me how much more special this nice wrapping made my prize seem.  I am going to start prettying up my giveaways, because I can!

 

 

For the most part I ordered things I would not normally buy for myself, such as fabric with no plan or a bag pattern...

 

For some reason I was really drawn to purchasing this pattern after seeing all the amazing ones people have made and hearing how tough it can be.  Sometimes I like a challenge.  I'll probably take this on in a couple years.  I hear you also need ~$100 worth of materials to make it, so I'll start saving up too.

I also bought a spool of white Aurifil thread, because I go through it!  I really enjoy how smoothly it works in all 3 of my machines, I must say.

 

Ok, here's one last thing we did in September, we hosted a rock crawling event for remote control vehicles.  Some are very lifelike, some look like bugs, but everyone has a good time.

Getting in some stitching while at the track.

Our youngest competitor (pretty sure he's only 3 years old) driving a scaled truck through the course and doing really well.

John giving Terry some direction over a tough log section.

One of the competition (aka bug like) crawlers crossing the bridge John built.  I helped paint it.

 

See, John's working hard and I'm supervising.

 The event went really well, and we're hoping to keep building awareness over the next couple months for a good turn-out in Spring.

Thank you for visiting, see you again soon!

~Brandy