"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jer 29:11 (NIV)

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Postcards for Sale



One of the things I'm hoping to do this year is to be able to start selling some of the things I make, such as the quilted postcards that I make. I've finished off 7 this week that I will be putting up on Ebay this weekend. I've added a couple of pictures of them below. Let me know what you think of them.










Angel UFO's

One of my oldest UFO's is a set of 12" swap blocks from a year-long swap back in 1998. For the most part these blocks have lanquished at the bottom of whatever tote I happened to be storing my umpteen sets of swap blocks in at the time. One of my goals this year is to work on finishing up my UFO's and I decided to start with these blocks. Most of these will be donated to either American Heros or Sunshine Quilts, so for me these are finished. At this point, one of the quilt tops I'll be keeping for a future baby gift.

Step one was to count the blocks and then put them into groups that went together. I counted 57 blocks, and ended up with 9 different piles of blocks. A couple of the piles I added some other blocks too to round out the numbers of blocks going into the quilts. Over the last ten days I have managed to finish 5 of the quilt tops. The last one was finished at about 2:30 am this morning and the last couple of rows drove me nuts......not only did i have to frog-stitch one whole row thanks to sewing it on upside down. But the machine I was working on decided to stop working right. So i have to try to fix it now. THank goodness for the old kenmore.........maybe it's time to pull out the bernina that I have tucked away and start using it.....

At any rate here are pics of the 5 quilt tops I've finished so far, click on the pics to see a larger view of the quilts.



















Gratitudes -

1. Multiple sewing machines that mean I almost always have a machine to sew on.
2. Lovely weather this weekend after the ice storm earlier in the week.


Catching up and Finished UFO's

I've been way too quiet lately as I've been dealing with continued unemployment and the job hunt as I try to find a job as an IT Business Analyst. Not to mention trying to sell my house in a depressed housing market. None of which is fun. Thankfully I do know that no matter what God will provide all I need according to His will - including the next job and a buyer for this house.


Getting the house back on the market has meant that i have been decluttering it and getting rid of a lot of stuff that I moved out here and never had time to deal with before. Lots of stuff has been given away on Freecycle. And I'm still pulling more stuff to be gotten rid of. Have a pile of boxes in the garage that are already packed and out the house. Need to do more so that I can declutter more. Have been thinking about what else I'd get rid of in the way of furniture if I end up having to put a lot of this into storage which is a very real possibility or even have to down size. Hard to believe but most of what is in my 3000+ sq foot house was in my little bitty 800 sq ft apartment just a couple of years ago.


Meanwhile, to help keep the stress level down I've been quilting a lot. I'm in a crazy quilt round robin with 4 friends. I finished up what I added to the first one I worked on this week. The picture below shows the work I added to her block.


I also put together a table topper that is going to be a BD present for one of my best friends. Her BD is in April so I won't post a picture of it till then. Am also planning on writing a pattern for it and submitting it to see if I can get it published in a quilt magazine. I've also been working on getting some of the many swap blocks I've had stashed away for years into quilt tops. I'll post in the next post about these.


Gratitudes -

1. That I know God is a loving God and will always supply my needs, in spite of how my circumstances appear to me.

2. That there has been a lot of activity in the job search this past week.