Sewing on a snowy day

Yesterday was day two of the latest round of snow days for school.   14" of the fluffy white stuff fell here at my house and it is definitely piled up after the latest round of shoveling.   

When not shoveling the snow, I was sewing away here in the house.   Finished off another commissioned garment, making for 6 that are finished and waiting to be shipped out.   Still have room in the box so I'll be making another couple before I ship it off. 

Once I finished off the garment, I pulled out a set of 'UFO fabrics' that i'd pulled several yrs ago to work up.   The main fabric is a print with astronauts, planets, and other space objects in it.   Pulled 3 coordinates for it from my stash and went to work on it.   After figuring out and cutting the biggest size pieces that I could get from the print (7.5" by 9.5"), I then made two coordinating blocks to go with them.   After setting them 4 by 5, and putting on a border I ended up with a quilt top that is 38" wide by 54" long.    It will be donated to Sunshine Quilts because the print fabric was part of what I was given when the founder and long-time founder of Sunshine passed away several years ago.

Gratitudes:
1. No snow predicted for today, altho the weather is supposed to be really cold.
2. District has offered and is paying for the bulk of the expenses for the conference in March and approved me attending it.

Been a while since I posted and I've actually been able to do some quilty type work for the first time in what seems a long time.

One of the things I managed to get done was to pull backing fabrics to go with the quilts I finally found that are for Sunshine quilts.   I knew when I had moved over a yr ago now that I had a tote filled with quilt tops for American Heroes and for Sunshine Quilts.   Well, that tote managed to stay hidden until a couple of weeks ago when it decided to make an appearance again.  These five pics are the ones that I made for Sunshine a couple of yrs ago and then never managed to get them sent off to be quilted by someone.   Thanks to today being payday I can finally afford to mail them off next week.   Just need to confirm with the quilter that that is ok.  Some of the fabric in them (upper right quilt and lower left quilt) is from Bev, a very special quilting angel that Sunshine misses very much.   I've still got some of her fabrics somewhere so her love for the kids will carry on as I have time to make it up.   The middle quilt on the right was made from the leftover fabric that I had in making up backings for the other 4 quilts.

 I finished up a couple of commissioned projects for a friend back in Dallas.   These included felt Wordless books and bean bags.   The bean bags are made out of cotton fabrics, with one side being solid green and the other side being a rail fence type block with 4 stripes.   They are supposed to finish at 4", but I ended up cutting the strips wrong and the blocks finished at 6".   Net result was that I had to remake the strip sets for the bean bags.   But because I hate to see fabric go to waste - especially as much as this would have been, I too the blocks that were too big and put them into a quilt top.   This quilt will end up going to American Heroes at some point in the future for the child of a service man/woman.

This weekend I'll be headed to a quilt retreat after getting out of school on Friday.   I'm taking lots of goodies to work on, and hopefully I'll make a dent in what I'm taking with me.  Among other things that I'm taking with me are blocks from 3 BOM projects - one of which I started back in 2005, the other two are from this year.   Here's a pic of the three blocks that I'm taking to do the buttonhole stitching on for the 2005 BOM.  I've got a number of other projects with me as well to work on including pillowcases for Christmas gifts and fabric for a sample block for my next block submission.  And I should say, I'm not taking a one of the commissioned garments that I need to get made up.   This weekend will be spent sewing on fun stuff.    I'll post a pic next week of what I get done over the weekend.  =)

Gratitudes -
1. The hot temps are finally gone!
2. Quilt Retreat is this weekend and I can afford to go again.

IMOB Sunshine Quilts

Some months ago I 'inherited' some fabric from the stash of a much loved, founding member of sunshine quilts when she passed away. Finally got it washed a few weeks ago, and have started makign quilts from it. Here are pics of the 5 that I've finished off so far. Have made a small dent in the fabric that I received, but still have many more to go I'm sure. =) Don't know when these will be quilted because things are crazy in grad school at the present time and will be for a year and half at least.........so they are just going into my tote of finished charity tops until I either have time to do them or someone else can quilt them for me.


Gratitudes:
1. Grad School is going well so far.
2. Extra hrs at work to help pay the bills.