Update...

Quote for the Day:

"I guess a drag queen's like an oil painting: 

You gotta stand back from it to get the full effect."
---Harvey Fierstein 

This week I've been working on getting my next quilt top ready to go into the quilting frame.

This is the backing being loaded into the frame...

The backing for this quilt is plain, unbleached muslin.  Sometimes I like to keep it simple.

After much rolling, the backing is on the frame and looks like this...

...ready for the batting and top to be added.

Next comes the batting.  Here's the batting attached to the backing.  Once I get the top ready to attach, both the backing and top will roll up at the same time.  Until then, the batting just hangs between the second and third rollers.

I've been busy marking the quilting design on the top for this quilt...

The top has some challenging design issues, so it's really required some thought to decide how to best quilt this.  I hope what I've chosen works out!  :)  I'm almost done marking and hope to get the top loaded onto the quilt frame tomorrow.

I have decided to use varigated thread instead of a plain off-white thread.  Unfortunately, no stores around here carry a varigated hand-quilting thread, so I had to order it online.  I'm anxiously awaiting it's arrival!  :)

My granddaughter's 5th birthday is coming up next weekend and I've had her quilt finished for some time now.

I've even had it packaged in this gift bag, ready to give to her...

It's been sitting in my office area waiting for next weekend.

Then...after looking at the bag this past week, suddenly it struck me how much the princess in pink actually looks like a drag queen!  No, really!!!

Okay...don't tell me you don't see it, too!  I mentioned it to Andy and he immediately saw it!  He said, "all that's missing is a big Adam's apple!"  LOL


Loretta

Disney Princess quilt FINISHED!!

Quote for the Day:

My granddaughter's birth has made me want to 

create things she will love.
~Billy Crystal

I have a "finish" to show you.  To those of you who are not quilters, a "finish" is a completed quilt.  :)

Over the past week, I have machine quilted, bound, and labeled the Disney Princess quilt that I have planned to give my granddaughter, Sera, for her 5th birthday in Sept.  Yes...I am early in completing it, but that is a good thing!  :)  It is very freeing to have both Andrew's birthday gift (his birthday is May 30) and Sera's birthday gift completed and ready for gifting!  :)  

There have been many gifts that were given late because I just couldn't get them done in time.  (Apologies to my children because their wedding quilts were late.)


So now for the picture show...

A close-up of a princess block...I think this one is Snow White...I'm sure Sera will know which one this is!  LOL

the pieced back...

I prefer to hand quilt so I don't machine quilt very often but kids' quilts really need to be machine quilted because they get some rough usage and get washed frequently.  So here is an up close of the machine quilting...

And last, but not least...a quilt is not "finished" until it is labeled!  :)

The top line is hard to read from this angle, but it says 

"Made for my princess" 

Seraphim Kaelyn Chapman 

With love 

Grandma Flood 

2011  

 

I used my embroidery machine to put a crown on the label using gold metallic thread!  I think it will appeal to Sera's love of "sparkly" things!  :O

 

I'm very excited to give my grandchildren their quilts this year for their birthdays...I'm afraid I might be more excited than they will be!  LOL

Thanks for stopping by my blog!  Hope you have a great day!

Loretta

More Super Couponing and a Quilt Top Finished!

Quote for the Day:

“The art is not in making money, but in keeping it.”

~ old proverb

Yesterday I was given a surprise day off from work!  :)  It doesn't happen very often, so it was a nice surprise.  It enabled me to do a lot of sewing on Sera's "Disney Princess" quilt and I got the top completed!  

I feel kinda bad because Sera's favorite color is PINK, but the focus fabric for this quilt was lavender, so her quilt is PURPLE.  To compensate for this, I'm going to find some pretty pink fabric from my stash to use as the backing.   She can have her Disney princesses on one side and her pink on the other! 

Now...onto my couponing...
My favorite drugstores to do my couponing at are Rite Aid and Walgreens.  They both offer deals, that when paired with coupons and their own rewards programs, add up to great money-savers.  (CVS also has great deals, but we don't have a CVS in our town.)


Today I went to Rite Aid to do my couponing there and I thought I'd share with you what I got.


This is what I purchased...

I had coupons for everything except the jane mascara...however, it was on clearance for 75% off...bringing the price down to $1.37...and I was in need of a new mascara!  :)


Before coupons, the total was $11.33.  After coupons, the total out-of-pocket was $1.01.   (Actually, I was only out $1.00 because the cashier offered to take the penny out of the penny cup that was there by the register!)  :)

After paying, I received $6.00 in +UP rewards to be used as cash towards my next shopping trip.  In addition, I submitted my receipt online and will get $1.00 back in rebate for purchasing the Lysol.  Also, on my receipt there was an offer of a $3.00 coupon off of a $15.00 future purchase if I went online and filled out a survey about this shopping visit...which I did...and then I printed out my coupon.

So... today Rite Aid gave me free products and then paid me $8.99 to remove these products from their store!  :)   How cool is that?   I LOVE getting free products...AND being "paid" to buy them!   


I learned several years ago that it isn't how much you MAKE...it's how much you KEEP.  


Even though I make a good hourly wage at my job, when you subtract taxes, car upkeep (including insurance, etc.) to drive to and from work, malpractice insurance, continuing education expense, and all the other expenses that go into keeping a nursing license and job, your "hourly" wage is much lower than what you think.  You can go here to calculate YOUR real hourly wage.


When you know your REAL hourly wage you can then figure out exactly how many hours it will take you to pay for something.  Then you can decide for yourself whether or not that thing is worth the x-number of hours of work it will take to pay for it.  

You can also use it figure out how long it would have taken you to earn the money to pay for the free products you can get with couponing.  :)   For me...it's definitely worth my time to coupon as I can get $50-100 dollars worth of free product per month...and that's a LOT of hours that I don't have to spend working at my "real hourly wage"! 


Thanks for visiting my blog today!  Feel free to leave me a comment...I love to read them!  :)  


Have a blessed day!


Loretta

Swiss Cheese Fabric?

Quote for the Day:

"Even miracles take a little time."

~Fairy Godmother in Cinderella

SPOILER ALERT:  Erin, if you don't want to know what Sera's birthday present will look like then don't read this post!  :)

I have been upstairs in my sewing room CREATING this past weekend!  It feels so good to be sewing!  I LOVE my "woman cave"!  I tell Andy that if he puts a coffee pot, microwave and a small fridge up there he'd never see me again!  LOL  

I love to go upstairs and spend HOURS sewing and quilting in my sewing and quilting rooms.  Yes, roomS!  Our house has 3 bedrooms, so when the kids grew up and moved out, I turned one bedroom into my "sewing" room with my sewing machines, cutting table, ironing board, fabric stash and all my supplies.  I turned the other bedroom into my "quilting room" and put the hand quilting frame in it!  Both rooms have a TV and stereo, too.

Anywho, Saturday I started on Sera's "Disney Princess" quilt and quite frankly, I am surprised at how much I've gotten done so far.

My design wall isn't large enough to handle the whole of a bed-sized quilt, so I have to put it up in sections.  

Here is a picture of the first 8 of the 15 rows that will be in this quilt...

Here is a close-up...these blocks are 6" finished...

 And a close-up picture of a strip set so you can see the colors better...

I'm not a fan of purple...but overall I think the quilt is going to look nice.

The Disney princesses were "fussy" cut...and as anyone who has ever "fussy" cut knows...it leaves you with "Swiss cheese fabric"...

Not very frugal, huh?  Under "normal" circumstances, I would try to salvage what is left of the fabric and cut it up and put it in my scrap box.  However, this fabric has flecks of glitter in it and I can't put my iron on it directly...I have to use a pressing cloth to press it.  So I don't know if it is worth saving the rest of the fabric or not...too much hassle.  The verdict is still out on that one...

Saturday when I was making the strip sets, I started to smell something that smelled like hot plastic!  

Evidently I wasn't paying attention where I set my iron and it got up against the plastic measuring cup that I use to fill the water reservoir on the iron...

 melted plastic on iron

 
I was lucky in that after I let the iron cool, I was able to chip the now- hardened plastic right off!  Otherwise, I would have needed to head over to WallyWorld to buy a new iron!  :(

Note to self...pay attention to where you set down the iron from now on!

BTW, it would have KILLED me to have to go pay full price for a new iron because I get mine at yard sales for $1-2.  I like to keep an extra one on hand in case something happens to whatever one I'm currently using, but I don't have any in back-up right now...and yard sales don't start for another 6 weeks or so!  Guess I'd better take good care of this one!  :)

When I quilt I like to listen to audio books on my mp2 player.  I am currently listening to "The Kids Are All Right" (the book, not the movie.   They are two different things entirely).  I am about two-thirds finished with it and HIGHLY recommend it!  Very good book!  :)

Thanks for stopping by!  Please leave me a comment to let me know you were here!

Loretta

My Next Quilt Project...

Quote for the Day:

A bed without a quilt is like a sky without stars.

~author unknown

Happy February to everyone!  Welcome to the second month of 2011!  

Tomorrow is Groundhog's Day and if the groundhog sees his shadow, thus predicting 6 more weeks of winter...I will have to find a gun and shoot the poor creature to put him out of my misery!!!  LOL  I just don't know how much more winter I can take!  "They" are predicting an ice/snow storm to come through tonight but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that "they"wrong and it will pass just north of us.  

Anyway...onto much pleasanter things...  :)   (Is "pleasanter" a word?  It didn't trigger the spell-check...so either or it is a word...or I've just confused the poor computer all to heck!)

This past weekend I put the binding on the Bug Jar quilt.  Now all I have to do is make a label for it and sew it on.  I plan on doing that this Thursday or Friday.

So now I'm putting my brain cells toward the next quilt...a Disney Princess quilt for my darling granddaughter's 5th birthday...which is in September!  (When making home made gifts, planning ahead is a MUST!)    This is a picture of the beautiful Sera after having 14" of her hair cut and donated to Locks of Love.  

She LOVES Disney Princesses!  And she LOVES "sparkly pretty" things!  :)   So when we were in Nashville last September and I found some "sparkly pretty" Disney Princess fabric at Goodwill, I grabbed it up before you could say "Disney Princess"!  LOL  

Since then, I've found some fabrics that will go nicely with the Disney Princess fabric, but was flummoxed by what pattern to make with them.  I needed something to showcase the princesses so I needed to leave that fabric in fairly large blocks.  

These are the fabrics I found:

That dark fabric on the top right is a dark purple that contrasts nicely with the lighter purple of the Disney Princess fabric.  The sparkles in the DP fabric don't show up well in this picture, but then none of the fabrics look as good in this picture as they do in real life.  :(

Today I decided to look through a new pattern book that I have and found this pattern in it that will be PERFECT for this quilt!  :)

The blank blocks will be "fussy-cut" DP fabric so each block shows a princess.  The striped blocks will be the four fabrics on the right side in the upper picture...cream, yellow, light purple/blue, and the dark purple.  I will make my quilt bigger than this pattern, so there will be more pictures of the princesses than just the 6 they show here.  

Here is the picture of the completed quilt they show in the pattern book.  For the solid blocks they used fussy-cut pictures of flowers.  

I've been contemplating what pattern I was going to use for this quilt for months, so I'm glad that I finally found a suitable pattern and I think it will be GREAT!

When I am creating/sewing I don't do much cleaning in my sewing room.  But between projects I do a very thorough cleaning.  Once I get the label done for the Bug Jar quilt, I'll do a thorough cleaning of my sewing room before starting on this DP quilt.  

Since the kids and grandkids are coming home in a couple weeks for Andy's birthday, I'll put off starting this project till after they leave so I don't mess the room back up again!  This is the room where the grandkids sleep, so I'll keep it all neat and clean for them!  :)

BTW...funny story...I've been working diligently on handquilting my whole-cloth quilt...

The other night Andy came into the quilting room and looked at it while I was stitching and said, "That's just too much stitching, my Dear...who is this for anyway?"  (He was asking because I give 90% of my quilts away and the stitching lines on this 90 X 98" quilt are no more than 1" apart...so there is a LOT of stitches going into this one!)  When I told him this one was for US he said, "oh well, then...stitch on!"  LOL  We both had a good laugh over that one!  

Thanks for stopping by!  Please leave a comment to let me know you were here!  :)

Loretta