Catching up

Last week kind of got away from me before I realized that I hadn't blogged all week.  Sorry about that.  I'll recap a few things and share pictures since I finally put them on my computer.

While Grandpa and Grandma were here my girls decided to put Yana's diapers on her head and run around.  It was pretty cute and funny.

I admit that I sometimes put diapers on their heads when they are babies...not the pull up kind but my girls had fun.

 Yana is in this "I can dress myself" phase.  See how well that worked.  She puts them over her head and then around her waste.

 Sarah has been in swim lessons for 2 weeks.  My girls are fish and can't seem to get enough swimming.

 She is really good at floating on her back.

 Here is Yana at swim lessons.  Entertaining herself.  Poor kid wants to swim but I can't let her out of her seat or I'll have to chase her all over the place.

 Sarah actually loves to swim under water.  She is really good at it.  One of the reasons for the swim lessons is to help teach her to swim with her head above water.

 Yana at the office.  She loves to pull the doll stroller over to the coffee table, sit in it and look at books.  It is so cute.

This weekend, since we couldn't really work in the yard, we worked in the garage.  My husband made me a quilt rack.  He's been telling me about it for a few months and now I have it.  I love it.

 It holds four quilts and it has a shelf.  I haven't decided what to put on the shelf yet.  I'm thinking Russian dolls or something.

 I should have split the two middle quilts up so you could see them better. 

Sarah just loves this quilt rack.  She has told me several times today how much she likes it and that it is so pretty.  I can't agree with her more. 

Well that pretty much should catch me up on everything. 

This week should be interesting as well so I'll do my best to keep you posted.  Have a great Monday.

Now posted

The frog quilt is now posted on my store.  Come check it out.  Click here to see it Idaho At Heart.  I took some pictures of it on my daughter's bed.

It is a super cute quilt and would be a great addition to any home.  The holidays are coming up and birthdays are year round.  Let me know what you think of it.

Frog Quilt finished!!!

My frog quilt.  I finally finished it.  I think it looks pretty good. 

 Here is the quilt.  It is 64" by 74 1/2".  It is a patchwork pattern called "Color Maze".  I found the pattern in the February/March 2010 Quilt magazine and really liked it.  I didn't want to use flowery material so I went with Frogs.  I found as many froggy themed bolts as I could and got started.

 There are 8 different blocks in this quilt.  Seven of them are froggies.

 I free motion quilted this on my sewing machine.  It is all cotton material with a cotton batting.  The back of the quilt is actually a sheet that I bought at Walmart so there are no seams.

If you would like to see the progression of this quilt check out these links :Quilt on the frame and For starters

It has been a very fun quilt and I'm glad for the experience of it.  I will get it posted on my store as soon as I get some pictures of it on a twin bed...after my youngest wakes from her nap.  I also need to add up the costs and decide how much I'm asking for it.  I will get it posted by tonight so keep checking back.  I'll add the link once I have it.

4 of 4 purses finished

Well I finished all the purses and am going to mail them off today.  Here are the pictures of the finished products.  My girls insisted on being my models.  They had fun.

On these ones I added a pocket to the outside as well as the inside.  My mother in law had me add one to her's as well.

I added up the time that I put into these 4 purses and it came to just over 10 hours to finish all 4 purses.  I'm sure it would have been a little less without messing up.  I seemed to like to pin the wrong sides together and then have to repin them.  I forgot to sew things to the outside until after the two sides were sewn together.  Little things like that add up in time.  It was fun and they all turned out really cute.  I will be heading to post office soon to get them mailed off.

Froggy Quilt

It took me a couple days but I finally got it sandwiched last night.  I'm glad that I did though because I'm getting excited to sew it and get it finished.  I think it is really cute. I laid the top on the floor and then set up the frame around it so I would know how big to make it since the sheet was quite a bit bigger.

 Here is the back sheet.  It is a cream color.  See how much bigger it was, but a size smaller wouldn't have fit the top.

Here it is all pinned and I think it is safety pinned in this picture but I'm not sure.  Anyways it is all ready to sew.

Today during nap time I will try to get it started.  I have one more purse to sew and that should take about 20 minutes and then I can start free motion quilting this.  I'll will share more details like where I got the pattern, the size, and so forth when it is done and I do a blog on the quilt.  Have a great day.

Purses and quilts

I know I said a while ago that I would share pictures of the material that I bought to make the 4 purses that I'm working on.  So here they are.  Last night I got them all sandwiched and ready to begin sewing on.  The top color on each of them will be the inside of the purse.  I have bias binding that will help bring out the color and finish it all off.  I'll share pictures of the finished project before I mail them off.

What do you all think?  Do the colors go well together?  It took forever for me to put some of them together.  In the end I liked them all.

An update on the quilt:  I meant to sandwich it last night until I had a "duh" moment.  I didn't have any backing so I couldn't sandwich it.  So today after Sarah meets her teacher we will go to the store and buy a sheet for the backing and I'll hopefully get it sandwiched tonight.

The garage is white!

Saturday we decided to let Sarah help us paint in the garage.  Actually my husband had been saving this project for her so she could help.  He had built this shelve and wanted it painted.  He had already painted the first one.  So we got Sarah all set up and gave her a brush and some paint.

 This is what happens when I ask her to smile.  She gives me a weird look.

My husband was moving when I took the picture but I mainly wanted to share what the garage looked like.  We had moved everything over to that side of the room in order to finish the other side.  Isn't it a nice white?  We like it.  We finished Saturday night.  We painted while Yana napped and then played with the girls until it was bed time and then finished painting.  It is so nice to have it done.  I can once again park in the garage and I love it.

Painting

 I think I mentioned the other day that we are painting our garage white.  Here are a couple of pictures from the first day.  He bought ultra bright white paint.  I keep teasing him that he is going to need sunglasses to work in his garage now.  We now have that whole wall painted and part of the ceiling.  By the time we got started last night we didn't have a lot of time to paint before we needed to get to bed.  We are excited to have it white.  We love our house but all the walls are that brown color and you can't wash anything off of them because the paint comes off with it.  So this white is supposed to be water proof when said and done.

After starting this project we decided that we probably wont be painting the whole house.  It is too expensive and way too time consuming.  It has definitely been an adventure though.  Well I'll talk to ya'll later.  I'm not sure I'll get any sewing done because I need to get some stuff done in the garage while Yana is sleeping.

The quilt

The Quilt.  Ok so I have been telling you all for a while now that I have been working on a quilt.  I also wasn't able to share pictures with you.  I wish I would have taken more pictures from the beginning.  I'll try to do better in the future.  This quilt was made for my brother and his fiance.  His favorite color is a limish green and hers is pink.  Their wedding colors are going to be.....green and pink.  So I went looking for quilt patterns that I could do just two colors in and have it look good.  This one is called "Picket Fence" and I found it in one of the quilting magazines I buy at random.  If you want to know for sure just ask and I'll figure out which magazine it was.  It was originally 85 X 85 but my husband and I like ours a little bigger so I added an extra row to the width and 2 rows to the length to help get it where we wanted it.

This is the quilt on the quilt frame that my husband built me.  If you have ever tied a quilt this is the same frame.  I don't tie quilts anymore so we didn't have the rack.  We built it and put it to use.  I was doing this on the floor.  Crawling all over and trying to keep all the layers straight and not bunched.  It took a while and a lot of help.  With this I pinned the sheet first.  Side Note: I use actual bed sheets for the backs of my quilts.  I actually buy the pack - you know the fitted sheet, flat sheet and pillow cases.  I give the whole thing as the gift.

Anyway I pinned the sheet on and then unrolled the batting and laid it on top.  My husband helped me because he didn't like that it wasn't straight.  Then I had him help me place the top of the quilt on top and get it all squared away.  Then I pinned it down on top of the other layers.

 Then I started putting the safety pins in.  It worked so much better than when it was on floor.  Everything stayed nice and tight.

 As I pinned I rolled.  It was wonderful.

 Here it is.  I used my new camera for these pictures.  Can you see the difference yet lol.  Ok sit fits perfectly on our bed and it looks really good.  It's hard to see in this picture but the binding is green.

 Our bed has a pillow top thing on it so it is pretty thick.  It hangs down slightly past the bottom of that and I have it pulled clear up onto the pillows.  It should wrap around a bed easily.

 This is the free motion stitch that I did.  It was fun and I think it looks nice.

 Here is the binding.  I chose this stitch for the binding.  It took awhile but it looks nice.

Here is the side view with the border and binding.

I really like this quilt.  It turned out much better than I thought.  I wasn't sure about green and pink but they do look nice together.  It was a fun quilt to make.  The original quilt in the magazine had many colors not just two.

Well have a good Monday.  I am on vacation and I'll try to post every few days but I'm not going to make any guarantees.