Small, fast update

Just a quick update: my folks are in town and I haven't found as much time as usual to sew. Mom brought a whole bunch of stuff for us to make Christmas ornaments together. We looked it over and thought it was going to be pretty easy and we would whip out a dozen in a few hours or so. yeah, that didn't happen. But we are experimenting and I'm documenting so I can share what we did with you.

I bought some fat quarters today to make patches to appliqué onto my son's quilt where the it has frayed.

The fish fabric is "Go Fish" for Timeless Treasure Fabrics of SoHo.  The plaid fabric is BungleJungle by Timbeck for moda. I don't know who makes the triangle fabric.

Yes, I know they don't exactly all match but I liked them all for different reasons and couldn't put them back after they were in my hands.

Onto what I have worked on this week.

Where I was last week:

Here I am today:

Not much progress.

With school starting next week-my oldest is starting Kindergarten!-I'm trying to capture these last few days of summer with them and not really worrying about much else. If I finish this week that would be great but...not too hurried.

Have a good week!

Kate

School Orientation!

Hello Friends!

Hope your Monday is going well. Have a good weekend?

I just got back from Orientation for Preschool! Bubba starts in a few weeks. Initially, I was a little worried about him being away from me (he is at a very clingy stage right now) but he was very excited to go look at his classroom and meet his teachers. He was not a happy camper when I told him it was time to go home and he cried all the way home. I think school will be great for him! I just can't believe it's already time. Where did the summer go?

Moving on....

Sewing-wise, I didn't get much done this week. We're doing lots of work on the house and the garden while the weather is gorgeous so sewing took a back seat this week.

Here is where I was at this time last week:

This is what I've accomplished:

Since last time I backstitched the quilt block in the upper-right hand corner, added in the quilt block on the lower right hand corner and added in the acorns and leaves. 

I'm kind of hoping to get the rest of this done this week--I'd like to cross it off my list!

Alright-that's it for this week! 

Don't forget to Like me on Facebook and to follow along on what happens outside of the blog on Instagram.

Work on your art!

Kate

Progress!

A little business first:  I've started an Instagram account for the blog to show the happenings of our day-to-day life here. You can find me at instagram.com/sewingbylottery Come check out the fun!

I've completed quite a lot on the Autumn cross stitch. This week has been pretty awesome in that I've been able to devote at least an hour each day to cross stitching. Let's hope this streak continues!

Here's what I had done last week:

And here's where I am at this week: 

I backstitched the the center frame,added the sunflower and finished the corner square last night

A little closer look at the backstitching. 

I think it is coming out really well. I can't believe how fast it is going!

I did have to spend some time on Saturday and Sunday fixing my son's quilt. A while ago-maybe two or three months-his quilt desperately needed a wash (with that dark blue fabric all his drool stains just show up!). When I took it out of the washer I noticed the quilt top had sheared away from the batting and the backing in one of the corners. It was very strange. 

Not even sure how that happened!

Plus the seam where I had connected the two ends of the binding had frayed very badly as well-no picture for that one. Luckily the part where the quilt top was frayed was on the same side as the bad binding so I got out my trusty seam ripper and took out about six feet of binding. I still had some of the striped fabric and was able to add a little patch to the frayed part up in the corner.

Voila!

I also had enough of the binding left over and was able to fix that as well. I even had enough time to re-attach all the binding!

However, as I was looking at the quilt top to see if there was any more damage I noticed that many of the nine patch squares had separated. Remember, this quilt was started at least 20 years ago and my mom said when she first started it she didn't really know all that much about making quilts or seam allowances.

There's about a dozen of these little separations. Bummer. 

She suggested we just dump the quilt and she make a new one for him but I don't think so! This gives us an opportunity to make something really awesome. I'm thinking we should appliqué various nautical patches onto the quilt: whales, anchors, boats, etc. I think that would make it really cute!

Alright, I've been a busy lady this week sewing-wise. Don't forget to check me out on Instagram and, if you haven't already, stop by and say HI on Facebook as well or comment below!

Have a great week!

Kate

Summertime!

It's summer! The last couple of months have just FLOWN by here in our house. We've had pre-school "graduations" (very cute but ridiculous to call it a graduation), beach excursions for birthdays, tea parties, matching shirts for Father's Day, fireworks in the backyard, cousins and aunts and uncles visiting, and I have two extra helpers in the kitchen lately wanting to help with every meal I make (sometimes a good thing, sometimes not so much).

We've also decided to put our house on the market but before we do we have had to do some sprucing up around the place. But with all this packing up and cleaning I have been doing a lot of de-cluttering and have gotten rid of so much stuff.  So. Much. Stuff. It's amazing. It's  kind of embarrassing how much stuff we have but it feels so good to give it away and get what's leftover organized.

But with packing up and making the house ready for strangers to walk through (ugh) I did put a lot of my sewing/crafting stuff in storage (and by storage I mean my in-laws garage!). I do know myself, though, and I have to keep some sort of project going, so I kept a few of my counted cross stitch projects here at home so I can work on those during down times. My thinking is I can get the stitching stuff done on a few projects and once we are at the new place and settled in I will finish them to completion! I do have an unspoken agreement with myself that I will not purchase any new craft or sewing project until I finish at least ten from my list. Confession time: I may have bought some Christmas fabric for a project that I already have but didn't have the fabric to complete it. That doesn't count, right?

This little plan has worked so far: I've finished an Easter sampler and some Christmas ornaments and now I am working on something for Autumn.

I'm thinking of adding their names somewhere

One for each of the girls

Right now back stitching the quilt.

I'm also going to try and post once a week if only to show the progress that I have made on any given project. 

I have so many ideas running around in my head. My latest idea is to take this giant, ugly quilt top I started eight or nine years ago, finish it and make it into a picnic blanket. I've found we have been taking lots of picnics or going to lots of parks this summer and we need a giant picnic blanket for everyone to spread out on. But I've got some cool ideas to make it awesome. Guess I will have to add that to The List.

What's everyone been working on this summer?? Let me know in the comments below, I love to hear from you!