Sidetracked Again

As we all know, I have a problem.

I have far too many projects- 75+ and counting.

Hence, the lottery and this website.

Plus I am easily sidetracked by seasonal stuff I want to do-I made some glitter X's and O's for Valentine's Day I haven't posted about, St. Patrick's Day garland seen here and made more awesome here, Halloween costumes , and so much more! There's actually a couple more counted cross stitch items I need to add to The List .

But there's just so many awesome things to do, you know? And sometimes hand quilting can get SO boring and I need to change it up a little.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is this: I've been side tracked.

Again.

But it's for a good reason! I swear!

Here's how it all started. I saw on Facebook that one of my favorite quilt stores, The Wild Rose Quilt Shop, needed help with some counted cross stitch samples. They are opening up a little sister store in one of the cruise ports in Alaska this summer and, among other things, will be selling Alaskan themed ornaments.

Hello?!?! How could I say no to that request? I like love counted cross stitching and I'm really good at it. So, for the last two weeks, I have been busting these bad boys out every couple of nights.

I have liked working on them since they aren't my usual subject matter. They are really small (stitched on 22 count Aida cloth) and go really fast.

I hope to have all of them stitched by next week and can spend next weekend framing them.

What are you working on these days?

Back to the Lottery!

Now that I have completed the projects I wanted to for the baby-or at least to the point of sending them off to be quilted-I am back to the lottery projects! You can see them all here, here and here.

WooHoo!

For those who are wondering, there is a tab on the website labeled, "The List." Very creative, I know. But it's the list I use to keep track of what's in the lottery. When I am ready to pick a new project, I use a random number generator found on the internet and that picks my next project from the lottery.

Anyway, the next project is.....

Another quilt!

I can't believe it; it's not that I don't like making them but it feels like I have made quite a few since the beginning of the year.

 I just went and looked through my posts since January and I really haven't made that many. I guess I was kind of hoping for something that didn't require me to stand at my cutting table for long stretches of time. I suppose that's the dark side of my lottery system-I don't always get what I want. 

Luckily, it is another jelly roll quilt-I love them so much-but it is my last one....until I buy another one!

It is for one of my sweet nieces and it should go pretty fast. Nothing super complicated-all straight seams and easy cuts. 

Here's the material I will be working with this time:

Happy fabrics for the happiest two-year-old I know!

I'll keep you posted and let's hope for smooth sailing!

Beginnings!

Hi there!

So what's this blog about? Well, it's a couple of things but to explain it I have to give you a little background about myself.

My name is Kate and I'm a married stay-at-home-mom (like 98% of all other bloggers out there it seems!). Before marriage and children there was sewing. I've been sewing in one shape or another since before the age of 10. My first and greatest love is counted cross stitch. I've made countless cross stitch projects: from Christmas ornaments and stockings, to samplers I made in my teens that still hang in my mom's kitchen, to landscape scenes. I love it. I always have a cross stitch project going, usually more than one, and many more on deck.

About seven years ago I lived across the street from a quilt shop. I lived about 30 minutes from work and didn't know anybody in this small town so I thought I would take a beginners quilting class. We made a table runner. Did I mention I didn't own a sewing machine at the time? I didn't? Well, I made the runner by hand. Thankfully my parents bought me a sewing machine the following Christmas and I've never looked back. I've made quilts for children, wall hangings, quilts for dollies and queen sized quilts.

In the last year or so I've tried my hand at other sewing crafts such as this and this They both came out really well, in my humble opinion. Here's how they looked when I was done:

I also knit and crochet but other than scarves and lap blankets I've never gotten into either one of those sewing arts.

So why all the background info? Well, over the years I've accumulated many things-quilt kits, cross stitch kits, and patterns that will all be done "someday." Plus many, many, MANY, projects that have been started and never completed. Now with Pinterest there are SO many other ideas that are just begging me to complete as well. That table runner I made in the quilting class, I never finished it!

So my mom was visiting this past June and we were going through all of the projects and I was telling her I was feeling overwhelmed with what to do next. She suggested, in her infinte wisdom, that I assign every project a number and then draw a number and that's the project I do next. I thought I would chronicle this journey in blog form-because my mom, sister and the three other random people on the internet might enjoy reading about this. There's no real deadline a la Julie and Julia, but ideally I would like to complete a project a month (hahahahahahaha!).

On top of all of the sewing projects there are quite a few crafting projects I have my heart set on doing. Most of these involve painting small pieces of furniture, like shelves and whatnot, to the insane idea of repainting and re-tiling my kitchen table (more on that later).

In addition to these many projects I have planned I have a family and home to care for and a giant garden that has to be maintained or we will quickly be overrun with blackberry bushes and trailing buttercups. I shudder to think what would happen if we gave up on it for more than a few weeks: we'd probably machete our way out. But I digress......


Right now I am in the midst of an ancient looking map of the world counted cross stitch. My goal is to work on that while I get this blog up and running and in the next few posts give some general information about what I will be working on for the foreseeable future. Here's where I am on that front:

You can find it here, if you are interested in working on it yourself.


For now I have listed all of projects and put them in a jar to be picked from but I think I need a bigger jar - if only to get my hand in and not just pick from the top. Once I finish this map, I'll let the lottery decide my next assignment!