It's Saturday!!

It is Saturday and one day closer to the celebration of the 30th anniversary of my 21st birthday, occurring tomorrow. I was hoping to be celebrating all weekend but that is just not going to happen. *sigh* I hope my family at least remembers. I have to say it's not looking too good though. I will be going out today to do my own shopping as DH already told me he doesn't have anything for me. I know you guys are shocked by that, right? I was kind of bad already though. I ordered some Martinique from The Fat Quarter Shop yesterday. Well, with the code it *was* 40% off so you can hardly blame a girl right? OK, enough wining, moving on.

I went and weighed in and lost another 0.8 pounds officially making it 40 pounds of fat gone from my body!! Then to the gym for the killer Body Vive class. Showered and ready to attack the day.

I thought I would trace the things I wanted to have ready for quilting next week. I use my light box and this super wonderful silver pencil my BFF PTM gave me and here is how it turned out.

I did this little girl for me to work on to go with the boy I already have done. There are 9 of them all together. Isn't she adorable? I think I am going to do her hair black and make the dots on her dress red. What color for the kitty? Maybe gray.
Any thoughts?

I traced this horse for Ali just in case she is at quilting this week. I hope she likes it!
You remember me telling you about my label idea, using my stamp and a stamp pad, right? While I did find some suitable label tape at JAF it was kind of expensive. A very nice man from Twilltape.com saw my post and sent me a link to his company's website and let me tell you, amazing!!! I will be placing an order with them very soon. I can get what I want at one fourth the cost! They even make it in colors. How fun is that? Thanks, John!! Go check it out and tell him Mama Spark sent you!!!

Ok, I am going to get going and run to the local Bernina dealership for a knee lifter. I have no idea where mine went and I really want to use it. I hope you all find a way to enjoy your day today too!!

Label Making and newest Embroidery

Hey there, want to here a funny story? OK, well, this morning I was all dressed and ready for work. I went downstairs and was getting ready to go when I put my hands on my hips. Not in an angry way but with my fingers facing my back, when I felt something *odd*. It was kind of crusty and I wondered what I had gotten on myself. Quick trip to the potty to take a look ... and EWWWW. The top of my my pants were covered in CAT BARF!!! GROSSSSS. *SIGH* I guess that happens when you leave your pants lying around (on the divan next to the bed) and you have 5 cats that make it their mission to sleep all over any piece of your clothing that touches a horizontal surface. Quick change into new pants and off to work, whew, crisis avoided!

On to some fun stuff. A little while ago I bought some custom made labels with my name and a small logo on them. It was a twill tape and said "Mama Spark's Quilts" followed by a wee kitty that I designed. I have only used them once so far and they were a little expensive but I love using them on certain projects when I don't want a huge ole label. There has to be a better way, right? So I went online in search of a custom rubber stamp. I found a fantastic place and sent in what I thought I wanted. Here is what I got back. The stamp is about 3" so the tape will be about an inch and a half when folded over and inserted into the binding.

I have some fabric ink stamp pads from Versa Craft that I have used with the stone stamp my friend Yuki made for me. She is the first one to give me the fabric ink pads too. I have looked and found some bigger pads and will be ordering them in several colors to use. The wee kitty has a heart on it's chest so I may have to try to figure out how to make that part red. I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to do that and I have some red pads already. I am going to purchase my own twill tape and make my own labels! Brilliant, right? I'll keep you posted. The online site I ordered from was fabulous to work with and the cost was very reasonable.

Last night was the CAQG meeting. I love the Wednesday night quilters! One of the ladies brought her DGD along. She and her folks have moved back to MI from Las Vegas. Papa lost his job so they moved back home and literally back to her home too. She and her DGD seem to be adjusting. Her DGD is such a sweetie. She sat next to me all night while I worked on my embroidery. I was showing her how to do what I was doing and I had her choose the colors of the clothes for me. Please realize that my stitching is far from perfect but I am happy with how it came out. I will be tracing the next one tonight (I hope). I asked DGD if she would like to try one and she likes horses, so I have a horse to trace for her tonight too. This is what my little boy turned out like.

I know, I was supposed to show you when it was "in progress" but DD1 borrowed my transfer cord and did not return it to me until this am, ARGH!! Anyway he is finished now. The next one will be a little girl.

We are getting ready for some severe thunderstorms. Can't wait!! It's almost time to go home and then to the gym and then to my tracing!!

More on the Weekend

It was a wonderful weekend. I hope you all had a fantastic holiday (if you are in the US). Mine was full of friends and family and lots of great food too. Before the weekend though I had something to share but just didn't have the time to get to it. Do you remember that my friend PTM did some stitching for Anne Sutton at Bunny Hill Designs. In fact the embroidery on the front of one of her patterns is by PTM, it even says so on the pattern!! Isn't that exciting?

(Photo from Bunny Hill's website)
So Anne sent a beautiful stack of FQs to PTM and guess what? Because I introduced them she sent one along for me too!! It is Maison De Garance by the French General and here it is

I was so surprised and excited that Anne was so thoughtful.

PTM brought her granddaughter over to see our newly hatched ducklings and she just loved them. She looked at me and asked me, "Is it a real duck?" LOL too cute!

I just love this second picture!
I managed to sneak away for a short time and finish another Tisket block too.

Please excuse the unpressed version!
My SIL and nephew came over for dinner last night and I managed to snap a couple of pics of my DH and his sis along with my DN and DD2.

I also began another embroidery but I'm not too certain about it. I will try to remember to snap a picture of it tonight, I'm not thrilled with the mouth but maybe you can tell me what you think. As part of the whole process pledge you will see it now and again once it is done. I am going to do several and put them into a baby quilt for a friend, so I need to know if it looks ok.

Try to stay cool it is supposed to "feel" like 100 degrees F here today. Thank goodness for A/C!!

Those Rich Old White Guys

Take a minute and listen to this. It tells of the trails the signers had to endure for daring to sign the declaration of independence. I am so grateful! They were true public servants. Our current public servants have a long way to go to equal this kind of sacrifice.

Picnic at the Farm

I hope everyone in the US found a way to celebrate our Independence today! Remember to thank a service man or woman for all that they have done to ensure our freedom too. We got to do BOTH of those things yesterday. We went to a picnic at the farm of LTW. Believe it or not I did not take a single photo either so this will not be too long and boring. We had 4 new chicks to bring to the farm and they were so little compared to the last group we left there. Megatron and co have grown so much! They were sad to see their "mommy" (DD1) leave too.

LTW's housemate has a son that was home from his post in Korea so they decided to have a BIG party! It was pretty awesome. I made some fruit kabobs (usually a hit), we brought some sausages, cupcakes and some diet Coke. We got there about an hour after the party had begun and lets just say, if anyone went home hungry it was their own fault! What a spread. It was an enjoyable afternoon with good food, good friends and my family. My DS even tagged along!

Then we came home and DD1's friends had gone out and bought some fireworks which might or might not have been legal in MI. DD1 had told all the neighbors ahead of time so we had quite a crowd watching. We used to do this when my kids were little too. It was a really nice way to top off the wonderful day. The best part of the night? You know those enormous bottles you can get? (we use ours for spare change) We were using it for launching the fireworks off in the street. A car was coming and we told DD and her friend E to move the stuff and E runs over to the bottle and kicks it sending it scudding across the street and breaking into a million pieces!!! I need to go out and see what we need to clean up this morning. I was cleaning the kitchen first, now on to laundry then the street.

I was visiting my friend Annemiek's blog and she had posted this fromo You Tube and I thought you might enjoy it too. Since LTW is my LAQ : Here's to you LTW!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!!

Vote for EL, er, I mean Mama Spark (my Quilt that is)

Yep the time is finally here when you can go and vote in the McCall's program. I have put the widget in my sidebar so you should be able to click on it and go right to my quilt. If any of you try it can you let me know if it works? I would appreciate it if you would spread the word for me and have people you know go and vote too.

Thanks everyone and have a great day. I have some more to post about but first off to the gym!!

OK, OK, thanks everyone that has taken time to vote. I just found out you can vote once a day for the next month. Contest closes on the 3rd of August, so if you happen to think about it I sure would appreciate your help!

XOP

Much to Share

On Tuesday my DD and I were rolling up to our usual parking spot in the parking structure and she yells out, "STOP the car!!" and I thought she was going to be ill. Instead she leaped out and ran to the half wall. I parked and went to where she was and this is what she spied,

A Dobson Fly. It had huge pincers and ginormous wings. The creepiest part? When I walked up, it turned it's huge head and LOOKED AT ME!!! EW! So of course she had to catch it and bring it into the lab to show everyone. We dropped it off with DD2 (the fishery and wildlife dd) at her work, since we drive right by it every day on the way home. Apparently, these males of the species mature, and have 3 days to mate and then they die. They don't even eat during that time! We were going to let it go and hope the poor guy got a chance to mate before he died. What's up with creep bugs this year??

OK, on to better things, or at least quilty things! Last night at quilting, one of the women that comes sometimes brought a raffle quilt that had been quilted by a local LAQ. The quilting was done poorly and since she had pieced the top, she was going to rip all the old quilting out and have it re-quilted (hopefully much nicer). Everyone dropped what they were doing to help. We were laughing that we all thought we would be involves in a quilting bee someday but NONE of us thought we would be involved in an *UN*-quilting bee! I laughed so hard but managed to snap this pic of everyone.


Remember that block that I was whining about the other day? I just decided it was NOT worth the time and effort to make it work and decided to make it into a lone star type of block. Here is what I have done so far.

I am much happier and have decided to make my second block a Halloween themed one. More on that later though.

I managed to get one more Tisket A Tasket block finished last night too so here is the July one.

Appropriate for the Fourth of July right??

I am going to head out soon for the day then off to the gym and hopefully some sewing too.

Giveaway

Tasha, over at A Little Sweetness, is having a giveaway of some of her gorgeous, self designed fabric. You should go and have a look, her fabric is so sweet. She also has a shop so take a minute and visit there too. Tell her Mama Spark sent you!

I have a question, have any of you used a pattern only to find out that it isn't correct? I saw a block that I wanted to make. I saw a pattern for the block recently so I bought it. Last night I took the pattern out and read it. Templates, huh? Well, I guess I can try that. I read their directions on making the templates, translated the squares and rectangles into rotary cutting and made templates for the things I couldn't easily figure out how to rotary cut. Basically it is half of a lone star in a basket. Imagine my surprise when I went to read the "how to put the block together" section and it basically said, breaking this into units will make it easier, look at the graph lines and refer to the general instructions if you have any questions. Ok, I still had some questions, but the general instructions were basic sewing instructions, not really any info on how to put the diamonds together or do the MANY set in seams.

I've done set in seams so I will refresh myself and figure that out, but needed to tackle the 4 diamonds making up the big diamond of the star. Man o man, I have never ripped out so many seams in such a small project in my life!!! After a LOT of trial and error I managed to get the diamonds made into 4 bigger ones and those put together. Whew. It was only midnight at this point. I'll just lay out the block and take a look at how it will be when done, right? BIG mistake. All the setting pieces were not the correct sizes either. I could NOT deal with that at that time of night, so I went to bed. Tossed and turned until about 2:30am. UGH, got up at 5 and went to the gym and came home.

I'll just lay it out and take a photo to show you all what I am talking about. OMG!!! The basket pieces are not the right size either!!! I can't stand it. I was so disgusted I just went to work. So sorry, no photos for you today. I am going to have to play around with it to get it together. This is a block for charity and I just want to throw it in the garbage!!! BUT...I do like how the half of my star came out. I suppose I could just do another half of the star and forget the basket.
I promise I will take some pictures when I get home and share with you all.

Thanks, for listening. Oh and BTW, thanks for all the prayers too. BFF's daughter is doing ok, I don't have any more info than that but I suspect this is for the moment. Keep up the good work!!

Need Prayers

I can't say too much at the moment but a really dear friend of mine is dealing with a life and death crisis that will, in all likelyhood, come to a head tomorrow. Please, if you have a minute offer up a prayer for her and her family for a positive outcome. Life and death are in God's hands and prayer is so powerful. I appreciate any prayers you can offer up!

Shipshewana Shop Hop Part 2

Now where was I? Oh yes, after lunch we headed into Shipshewana. First stop was E & S Sales. Have you ever been there? It's a great bulk food shop. There is this wonderful chicken stock (in granular form) that I would be LOST without! I use the heck out of it and Shipshewana is the only place I can find it. I think they must put some kind of drug in the stuff that keeps you coming back for more. It is seriously that good! I had a list from my DH of everything I needed to bring home. LTW and PTM picked up some bulk goodness too. Next stop was Yoder's meat and cheese shop. Came home with some bacon and this wonderful dried beef lunch meat and a package of cheese curds. Love Yoder's! We even brought coolers so we could bring home the perishables. Now that we had our foodstuffs it was time to hit the other quilt shops.

First we went to little bit of Lolly's. I actually bought a few things there. See the light green with the cream print on it? That's for a skirt.

After we were done in there we headed upstairs to Lolly's.

Here are the girls getting ready to shop!! Me?? I bought one yard of this, that's it!

I did have a list with me but only found a few things that were on it. This was one of the things, so that made me happy. This quilt was hanging in Lolly's.

It was spectacular but they did an overall stipple rather than more detailed quilting. I found that a little disappointing.
We headed up to Vintage Home (I love that shop too). Love all the Fiesta Ware.

I was in Fiesta heaven, I tell ya!


I just *had* to have these 2 heart shaped ones in aqua and red. Adorable! I also bought a few dish towels. Next stop Jo-Jo's pretzels, love em' and so did the girls.

Just look at the smile on LTW!! It was awesome! The next to the last stop was Yoder's department store. I had to run into the general store to get some half gallon Ball jars for DH (he had a list too!). I ran those out to the car and then joined PTM and LTW in the fabric part of the store. This is inside the store.

These are the things I bought.

That nursery print was done up in an adorable pattern, which PTM bought so we can do one together. Then I found this fabric. It kind of reminds me of the Liberty of London fabric so I bought a little bit of some of the different ones they had.

Last stop was the Bernina shop. I happened to find a foot I was looking for at half price! (Turns out it is the same foot my DH had bought me for Christmas!!). Anyone out there need a number 13 Bernina foot? I have one to sell.

After that we headed home. I don't think we could have fit another thing in the car! We drove to LTW's farm, had some food (left over from our awesome lunch) and I drove PTM and myself home. I got home around 11pm. It was a LONG but wonderful trip. Thanks, ladies, I can't remember the last time I had so much fun!!

Shipshewana Shop Hop Part 1

I have so much to share I just know it is going to take more than one post. I hope you are ready for the ride! Just know that only some of the pics will be blogged about and *many* more are over at my Flickr account (click on the sidebar link to view). Ok, with that disclaimer here goes.

I picked PTM up around 7am and we drove to the farm to get LTW, who was driving. Now you have to know about PTM, she is a wonderful friend and I love her to death. She always has the perfect little touches to everything she does. I feel blessed to have her as my friend. She brought each of us our own bag so as we got our *treasures* we could put them into our own bag and then when we got home we could pick up our own bag and have our stuff. Hers was pink with black polka dots, LTW's had chickens on it (of course it did) and mine, what else? Cats of course!

Adorable,right? Ittook us quite some time ~2.5 hours) to arrive at our first shop and it happened to be the littlest one too. It was called Homespun Treasures. I was so excited I could barely stand it. Here are "the girls" before we went in. And a peek inside the shop too.

I didn't buy anything here but LTW found some cute dinosaur fabric. Back to the car and now I was driving and LTW was navigating. Buckle up gals and let's hit the road! Next stop, Caroline's Cottage in Rome City. What a cute shop with very nice owners too. The drive to this shop took us by a beautiful lake (but I didn't get any photos as I was the driver)

A very quaint shop. Here is LTW and me on their front porch. They had some really nice red and white fabric that had to come home with me.

Ok ladies, pack it in and let;s go to Emmatown Fabrics. While this shop didn't have a lot of anything any of us found useful (I do think PTM got some blues for her snowman quilt though) there was a funny thing that happened when we pulled up to park.
As you can see from the photo the only parking is in the front of the shop.

Of course on shop hop day it was full. So I waited for a spot to open up. *Finally* someone pulled out and we zipped in. The person right next to us was pulling out and someone was sitting in the spot we had just left, waiting to be able to pull into the spot that was vacating. Didn't quite happen the way they thought. The person pulled out and some little old lady zipped right in taking it from the people that had been patietntly stalking waiting for said spot! She was not even aware that she had taken anyone else's spot either. There seemed to be a lot of folks not paying attention to things that day. Several times we had to say "excuse me" to get someone to move that was blocking an entryway when if they were paying attention they would not have positioned themselves in the way in the first place. But I digress!

We loaded ourselves up and headed off to The Quilt Shop at Essenhaus next. This shop was inside a cute little gift shop. Just look at that adorable window dressing!

We happened to see these adorable guys all over the place!

This is what we saw as we walked up to the shop

They had a really nice selection and variety of fabric with a few really different lines of patterns. Here is what I brought home with me

I love that "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" but will probably use some more contemporary colors, and that aqua? I am going to try my hand at making the skirt I have listed in the tutorial on my side bar. I will use some other fabric the first time but don't you think this will be a cute skirt??
We decided to stop and eat lunch at this point and you will never guess what? PTM brought the most magnificent spread for us! We had decided to bring our food so that we could eat whenever we wanted to and no lines. PTM sure knows how to do it right!
You will not even believe it but there just happened to be a picnic table here so this is where we ate.

It is difficult to see but here was our lunch:
Salmon, chicken and egg salads, cheese, deviled eggs, veggies, grapes, fresh pineapple, watermelon, pickles, condiments, chips and of course Diet Coke! What can I say? These 2 are the BEST!!

I will leave you mid way through the day so I can go and clean lettuce for the salad I am bringing to the baby shower I have to go to today. More on that later too. I am wanting to have a little sewing time before I go also, since I spent about 4 hours gardening yesterday and was too tired to do any sewing yesterday. More later!

The Chenille Blanket

My good friend PTM, talked me into trying to make a chenille blanket for a gift. She even donated the fabric so I laid it out and promptly forgot about it until this Wed. So at quilting on Wed night she promised to help me with it. I ironed all the flannel, and then we layered it. First a cotton for the back, right side down, followed by 4 layers of flannel. Then the darned thing needs to be basted. Yeah, not so much. My hands just don't like doing all that work. (Sheesh, can't LTW just sew it on the big machine for me?) Anyway, being the good sport she always is PTW did the basting for me. We basted with the flannel side down but changed it later. Here she is, isn't she so cute??

Then came the marking and sewing. What?? I have to mark all the diagonal lines and then I can sew? You have got to be kidding me! Instead we put tape diagonally from one corner to the other one and I took that to the sewing machine and sewed along the edge. I used my walking foot with that weird little guide bar thingy. Ever used one? Well, it saved me having to mark the whole quilt!! Of course just before I am ready to sew my light bulb burned out. Good grief, what else is going to go wrong? Anyway, I lined up the bar on the last line I had sewn and then sewed like mad in a parallel diagonal line. I got a little over half way done in the time we had, not too bad. I am in a little bit of a time crunch so I had to decide what to do about that. This is what the diagonal line sewing looked like on the top and the bottom.

You can even see the orange basting thread if you look closely.

I decided to take half a day off work today and went over to PTM's to finish the blanket. I really didn't leave work until around 1:30 so not truly a half a day off but whatever. I dropped DD1 at home, packed my bag up, packed my gym bag too so we could go exercise after we were done and headed over to PTM's house. What got left at home you ask? Why my camera of course so no more pics today of the blanket. I did finish all the sewing. Then I had to cut through the top 3 layers of the flannel, down the center of the "channel" I made when sewing my half inch diagonal lines. I was sweating that a little, I didn't want to cut through the wrong layer. I did just fine. Then we had to square it up, not too bad, and make binding for it. I made the binding, PTM pressed it and sewed it to the "fluffy-ish" side. She is going to hand stitch it down for me too (my hands just can't take it)

Next it was off to the gym. We worked out for an hour and then went our separate ways to get ready for our road trip tomorrow. I am going on the Shipshewana Shop Hop with LTW and PTM. We thought 2 of our other friends might be joining us but one had her father pass away and the other one had something come up (she just called me). LTW is supplying the car and PTM is packing the food, I have the drinks, directions, and driving. Don't worry, we've got this! I have the BEST friends EVER!!!

One last thing before I go and finish getting my things together, I assume most of you know Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts? Well, she is going to be in Grand Rapids, MI at the end of July. Read about why she will be in GR here) I grew up in GR and that's where my dad and sister live, so guess who is going to GR at the end of the month? Yep, MEEEEE!!!!!Not only will I get to meet Amanda Jean, I will get to spend time with my dad on his 84th birthday. Life is GOOD to this quiltin' mama. I promise I will take lots of pictures to share the day of shop hop fun tomorrow, but I will probably post on Sat as I anticipate a very late return tomorrow night (3 hour drive both ways). So one more sleep and then the fun begins!!!

Beautiful new fabric

I ordered some fabric from Sew Dearly Loved and it arrived the other day. It is so adorable. I am in love! Without further ado here is the fabric.

Here are some close ups:


Ok how do you keep all that cuteness contained? You can't. Enjoy the adorableness of this!! I know I am. Oh and if you *need* some of this cuteness too, go here and order some for yourself!