Tumbleweeds, Dragons and Seashells, Oh My

Sometimes I'm amazed but most of the time I'm just amused at how scattered and hectic my days end up.  This MUST be the reason my projects are so scattered as well.

Yippee!!  I think I've completed the required amount of a particular block for the Texas Tumbleweed quilt top designed by Bonnie Hunter......I think.....

But alas, I must have miscounted my pieces earlier.  I'm 8 blocks short!!!!  Back to chain piecing we go....

The fun part was being able to use a new toy that my friend Marianne gave me at Christmas.  This is so quick and fun to "cut" apart the long, long train of chain pieced block segments.

I've got my embroidery machine set up on a table to my left, so as I'm piecing, I'm embroidering too!  My grandson Liam keeps asking for me to make him something.  It really is more difficult to find things to make for little boys in comparison to little girls.  He has lots of little, itty, bitty toys and is always in need of a place to keep them sorted and ready to play.

I found this zippered ITH (in-the-hoop) Dragon bag at www.spunkystitches.com 

Thankfully, he LOVED IT!  It's about 10" wide and will hold a ton of dinosaurs.

I also used a free ITH design from www.kreativekiwi.com called Simply Shells to make two different colored sets of seashell coasters for gifts.

Not a bad display of accomplishments considering the scattered way in which they all were completed. :)

What have you been up to this week?

Until next time...

Back at Texas Tumbleweeds by Bonnie Hunter

My brain never sits still for a second, in other words, I can't focus on any one single thing for too long. haha

My embroidery machine continues to stay humming fairly non-stop these days as I work on some "just because" gifts and then of course Mother's Day isn't too far away.

I've been itching to do some quilt piecing.  I have a ton of WIP (work in process...or could even be work in pieces :) quilt tops.  All I had to do was go pull a plastic container of one of these projects and get to work.  The closest container and easiest to find contained the start of Bonnie Hunter's Texas Tumbleweeds from the workshop I attended back in October of 2017.

The pattern can be found in her book "MORE ADVENTURES WITH LEADERS AND ENDERS".

Texas Tumbleweeds looks like this (photo taken from her book)....

After looking through my container and figuring out where I had left off when hiding the container months ago, I realized I'm at the tedious stage of drawing center lines on the back of squares. Since I'm a Bonnie devotee I must make use of the "bonus" triangles that can be salvaged from the scraps which means marking the squares not once but twice!!

 

Bonnie has designed and now sells a special little ruler that allows you to make both lines quickly and gives you a common useable size "bonus triangle".  

Let the production line begin!.....

I've got to mark TONS of these little boogers! :)

The youngest daughter requested an Edgar Allen Poe pillow for her sofa.  Embroidery is complete...now to sew borders, back and finish the pillow sham.

Since she loves photography I decided to stitch this up as well and make her a set of sofa pillows....I put my hand in the photo just to show how large this stitched out.  I'm excited to make this one as well.

We've had a little snow every single day this week so I'm still waiting on warmer temperatures to head down into the basement sewing room and get a quilt top loaded on the longarm.

Hope you all have had a productive week!  Happy sewing and quilting (and embroidery)!  

Until next time....

Amanda's Bodybuilding Competition Results

Just a quick little blog post update on my daughter Amanda's bodybuilding competition.  This was her first one to compete in and my first one to ever attend.

She did well. I'm so proud of the hard work and dedication she put into this dream of hers.  The hours spent in the gym and the special diet....so much work!

We were able to keep the TEAM MANDA embroidered shirts a secret until we arrived at the venue.  As imagined, Amanda was thrilled to see us all decked out in her honor!

She won 1st Place in Debut, 1st Place in Novice and 2nd Place in Women's Open Physique...

Another competition she will be entering is at the end of this month.  Thankfully, the family can wear the same shirts and I can get back to other items of interest.  

If the weather will warm up just a little bit more I'll be able to go down in the basement and throw a quilt top on the longarm and brush the dust off my quilting skills. :)

I'll close today's post with some of the professional photos taken of Amanda last week.

Time to get back to sewing and quilting!  Have a great day!