ambitious

Yesterday Joe and Noah went to do Christmas with his grandparents but I stayed home (sick!) to go to the doctor and "relax".

However, I can not sit still, so I got to work piecing a baby quilt top for an old friend (who is having her baby AS I TYPE THIS!). Once it was pieced, I though "why not baste it?" and then once it was basted I thought "might as well quilt it!" and before I knew it, the binding was on it and I was hand-stitching it on the back while watching "Lost" reruns at 1am.

I did eventually go to sleep.

I tried two new things with this quilt- Kona coal for the solid squares and binding (which it seems I am the last to discover, but seriously? It looks GREAT with anything!) and straight line diagonal quilting (which Jessica did on a table runner the other day and, holy crap- it was cute AND fast!). I'll only show a bit of this right now, since it hasn't been gifted yet.

Oh, and that Christmas quilt is finally finished and has been used for ample snuggling in the past week.

So this is new...

I got a job.

"Oh, you were looking for a job? How exciting!"

No, I was not looking, that's the weird part!
A principal (who, interestingly enough, interviewed me 3 years ago! I guess I made an impression- then again, it could have been my hair... it's hard to miss.) called me and asked me to come interview (I said "Let me talk with my husband to see if we're interested and call you back" and then the husband says "YES YOU ARE INTERESTED IN A JOB!"). I interviewed at 9am Wednesday morning and they called me at 11am asking me to come to the district office the following morning to fill out paperwork.

Not sure yet how I feel about going back to work (probably because it wasn't my idea- ha!), but I do think it will be great once I get used to it. The job is only until May and I can re-evaluate then to see if I even want to continue teaching full-time (and see if they'll offer this position to me on a contract!).

So the sewing (and posting) will probably slow down (can you imagine? Even slower than now!), but I will post soon about all of the gifts I've been busy making/embroidering/wrapping/hiding from Joe! :)

what do Santa's elves do late at night?

make big crayons for little hands.

tricks up my sleeve

In the short time that I've been quilting (and more importantly, reading quilting blogs), I have learned a few tricks that have help make the binding process easy. So easy, in fact, that tonight I realized that this just may be my favorite part of making a quilt!

Trick #1

(are you tired of looking at this stupid quilt yet? I sure am!)

Serge the quilt sandwich before binding- genius!

I can't rember where I read this first (Cluck Cluck Sew, maybe?) but it's so smart!

I have a tendency to leave much more than the recommended 2-3" of batting and backing on while I'm quilting a sandwich and it was always sort of a pain to lay it out and trim all that when I was done quilting (oh, and it made me nervous that I was somehow going to cut my quilt in half. No really, I'm a spaz like that.).

Serging the edges kills two birds with one stone- it cuts off all the excess batting/backing AND holds the edges together so neatly for you to sew your binding on!

See? The 6.5% of myself that is a perfectionist loves that.

I almost don't want to bind it.

Almost.

Trick #2:

(source: Know What I Love?)

The second trick I got from Know What I Love? who said she got the idea from The Sometimes Crafter (I couldn't find her mention of it though!). When I iron the binding in half, I roll it up as I go. When I'm finished and the binding is ready to go, I slip a measuring tape (oh so stylish!) through the center and there you have it- a way to keep your binding on hand without it all strewn about!

Tomorrow night will be a rarity: Joe and I have NOTHING planned (the only night from December 5th until December 22nd where that is the case!), so we're going to make fish and chips, turn on the fire and watch a movie while I bind my quilt! Fun!

dipping my toe in free-motion quilting

the good,

(for me anyway)

... the bad,

(I didn't quilt low enough on the top row so there was random big puffy areas- therefore I did a tiny loop-de-loop across the seam)

.... and the GOOD LORD THAT'S UGLY!

Eh... It's a Christmas quilt. I'll only have to look at it one month out of the year. :)

This free-motion junk has a definite learning curve!

Quilters: What do you do when you have to let off the petal to reposition- how do you avoid the jerky, sharp motions that ruin your nice curves?

little bits of Christmas!

Char over at Crap I've Made is hosting a Nativity Parade- I don't have my "real" nativity yet, but after I took a picture of what we DO have, I went on a sort of rampage taking pictures of the Christmas stuff in our house- which I will now bored you with! :) Yay Christmas!

I bought this nativity piece in 2007 from an artist in York, SC. It's all one piece and has a cute little light that switches on under the star. It's not really my "Christmas style", persay, but I didn't have any sort of navtivity (or anything else Christmasy, for that matter) so I got it! I think it is so cute!

This sweet little crowd is currently residing in Noah's room for the Christmas season. We had a small light up tree in there to use as a night light, but it was too bright and he would stay awake at night to stare at it.... thus, it was replaced by these guys!

Here are a few shots of my favorite things around my house at the moment: