No Things isn't really nothing, right?

Five months since I posted on this blog. Holy cow. Part of it is a shortage of time, part of it is because I have done nothing on the list. Let's see...

Thing 11. Sort, organize, label and back-up pictures on home PC -- I did sort, organize and label. I even bought a new external hard drive to back them up onto. A little bit of progress here... hoping to actually FINISH this one so I can cross it off the list already!

Thing 12: Make a Kat Quilt -- I found 2 patterns that I like a lot, but nothing that I LOVE yet. I'm planning to make my "Kat Quilt" to go on the bed in the guest room and hopefully decorate the room to match the quilt. I'm not rushing this one... if I'm going to take the time to make a queen size quilt, I want to be completely in love with the pattern. It'll happen... eventually. In the meantime, I have been doing some other sewing. Pictures of some of my recent projects are below.

Thing 14. Average 20 crunches/day for 30 days -- Ha! And that's all I have to say about that.

Thing 15. Make window treatments for master bathroom -- Not sure what possessed me to put this on the list in the first place. I have 2 windows in the bathroom over the tub and the wall certainly looks a bit empty. However, what kind of window treatments should go in a bathroom?? I have NO idea. I'm calling this one a challenge and leaving it on the list. Maybe I'll find something perfect for this in the same pattern book where I find the Kat Quilt. Maybe.

Thing 16. Update Jessica's baby book -- OK, so the kid will be 3 in June and still, the baby book is in the plastic wrapper it came in. Three months to do this before her 3rd birthday. I'll try. Hard. Really, I will.

In the meantime, here's some of the other stuff I've been doing. None of them were anywhere near The List but hey, I sure had fun working on this stuff while neglecting my 5 Things!

My brother and his wife bought a new house in September. I made this for them as a housewarming gift:


I've had this pattern for a long time. I downloaded the paper-piecing templates from a free website at least a year ago. Of course, I didn't download / print the full directions and when I tried to find them again, I couldn't. Oh well... wingin' it is what I do best! I've wanted to try paper-piecing (a quilting technique) for a while so decided to give it a shot on this wall hanging. I gave it to my friend Elissa for Hanukkah:

My friend Mel -- who is my partner is Sewing crime, and the only other person I know who has as much fabric as I do -- was the recipient of this one. It's pretty "folksy" and not really her style, but the "sew crazy" stuff and the antique sewing machine applique are so "us" so it had to be made. I thought about changing the colors to ones more her taste but we have a running joke about how I NEVER follow a pattern... so part of my gift to her was to make it EXACTLY the way the pattern showed it:

Of course, what are the holidays without gifts for your kid's teacher? My 5-year-old is in Kindergarten and her class' theme is "the busy bees." Mrs. J got this wall hanging for Christmas. Those bees are tiny wooden shapes (think of an egg sliced in half) and took longer to paint than the rest of the wall hanging took to make. Oh well... turned out pretty cute:

My friend Luanne has blessed my family with her friendship and kindness in many, many ways over the past year or so. She loves Disney as much as we do so this Mickey wall hanging was her Christmas gift. On the upper left hanger of the wall hanging, you can see a small Snowman Mickey pin. I used that pin as the inspiration to make up the rest of the pattern. Mickey himself is a hand-stitched felt applique. I love the little Mickey-head buttons and am quite impressed with myself for thinking to make "Mickey heads" on the black wooden hanger rod, too:

Here's a (badly lit) close-up:

Last but certainly not least is a quilt I made to auction off on yet another blog I started. Three blogs wasn't enough, you know. Of all the blogs I have, this new one, Angels for Ana, is by far the most important one to me. I don't have the picture of that quilt on the computer I'm using, so I hope you'll take a minute to click over and see it for yourself.

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So, there's my non-Things update. Hoping to get at least one of my 5 Things done soon, but hoping you'll agree that "no things" isn't really "nothing," right?

Thing 14 -- Do Over!

OK, I started out strong. Then I was weak. Then I was super-human for a few days to make up for the weakness and well.... then I just stopped. So, I'm going to start this one over again and this time, I'm going to keep track on paper of what I've done (or not done!). Thing 14 starts over today. Or maybe tomorrow....

Thing 14 -- Day 2

Day 1 -- 20 crunches (+ 5 peanut butter cookies)
Day 2 -- 30 crunches (+ 1 banana)

Average to date = 25 crunches/day -- ahead of plan!

Still no pain... maybe I'm doing them wrong?
Quite possible.

Maybe I should do more of them?
Not likely.

Two days done... so far, so good....

Finally, a Thing!

At (very) long last, I have started on Thing 14 -- Average 20 crunches/day for 30 days.

Last night, I did my first set of 20... 10 in the middle and 5 on each side. I'm feeling OK today, no pain. I'm happy about that but of course, also wondering if 20 crunches is enough, if I'm not feeling it at all today?

My husband tells me that the 5 peanut butter cookies I ate right after doing the 20 crunches (yes, I really ate 5 of them!) pretty much negates the value of the crunches. Party pooper!! I told him, though, that crunches or not, I was going to eat the 5 peanut butter cookies anyway so 4 crunches per cookie was still better than NO crunches per cookie, right??? He also tells me that you're not supposed to work the same muscle(s) on consecutive days... but I think that skipping a day and doing 40 every other day would throw me right off the track... remembering which day it is AND doing 40? Me thinks not....

So, I'll try to keep up with my 20, maybe even work up to 25 or 30, we'll see how it goes. At this point, I'm happy to have come within sight of one of my Things, so today, 20 is good enough for me!

Wish me (and my abs!) luck!

June & July Projects

No, nothing from the list... but I wanted to show y'all that I'm still alive and kicking, and at least doing something while ignoring everything on my list. (**sigh**)

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Rachel got a butterfly quilt a little while back, so this one is for Jessica. I purchased the fabric months ago with no plan in mind, and sort of made up the pattern as I went along.

Those green blobs are froggies!

This one was for a friend's new baby girl. The pattern is called "Posy" something or other, and it's from my favorite pattern book, "Creative Scraps: Quilting with Bits and Pieces." Of course, as is typical, I modified the pattern a little bit, but it still turned out OK. The colors look much nicer in person!
Not sure if you can tell from this picture, but the edge of the flower petals are "ragged" looking. That's intentional, it's supposed to look loved and worn.
This one was for my neighbor's new baby boy. I call it "A Star is Born" but it's really my own twist on a pattern called "Bundle Up Baby Girl," which is made with girly colors and flowers instead of stars. No, I don't usually follow the pattern. Ever. Not sure why the "ragged" looking ones are appealing to me so much lately, maybe because I'm feeling ragged most days?!? Anyway, this one is also intentionally "worn" looking, both on the stripes and the stars. Easiest quilt I've ever made, though, will be making lots more of these in the future, the possibilites are endless when you have a shape you like!

So, there's my "non-update," really. Maybe I'll surprise everyone someday and actually get back to the list! ;-)

Still not Thing 12

OK, this is STILL not Thing 12 (or Thing 11, Thing 14, Thing 15 or Thing 16). Oh well....

I just finished this quilt for my mom, a (belated) Mother's Day gift. I told her in advance her gift would be late, just wasn't expecting it to be quite this late. But, who better than your own mom to understand how kids + job don't always = time to quilt...

The pattern is a log cabin, and it's from my favorite quilting book, "Creative Scraps: Quilting with Bits and Pieces." The sample in the book is done in Christmas prints (reds, whites, greens and it's gorgeous), but I decided to give it a shot in non-holiday colors.

Mom's favorite colors are blue and yellow and of course, she loves flowers.

Close-up of one of the blocks. The quilt is 4 blocks wide & 5 blocks long, plus borders:

Close-up of the quilt tag, which I hand embroidered. Starting this year (2008), every quilt I make has an embroidered tag (for posterity -- ha!) and someplace on it, a ladybug. For this quilt, it's a little more obvious than on some of the other ones I've made. Yes, I blocked out Mom's last name and mine. (You can never be too safe, you know!)

Not Quite Thing 12

OK, so I've made very little progress on "the list." I'm a bit disappointed since some of them are just SO easy, what's my problem?!?!? Oh well... there's always tomorrow....

In the meantime, these aren't quite Thing 12: Make a Kat Quilt, but I've sure had a lot of fun with them and I wanted to share. In trying to figure out what Kat Quilt I wanted to make, I decided to try my hand at a few new patterns. I think they both came out great (if I do say so myself!) and they've helped build my confidence that I can make any Kat Quilt I choose, once I finally get around to choosing one from the gazillion "must have" patterns I've been looking at!

This first one, called "Mousekethanks," was for Luanne, who gave my family a very generous gift. Though this can't begin to show our full appreciation, it was my best attempt at combining my favorite hobby (quilting) with hers (Disney!). The pattern is a Double Irish Chain and it's available for free (along with tons of other great patterns) on the Quilter's Cache website.


Red, black and pink would not usually be my first choice quilt colors, but Mickey fabric isn't as easy to find as you might think and as it turns out, Luanne's home office is pink, so the quilt fits right in!

Might be hard to tell, but those are Mickey heads on the red fabric.

This next one was for my daughter, Rachel, who gets a bit frustrated at me when I spend so much time sewing and then ship all the quilts to other people. I found a set of 5 coordinating butterfly fabrics a while back and couldn't walk away from them. I had no specific intent in mind when I bought them, but when I came across this pattern, I knew the butterfly fabric would be perfect! I call this quilt "Butterfly Kisses" and the pattern is available in an amazing book called "Creative Scraps: Quilting with Bits and Pieces." If you quilt, you MUST own this book, it's awesome!

Hoping to have more "list-relevant" updates soon but hey, so long as I'm having fun doing something, that's all that matters, right?