Blogger Quilt Festival - Spring 2010

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good day. I'm a little late posting this...but I had to work today.

Amy is hosting the Spring 2010 Blogger Quilt Festival again this year. It was so much fun to participate before, that I had to participate again. I had a hard time deciding which quilt to chose to share with you.

But, my Woodland Bloom quilt won out in the end. I chose this one, not because it is the best work I've done this year. But because I actually finished it. I had started to make a quilt top over a year ago, and I hated it. So this January I decided to take that quilt top apart and change it. It is always a big decision to take something apart. I just didn't want it to sit forever, especially since I had spent a lot of money on the material. I also had the backing fabric and other yardage to finish it. So, I'm glad that I finished it. It is the largest quilt I've ever made on my own. It's a queen size quilt. I used my 25 year old sewing machine to quilt it. So, I kept the quilting simple. This quilt lives on my daughters bed. It is an everyday quilt. I has a beautiful flannel backing from the Woodland Bloom Collection. I hope you like how it turned out.

This is what it looked like before. It was pretty ugly.

Thanks to Amy for Organizing the quilt festival. It is a lot of work. But I'm so glad she does it.

Have fun looking at all the beautiful quilts.

Hugs

Ariane

Woodland Bloom Quilt finished!!!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good day. It was a little crazy around here today. But one good thing happened. I finished my Woodland Bloom Quilt. Now my daughter has a homemade quilt on her bed that fits. This is a queen size quilt. It is the largest quilt I have ever completed on my own. I quilted it using my old Betty sewing machine that is over 25 years old. So I kept the quilting simple. It is backed with flannel from the same collection. So it is very soft. I really love the way it turned out. I hope you like it. I know my daughter is very excited to finally have it on her bed. She says it brightens up her room.

I also received two pattern that I ordered. I love these patterns. I hope to get a chance to make one of these soon. Here they are:

On another note, we have been out of hot water for the last three days. On Wednesday, we noticed that we didn't have any hot water. So we called to have a technician come and look at it. On Thursday, the technician came and told me that we had a carbon monoxide leak from our natural gas hot water tank and that the gases were not venting outside but into our basement. He put a code violation on our tank and left saying it could not be in use.

I was quite concerned about this and had to have a contractor come in and look at getting the venting issue fixed. Then he told me that it could not be fixed because the tank was not properly installed in the first place and that the venting issue could not be resolved if the tank stayed in the same location.

The tank is in a crawl space and we could not fit any other kind of tank in that location that used natural gas. So now we had to decide to go to an electric tank and find a new location to put it. I had to get an electrician in to set up the hook-ups and the gas people to come and disconnect the old tank. The plumbers couldn't come today. They will be here tomorrow and hopefully can do the plumbing for the new location and set up the new tank.

I had to take care of all of this because my husband had to work. He just started a new position and could not take the days off to get this done. So, I end up having to look after this....and I have no idea what the heck I'm doing. It was kind of stressful. I was even more worried that we had a carbon monoxide leak and that we didn't know about it. We have a carbon monoxide detector in the hall outside our bedrooms. But not in the basement. I am definitely installing one now.

So, that's what I have been up to. I hope you all have carbon monoxide detectors in your homes or apartments. It would just be a shame to have something bad happen that could have been prevented by just having a detector in your home. Our home is 36 yrs old and we have been living here for just over 2 yrs. God was watching over us, and gave us a sign that something was wrong. So we were fortunate to be able to fix this problem before something bad happened. That's all for today!

Hugs

Ariane

Almost done quilting my Woodland Bloom Quilt

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a nice day. They weather was gorgeous here today. I did spend quite a bit of time outside. But, I also decided to do some quilting on the Woodland Bloom quilt I have been making for my daughters bed. I kept putting it off because it was so big and I was really nervous to quilt it. Then my newer sewing machine broke down. But today I decided to just do it with my old machine and that I would keep the quilting simple. I am almost done.  I just have to quilt the borders. I just ran out of thread. I will buy some tomorrow than try to have it done in the next few days. This quilt is going to be an everyday quilt. I have enough flannel that I used for the back to make two matching pillow cases. I am also going to make a few decorative pillows to match. This quilt is a large queen size quilt. I am glad that I decided to do it today. My daughters been asking me when I was going to finish it. It is almost done. Yeah!!!

I wish all of you a Happy Easter!

Hugs

Ariane

A great day and a redo

Hi Everyone! I had a wonderful day today.

I spent the day with my sister's family.

We all went skating on a pond at a local conservation area.

Then, we took a walk in the woods. It was nice and sunny and cold.

 But there was no wind. It was great to get some fresh air.

Then we all went back to my sister's house to have hot chocolate and some lunch.

My sister's husband loves to bake.

So he got the kids to help him make some old fashioned home made donuts.

Hmmmmm!!!! They were so good.

We also played some games with the kids.

 I really needed to have a fun day like that, with no pressure.

It was a lovely day.

(Above: This is my woodland bloom quilt top as of today.)

Tonight, I worked on one of my Woodland Bloom quilt.

 This is one of the UFO's I was commited to finish this year.

I had made a quilt top with this fabric last year and I hated it.

I just couldn't work on it to finish it. It wasn't well put together.

It was just a mess in my opinion. So last week I took it apart.

Tonight I worked on getting the center panel of the quilt done.

 So now I just have to figure out what kind of border to use.

This is going to be a queen size quilt.

 My daughter has a double bed in her room and I like the quilt to hang down low.

So I hope you like the changes.

I like it a lot better now and I can't wait to be done.

(Above: This is the before shot of my Woodland Bloom quilt. I hated this one.)

Thanks to all of you who sent me well wishes the last couple of days.

 I was feeling really down. But things were much better today.

I have three more days off work. Yeah!!

I will be spending some really nice time with the kids.

They were so great today. I got lots of hugs.

So I'm going to keep taking it easy and doing some sewing.

Just enjoying every day.

Hugs Ariane

Added a border

Hi! I hope everyone is well. Today has been a crazy busy day for me. It was my first day off and I had so much to do. I work shift work, and only get two weekends off in a six week rotation. They come back to back. So I work 4 weekends then get two weekends off in a row. Last weekend was my weekend off to spend time as a family. My husband and I only get the same weekend off once every six weeks. So last, weekend was our family weekend off to spend time together. This weekend it's just me and the kids. So, I got up early and cleaned my house with some help from the kids. We got that done before noon. I swear that's a record. The kids are getting better at helping out. Yes!!! Finally!!! Then I had a list of things that I had to do in town, so I enlisted me daughter to be my helper. The boys were not interested in coming. So I did all my running around and got back home around 2 pm. We put away the groceries, and such, then I made lunch. I wanted to make some cabbage rolls, so I put them together and threw them in the oven. I had promised the kids that we would go the YMCA. Yes, I made the New Years resolution to get back in shape. So we went and I worked out with my oldest son, while the other two kids played in the kids fitness area. Then we all went for a swim in the pool. It was quite nice. Then came home to get supper finished up. But after that workout and all the running around. I've run out of steam. Time to relax. Well, yesterday I worked on my daughters bright quilt. I had showed you the center panel in an earlier post. I have to make it bigger. My daughter has a double bed. I added a border to it. It still needs to get bigger. But I think I going in the right direction. She just loves how bright it is. I used one layer cake and a charm pack of MODA "Woodland Bloom" material. I also bought more fabric in the same collection to add to what I had. I have a lot of projects on the go. Eventually I'll get one done.

Ariane

A bright Log Cabin Panel

Today my sister and her family, as well as my brother and his girlfriend came over for a visit. We had lunch and spent the afternoon together. It was very nice to have them over, since they don't come very often. I was showing my sister some of the quilting projects I was working on. I took out some blocks that I had put together. I made them quite a while ago, but never sewed them together. After she left, I just couldn't put them away. I thought to myself....I should at least sew them together. Then I can figure out later what else to do with the quilt. It needs to be much bigger. So, I was thinking of maybe putting a few large borders on it. Maybe do some applique on one of the borders. It needs to eventually fit a double bed. So I will have to keep thinking about how to inlarge it. I really love the colors. It's very bright.