Been away far too long!

Friends,

It has been far to long since I posted last!  Life gets in the way of all things good, but unfortunately it also pays the bills.

So, what have I been up to for the last 6 months?  Yes, it has been 6 months since my last post (sounds like a confession) but lets move on.....

Last post was the end of September.  Since then we have had: Veterans Day, Halloween,
Quilt Camp, Thanksgiving, my daughters birthday, Christmas, New Years, my husbands birthday, the annual craft show, Valentines Day, our 32nd wedding anniversary, I lost 40 pounds and daylights savings starts next week!

All that while working a 40 hour a week job driving a school bus!

Well, I wish it was that fun, but we all know its not, but I can dream.  LOL

So what have I been working on?  In my head, lots and lots, what I have actually done, not so much.

I finished my husbands Christmas/Birthday Quilt. I had been promising him a quilt for years, and I finally made him one.  My friend, Karen Walker, did the quilting.

 

I bought a new ruler that is supposed to be an easy way to make a pineapple block.  I was easy, but the fabric that I choose, well, wasn't the best choice for a quilt. This took a weekend to complete and when it was done, I put it on the wall and went.... Oh S#$(%&##!  AGG, what was I thinking?  Well, we all have monumental failures in our quilting life, I just never expected it would have been this one!  This was a jelly roll from RJR, don't remember the name, but it has birds and butterflies and bird houses in several different colors.... ok, so not all jelly rolls play well with themselves, this one sure didn't!

 

Onward and upward:
I did make the center to Quilt in a Day's "Case of the Lost Quilt" Mystery, AKA: All Star Quilts
I think I will put a border on this and call it good.  The center took me 6 hours to do as I had to rip and resew each piece to get them to line up.  The center fabric is also one of the colors of the outer border, but they really don't go when you look at them from far away, so I will try again... someday.

Made a runner, place mats and napkins for Christmas and a hot pad on the fly.

and made two charity strip quilts:  

but this is what they did to my machine:

I have decided that it is time to upgrade my quilting machine from a mid arm to a long arm.  These things cost as much as a luxury car!  I really don't see the need to have them that expensive, but it is what it is.  I have my eyes on a Handy Quilter with frames, only cost me about 9 grand and then I want software so it will stitch by itself... well, people in hexxxxx want ice water too!  So I have started a couple of things.  I will be selling a line of quilting patterns on Craftsy, my first post is how to make the Magic 8, its free, kinda a test pattern/ instruction sheet.  It is something that I will refer to with most of my patterns, so instead of taking up precious space in a pattern over and over again, it is here for free.  I will be putting one up for mitered corners next week and then my 1st real pattern will go up.  It is at the proof reader right now, so hopefully everything is fine and I can get it up and ready for sale soon.

It is called Blue Skies.  It was originally written as a 9 part mystery quilt for beginners and I have total redone the directions and updated some of the techniques.  It is now 5 pages, designed for the advanced beginner, set on point with mitered borders.   This is the quilt that makes me want a long arm machine because of all of the open space in the borders that was designed to be quilted.  It currently isn't quilted, but I am working on that issue.  It is quilted in my head, now to get it onto the fabric!

I hope to get back to farming this summer when I can spend more than just a couple of hours at a time doing it. 

Till then, spread the word, oh and also tell your friends that I have a Go Fund Me account to help raise funds for my quilting machine.  Any contributions would be appreciated and if you have been following my blog, that would be a great way to say HI!  I read and follow you!!  Please spread the word, its time to get some followers so I can get this off the ground, but I need your help to do it!

Happy Farming and Quilting!

Susan