Beaded Christmas Ornaments

I have been busy making beaded Christmas ornaments for the kids on my school bus to put in their treat bags. Here are some that I have made so far.

More projects I did

Here is a few more blankets I made. I liked the nativity scene and figured it would be good to use during the Christmas season.

The other is a fleece baby blanket. I don't have a specific person in mind for this blanket, but eventually someone I know will have a baby and I will be ready with a gift!

Lap blankets for my husband

My husband is a huge Star Wars fan and when I found these two prints in fleece, I just knew I had to make him a couple of blankets.

Christmas presents I made for my grandkids

Here are three of the four items I made for my grandkids for Christmas. My grandson will get the fleece baby blanket and the fleece pillow. My granddaughter gets the teddy bear. I also made her a fleece John Deere jacket but I don't have a picture of that yet. I still need to sew on some elastic so she can button the jacket.

Here are some blankets I sewed recently

Not too long ago my son-in-law's cousins lost their home to a horrific fire. Everything was lost. I decided to help out by making some lap blankets for the couple's four children. I let them pick out which one they wanted as I sent them to them via my daughter. They loved them!

Hip Line Media Presents A Simple Quilt: DVD review

The last trip I made to Hancock Fabrics was a few weeks ago. I needed to pick up a couple of items, but as usual, I walked out spending about $140. One of the items I bought was a DVD from Hip Line Media.

Hip Line Media Presents A Simple Quilt is very good DVD for anyone who wants to learn how to make a quilt. It is almost like sitting in a classroom with a teacher teaching you what to do to get from the beginning to the end.

My best friend and I have watched it completely through once and halfway through a second time. We are taking notes so we understand each step a little better.

Susie Tilton is the host of this DVD. She is a professional designer and educator. She goes through each steps and makes it very easy to understand. She tells us exactly how much fabric is needed and how many colors.

She will show you which tools you need, how to cut the fabric pieces, and how to assemble each piece, including the batting and backing.

I personally could never get the hang of binding a quilt by reading all the "how to's" in magazines and books. The minute that Susie showed me how to do quilt binding on this DVD I understood it.

I highly recommend Hip Line Media DVDs to anyone who wants to learn anything about sewing and quilting. These DVDs are about $25, but well worth the money. You can learn to make pajamas, handbags, pants, home decor as well the quilt.

You can visit their website at www.hiplinemedia.com

If you use myLot, you might want to rethink it...

I have been a member of myLot for well over a year now. I was having a good time on there starting discussions and making friends. A little over a month ago, I suddenly couldn't log on anymore and several of my discussions disappeared right before the login issues began. I have contacted myLot about 5-8 times and have NEVER gotten a response back. I am still in the system and can pull myself up and see that over the past couple of weeks I have had comments, etc., but there is nothing I can do about it because I cannot login.

I am just forewarning you that the people at myLot are immature and refuse to answer any emails sent to them. I have finally sent one last one telling them if they don't answer this one and either help me get logged back in or tell me why I was blocked, that I would go into all of my many blogs and let people know exactly how they treat their members.

I did not even bother to wait for a reply since it has been over a month and I have never gotten any kind of reply so far. I am telling all of my friends that myLot is a rip off and needs to be avoided like the plague!

Scrapbook companies that don't have what I need

My husband, Tracy, is a truck driver. I drive a school bus. I am also a scrapbooker on top of all of my other hobbies.

I have been searching, and unsuccessfully I might add, for several years for templates, stickers, papers, etc. for trucks. Big trucks. Big rigs. Semis. Tractor trailers. Anything to do with the trucks that haul all of the goods we buy. But do you think that I can find anything? NO!! NADDA!! NOT A THING!! NOTHING!!

I can print out pictures, cut out pictures for magazines, etc., but I want embellishments! I want papers! I want stickers! I want templates! It would be a huge help to be able to create pages from my husband's travels. And in the area that I live in, there are A LOT of trucking companies. Wake up scrapbook companies and cater to the needs of the people!!

The Yo-Yo Quilts are now completed!

Woo Hoo!! I finally did it! I just finished my final Yo-Yo Quilt this afternoon! Yippee!! Now Christmas is complete for two people. That is a huge amount of work off of me for the moment.

I still have a ton of work to do, like getting my craft room finished up, making a baby blanket for the new baby (Hurry up Sept. 11 so I can hold my new grandson!!), and a quilt for my granddaughter. Yes, she has informed me that she has to have a quilt for her bed made by me. Go figure!! LOL

At least now my quilting won't take over the living room now because I am done with the hand sewing. Well, at least for the time being anyways. I plan on using the sewing machine for the rest of the quilts that need to be done.

Now, do I do the denim quilt or do I make Crazy Quilt? Hmmm...I have the needles and the thread for the denim, but I still need room to cut the jeans up. I also have a two totes full of scrap fabric that would be perfect for the Crazy Quilt. Hmmm...decisions, decisions, decisions!!!

Another quilt down, 1/2 of one to go.

I finished up one more Yo-Yo Quilt last week. I am halfway finished with the third quilt. Christmas is almost halfway finished now!! Yippeee!!!! LOL!! I will have to work on getting my craft room up and running when I am done with this last quilt. I am going to need the room for my next quilt project!!

My husband is letting me have the front bedroom in this apartment as my "craft room", or "crap room" as he calls it. We are going to move out the computer desk and a dresser into the living room. We have been using this room as the computer room for a couple of years now and it is time for a change. Since we use the dresser for storage of computer and "office" stuff, it can go into the living room with the desk and computer.

We will move the other desk that is in the basement into the front bedroom so I can use it for my scrapbooking and cutting my fabric. I will also move my sewing machine and all of my craft totes into that room. Goodbye extra closet for jackets we don't use, and hello to stacking those nice wide three drawer totes full of craft supplies in there! Goodbye Halloween decorations which will be banished to the basement where they belong anyways! LOL Goodbye games that never get played because we can't get to them and hello shelf for other supplies, such as scrappbooking.

Any and all computer stuff leftinthe chest-on-chest will be banished to the living room so I can store all of my fabric in it. (I have a huge tote full of fabric and then some! LOL)

Once all this moving around is done, then I can start on a quilt for my granddaughter, who has informed me that "I have to make her a quilt". Hopefully, I will be able to get it done for Christmas as well. It iwll be a "Denim rag Quilt". Demin on the front and flannel on the back. I have never sewn denim before, so it might be a bit of a challange for me. At least I don't have to worry about the newest grandbaby yet. I still have a couple of years before I will "have to make a quilt" for him! LOL I do, hovwever, have to get busy and make the fleece blanket for him before he is born, so I guess I will be making that next before I start moving everything. That is only a two hour job, so it won't take too long to finish.

At least I have my sewing machine "marinating" in oil. I hadn't oiled it in probably close to a year, so I went ahead and oiled it down last week. I also fixed my grandmother's old Singer Featherweight 221K about a month ago. Everyone who quilts is on the hunt for one, and I haven't been able to use it in several years, as it had "frozen" up on me. I bought a book off of ebay on fixing it and now it runs like a dream again! Thank goodness I don't mind getting dirty and oily to fix things, huh? LOL Now I will be able to do some machine quilting when the time comes.

I finished my Yo-Yo Quilt May 24!

I finally got my Yo-Yo Quilt finished on May 24th. Anyways, it took me about a year to work on this quilt. I had to start off by buying some yo-yos off of ebay so I could actually see what they looked like when they were sewn. (I didn't want to take apart my Yo-Yo Clown doll that I have because it is older than me.) Once I got some in, I bid on some more just to get a small head start on them. I then used a bunch of my leftover scraps and remenants to make well over 3,000 of the silly yo-yos. Once I had those all made, then came the arduous task of sewing them all together. After the quilt got so big, I had to start sewing them together in "blocks" of so many across and so many down. Those "blocks" then got sewed into "strips" and then sewn onto the quilt.

I was bound and determined to finish my quilt before summer got here so I could take into the school office and show the women in there what it looks like. I sewed for three days straight every chance I got (when not driving the bus or getting tires). I finally sewed the last strip in place last night about 8:45 PM. I am so happy that it is over and done now.

Now I will get start on some other projects that need to be finished before I start sewing another quilt. Both of my girls want me to make quilts for them, so I think that I will make two more yo-yo quilts in queen size for them. Only this time, I will not be using 2" yo-yos. I will make them bigger so I don't have as much sewing to do since it is all hand sewn. I hope to be able to finish those my next Christmas for their presents!

The finished size of my quilt is 108"x108". The ones I am making for my girls will be approximately the same size, but I am making 4-inch yo-yos for theirs.

I went on a hunt for another rotary circle cutter

The other day I was cutting out more circles for yo-yo quilts that I am making for my two daughters. Everything was going along just fine. I got most of the fabric ironed and was in the process of actually doing the cutting, when my cutter's handle broke! I was in quite a quandry because the only other circle cutter I have doesn't cut circles quite as big as I need.

I have searched for two days making two different trips to Hickory, NC just to try and find the type I needed so I could send mine off to be repaired. I knew that Hancock Fabrics carried them, but of course, just because I need it, they are out. I checked several other places and no one carried them. Finally, I broke down today and called Michael's Arts and Crafts as a last ditch effort. I didn't figure they would have them since they don't really carry much in the way of sewing equipment. Boy was I wrong!

They still don't carry much sewing equipment, but they did have about four of the OLFA Rotary Circle Cutters. I bought two of them and four blades. That should tide me over until I can send my other one off to be repaired or replaced. While I was searching, I did check online at www.olfa.com. .

They have some great craft projects for both sewing and paper projects. I hope that you will check them out. I printed out several projects to make at a later date. I will file these in my sewing binder, for future reference.