Cutting Projects

I was intending on writing a post along with a couple of pictures from our last two weekends. Only the internet in the hotel I am in right now won't let me upload any pictures to blogger. Sad. 

So...

In keeping with my theme lately of quilting and sewing projects.... I'll finish this post that I had already uploaded the pictures when I was at home.

I receive an email newsletter from a small quilt shop about 20 miles from my house. Once, when looking through the shop's website, I noticed a little blurb at the bottom about renting a machine (die-cutter) they have for cutting shapes out of several layers of fabric at a time.

So I drove myself over there to ask about using it. I ended up renting it for a month's period of time. I could go to the shop and use it any number of times for the four weeks (for the ridiculously cheap cost of $10).

I dug through my stash and found a ton of Christmas fabric. I also have quite a bit of blue and yellow fabrics I bought a long time ago for a project that I decided to not do. Out came the iron and I ironed all those pieces and headed to the quilt shop.

This is what the cutter looks like. I was cutting 5 inch squares. You can make out the outline of eight squares on the die in the picture below.

I layered about four or five pieces of fabrics on the die....

.....placed a thick piece of plastic over it all, and rolled it through some rollers....

.....and POOF! Five inch squares! (And some scraps. But in the quilting world, scraps are good!)

Just look at that stack! It would have taken me hours to do all that with a rotary cutter. I have two stacks like this and I did them in under an hour!

Now, if you know me, you won't be surprised if you get a quilted table runner for Christmas,

now will you?

Good Fortune

I've been having so much fun with making some small quilts. I found a cute pattern to make a little quilt that is used as a car seat cover for babies. I finished my first one! Only I made a boo-boo.... I arranged the blocks wrong and ended up making a square quilt instead of rectangle. Oops.

The fabric line I used is called "Good Fortune". I love the Asian flair it has.

But I love how it turned out anyway. It will be a sweet tummy-time quilt for a sweet baby girl.

I have two more quilt tops finished out of different fabric. (And they are rectangles!!!) I just need to sandwich them and quilt them and bind them. I'll make sure to post pictures when I finish them.

Baby Blankets

Over the weekend I worked on a few more baby blankets. I had bought some more flannel to go with some that I had on hand. I am really happy with how they turned out. So soft and pretty! (The purple one on the bottom is the first one I made a few weeks ago.) (Go to this YouTube link to watch a tutorial of how to make these.)

One thing I've like about these, aside from the magic of the border, is being able to choose a decorative stitch for the top-stitching. I think you are able to see on this close-up some of the stitching I used. I even bought some variegated thread (with pink, yellow, green, blue, and purple) to use on these.

Now I just need some babies to wrap up in a cozy blanket. That pink one is so incredibly soft!

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do or Do Without

I decided this morning that I am going to use up the things I have in my house. I was inspired also by a conversation with my daughter and after reading this blog-post from our sweet friends in China.

We've only been in this house for 1 1/2 years and we purged quite a bit as we unpacked boxes, but somewhere more stuff crept in.  I've been thinking about this for a while, but after cleaning out my train-case this morning, I decided to make it a goal. Anyone know what a train-case is? My hubby gave this one to me on our wedding day. It matched the luggage that I had at the time. 27 years later I still use this when we travel.

As I cleaned it out today after 6 weekends in a row of being out of town, I found all these things in there I got from all sorts of different hotels we have stayed in.

and then I found this in an overflowing drawer in the bathroom.

All these things are the small sizes you get in a hotel. That's a lot of shampoo, conditioner, lotions and soap! I am on a quest to use them all up. I'll sure be clean and smell good!


Last month I re-organized the freezer and found a bunch of food items that need to get used. There were several meat patties I had bought sometime last summer for on the grill. I really don't have any idea if they were pork or chicken or turkey. One night I broke them up and browned them, added BBQ sauce and put it over some baked potatoes with some grated cheese. Hubby asked what we were having for supper and I answered, "I have no idea. I'll call it.... BBQ Mystery Meat." Despite the mystery, it was quite yummy.

My quest to purge also took me to the medicine cabinet and, sure enough, there were some expired cold medicine and things we never use that ended up in the trash. 


This morning I looked through the pantry and tossed some items that had expiration dates from the year 2009. I don't think I can consume something knowing it's that old. Yuck. I'm going to try to figure out how I can use the things that are in there and then only replace them when I am planning on using them in a recipe

Boy, I guess I am on a roll, huh?

Next stop all the condiments in the refrigerator. Where do they all come from?

I'm also going to try to extend this using it up thing to my sewing room and see if I can make at least one quilt from just the fabrics I have. Believe me, that shouldn't be too hard at all!

Even though I don't set New Year's Resolutions, I think this quest could qualify, don't you?

Creative? Crafty?

I like to buy interestingly shaped pots, but don't care for the color of the clay terracotta much. I also don't like the price of the pots that do have different colors. So I decided I could paint them! I gathered up the various cans of spray paint and got to work.

This is a light coating of a textured spray paint. The kind that is supposed to make something have a stone look.
Then I used some flat black spray paint. But I didn't really like it. I looked at it and kept thinking, the pot that called the kettle black.So I decided to dab some greenish and rust paint on.
Yuck. Didn't like that either. It looks like sick camouflage. I lightly sprayed more black over it, but still am not satisfied, so I put it away. Maybe when I pull it out again, I'll either have another inspiration or decide I like it.

So time to move on to the other pot. I sprayed it with some metallic paint.
It was a bit too plain, so I dabbed some rust colored paint all over it. Love that look. I sprayed several coats of polyurethane over the finished product.
Sometimes I surprise myself with my creativity. :)