April Showers Mug Rug Blog Hop

Welcome to the last day of the April Showers Blog Hop and welcome to my blog!  Hasn’t this blog hop been amazing? ….. So inspiring!  A big thank you to Madame Samm at Sew We Quilt and to our cheerleader, Erin, at Sew at Home Mummy 
The theme for the April Showers Mug Rug Blog Hop is anything you find inspiring for the month of April.  what do I think of when I think of April?  Rain. Rain. and even more Rain!  And Easter.  And flowers.  And warm weather – NO MORE COATS!!!!!  I always think of those cute little vintagey Easter chicks and ducks when I think of Easter.  So, I put on on my mug rug!
             
 
I thought and thought long and hard about how to fashion my mug rug.  I looked at embroidery designs and vintage illustrations …… all kinds of things.  And I came up with absolutely NOTHING.  So, I turned to my stash of orphan quilting blocks and my scrap bin in hopes of cobbling something together.  I found the little 16 patch block in my baggie of orphan blocks and it looked promising …… blue, which I always think of April as being a ‘blue’ month.  And then the white fabric had little blue droplets on it ….. just like rain.  So I grabbed it up and decided to use it for one side of the mug rug.  All I needed to do was look for a little embroidery to go with it.  I found the little drawing of the chick, downsized it on my printer to the perfect size, and then spent a couple of hours with needle and thread embroidering it.  I added in some raindrops to make it more April like (at least in my mind it’s more April like).  A little border from the scrap bin, some rick rack edging for the ‘cute factor’, and there you have it.  My mug rug.  I hope you like it as much as I do!
                 
Thanks for stopping by my blog!  I hope you will come back and see me.  AND  don’t forget to visit the other bloggers on the April Showers Mug Rug Blog Hop!  Here’s a list of links :
Thursday April 18
Merry Gay @ Merry Gay in Stitches
Mary @ Sew Maybe I Can
Joanne @ Everyone Deserves a Quilt
Linda @ Buzzing and Bumbling
Mary @ NeedledMom
Sherry @ Peanuts Patchwork
Fredrika @ Feltfree på Åsly
Shauna @ Welcome to Shauna's World
Sharon @ Dancing thru Threads
Madame Samm @ !Sew WE Quilt!
Happy Hopping Everyone!
Merry Gay

Too many projects .....

I have so many projects on the go right now that I can't make sense of them all on my workspace! I'm trying to get them finished as fast as I can. I'll post pictures as I get them done.  Stand by .....

Enjoy, Merry Gay

Finally! A new post!

I didn't realize that I haven't blogged on a whole month! Surely I can do better than that. My life has been such a roller coaster lately that I've lost track of just about everything. But I promise to try to do better.

I haven't sat at the sewing machine much, but I did manage to finish the Vintage Tin quilt top and have ordered the backing and batting so that it can be sandwiched and quilted. Yay! I am so happy to have one close to finished! If you only knew how many tops I have stacked up ready to be quilted!

I am still slogging away on this embroidery project ... The embroidered borders for Bluebirds. Pictures will be found down below. If there is a way to embed the pictures into the paragraph using Blogger app for android, I haven't figured it out yet! I used to think I knew about technology... "used to" being the operative phrase here. One of these days my son will come home and teach me! Anyway, the Bluebirds quilt embroidery COULD BE finished by Easter if I really threw myself into it, but with my life being so topsy turvy right now, I'm thinking it will be more like 2 weeks. ;-)

In the mean time ....

Enjoy, Merry Gay

Eye Candy Gram - The Neverending Border

I haven't had a lot to show the past week or so. I've been plugging away on the neverending quilt border for The Bluebird Quilt. I figure that I'm about half way finished with the embroidery. I am also working towards finishing up a quilt top this week and it is one that I haven't shared with you yet. So I will have a big surprise to unveil! So stay tuned!

Enjoy!  Merry Gay

Design Wall Wednesday …

It’s BOM time!  I’ve been working on 2 Block of the Month quilts, The “Aurifil 2013 BOM” and “Jingle Belle”.  I don’t actually have them on my wall, but there isn’t anything there, so I’ll have to show you work table shots.
               
This is the February block for the Aurifil 2013 BOM, all lain out ready for me to stitch the next time I sit down at my machine (tomorrow).  I’m excited about watching this quilt come together.  It’s going to be done in Christmas colors for my bed.  Actually, so is the February applique block for Jingle Belle.
           
I’m using the same colors in each of these quilts, so by the end of the year, I’m probably going to be sick of red and green, but I will have 2 quilts to show for it, so I won’t have to make another Christmas quilt for a while.

I do have other things that I’m working on.  There is the seemingly never ending embroidery around the perimeter of the Bluebird quilt.  And I haven’t even shown you the Crabapple Hill BOM, which isn’t a quilt at all, but one of those perpetual wall calendars with cute little embroidered blocks that you can move around from month to month and year to year.  I’m really going to enjoy having that! 

Oh, and the 2 French Cottage Garden quilts/bedspreads. I am going to finally finish one of those ….. well the top anyway (I won’t quilt them until they are both done) probably in the next couple of weeks.  I have to tell you, I love love love the way those are turning out,  But I’m so sick of making pinwheels.  It feels like I’ve made a   thousand of them.  I’ll post a picture of the one I have finished when I finally do get it finished.

So, for now, that’s enough to keep me busy.  Hope you enjoyed taking a peek.

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

No New Pictures

Well, my camera broke.    So I don’t have any new pictures to show you.  Not that it would matter if I had a camera since I’ve been bogged down with hand embroidery for the last 2 weeks and will probably continue to be bogged down with it for the foreseeable future.  That’s what happens when you decide to heavily embroider the entire outer border of a quilt.  I keep telling myself it will be SO PRETTY when it’s finished that it will worth all the work.  We shall see. 

In the mean time, however, I was asked a couple of weeks ago by a blog reader to give everybody a peek at my sewing space.  That is complicated since I have recently moved all of my ‘stuff’ from my sewing room into the dining room so I could spend more quality time with my husband and also get some sewing done at the same time.  But I have pictures of my sewing room before all this happened, so I will show you pictures of that.

Ready?  Here goes ………

              

This photo shows the desk I use for my sewing machine and it also accommodates my laptop.  I can multi-task using this setup ….. you know read blogs/ e-mail/watch Netflix while I sew.  It worked so well for me.  I haven’t been able to get this kind of thing worked out in the dining room where I sew now.  That kind of makes me miss it.  I also had my ironing board situated so that I could sew a seam and then just spin around and press it on the ironing board without having to get up which was really nice.  Just one more thing … I had that wing back chair!  I loved having my dog (sometimes more than one when I had more than one) right there with me for company.  Alison is sitting there in this picture and she passed away a little more than a year ago.  I still miss her.  Anyway,  I digress …..

             

Here is another view from the bedroom doorway.  This is a smallish room.  It had been a dressing room before I transformed it into a sewing room.  Let me tell ya,  I did a whole lot more sewing here than I ever did dressing!  LOL.  I still keep some clothing items in the dresser, and the light is so good in here that I always put my make-up on in here. 

            

This is yet another view …. a straight shot from the bedroom door into the hallway.  It shows the little cabinet that I use to store buttons and fabrics, stabilizers and embroidery supplies.                                                         

  

These pictures are taken of my sewing area as it is now in the dining room.  These pictures were taken at night, so it is much darker, but on any day this room is always darker than in my actual sewing room.  I do have a wonderful view of my back yard though.  It works almost as well as the old set up and my husband appreciates the fact that I have rearranged everything for him.  And that is really all that counts in the long run.

I hope you have enjoyed the short tour.  I will be back next week with a new post and some new pictures!  I’m working on getting a new camera (wink).  Until then…..

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Do You Dare? …

       

To Dresden!  I do!  Enthusiastically!  I am so excited to be a part of the Dare to Dresden blog hop organized by Madame Samm over at the “Sew We Quilt” blog and Christine at the “Quilt Monster in My Closet” blog. 
                       
Last summer, I started playing with my EZ Dresden ruler and made a bunch of Dresdens.  I appliqued them all down onto some plain blocks.  Then I decided that it was just too darn plain!  Even with fancy sashings, it was just too plain.  So I dug into my folder of applique shapes and came up with this ………
                       
Much better, I think!  Now make 12 of these babies and design some sweet borders to finish it off ……
   
  
                   
I used two sashings with a contrasting corner post around each block.  To join the 12 blocks together, I used a wide fuchsia mini dot print with a 16 block corner post.  This quilt was time consuming, but it was truly a pleasure to design and assemble.  I enjoyed every minute of it.  Thank you for stopping here and looking in on my Dresden creation on the Dare to Dresden blog hop and hope you will come back again.  Please do click on the following links and check out what the other Dare to Dresden hoppers have to share with you!

January 30^th, 2013

Charlotte H @ “that Other Blog”

It Seems to be Sew

Merry Gay in Stitches

Water Penny

Granny Good Stuff

Under the Presser Foot

More Stars in Comanche

Sew Me Something Good

The Day Before This Day

Farm Road

Livin' Blue Quilter

I Piece 2 Mary
Kwilty Pleasures
Espritpatch
Nutz4Redwork

Till next time …….


Enjoy,  Merry Gay