QAYG progress report and a little blizzard

I talked about my quilt-as-you-go project here and here.  To recap, I need 56 blocks to finish my king-sized quilt.  I've divided the 56 into 19 blue/grey blocks, 18 pinkish blocks, and I have yet to finish the remaining 19 purple/black blocks.  So far, I'm not loving the the pink blocks.  However, I'm drawing only from the fabric in my stash and trying to keep a Tim-Gunn-let's-make-it-work attitude.

Once I put the pink and blue blocks together, I was a bit more satisfied.  This is going to be a very unusual looking quilt when (I will not say if) I get it done.  I was hoping to get all the blocks done before the end of Feb. but it's not looking that way.  I'm going to have to put all quilting aside in lieu of my typography project.  I think I know what I'm going to do--finally!!  I'll keep you posted.  :)

On Wednesday we had a nice little snow storm.  I was waiting for the kids to get out of school and it started to sprinkle.  Then the sprinkles turned to tiny little pellets of snow.  Then the little pellets turned into pea-sized hail.  We had thunder and lightning on the ride home from school.  Upon arriving at home, we had a nice fluffy snowfall.

The kids wanted to go out and make snow angels.  We're at the end of February and there won't be many more opportunities for playing in the snow, so I let the kids put aside homework and take advantage of the weather.  Soon after they went outside, I unleashed Pippa, our new little cockapoo.

My son, who has been afraid of dogs for many years, has really bonded with Pippa.  You see Pippa's a big ol' scaredy-dog and needs lots of reassurance as she encounters new things.  We rescued her from the local animal shelter so we're not sure why she's afraid of cars, doors, brooms, electric toothbrushes, garbage cans, etc.  My son can relate to feeling afraid and has taken a special interest in making sure Pippa gets lots of love and attention.   Every time I see them together I am so proud of their special partnership.

If you're reading this before February 29, 2012, go HERE and vote!
If you're reading this before March 31, 2012, go HERE and sign up! 

Happy crafting and big hugs from Montana,

My Typography Challenge Project Begins...

Click this button and check out the challenge headquarters.

I'm going to make two pillows that will kinda look like these:

My inspiration found on Pinterest:

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Source: tumblr.com via Allison on Pinterest

They will be a wedding gift.  So if you know me and know whose wedding I'm going to, don't spill the beans!

If you're reading this before February 29, 2012, go HERE and vote!
If you're reading this before March 31, 2012, go HERE and sign up! 

Happy crafting and big hugs from Montana,

Designer Handbag Cupcakes

I found these little sweeties on pinterest which brought me to this post.  The folks who make them can be found at Made Fresh Daily Cakes.  This is a business out of Atlanta, GA.  They deliver if you're interested!

They are just too precious not to share!  Can you even believe the detail?????  Incredible!!!

They are $18 each and you must buy a minimum of 6.  I don't if I could bring myself to eat one as they are so cool to look at.  Maybe one of you talented folks out here can teach me how to make these out of polymer clay?  

Big hugs from Montana,

Quilt-as-you-go progress report

These blocks are on a full-sized bed and they make up 1/3 of a king-sized quilt for my own bed.

I told you all about my latest project in my previous post.  I'm tying out the quilt-as-you-go method I heard about on sewtakeahike.  My plan is to divide the 56 blocks I need to complete my quilt into 3 color catagories:

1. blue/greys with black centers (done!)
2. pinkish with blacks centers (halfway done!)
3. purple/blacks with grey centers (not started yet.)

I couldn't bring myself to make each block the same.  I just got too repetitive and I worried about running out of a specific color of fabric.  You see, I have no idea how much fabric I'll need.  Some of the fabric I'm using are from old clothes, so yardage is difficult to determine.  After I finished the first 19 though, I have a better idea of what I need.  

The unifying elements in this quilt are as follows:

• all blocks are log cabin style made with 2" wide strips
• all blocks contain tie-dyed fabic in blue, pink, or purple
• all blocks will have a black or grey center square.
• all blocks contain both black and grey.

I've started the pinkish ones today.  They are quite a bit wilder than the blue/greys.  I'm not all the way sold on them yet, but I'm sticking to the original plan.  They'll only make up a third of the overall quilt and I can hide them around the edges if they continue to bother me.

Take a look at a few pinkish ones I did Saturday morning:

We'll just have to see how this all works out.....

If you're reading this before February 29, 2012, go HERE and vote!
If you're reading this before March 31, 2012, go HERE and sign up!

Happy crafting and big hugs from Montana,

Cleaning before quilting

Ever since I started following and becoming friends with Keren from sew la vie, I've had quilting rolling around in the back of of my brain. I started with my Retro Pillow Challenge entry, then my daughter's pink rag quilt, then my son's chevron rag quilt, then my Solids-Only Tote Challenge entry, and then pillows for Mom.   Now, I'm wanting to try to make a king-sized quilt for my bed.  I am scared to machine quilt such a huge project so I searched online for some alternative quilting methods.  This is what I found:

[source]

Quilt-as-you-go is a method where you cut your batting into blocks and sew your blocks right onto it, log cabin style.  I won't attempt to explain in further detail, but rather direct you to the great tutorial by sewtakeahike.  Miss Penny from sewtakeahike hosted a quilt-along last fall and posted her quilt-as-you-go tutorial over four posts.  The photos are great.  Penny's instructions are simple and easy to follow.  I highly recommend you head over and give it a read.  

Before I could allow myself the luxury of scratching my quilting itch, I needed to clean up and organize my fabric a bit.  Check out the difference in my 2 fabric shelves when everything is folded and tidy:

Top shelf is blacks and greys,
second shelf is reds and pinks,
third shelf is blues and purples,
and the bottom shelf  houses a box of denim
 and ticking and other heavy duty fabrics.

Top shelf is my whites and creams and ironing what-nots,
second shelf is oranges and greens,
third shelf is browns,
and the bottom has all the silky and satin-y and slippery fabrics.

After the big clean up, I was ready to choose fabrics for my quilt-as-you-go project.  I'll make 18 blue/grey blocks with black centers, 19 pinkish blocks with black centers, and 19 purple/black blocks with grey centers.  I've completed about 14 of the blue/grey blocks.  Each block is different.  Well, as different as you can be when working log-cabin style with 2" strips.  I'm having fun mixing it up so far, but have so much more to do.....

Have any of you tried this quilt-as-you-go method?

If you're reading this before February 29, 2012, go HERE and vote!
If you're reading this before March 31, 2012, go HERE and sign up!

Happy crafting and big hugs from Montana,

Disabling the "right-click"

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I am so sorry to do this to you all, but yet again I have no crafty post for you.  Instead I have come to complain a bit and ask for advice.  I enjoy blogging nearly as much as I love crafting.  If you look at my tutorial page, you'll see that I love to share tips and strategies with you all.  If you look at my sidebar, you'll see how proud I am of all the lovely people who have featured my work.  It is so rewarding to look at my blog's stats and see traffic coming from those sites that featured my work.

Today I noticed a tiny bit of traffic coming from an unknown source.  When I followed the link I found THIS.  (please take a minute to check it out, though I loath to give them more traffic.)  They took my entire post, omitted the text and re-posted it with a link back to the original post.  They did include the link back, but why would anyone need to follow it since all the photos had the steps written on them.  I did not appreciate that.  Why not just take a single photo and place a link under it?  I think it is rude.  I've seen a similar thing happen with a friend's blog and it's just infuriating.

In response, I've considered disabling the right-click function on my blog.  That would prevent anyone from right-clicking on my photos and reusing them on their sites.  I found an easy way to this HERE.  Just a simple code to embed in a gadget.  Would this end the problem?  Would it deter more noble-minded sites from featuring my posts?  I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

I can't seem to get these photos to rotate.....they are turned the right way in every other program I open them in.....perplexing!!!!  I'm just going to go with it, so bear with me!

These are the Valentines we made for the kid's classmates.  The actual cards had a real sucker/lolly.

They're cute aren't they?  And getting so big!  It was just starting to snow as I took these photos yesterday.  It's February and promises of spring of still a couple months away up here in Montana.

Wishing you all lots of extra lovin' and huggin' and kissin' and romancin' on this day!

Clipix is my new shopping buddy!

 clipix
I can't seem to get enough of all these free online bookmarking services.  I'm totally geeking out on them.  In fact, I just ran across a cool one and I'd like to share it with you.  I promise, I'll keep it brief and to the point.  Plus, I've even added some big photos because I know you all are visually-orientated folks like myself.
Clipix is a totally free online clipboard that saves and organizes all the things you run across on the web.  I've been trying it out for a couple days and so far am very impressed.  I'm sure it will be helpful to anyone who uses it, but I feel it has one very awesome feature:

   I can control who sees the things I clip!   

That way I can research gifts for my friends and they'll never be the wiser.  It's so sneaky.  I love it!
First of all, let me say that I had no trouble setting up my Clipix account.  I could sign up through my facebook account, so I didn't even have to fill out a form.  There's a little "clip" button that I had to click and drag to my bookmark bar and then I was all set up.
So, the first thing I try to clip is a guitar for my husband.

A little window popped up and it had the exact photo I wanted along with a description and a price.  I didn't have to add anything else.  That was all I needed in one click, or maybe I should say "clip"?
So I go back to my clipix clipboards and find the guitar that I clipped.  This is what I found:

That's a lot of info isn't it?  It is going to make shopping for gifts a whole lot easier for me.
And now that I'm starting to clip gift ideas, I can easily keep my clipboards away from prying eyes.

I bet you all could think of lots more stuff to clip and save and organize and keep from prying eyes.  What do you think?  Would you give a try?  Give it a shot and let me know what you think, please.
Happy online shopping and big hugs from Montana,
Rikka J.
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