Baby Shower!

 I'm sorry I've been neglecting this blog. I have been a sewing maniac this summer making lots of quilts for special events in our lives. One of them was a baby shower for our daughter-in-law, Amberleigh. It was held at one of her sister's homes. You can see her two sisters in the photo above. This is a baby quilt I made as soon as I heard she was pregnant. It was a kit and I loved how it turned out.

I also had just gotten her wedding quilt back from my long arm quilter and I was able to get the binding sewn on just in time for the shower. She loved it.

 My son had a Winnie-the-Pooh room when he was a baby and he wanted the same for his little one. They decorated the baby's room in the original looking pooh and I found this pooh bear on line. This was a perfect gift from my mom. She loved it and it was so soft and cuddly.

 My daughter was also able to attend and it was wonderful to meet all of Amberleigh's family and friends.

 I also won a prize for a game where we had to look at jars of baby food and guess what they were. There were 10 and I got 8 right. I reversed the green beans and peas. I'm pretty good at baby food jars.

My parents were in town when I completed Amberleigh's wedding quilt and they helped hold it up so I could take a photo.

Here is a close up of the quilt. I absolutely love how it turned out.

Our trip to Korea is coming up fast and I still have a lot to do before we go but we can't wait to return to the "Land of the Morning Calm." We will be taking a trip down to Busan to see Hellena and her twin girls. We've never seen them in person. I also am working on my shopping list because I don't want to forget anything. My bojagi teacher who is living and teaching in New York right now is setting up an exhibition in New York for next September and she wants me to take part. I have some ideas for bojagi projects and it is perfect timing that we will be in Korea soon and I can buy the fabric I need.

Quilting!

 

 A couple of weeks ago, Diane, my long-arm girl, finished quilting three of my quilts. It's like Christmas to me to pick up a quilt from Diane to see the magic that she does with her long-arm. Binding a quilt is still time-consuming. I sew by machine the binding onto the quilt and then I handstitch it into place.

 

The quilt above is from my favorite quilt pattern company at the moment, Madison Cottage. It is called "Crushed Pistachio" and the fabric was a kit from Bear Patching Quilt Quilting in White Bear Lake, MN which also happens to be my local quilt shop. I wasn't intending on making any extra quilts besides the ones that I was already committed to but when you are buying fabric and you see these gorgeous quilts on the walls with kits located nearby, I have only so much willpower. Or you could say that I have little to no willpower while in a quilt shop.

I also saw this quilt at the same shop by Madison Cottage. This quilt pattern is called "Mango Parfait." It too was a kit and it turned out so beautiful. I love to buy kits because I don't have a large stash and when you need lots of different colors, it can be difficult to put it all together. I have really enjoyed the kits that I have made.

This quilt is called "Tumbled" by Sunnyside Designs. This was also a kit and you can find it here. This quilt is actually what started my quilting obsession, I mean binge. My son and his new wife are expecting their first baby in November and I wanted to make a quilt for the little one. When I bought the kit, I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl but now we know that that they are expecting a little boy.

The saga of Rocketman and the kidney stone continues. When he went to his urologist, he found out that he had two additional kidney stones still in the kidney. This came as a surprise to us since the ER doctor failed to mention that. The urologist will probably be removing them in the next month since Rocketman does travel to Asia occasionally and a kidney stone is not what you want to experience in China or South Korea.

He also wants to figure out why all of a sudden Rocketman is developing these stones. So he is spending 48 hours this weekend collecting all his urine to be analyzed to hopefully determine a treatment or what preventative care we can do.

Now that I am waiting for more quilts to be finished, I find myself trying to figure out what I want to work on next. It's not like I have nothing to do because we crafters ALWAYS have things we could do. I am writing a children's e-book which we will self publish. I will not only write the book but also illustrate it with simple watercolor pictures. I also want to begin some hanji projects too. But I could at any time get an email from Diane saying more quilts are finished and ready to be picked up. Welcome to the life of The Constant Crafter.

Lot of Quilting Going On!

The quilting splurge started with a new daughter-in-law and continued with a baby due in the Fall. I hadn't made a quilt for over five years so I guess I was due. The photo above is a double Irish chain for our new daughter-in-law. She wanted red and loved the double Irish chain. It was so funny because that is the pattern I chose to make my first quilt way back in 1980 when I started quilting.

 

That was before I had a rotary cutter and I gave up because it was just too difficult for me to do it. I did take a lot of quilting classes and learned a lot. But when the rotary cutter was invented that changed my whole world and made quilting a whole lot easier.

        I never did make myself a double Irish chain so I thought it was a great time to remedy that.

This quilt has one of my favorite color combinations and will look great with the bojagi curtains I made.

 I was visiting my local quilt store, Bear Patch Quilting all the time and those naughty people have the walls covered with beautiful quilts.  What makes it naughty is they have kits so that you can make the same thing. The photo above is one of those kits I bought.

I became addicted to the quilt patterns by Madison Cottage Design. Their quilts are gorgeous and the instructions are easy to follow. You can also find kits online. The photo above is also a kit with the pattern from Madison Cottage.

I contacted my long-arm girl and she was booked until June. She emailed last week to see if I had any quilts ready for her and I dropped off a bunch. I can't wait to see what she does with them. I have three more left to do and I will be done for the foreseeable future. So if you want me, I'll be in my crafting room where the iron is hot and the sewing machine is humming.

My Korean Quilt

It's finally done. I had bought a bunch of Korean satin when we lived in South Korea with the intention of making a quilt. I made the quilt for the bed in our guest room which happens to be the Korean room since there are so many Korean things in it.


The pictures don't really portray how bold and beautiful the colors are.

This stripe looks like I sewed all the stripes together but if you are Korean you may know what it is. It's material they use for the sleeves of a hanbok and it comes striped. I used the material in the border of the quilt. I want to buy more of this next time I'm in Seoul.


I hired a gal with a long arm to quilt the piece for me. I could never make it look so nice just using my sewing machine. I'm just thrilled with how it turned out.

New Quilt

Shortly before we left for South Korea, I bought a quilt kit. I made the quilt while living in South Korea. I was a little nervous the first time I turned my sewing machine on as it was plugged into a transformer due to the voltage difference. But my sewing machine survived and worked just fine.


This is the back of the quilt. I have a gal who has a long-arm quilting business and she does all the quilting for me. I could never do anything like this with my sewing machine. I'll be using this quilt to keep me warm during the long Minnesota winters.

Rocketman is back to normal and back to work. He took it easy all weekend although he did mow the lawn. He now is seeing pretty good out of the left eye. This is the one he had surgery on last Thursday. His prescription for is glasses is so messed up now that he popped the lens out of his left eye. I wonder if anyone will notice that at work. He can get new glasses in two weeks if there are no complications.

He is so anxious to do this but knows he has to wait. I feel so bad for him. He hasn't had normal or good sight now for 13 months. He's a real trooper.

The Quilt

I got the quilt sewn together and it turned out great!


The border is very special to me. The striped satin is common used for the sleeves on the Korean hanbok and was bought in South Korea. It really seemed to frame the quilt beautifully.

This is going to be the backing fabric. What a story this was. I thought I calculated correctly the amount of fabric I needed which was 4 yards and I went to the quilt store yesterday to find the backing fabric. I was surprised when this one caught my eye because I've never been a big fan of orange.

The store was packed and everyone was waiting for fabric to be measured and cut. I ended up waiting 20 minutes. I was also short again on black and found they had that restocked so I bought some more.

I got home and preshrunk the fabric. I laid the fabric over the quilt and saw that I had miscalculated by half. I needed another 4 yards. Did I ever mention math was my worst subject in school? Where is Rocketman when I need him?

So today as soon as the quilt store was open I was there. Luckily it wasn't as crowded as Saturday. I had a swatch of the fabric and went to the section where I had purchased it yesterday. It wasn't there. A shop employee even helped me looked. I couldn't believe the entire bolt had been sold.

As I looked further around the room, I saw a fellow shopper with a bunch of bolts of material laying on a table and one of those bolts was my fabric! My stomach dropped and I felt sick. I got up my nerve and went over to her and asked her how much of that fabric she needed. She smiled and said that she just needed half a yard. I asked her if I could get 4 yards from it and she gladly handed over the bolt to me.

I quickly had it measured and cut, returning the bolt to her while thanking her profusely. I left the shop relieved and thinking that I had never had so much trouble with a quilt before. First not being able to find plain black fabric and then this. I'm glad I'm almost finished.

I have a few more things I finishing up and then I will email the lady that does the quilting for me with her long arm. She does a fantastic job.

Quilting

I started out using my rotary cutter to cut out the satin into 4 1/2" and 5" squares. I had a very hard time finding black fabric. I called many quilt stores in the area and they were out. Finally, the fourth one I called had some so off to Stillwater, MN I went. I could have bought some at JoAnn's but their quilt material isn't as thick as you would find at a quilt store so I always opt to spent a lot more and get my fabric from a quilt store.


Louie was very intrigued with what I was doing.

He patiently watched as I pinned the fabric.

Here I put him on quality control as I sewed. He loved watching the fabric come through the sewing machine and not once did he put a paw on it.

Here is the top all finished except for the border. I'm working on that now. I have a professional long arm quilter who finishes my quilts for me. She does a fantastic job.

Yesterday I got an email from my 76 year old Korean yoga buddy. He fell a few weeks ago while hiking on the mountain behind his home and ended up in the hospital for a week. He had surgery and has a six week recovery. He is really looking forward to our visit.

When we lived in Korea, I honestly could not keep up with the guy. We would go to yoga every day where I groaned and moaned my way through the 1 1/2 hours only to stumble the 1 mile walk back to my apartment. Choi would walk an equal distance to his apartment, eat a little lunch and then hike his mountain for a few hours. I usually spent a hour or two on the couch recovering from yoga only to do it again the next day. I miss those days!