Oh Tanya has a new toy or is it Richards?

What a cute little kitten.  My wife has been in need of a sewing machine for a while (since we gave hers to our daughter for part of her Christmas) We have wanted to try some simple embroidery yet needed a machine that she could do normal sewing on also.  This was a lower end machine that gave us options for both without investing too much.

This is a picture of the machine I got off the web.  Tanya had to go to work before she even got to play with it and told me to go figure it out.  It has a few built in designs and since we are partial to cats, I made a cat.

Now for questions.  Is there any free or cheaper end software that can be used to make our own embroidery designs.  I found online a demo for the high end brother editing software and my son and I were able to make a design we liked using it.  But of course demo software, I can't export my design.   It seemed easy enough.  I look up the price tag and gagged on the 900+ price tag.   Such is life.  Any way if you have experience with Embroidery let me know your thoughts.

Link A Finish Friday #53

It is now time for Link A Finish Friday.  Today I would like to start with a big thank you to Fat Quarter Shop who has offered to Sponsor our Link A Finish Friday with Prizes.  This month's winner (February) will win a $15 gift certificate to spend at Fat Quarter Shop. 

Please remember to thank our sponsor by visiting their store at http://www.fatquartershop.com/ their blog http://www.fatquartershop.blogspot.com/ and Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FatQuarterShop

Dared to Dresden by Mountain Quiltworks

Block 7 from BillieBee's Blog

The Crazy Shortcut Quilt from Teresa's Quilt Journey 

(I hear there is a giveaway going on over there.  Stop by and see how she is doing.)

These are 3 of the wonderful quilts linked up last week.  Please share with us what you have done this week.

1) Who likes rules. Toss them out.

2) Add a link to your finish blog or where ever you show off your finishes (Not limited to quilts but I like them the most).
3) Visit a few of the finishes and comment or encourage them on.
4) Monthly random winner picked from all of the months linkups to $15 gift card from Fat Quarter Shop.

Not required but fun to do

1) Follow my blog.
2) Follow the blog of all those that link.
3) Link back to my blog.
4) No finish, go quilt and stop reading the web.

The marvelous color GREEN!

A while back when I was making my Orange plus quilt (yes its still not bound and finished) My son Jared walked in grabbed the quilt and said it was his and ran out of the room.  He loved the quilt but it just was not in his color.  If you have been around you will know he loves Green. One of the first few quilts I made was a rag quilt named "The Green Quilt of Awesomeness" He was so happy to have it.  But it seems that he is not happy with just that quilt.  He wants a green version of my plus quilt.

My quilt design consists of 33+ unique colors to make all of the pluses unique.  So this caused me to hunt for green.  Tanya and the kids had to help because our stash is a mess.  We opened every single box we had and pulled all things that were green or greenish an put it into a pile.  I then started cutting 2 1/2 inch strips off of each of the items.  Because I want to make a rainbow quilt later this year I got more then my 5 squares of each of them so I could build the green stash.  (while sorting I did find a few more orange and gray too so maybe I can work again on that one).  What I ended up with was a pile of  85 different green blocks (above you can see they are pinned into stacks of 5).

Needless to say I have a few too many.  So Jared (yes he is wearing a green shirt as he stuffs his head into my picture) at first grabbed the full stack of greens and screamed MINE!! yes he screams a lot.  We told him he had to sort the pile into ones he liked and ones he did not like.  So he did such we ended up with about 75 he liked and 10 he did not like.  So  I took those away and tried again.  This time I let him pick his favorite 10 out at a time.  Then mixed up the left over and had him pick 10 again.  We did this tell we had 35 in one pile.

Rebecca my oldest girl did not find it right that we rejected 40+ blocks.  SO she also grabbed a pile of 35 blocks (it seems I must make 2 quilts?)  Maybe she can make her own.  Above you can see the bag on the bottom is Jareds they are brighter.  And Rebecca's are on the top. And of course the left overs on the left (I guess it was a couple more then 75 to start with.  Any way expect to see some green over the next month or 2 on the blog.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Link a Finish Friday winner for the month of January goes to  LAFF#48 entry 6 which is!!!

Valerie of re.engineered for her quilt she made for Ella for Christmas

Congrats I have already heard back from Fat Quarter Shop that Valerie was sent her gift certificate.  Remember to stop back on Friday and link up for your chance to win.

Late in the day work in progress #37

This post is by Tanya

On Saturday I got some sewing done.  I made a simple gender neutral baby top in yellows and greens that I cut up about two  or three weeks ago.

I have been busy with life and my 1/4 inch foot was MIA.  My problem is I currently share a desk and sewing machine with my Daughter Rebecca.  Two people that are not good at cleaning up is not a good thing.  I had tons of scraps from her projects, and at least 6 different colored bobbins and several spools of thread scattered along desk top.  For some reason my space whether it be  my computer area, my dresser, and my sewing desk seem to say to kids put all stuff you don't know what to do with on any one of the three.

Anyway I cleaned off my sewing desk this weekend, we went through several scrap boxes.  We threw away a ton of stuff that was too small for 2 1/2 in squares or string blocks or even stuff to use in appliques.  As new quilters we saved everything, including batting scraps too small to do anything with.  We use a lot of larger batting scraps in rag quilts.

Here are a couple of pictures of Julia with the bear Rebecca made her.

Richard has been busy cutting up 2 1/2 inch squares.  He has now quilted half of Rebecca's twin quilt.

Over and Under A Quilt Design

Like every thing I design, I always start with yellow and orange.  You might just love this crazy color or do I just have issues.  Well that's simple I just have issues.  That and any time I can get my wife to look at something and just sigh at what I have come up with that helps too.

I sat down today while Julia was sleeping, she is still sick and I did not want to go too far away so I could grab her if she woke up so I opened up Electronic Quilt 7 the Quilt design software I bought for Tanya (she never uses it, but her birthday was closer when I had the money to buy it so she got it.  How many times have you gotten a wrench or a new saw just cause it was your B-day).  If you have never tried EQ7 you should, it is a lot of fun.  It has tons and tons of blocks and you can do many things with it.

I have been trying to make more modern designs and as a not so modern person I struggle at it.  My design process for this quilt was a little different than most.  I wanted to make a on point quilt.  So I went though all the blocks in EQ7 (yes it took a while as their are hundreds of them) and I finally settled on about 8 I wanted to play with.  One of them was the block here that on its own is not that impressing, but when I filled the full quilt up with them it gave me a million blocks.  So being modern, I just can't have a full quilt of the same block so I started removing squares one at a time from the designer (squares, not blocks)  this too some time to do.  I first went and colored all of the lines gray of the blocks I wanted to make go away.  In my finished quilt I wanted the blocks to be solid (not the gray on gray lines) so I went and started making blocks to replace the blocks that had pieces cut out.

So I ended up creating 5 new blocks out of my 1 original block and started replacing them in the design (Yes a lack of bars is not a block per say, its just a piece of fabric).  So I have the design done and I invited my son over to help me come up with a name.  His first though is I don't like the colors. (yes he is as bad as Tanya, no one understands my vision).

The left one was the last of James color choices its a purple and dark gray on a light gray back ground.  I added the border, could not decide if I liked it or not.  The first of his color choices was the brown and green on the blue background and the pink and light gray on the obsidian background was his 2nd.

Of course I show the design to Tanya and she hates mine (like she ever likes my choice) she thought the purple one was OK on James choices.  None of them was Tanya.

So yes the blocks should have given it away, we will end up with a brown and green quilt on a tan background.  The blocks by the way are 12 1/2 square and the borders are 3 inches.  It will end up to be a 91 x 108 inch quilt or so EQ7 tells me (well it says 90.853 x 107.823) but the rounding sounds better.