Today was a day of cutting. It started with the material for my manly lap blankets. The plan is to make my brother, and brother-in-laws, and one of my friends, Each a a lap blanket.
My wife and I previously picked out 5 different gray and or black patterned material (none of the ones listed here) when my friend was over the other day I showed him the squares I had cut, sewn X's though (making rag quilts). Not telling him one was for him and he told me that they were not Manly enough material for him and told us 2 of the 5 was ok. We explained to him what the plan was and he explained that we needed some paisley type materials if I was going to make one for him. That by the way is what instigated the last Saturday's terrible shopping trip with too many people at the cut table. Any way the 4 new materials are above (and below) those in black, gray and now a red (which was terribly expensive compared to the others. I have not yet figured out how many quilts I plan to make but the number is some where in the 4-5 range assuming I get one. So I spent tonight cutting and cutting. When done cutting my wife started to pin the backs (already cut) and batting to the front so I can Friday sew the cross stitches in them. Not sure the scope of the full project, but when done it will be amazing.
When I quilt I tend to watch TV I am a Junkie for the TV so much so that I created a website to track my TV watching. http://trackmyshows.com (not sure If I said it already but I am a computer programmer) It is a free by the way if interested in tracking your own obsession. Any way more to the point yesterday while watching TV and cutting (oh ya did some cutting yesterday too) I nicked my finger. I have realized that It is dangerous to watch TV and use my razor knife. Which brings up my last photo of the day. I will leave the photo but will be another day before I explain it. What are your thoughts.
Rebecca cutting material for her quilt, nice cutting gloves.
Today's finish is not mine. OK while I did finish it but I did not do the bulk of it. My mother in law intended to make each of her 4 children a hand stitched quilt.
My wife was given this one unfinished all was done but the binding. As the wife is pregnant she felt it
should be completed for her baby. At this rate, Julia will have like 20 quilts by the time I am done.
The binding was done with a cute polkadotted border my wife picked out and machine sewed on (ya I know hand quilted body and machine sewn edge got to love it)
.
I am not a hand quilter I don't know if I could ever slow down enough to do that.
As of right now this quilt is not named. My wife for some reason does not see the need of a name and
I am not personally vested in it so its nameless to me. If a wonderful blogger would please suggest a name I can maybe get it named one day.
I am sitting here reading my blogs and trying to decide which of my quilting projects I want to work on and my tummy started to rumble (think that's how pooh said it) any way no one wants to cook so its now Dads turn. Every one knows what that means.
PLUS
Spaghetti for me comes with a story. When I was like 15 my dad lost his job. My parents had always had a huge food storage and a great garden. My sister who was 2 and 1/2 years older than me was tasked to cook a lot using the stuff in storage which we lived off more then a year while out of work. The thing she made best and most often was Spaghetti. So to me it was a survival thing. I was taught by my mom to cook and learned to cook many things but I always revert back to my favorite when their is a rumble in the tummy.
One thing I would like to share with all is my recipe. Note that spaghetti is not about the crappy cheap noodles or the cheese its all about the homemade sauce. Please look at one of the 2 links below both are for my little girls cooking site. I am a programmer and I can shamelessly claim fame to creating the cooking site. She is in desperate need of more recipes and if possible a link to her site to show it off. If you want to feel the love please link to her site. Other wise just go make Richards Famous Spaghetti Sauce. You can see from the picture above that I make and freeze mine so kids or me can nuke the sauce boil water and we are done.
P.S. If you don't love my sauce the stores that you buy the ingredients from will give your money back (sure they will) hey shut up i am trying to make a plea to try out the sauce. Every one will love it so its a sure winner.
Being new to quilting I do not yet know what all tools of the trade best fit the job at hand. So far I have bought a sewing machine I bought a Singer model 7258. This is not a cheap low end, nor is it a expensive high end machine. I am a computer programmer (that's my paid job any way) and I am high tech and when my wife bought my machine she new I would want bells and whistles and it had to be digital. This machine is wonderful and I have nothing to complain about it. Once I got my machine and some material it was quite obvious that they would not cut up just by me staring it down. My wife had a small Olfa Rotary Cutter she had for craft projects, I started with this. I bought a small Omnigrid Mat. I later realized was way too small, which got upgraded to a much larger Olfa Mat. OK have material, a mat, a knife. Now I needed a plan. Oh ya I don't know how to sew. I bought a book The Magic of Quiltmaking.
From the first moment, I knew my little knife was too small, so I bought a Fiskars Rotary Blade (the one in the rotating ad. Which I have to say I completely HATE!! Oh I HATE it. I can't say that enough. Being a man, I get into my cutting and I put too much strength into it and it keeps popping closed. So I bought a bigger Olfa Rotary cutter to replace my baby sized one. Now your saying, why is there a Giant ad and a bunch of blabber about tools. I am new and you all are more experienced then me. What I would like is a linking party to any and all posts that you have about the tools you use. The tools you Hate (I don't want to buy them, but need to be aware) and the ones you dream to buy.
All of the basic tools that I have is what is rotating in the add above. The dream item I have is a embroidery machine (I like fancy junk, ya I know, I am a guy not supposed to like fancy crap), but I do. Oh and one of those giant quilting machines. Please leave a note or a link to a post that will help me figure out what tools I want to buy. The sky is the limit!
My newest quilt is named Train Wrek and yes it is so bad I can't even spell its name right. This is my first pieced quilt to be finished. In fact the first to be started. When I finally convinced my wife I was going to buy a sewing machine with or without her I saw this bundle of materials at Walmart (I believe it as fat quarter?) of 5 different flannel materials. I garbed 2 bundles thinking that would be more then enough.
Got home and started cutting them and created a design I wanted. Being a computer programmer, I created my own web page that I could use as a design board. The picture included is the original design for Train Wrek. You can see in the image its a simple pattern with 3 matching materials.
But hey what is that S/O column on my page hum O could mean Over. That must me S is short, hey wait that negative 10 and negative 7 does that mean I am short material. Yes my first project was a WREK!! OK wife say hey the material pack came with more material so we added material around the one block and another checker board block. Ack color over load. Oh no this is totally a Train Wrek. But hey its for Julia Dawn, my unborn child with her laying on it, it will all be better. The cat posing with the blanket on top is Chubby Wuby, Jared's cat. The cat posing with the back is Rat. Maybe some day I will explain his name, but not today. I finished the quilt on Jan 15th at 1 am in the morning, so the cats were sleeping and had to get them into the shot to spice it up a bit. The pizza was dinner, I refused to cook Saturday night because I was determined to get this quilt done, almost made it.
All in all, I am quite pleased with this quilt. It is my first pieced, my first machine quilted using the "in the ditch" I believe its called style and its my first quilt binding done. The first side was terrible, I sewed a strait edge down the front of my binding (started my binding on back and finished on front to control the look of the edge or so I claim. After my straight line revealed wiggly, ugly edge I did a zigzag down it to hold the edge to the quilt better. It worked out great and the other sides were done in the same way. The corners were not well mitered and while were a wrek, but each of the 4 corners got better. I think its a total win for me. I can do any thing!! or at least I am going to keep telling myself this.
Today was a day of cutting. It started with the material for my manly lap blankets. The plan is to make my brother, and brother-in-laws, and one of my friends, Each a a lap blanket.
My wife and I previously picked out 5 different gray and or black patterned material (none of the ones listed here) when my friend was over the other day I showed him the squares I had cut, sewn X's though (making rag quilts). Not telling him one was for him and he told me that they were not Manly enough material for him and told us 2 of the 5 was ok. We explained to him what the plan was and he explained that we needed some paisley type materials if I was going to make one for him. That by the way is what instigated the last Saturday's terrible shopping trip with too many people at the cut table. Any way the 4 new materials are above (and below) those in black, gray and now a red (which was terribly expensive compared to the others. I have not yet figured out how many quilts I plan to make but the number is some where in the 4-5 range assuming I get one. So I spent tonight cutting and cutting. When done cutting my wife started to pin the backs (already cut) and batting to the front so I can Friday sew the cross stitches in them. Not sure the scope of the full project, but when done it will be amazing.
