Sewing continues...

We've worked 2 weeks at our little sewing time to make these little wallet/coin purses.  Marcy and Jen were doing great but we waited until this week to do the zippers and linings, they both came out soo good!

 And here is Alissa with her new to her machine!  She's had such fun learning everything about her new sewing machine.  She got such a great deal on this and it just runs along so nice.  She spent last week just figuring it out, this week she was much more aware of what it did ( I can tell she practiced with it at home!) so she was sewing her apron straps.  Next week we are moving on to skirts for summer!

Sew and Go Machine Needle case

I was excited to show you a little project I finished up.  It's for a Sew and Go class coming up the last 2 weeks of April ( shhhhhhh don't tell that I"m leaking this !)  I just love how it came out.  Has a zipper pocket with vinyl and then another little pocket behind the needle packs.  The needles slide into their own little vinyl pockets so you can see what kind/size.

 This is going to be a great project for everyone, perfect to throw in your bag for camp or for a class, then you don't have to wonder, do I have the right thing with me.  I've tried hard to duplicate my notions for "going" sewing places, whether it's work or somewhere else, it's so nice to just grab my bag and go without wondering do I have the right stuff.  So now if I need a different kind of needle, there it is in my cute little bag!  Barb found a great handout too to give everyone about what kind of needle to use when!

Watermelon Picnic

Here's a new quilt going up at ETC.  It's called Watermelon Picnic and it's for my next Beyond Basics class.  A 3 week series in May and then another one in June.  It's all about a log cabin block, so you really could make any kind of color scheme you want if you don't want watermelons.  I just hope we get to the picnic before the ants!

Sew and Go table runner

We did a rare thing today, I hung up a future Sew and Go project for everyone to see. It's just to cute to keep under wraps so we went ahead and hung up our project for the the last 2 Sew and Go's in May.  It's our last project before our fun summer series begins, so we thought we'd make a great summer project of this cute table runner.  Your kit will include 3 of the watermelons.  If you'd like to do it larger there will be extra kits so you can expand yours and then we'll have some black fabric ready for you if you want to buy it to die cut the ants!  We usually keep our sew and Go projects a surprise but this one is hanging down at ETC now for you to see.  Come make this cute little watermelon top with us!  

All Cut Up... It's a Bag!

Here is our finished project for our All Cut Up Class on Wed. at ETC.  We have charm squares ready to go and this is what the pattern will be, it came out so cute, we've named it the Sunshine Bag since it makes you smile! You are gonna love this tote with it's outside pocket, how easy it goes together, all lined and nothing to it! Wait until you see the inside pocket....even that will make you smile! I had fun getting it made, we've got another one out of pretty batiks to show you. The pattern has been bouncing back and forth between Barb and I all weekend getting it fine tuned and I think we've got it!  So come on down and see the demo and get the pattern. It's only $2.50 and then you get that back as a coupon, so how can you go wrong!  Wed. is the day, see you at 11:00.....better come early, we ran out of chairs last time!  Oh and if you have show and tell from the last 3 All Cut Up's be sure and bring them, we love it!

Summer Series fabrics

We have our fabrics chosen for our "summer series" at ETC. for Sew and Go.  Here's what you can pick from for our summer Sew and Go class.  We'll have these out every Sew and Go in April and you can choose what you'd like all your summer kits to be cut from.  This summer our theme is Travel.  So all our projects for each class are going to be something you'll love to have for Traveling! If you are signed up for the next one after each class thru June July and August we can cut all your kits out of the same coordinating fabric so you'll have a lovely put together travel set when you are done.  Some of the sets are already sold out so we may even have to pick a few more.  We were so organized, Barb had a spread sheet, we had papers for picking up so that the sets wouldn't be overpicked.  Only about 2-6 people can be on any particular set depending on the yardage amounts.  So if you haven't chosen, better get down to ETC. some Tuesday while they are out.   We even have the sample for our Companion kit out to sign up for....more on that another post!  

All Cut Up

Cutting cutting cutting!  Lots of cutting here and there at work in the last few weeks for All Cut Up Demo to get it ~all cut up~ !  We are featuring these charm squares....39 different ones to make this fun project !  I'll be showing you the project soon so stay tuned!  The demo day is wed. at 11:00 at ETC.  It's all of $2.50, you get the pattern and us and then you get your $2.50 back in a coupon for your purchase that day!  You are going to love what we made with these! Still cutting, stacking, cutting stacking.....

Tote bag brought to you by "This old Bag"

We finished up the class of this great tote bag brought to you by....This old Bag....that's Barb and I ! HA ! We are trying to do a really cool bag once every calendar at ETC. to accomplish a bag we'd like to make and you will too! I didn't get photo's of every one but here are a few so you can see how cool they came out!

Here is Ernestines, she's doing 2 for her nieces, won't they be fun!  witches!

 Some of these are just coming out so cool, the red on this one is ultrasuede.

 Julie added a few little pockets  inside her outside pockets to hers to adapt to travel in Ireland and their rail passes

 Tash has one in batiks with that pretty teal Ultrasuede.

 They just all came out so great, feet on the bottom even.  I loved using mine when we went to Lake Havasu to teach, it worked really well with the huge zipper. Watch for our next one, it's so neat, the calendar will be out soon!

It was a great "Spend the night"

We got to have our 3 oldest Grandsons this weekend, for a "spend the night"!  We'd tried for a couple weeks to do this and with different ones getting sick and such we finally got it done without canceling!

 They came over in the afternoon and had no problem talking Papa into going to Chuck E Cheese.  So they pizza'd up and used up all their tokens and then we still had time to go to our neighborhood park for lots of fun and giggles!  By the time we got home for showers and baths they were starving so more pizza and an attack on the doughnuts I'd bought!

 I love moments like this....here is Ethan the next morning helping get things ready for breakfast, of course they'd done the request for chocolate chip pancakes so while I was making those Ethan had the big job of cutting up the 2 doughnuts that were left.  He did pretty good for 3, of course his plate had almost a whole doughnut on it but then when I pointed it out he divvied them up pretty darn good!

We relaxed all morning and just played, Ethan had such fun with playdough worms going in the big truck to the "dump", then we needed to play with the dishes and water so we went outside.  Garrett and I had fun playing the "feed the kitty" game we have....he won 2 times!

 It was pretty out and fun to just hang out in your jammie bottoms!

 Lots of fun and smiles, I'm ready for another spend the night!

Get READY !

You may have to enlarge this photo to really appreciate it, but spring is here and so are the apricots!  We had our tree severely trimmed this past year so I really wasn't expecting a very good crop since the last few have been amazing.  Amy was here and we went looking to see what was out there and oh my gosh!  There are more apricots than leaves so far!  It seems rather sparse on the leaves, altho apricot trees bloom, the apricots set on and then the leaves come.  So I guess we better be getting ready for apricots, they are everywhere!

Oranges

A big thankyou goes out to our navel orange tree this year. It went above and beyond to provide us with the best oranges!  Ken and I picked it clean and ended up with about 6 grocery sacks full and that was after we thought oh there are only a few left on there! ha!  They hide!  They were so good this year, very juicey and sweet. We usually start picking right around christmas so good heavens we've been  picking for 3 months and still had so many left.   We seemed to have a ton of them this year. We shared many, our company that came to the family reunion enjoyed getting to pick their own citrus to take home.  I think it was a great "orange" kind of year.  So now the tree can rest and be busy making all those little oranges on there into another wonderful crop!  The refrigerator is full so they should keep quite a while!  I love having mature trees out in the yard and being able to run pick a few every day to eat for lunch at work.  

Twister Class

Another great Twister class at Etc. yesterday!  Louise and I teach this and we've had alot of fun and seen a whole lot of twister quilts come out of our classes! I'll show you what we had and towards the end everyone was talking about their next one! 

Look at this one all in brights!

 Karens came out so pretty, lots of wonderful comments on hers out of this layer cake, she was trying to decide on her borders at the end.

 Look at these blues with the tiny twister!

 We had our first "eye spy" one, it was so fun to see, I can't wait to wee all these come back, I hope they bring them to show us!

 The new French General line... I can't believe how many got their tops done!

 Loved this one, it would sure go nice in my house....Betsy would have none of that! :-)

 This one out of Ruby....It was fun to have a couple new quilters in class!  I think they enjoyed their time at ETC and will be back!

 Here is a new sample that Louise finished up in another kind of setting.

 And Carol did hers that way with 2 different sides.  She may set them this way or put a sashing in between. Twister makes such fun quilts!  We have all four sizes for sale at ETC.  The teeny tiny one is my favorite! Sick huh!  You start with 2 1/2 inch squares and they end up about 1 inch!