Winners and Flimsy Complete

Wow! I think it's safe to say that y'all like giveaways and you like to read! I want to thank each and every one of you for chiming in and thanks to Quilting Gallery for hosting a week of fun! Lots of great gifts were offered up and hopefully fun, new bloggy friends were discovered! As for me, I now have a LOOOONG list of books to keep me busy for a really long time. I appreciate y'all sharing your insights to what you were reading as well. Y'all are a well read bunch!

So I imagine y'all just want me to hush up and spill the beans about who won.  I used Mr. random number generator and he said 220 is the winner and that just happens to be:

 ytsmom said...

Either one would be great, but if I won, I would pick the clips. I have been wanting some of those for quite a while.

So the second number that was drawn was 86 and that happens to be:

Amy DeCesare said...

Right now I'm reading Killing Lincoln. It sounds upsetting or depressing, but it's really fascinating, and I'm learning so much about history.

Amy wins the fabric!

So if y'all will drop me a note and let me know where these little packages need to be sent, I will get them out to you! Congratulations and I hope y'all enjoy them!

This weekend a little birdie told me that September is National Sewing Month and a few people like Darlene, whom I always listen too, said that we had to sew every day this month. I'll try, but I'm not making any promises. We'll be shipping this month and that tends to remove me from my stitching schedule. Ppfftt. Schedule! What schedule? I'm sure shipping or not, Darlene expects me to sew. :)

However, I did manage to finish up a flimsy. I finished piecing the Gypsy quilt!

The border is on,  I pieced the back, and made the binding. Now I am in a quandry about what to chose for the quilting. This is another big quilt...surprise! It measures 100x100. For some reason I have a pretty good sized stack of blocks left over. Don't know what I was thinking when I did the math, but there will be a Gypsy sidekick one of these days.

Stitching on Saturday with Jimmy Buffet

Around here, weekends are pretty much the same as  weekdays. The cattle don't care that it's a Saturday and if there is a leak to be fixed, it gets fixed, Sunday or not. But sometimes, a free day rolls around and sometimes it falls on a Saturday. Like today. We still chore and check some water and tend to the garden and chickens and water, but that's a free day around here.

This morning DH is off playing and I am choosing to ignore the kitchen floor and play with fabric. DH called right after he left and said he forgot  coffee and was turning around so I filled his mug and met him out in the drive. When he drove up I grinned and said, "Now where are you gonna get service like THAT?!" He chuckled and handed me this:

  and said, "Not that that's all your worth, but it's all I got." :) That's ok. I'll take a kiss and a rain check. ;)

Gosh! I almost don't know what to do with a free morning! I don't really want to trim blocks for the gypsy quilt, but I do really want to get it pieced so that goes to the top of the list. So I trim a bit and sew a bit...all morning and I make good progress

 even though I get sidetracked by the precarious stack of fabric on the cutting table.

 New projects! No. stay focused.

I would love to finish this up, but I still need a backing. Last week we made a day trip to Texas to take a few head to the packer and drop off a trailer that needed a new floor and rewiring. We took the opportunity to whisk college girl away from her veterinary diagnostics and take her to lunch - a treat for all of us!

And I coerced DH into stopping at a quilt shop for a few minutes so that I could begin my search for a backing. I am not a blue person, but lately I have been drawn to teals and turquoise and azure. Perhaps I've been listening to too much Jimmy Buffet. He's keeping me company today too....I'm growing older, but not up... sing along!

A few years back, college girl had to take a test with lots of odd questions that was supposed to gauge her aptitude  for various careers. Stay with me for a minute. :) She came home excited, saying that she was supposed to be the captain of a ship and she said, "Hey! I can be a pirate! How cool is that?!" Still makes us laugh. The kid's weakest subject is geography and her sense of direction is a bit skewed. However, as I am typing this, I am beginning to think this piece could be a nod to her her inner pirate. Pirates are a kind of gypsy, aren't they? And even this desert rat has a bit of salty sea in her.

I picked up this piece, but they didn't have much of it.

The good news is that it is a new line and I can get lots more if I choose to use this for the backing. But, I don't know if it's a good choice. What do you think?

Should I go with something else? There is so much going on on the front that I don't want to make the back too busy. However, the sea is calling me...

Iron Man

Iron Man Woman.

Sleep...press
laundry...press
chickens...press
garden...press
laundry...press
bed...press
breakfast...press
walk...press
dishes...press
press...press...press

Making progress!

Weekend Sewing on the Gypsy Quilt

I was excited to start college girl's quilt! I had been shopping and seeing a lot of Tony, my UPS man. :) When I was still cooking for a crew, after the dishes were washed in the afternoon and everything was put away, I found myself wandering into her room. I felt like I had earned it as long as there were leftovers for supper. Yay! I pulled fabric. Rearranged fabric. Stacked fabric. Fanned fabric. And dreamed of the day when rotary cutter would meet fabric.
Scrappy she requested. Scrappy she shall have. We are both quite smitten with scrappy. There is going to be a little bit of everything in this quilt. So far I've got Amy Butler, Kim Diehl, Ty Pennington, Joel Dewberry, Basic Grey. There will be bits of Terrain, Curio, Lark, Gypsy Caravan, Organic Soul, London, Nest, Grand Bazzar, Road to Marrakesh, Rhapsodia, Mimosa, Power Pop, Daisy Chain, Summersault and who knows what else! Its an eclectic mix and I'm toying with the idea of calling it her gypsy quilt. The last quilt was her Hobo Quilt. Gypsy has the same connotation, but it sounds more foreign and that name popped into my head as I thumbed through these pretty pieces. Some of the names of the fabric lines just made me think of exotic and far away lands and thus gypsy came to mind. She is on a journey so I'm thinking it fits.

 I keep thinking about the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel stomp grapes. Don't ask me why. This is what happens when I get up at 3:30 in the morning to make breakfast for a crew of cowboys. I need to find a piece of grape fabric to put in the quilt! I found awesome fabric at The Fat Quarter Shop , The Intrepid Thread , and Quilt Home and at my LQS. Thinking of looking at a couple of my favorite shops in Texas too, but honestly, I probably have enough to make numerous gypsy quilts. LOL. Heck, I could probably wrap an entire band of gypsies in quilts, but I'm going to concentrate in college girl's gypsy quilt for the time being.

So last weekend  I felt completely spoiled. I had lots of time to cut:

and stitch:

and press:

LOTS of pressing. And then more pressing:

Then more cutting of sashing:

The seams on this quilt need to be pressed open and the sashing is just 1/2" finished! Did I mention that the quilt will be 107x107? The original quilt in the magazine is 57x78 and has 72 blocks. I had to increase that to 224 blocks.

And chain piecing:

What is it with me and big quilts? Sigh?
So after my sewing marathon, I ended up with this:

These two piles need to be stitched together and the blocks will be complete! This doesn't look like it'll make a quilt that big, but I am hopeful. It was a weekend of marathon sewing, but on Sunday night at 9 pm, I could not press one more seam. I was done.