Creativity Returns… Kind Of

I’ve been in a real slump lately when it comes to creating things. I just can’t get interested!! And it’s not just quilting- it’s knitting and cardmaking and cooking too. I really think it’s because of the hot humid weather we’ve had. It’s gone on for weeks now with no break. I feel more housebound now than I do in winter!

I’m going on a trip to New York next week (by myself, since Hubby can’t get away from work) and I wanted a nice sleeve for my new laptop, to protect it as I travel.

The summer 2009 Quilts and More magazine has a really nice pattern for a laptop sleeve. I’ve actually made one before…

This was made for my sister, with fabrics she picked out.

Well, I finally broke a little hole in my creativity block and got something done!

I made a variation on the same laptop sleeve using Joel Dewberry “Modern Meadow” fabrics with a dash of Essex linen thrown in! Both the outside and the lining have been quilted with batting, to make it extra soft. I also used velcro instead of a button. I didn’t want anything on the outside that could catch on something.

Hopefully I’ve fully broken out of the slump. I have a lot of projects I need to get done!

The Monster Sunflower :)

As many of you probably know or have guessed, I love, love, LOVE sunflowers! So when one started growing in a really weird spot in front of the house, I just couldn’t pull it out. I think it was planted by a squirrel or a bird.

It’s HUGE!! It’s nearly as tall as the house, actually. And it’s just starting to open!

I ♥ it :)

Playing :)

My new laptop has Live Writer! I’ve heard a few people say that they really like writing their blog this way, so I’m testing it :)

Check out this picture I took this morning on my way to the Y (don’t worry, I was at a red light!)

It was storming at home, but 20 miles south in Sycamore it was broken clouds. It’s funny how weather can be so different from one place to another!

Anyway...

So, I've been really busy lately. Going to the Y takes a LOT of my energy right now. Cooking healthy meals and not eating junk takes more of it. Add in cleaning the house and doing yardwork in the ungodly humidity we've been having, and you end up with one tired, worn out Jennie.

I haven't even turned my sewing machine on since Sunday >:-(

In the meantime I've been...


Drinking iced caramel macchiatos, trying to both keep cool and get a little energy boost...


Playing with my new laptop (it just came today!)!! It's already beat me at Scrabble. Which isn't hard, but anyway...




And packing fabric for the yard sale my friends and I are holding the first weekend of August! More details about that to come shortly, but if you're in the Chicago area you might want to think about stopping by :)

I'm also cleaning and planning- friends of mine from back home in New York will be here next weekend!! I'm SO excited to see them!!

I hope to get sewing soon- I have so many projects I want to make!

My {First} NASCAR Experience :)

This past weekend my sister-in-law brought my nieces and nephew up to Chicago to spend some time with family and go to the Nascar races at the Chicagoland Speedway. My dad had tickets for the Nationwide race on Friday and the Sprint Cup race on Saturday. Because of schedule issues, he ended up with an extra ticket to each race, and I was invited to go along!

Now, I confess to having harbored some Nascar prejudices: I thought it was pretty much loud, beer-drinking, tattooed redneck guys and their equally loud, beer-drinking, tattooed, bikini-wearing wives/girlfriends. I was really not looking forward to going. But I don't get to spend a lot of time with my nieces, and I'd never seen my 9 month old nephew. So I thought I would go, and it would be a way to bond with them, and I'd hate the race, and that would be the end of my Nascar experiences.

Well, I was wrong. It's NOT all loud, beer-drinking, tattooed, bikini-wearing people (although believe me, they're there!). It's pretty family oriented, really. And I really had a fun time. So much fun that I would like to do it again. Soon! With more money. The racetrack is pretty much set up to perform a "cashectomy" on you every time you turn a corner.

I digress.


The first thing I did was buy a Matt Kenseth hat. He's the favorite of most of the family, and I needed a hat because it was really sunny and I'd forgotten mine. And it's pretty. And purple :)

Merchandise is sold from "haulers", which are trailers with sides that open. When the race is over, they get closed up, hooked to semi tractors and hauled (hence the name...) to the next race! When my nieces first asked where the haulers were I asked them what that meant. They looked at me like I had 12 heads and 15 eyes. I reminded them that I'd never been to a race before. And then they began educating me about Nascar :)

Anyway.


Dad got us some pretty amazing seats! We could see the whole track, and the flag tower and all of the pits.


For the Nationwide race (the Dollar General 300) on Friday we pulled for #7 Danica Patrick. Because she's a girl race car driver. And 5 of the seven of us at the race were girls :)


The only boys were PopPop and my nephew. They enjoyed the race too :)

On Saturday night we went to the Sprint Cup race (the Lifelock 400), which is otherwise known as the "race that has drivers I've actually heard of". We were a bit more varied in who we were pulling for. My dad, sister and I were pulling for Matt Kenseth. My niece Fiona was pulling for Kasey Kahne (because "he's dreamy"!) and Zoë was pulling for Carl Edwards (he finished 2nd. Zoë was VERY happy!).


Some nice people sitting behind us took this great picture of us with the track in the background!

My sister got some great pictures of all of our favorite cars.


#17 Matt Kenseth


#99 Carl Edwards


#9 Kasey Kahne


And all of our drivers finished in the top 15!

It really was a great weekend, and I enjoyed myself SO much more than I thought I would. And I was able to spend some time getting to know my nieces. Which was the most important thing (to me, anyway)!

PS- I forgot to show you my Matt Kenseth toes!! I had a mani/pedi the night before the first race, so I had Terry paint my finger and toe nails purple (Matt's car is black and purple)!

Pillow Talk Swap 3 {Sent and Received}!

Another Pillow Talk Swap, another AMAZING pillow!! I received this today from Rachel...


What a lovely sunflower! I don't know if you know this about me, but I *LOVE* sunflowers :)


She sent along some goodies too- some vintage sheet pieces and a lovely hand crocheted dishcloth!


Now I have a lovely flower garden (without any bees!) right on my couch!

And on the sent side of things...


I sent this pillow to Joan of Wishes, True and Kind! She did a lovely blog post about it, which you can read here!

I think she likes it :)

I can't wait for round 4 to start... this is one of the best swaps in the world :)

Happy Fun Time!

That's what this past week has been, really. Well, except for the DAILY t-storms and ungodly hot and humid weather. Our air conditioner has been getting a good workout!


I finished the set up in my new sewing room (or my "girl cave" as Hubby calls it!!). Hubby put hooks into the wall for my rulers. They are SO handy, right behind my cutting table. Just turn around and grab!


I finished up and mailed my Modern Siggy Swap 2 blocks. They were fun to make!




At the lock-in Saturday night I started making asterisk blocks. I'm not really doing the quilt along per se, but I thought the blocks were cute and I wanted to make enough for a wall hanging. Well, let me tell you- these blocks are more fun than should be allowed by law! They are addicting. So, if you don't want to spend every spare second making asterisk blocks, I suggest you don't start at all :)


And finally I designed a quilt for the lovely new "Spa" fabrics by Rosemarie Levin. I pressed and cut the fabrics yesterday. My new shelves double as fabric racks- how cool is that!

A Productive Day!

Today was the first time I was really able to sew in my new digs. And I have to tell you, I'm LOVING them! Everything works very well, I only found a couple of things that need to be tweaked :)

I also finished a couple projects up today!


My offering for the Pillow Talk Swap... I hope my secret partner likes it!


And a cover for my embroidery machine!

Tomorrow I'm heading up to see my daddy for Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to all of you dads out there!!

A New Space

This spring Hubby and I have been reorganizing. Almost every room in the house has been changed around in some way!

One MAJOR change was the moving of my sewing room from a space near the kitchen to the smallest bedroom. We've referred to this room as "the room of doom" because it was pretty much a storage room. A very disorganized storage room!

After 4 full days of cleaning (I filled SIX big garbage bags with trash, not to mention the recycle and garage sale stuff that came out of there!) it was ready for occupancy!

 
There was a nice big old desk in there, so I left it in and am now using it for my sewing table. It's so nice and sturdy!


There are oodles of shelves too! The whole wall is lined with shelves and there are 2 units underneath the cutting and ironing tables. It was a bit of a puzzle at first but this arrangement works very, very nicely!


This is what I see when I turn around in my chair. When I sit at my machine my back is to the rest of the room. But this was better than having my back to the door, which was the only other way things could have been arranged :)


We moved the embroidery machine in this morning. My sewing room is now complete! And it's also very, very cosy. I think I can safely say there is no wasted space anywhere :)

I'm excited to spend tomorrow actually working on projects in there!

It's Party Time!!

That's right! Heather over at A La Mode Fabric is celebrating her birthday with a whole month of giveaways!! I brought her some presents to give away...


Charm packs of every MoMo line from Moda!! One person will get all three of these delicious charm packs :)

You need to go to THIS POST over at Heather's blog to enter to win! Don't comment here (unless you want to just say hi or something ♥)!

Chaos Theory

" {the} chaos theory is... about finding the underlying order in apparently random data"- imho.com

Last night I was cleaning up my cutting table and came across a little pile of 1.5" squares. They were leftovers from piecing a bee block. I was about to start sorting them into my scrap bins, but then I stopped. And pulled out the bolt of Moda Bella white. And went to town!


I sashed all those little squares with white, then trimmed them on an angle to 4.5". There were 49 squares- how perfect was that? 7 rows of 7 squares each! I put the top together and basted it (I ♥ Sulky KK 2000 spray basting- makes my life SO much easier!). Then I debated- do I quilt it with wavy lines or straight lines? I put the question out to my Flickr friends, and they TOTALLY came through for me :)

Quiltedoma (Andrea) suggested straight lines 1/4" from the seams. Threekitchenfairies (Paloma) suggested random straight lines. Then I had a "lightbulb moment" and combined the two!


Chaos Theory is quilted with random, 1/4" spaced straight lines! I pulled out my roll of 1/4" wide masking tape and marked lines randomly, then quilted on either side of the tape.

The binding is sewn to the front. I'll do the hand sewing at a lock-in I'm attending on Saturday. Right now I need to finish Pillow talk Swap 3 and Modern Siggy Swap 2 and get them mailed out :)

Fabric For Sale

My amazingly talented hubby made a website for me to sell the fabric and books I no longer want!

You can check it out here! I am so excited to be able to do this and I hope that the stuff I don't want anymore will be able to find a good home :)

There is LOTS more stuff to go on here, it will be updated every day. So if you don't see anything you want now, keep checking!

Bee Blocks: May 2010

I finished up my May bee blocks yesterday... nothing like waiting till the last minute :)


For Mary in The Block Swap 2: she sent muslin foundations and the lovely greens and browns for this block. I attempted to make 2 for her, but I made a stupid cutting mistake. I'm sending the partially finished one to her too, so she can finish it.


For Kelly in the Scraptastic Bee: Kelly send the background and black and white print and asked us to use scraps to make wonky houses! This one's pretty darn wonky, I have to admit. Wonky stuff is not my favorite. It's good that I have to do it in my bees occasionally, just to get me out of my box a little :)


For Adrienne in the Buzz Cuts 2 bee: she sent the white and asked us to use blue and green scraps to make this block! This one is closer to what I like- intricate with lots of pieces :) I had fun making this one. It was hard to mail it off! I have leftovers and am thinking of making another block just like it and finishing it into a mini quilt :)

June is my month to send fabric for the Scraptastic Bee and Buzz Cuts 2, and I can't wait to see what I get back from my talented bee friends :) I have fabric for A Piece Of Work B, and am waiting for fabric for The Block Swap 2 and Bee White Black. I hope I get them by Friday, since I'd like to use Saturday to get them done!