English Paper What?

Crafting hobbies don't live alone, do they? People aren't "just" quilters, embroiderers, knitters, or whatever. Once you start quilting, well, it's only a matter of time before you do one of those nifty quilts that include bits of embroidery, which gets you to just embroidering things to have something to do in front of the tv, and so forth, right?

I guess my new hobby is sort of quilting, but it feels different so I'm going to say it is. I've recently taken up English paper piecing - fed up with seeing all the OTHER bloggirls make adorable hexagons, I wanted to make some for myself. I combined the beginning of this venture with my attempt to organize/sort scraps, which really has worked out pretty well.

I bought the die-cut papers that I'm using off eBay and they included a handy tutorial (including pictures!), but here's one that I found online that you may find useful: summerfete's the basics of english paper piecing.

I haven't gotten to the point where I'm sewing any together yet - right now, I just have this pile of scrap candy.

 Which includes favorites from projects past - the red from this finish, the purple stars from the quilt on our bed that I never properly posted a "finished!" post for, and the flowers...I think from these placemats? Yup, it's in there.

 There are also ones I just think are pretty - the leaf print from buntings I haven't finished yet; the pink flowers from another WIP; the turtle from a baby quilt I finished for a friend, and those cute birds that ended up just so - both from fat eighth bundles I got at Joann - the brown was in another set of placemats, the pink just left over. :)

Then my cat decided to get involved. Hopefully she doesn't think they're toys and scatter them everywhere by the time I get home from work!

Next on the project list - a pouch to keep my supplies in! All the OTHER girls have one, maaaaaa (Who knew I'd end up saying that about things like this!? Haha!)

In other news - this is my 201st post! Okay, not a big deal, but hitting 200 was, regardless of how sporadic my posting has been. Quilting Gallery is hosting a blog hop / giveaway party this weekend in celebration of Saint Patty's Day, so I figured I'd join up with that to give away something (haven't figured what yet!) in celebration! Check back for it later this week! :)

If you'd like to join in on the hopping, follow that link right up there - you do have to pre-register for the hop...which in a way is really nice, because you get a handy e-mail sent to you so you don't forget the rules and the dates and all that!

Have a great day, readers!

WIP - Sara's Star

My friend Sara got married a few weeks ago, so of course I decided (after the wedding had already occurred, mind you!) that she and her new hubby needed a quilt.

Here's my progress thus far:

 Fabric choices - white, some Kona gray, green and blue, and tone-on-tone blue and gray prints.

 Molly likes helping me lay out the bits. It's a big star!

All pieced together.

Because I am rubbish at maths (as my British friends would say?), I ended up with enough fabric to make TWO roughly 80x80 quilt tops... so here's the heir and the spare, so to speak, both all put together.

I decided I didn't like it as a square, so I added a red border to two sides. (Don't these stars look neat on point, by the way? Maybe I'll have to figure out how to make one - the extra? - that way!)

 The quilt, all sandwiched and pinned...this is Wrench's favorite part. She LOVES snuggling up on unfinished quilts, much to the chagrin of my sewing machine! (I'm careful to use a lint roller first, if there's a ton of furries).

I've gotten about half of the quilting done on it so far. I've decided to keep it simple, with stitch-in-the-ditch and I'll add some extra here and there before I call it done. I think I want it to feel more like a comforter than something heavily quilted...also I'm lazy, so that works for that, too!

Nothing better than kitties and quilts

I don't think there's much better than kitties or quilts...so my Wrench kitty on a quilt I'm working on, that just had to be shared. She's not too keen on the sewing machine itself, even though she likes all kinds of other power tools, but she does love comfy quilts. I just had to share. :)

Cat Mat #1 Complete!

 Cat Mat #1 for Butte Humane Society is complete! As I wrote about the other day, I've decided to help out the local humane society by making cat sized quilts (would they be cat lap quilts? I'm not sure) to go on the cat trees that they have in their catteries.

It took a whopping 45 minutes, start to finish, to make the one that Molly is so kindly modeling for us! They're super easy to make - scrap batting, probably a fat quarter of flannel for each side, and some leftover white flannel binding I'd made up for another project. I'm set to volunteer today, so I'll take it with and hopefully get the go-ahead to make a whole bunch.

I'm joined up with Lily's Quilt's Small Blog Meet-Up again today - welcome to everyone who's new! I love quilting, picking fabrics, saving money, reading books, and of course kittens (I have two, Molly and Wrench), and I occasionally write about home improvements, too.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Happy Saturday

This Saturday was pretty eventful - another shift at Butte Humane - three hours of washing and drying a TON of laundry, cleaning litter pans, and, since unfortunately their dishwasher is broken, doing dishes by hand, too. I was so busy that even though I was at the cat center, I didn't see a single cat! LOL! This guy's really cute though, so here's a gratuitous cat photo:

I've never SEEN a cat like this before! Amazing? Yes.

Before that, though, one of my coworkers - the same one who laid our kitchen tile floor - which looks like this:

Wrench wasn't sure about this new floor at first - but she definitely loves sleeping on it, now!

It's a black and white checkerboard floor with lovely black grout - so it doesn't look dirty! Hah! Love this floor. The tile store actually didn't have solid black and white tiles, but it's close enough. :)

Anyway, our bedroom used to have a terrible sliding glass door in it. We think that the people were originally planning on building a deck off the bedroom...but never did, so it was just a big single-pane stupid waste of heat. Hah.

No more sliding glass door...now a normal, new construction, dual pane window is there, instead!

I don't have that many great "before" pictures of our house...probably because the house was SO terrible. Seriously, who does something like this:

That's right. Tile, EVERYWHERE, except on the floor where it belongs. The window to the left, as well as the window facing the same direction in the living room, were surrounded by that terrible green and gray checkerboard style tile. The tile served as baseboard around the bottom of hte dining room (I'd forgotten about that!).

Oh wait, and there's more tile - around the pass-through from the kitchen to the dining room. And that red stuff, to the right of the stove (let's not get into the terrible placement of THAT!) - that's more of hte same tile, SPRAY PAINTED.

Okay now I've gotten completely off track remembering how terrible the tile was! There's MORE of the tile, in a different pattern, on the wall facing the dining room. There are also beams that run across the living room and dining room ceilings (one in each room) - each was also covered in the tile, which had been half-spray painted white, too...but only the green squares? I don't know.

Anyway, enough with the terrible tile. Ralph came, the door's mostly replaced with a window, and in a month or so, provided it isn't raining yet, he will replace the other window in the room with a proper dual-pane window, too.

I got a bunch of sewing done - a little quilting on a gift quilt, and yes, started ANOTHER project? Oye. I'm never going to finish anything. Oh, and I sewed two really big pieces of flannel together that will serve as the back for a top I've already made. Oh, ANDDDDD I also went to Joann, again, with Dianna, because she dragged me out of the house to look at yarn.

Tomorrow? Visiting with a friend, perhaps, and probably finishing this season of True Blood, so no spoilers, people! :P

Hopefully your weekend's just as productively busy as mine!! :)

Swap!

I volunteered at my local Humane Society for the first time this morning, and when I got home, my kitties were pretty jealous. Mostly it was hot today, though, so Wrench just chilled all day. :)

Anyway...I love getting mail - I belong to PaperBackSwap.com, so I get books pretty often. I do a bunch of shopping online, through Amazon or wherever else, so the mail's not the boring stack of bills my parents always receive.

This past week I decided to join up with the fall colors swap being hosted over at Bolo Heads. I drew tan as my color, so off to Joann I went today to acquire these:

I think I stretched the definition of tan a little bit - and the tan remnant I got actually has ducks all over it - I think I might fussy cut it so that the ducks are actually in the squares I send.

Of course, no trip is complete without a stop at the remnant rack - I love the aqua-and-pink and the Celtic-feeling pattern, too. And basic black-and-white check, which I think I might make into something for our kitchen, which has a black-and-white checkerboard floor. :)

Okay, really, I promise I won't go to Joann again for a while. (Yeah, right.)

WIP Wednesday

I actually have some WIPs that I can blog about now , so I can finally join in Freshly Pieced's W.i.P. Wednesday! :D For a while all I'd been working on were gift quilts (though admittedly I still am) but now I've started a few projects that don't have destinations or which, heaven forbid, are actually for my husband and I!

First, the longest-running project, the queen sized quilt for our bedroom - simple 4" squares, in a brick-like pattern, in a blue/purple/black scheme to match the bedroom we have not yet painted. I'm about 3/4 of the way through quilting it (straight line quilting, 1/4" from the seams). I'm definitely hoping to have it done, um, before winter. I think I can manage that timeline. :)

I'll admit, I love the fancy designer fabrics from Moda...but the clearance racks and remnant bin at Joann's are a bit more my budget. I found this adorable jelly roll there this past weekend, and grabbed it. I'm planning on using it for a nine-patch quilt - my first attempt at using one of those nifty, sew-strips-together-and-turn-them-into-fancy-things techniques that seem oh-so-clever!

 While on our way home from vacation, I had the brilliant idea to make a Tetris-themed quilt. After deciding to use the color scheme from the Microsoft Windows 3.1 version of the game, I bought solids (again, at Joann, which had them 50% off all weekend) - hooray! Looking forward to getting started on that one.

Okay, so my kitties aren't a work-in-progress (or are they?) but they're adorable so I included them. They LOVE hanging out by the front door when it's open - Jeff and I call it Cat-TV. :)

Small Blog Link Up

Hi everyone! I'm joining up with Lily's Quilts for the Small New Blog Meet Up! I've increased my following by one this week to 12, so I still definitely qualify!

My blog name, Hope Sewing is Genetic, comes from my beloved grandmother's gift for sewing. She was able to do any craft possible, it seemed, from quilting to crochet to counted cross stitch; her gift for creating extended into her lovely gardens, too. 

(still unfinished quilt for our bedroom)

I started quilting in November of last year, when I purchased a cheeeeeap Singer machine during Target's Black Friday sale. I was getting out of playing World of Warcraft and looking for a new hobby to replace it. I figured, "Well, Grammy was good at sewing, and I certainly spent enough time at her house growing up, so some of it had to have sunk in...right??"

Things have gone well so far - I have sewn several projects for around our house and a bunch of skirts for my good friend's daughter. I've already moved on to Bertha, my Brother CS6000i, who I am very much in love with (just don't tell my husband!).

I finished my first quilt this weekend, in fact: a jelly roll race quilt, in lovely shades of pink and purple and white, for a coworker whose girlfriend is expecting their first daughter any day now!

(My first finish, hooray!)

Other than quilting and sewing projects, you'll find some book reviews/comments, updates on the status of our various home improvement projects, and darling pictures of my kittens!

(This is Molly, our acro-cat!)

Thanks for visiting, and I look forward to following you back! :D

Shower curtain almost done!

Yesterday I went to Joann again and found a bunch of remnants (surprise surprise!), including some for my shower curtain project! These are the fabrics I ended up with:

I bought the star fabric yesterday - it wasn't a remnant, but I found it on the shelves and since there was less than a yard left, I got remnant price - it was originally $8/yard fabric, on sale for 50% off making it $4/yard, but I got it at remnant price, $2/yard! Woo!

Here's my kitty, Molly, supervising (?) my progress:

The shower that the curtain's for isn't a full width shower (no bathtub) but is slightly wider than just a regular stall shower, so there's no door. I went with a 50"' width, so it will have a little drape when it's hung up! All that's left to do now is add buttonholes across the top for the hooks, and to hem it to the appropriate length:

Quilt progress

My husband's going to be gone all weekend (I'm starting to feel like I never see him!) so I figured it would be a good time to get some work done on the big quilt. The next step I had to take was getting the backing, batting, and quilt top all sandwiched together.

First I spread everything out on the floor. Wrench decided that this new thing needed to be inspected:

Molly decided it was infested with some kind of invisible under-the-quilt critter, and had to take care of THAT situation:

I had to start over once, when I discovered that my backing didn't match up to my quilt top (there wasn't enough in the corner Molly's looking at in the above photo). I managed to only fling my safety pins all over the place once, and only poked myself a dozen times, so overall, I'd say it's a win. Now it looks like this:

Now the hard part, and the part I've been dreading - actually quilting it! Any advice for a beginner??

Curtains

Tonight I picked Dianna up from work, we grabbed some pizza, and came back to my house where she and I entertained the kittens while Lynn started working (so graciously, oh my gosh, seriously, I can't thank her enough) on the curtains for my office! I'm so excited - there will be enough left over for matching pillows. I wish I had a sewing machine. Maybe someday, as it isn't in the money-cards right now.

Because we had company over, my cats are completely cracked-out hyper. Running all around, nibbling, clawing, who knows. Lunatics. Good news, though - I spent three and a half hours around them and hardly got kitty-sick at all. I've got a wee bit of a sniffly nose, and my right eye itched (it's always the right one!) for a little while, but other than that I've been really good. That's such a great sign!

Work was not so great today. Yesterday I did a whole heap of work to help another employee - not really to help her out, but mostly to help her out the door, ifyouknowwhatImean. She had a heap of filing to do, and I got it all in order for her, so all she had to do was go take it to the filing cabinets, and get 'er done. Does she do that? No. I don't know why I actually expected her to suddenly turn into a competent employee. Instead, she filed maybe 1/5 of the paperwork, then spent the remaining FOUR HOURS of her day making new folders, which shouldn't have taken her more than half an hour, tops.

I guess sometimes I just need to set the bar lower.

Did I mention that I have a job interview in a few weeks? Sigh.

I've lost track of what meme day it is.

I must be really bad at this, if I can't count. Hah. I'm either supposed to put in a photo of the last thing I bought (groceries, not exciting at all) or of my favorite place to eat, which I don't have a photo of. Sorry.

I love my kittens. Just putting that in there. I was worried that I wouldn't, or that they wouldn't love me, but Molly's pretty much a whore who will sit on everyone (except maybe Alex), and Wrench won't really sit on anyone (except maybe Alex).

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, and seeing Memaw and Bapaw (Jeff's grandparents) and then having orphan Thanksgiving with the leftovers. I'm reading the book Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family?. I've really enjoyed it thus far, as I feel like it's legitimized the way I live (or at least am trying to be)- far from my family, but with a handful of close friends. Having friends has always been a struggle, but I've got some great ones now (whether close by like Dianna or far like Renee!), and am slowly getting used to the fact that they aren't going to just ditch me.

It's time to hang out with the kittens, I think.

Yes.

Sorry...

for not following the meme. It's been a busy 24 hours.

Last night we had our friends Alex and Dianna over to watch House. I had gathered a gift for Dianna - a bunch of leftover/scrap fabric - from some people on The Internet (okay, really it was Freecycle.com - which I recommend you join if there's one in your area) and was excited to present it to her (by present I really mean plop in her lap and say "PRESENT!"). Because I was excited, I didn't spend any time in my office, which is currently acting as a sort of "clean room" for me to go into to avoid being around the kitties for a while.

I ended up a blind, allergic mess for about an hour last night. What I'd have done without Jeff, I don't know (besides not have the kittens and thus not have had the problem in the first place. You know what I meant). I alternated between sobbing "I don't wanna get rid of the kitties" and "I can't be sick anymore" and "I can't abandon them like everyone abandons meeeeeeeeeee." Meltdown of the highest order. Thankfully I was able to shower and be cuddled long enough to (eventually) see again.

Today, Jeff had a dentist appointment to have the sutures removed from when he had a wisdom tooth extracted last week. That didn't go so well. He was told that he likely needs surgery to shave down part of his mandible in order to avoid infection. His bone apparently grew faster than his gums did, leaving the bone exposed and vulnerable (oh the metaphor available here!). He was given antibiotics and an immediate consultation with an oral surgeon.

I haven't spoken to him since, so I'm still operating (harhar) under the assumption that he'll have to have surgery.

We cannot afford this.

There are no oral surgeons who are in our dental insurance's network in this county; the closest is 45 minutes away and isn't a realistic option for his care. He's decided to take the antibiotics, consult with a professor of his who has been an oral/facial reconstructive surgeon for decades regarding the necessity of the procedure and who the professor would recommend, and get at least one additional opinion from another in-network dentist.

It took a lot for me not to start crying at my desk. I guess at least with the cats in the house, I can use them as an excuse. Poor girls.