More Camping Quilt Progress!

Last night was the Friday Night Sew In hosted by Handmade By Heidi and Crafty Vegas Mom and I managed to get all the 3 patch strips sewn into 9 patch blocks!

Nothing says fun like Baby C tearing apart my quilt after I laid it out on the floor. 

Little turkey!  ;)  Oh well at least he's helping the creative process!!  

I've managed to square up most of the 9 patch blocks, I think I still have 4 more to do then I can piece the entire top together this afternoon or evening.  

I'm going to hit the fabric store this afternoon to see if I can find any sweet flannel to back the quilt with, hopefully they have something similar to what I have in my mind.  

I hope you all have a super weekend, and thanks again to the ladies for hosting the Friday Night Sew-IN again this month!  

My Camping Quilt in a Week Challenge!

Last night I posted about how I got this lovely brainstorm to make a Jean Quilt in a WEEK for camping next weekend - well last night was quite productive and I got all the squares cut, pieced into rows, and cut again to make this lovely piece of quilting goodness:

I'd say thats not too bad because three hours before that picture was taken those squares looked like this:

Hopefully I can get the top mostly pieced together today (the squares are currently sewn together in three patch sections) and I can run to the fabric store and get some boarder fabric, backing and possibly some batting depending on how big the quilt winds up being.

Hi ho, hi ho, its off to the sewing machine I go!!  

Happy Friday everyone!  

Camping Quilt

We are heading out camping next weekend since we don't want to battle the long weekend crowds plus Mr. Quiltapotamus works this Monday (in Canada our May long weekend is this coming weekend not next weekend like you have in the States). I made a passing comment to my husband the other day that i'd love to have a jean quilt to cuddle up in by the fire and now that's all I can think about!!!

So I do a little googling to find out approximately how many jeans I would need and now I'm going to do what I do best WING IT!!! ;)

I'm going to attempt to sew my little bum off for the next week and see if i can actually pull this quilt off for us to take it with us camping.

Wish me luck and I'll try to update my progress with the jean quilt each day to help keep me accountable!!!!

I've entered the New Age!!!

After 3 good solid years with my trusty Blackberry I decided to end the relationship. We have had a good run, but it was time for it to go and I am embracing (and LOVING) my new iPhone!!!

I downloaded the blogger app and am trying it put right now. I hope it's super easy to use and then I can start back blogging more. I have so much stuff going on that I would love to blog about but by the end of the day I'm so tired that my blog gets neglected!

Hopefully I'll get some sewing done tonight and I can actually post about some sewing goodness!

I hope you are all having a fabulous Tuesday!!

New Quilt on the Go - A Quilt for My SIL!!!

I am SUPER excited about my newest quilt on the go (and no I haven't finished any lately, I just added yet another one to the WIP pile!!!) - a Quilt for my SIL.  

I have been saying for YEARS that I really want to make a Granny Square quilt and my SIL has been saying saying that she would like to make a quilt - the problem with both our 'wants' is I don't crochet (very well!) and she doesn't quilt (very well) so we decided that we could make each other a quilt/afghan and call it the Great Quilfghan Swap!  I found some fabric that I LOVE and am waffling between two different patterns that use the same quilt blocks and I've been going to town on it the past few days.  

The only problem with doing this quilt is that I can't show it to you until its done because my SIL reads my blog and I don't want to spoil the surprise for her!!  I've been sewing like a banshee for the past week and actually have quite a bit to show for it but I can't post any of it.  Once I give her the quilt I'll be able to make a MEGA post all about it!  

I think I'm going to call this quilt Domestic Handbag.  Domestic is part of the fabric line and Handbag is an inside joke between my SIL and I (that I'll explain when I show off the quilt!) and I think she'll get a serious kick out of it!!  

Off to get a little more sewing done before having to pick Miss S up from school.

Cute Cord Keepers

Every once in a while you come across something and have a lightbulb moment and think - WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?!?!?!  A while ago I came across this post at A Girl And a Glue Gun and have been wanting to make some Cord Keepers of my own.

Tonight since Mr. Quiltapotamus is working I was debating between some much needed sleep, or some much needed time with my sewing machine.  The sewing machine won out and I made these little cuties to keep my camera cord, memory card reader cord and the baby monitor cord all nice and wrapped up:

Just some simple strips of scrap fabric, sewn together, turned out, a little velcro and VOILA!

The smaller two worked better than the big one but I think the longer one would be GREAT with an extension cord.

All rolled up and ready to go!!!  

Now that I got my sewing fix in for the evening, its time to get my sleeping fix in!! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Strippy Zipper Pouch!!!

I have a love affair with zippered pouches - I really do!  I think they are adorable and have been dying to make another one since I made this Zippered Pouch in the fall last year.  

I took the pattern from the first zippered pouch that I did - sewed on a bunch of strips of folded fabric (although I desperately want to call them ruffles they really aren't since they lay flat, the NEXT pouch will have full on ruffles) and this is the result!!!

The side view:

The top view:

SUPER CUTE!!  If I may say so myself!  

I'm looking forward to making the next one and am already thinking of a few tweaks that I can do to it to make it even more awesome.  

It was a Fabric BONANZA!

On Saturday my SIL and I went to a fabric sale put on by a local churches women's group.  They collect yarn, fabric, batting, notions, books....EVERYTHING that you could want for absolutely dirt cheap!!!

After getting to the sale a few minutes late and missing out on the 100 person lineup in the snow I found my SIL and we got to work!  (I'm still bummed I forgot my camera, it was insanely busy but everyone was well behaved) When you came downstairs they had some white garbage bags filled with mystery fabric for $0.50 - seriously FIFTY CENTS!!  How can you pass that up?!  So I grabbed two bags but I totally would have grabbed more if I had another reusable shopping bag with me.

Then we found the quilting room and I went to town - twice...  ;)  I got a bunch of 1930's and late 1800's reproduction fabric for $2-4 a bag which was still an amazing price!

My SIL scored with the yarn room and got something like 40 balls of yarn - all different kinds - for $18!

After I got home I had to take pictures of my haul.  All the fabric in the reusable bag is the quilting cottons and the two plastic bags to the right are my $0.50 grab bags.

This is all the grab bag stuff.  Some narsty (yes I mean narsty - its even nastier than nasty; hence narsty!!) stuff for sure but some of it will be awesome for small projects.

Next came some of the quilting fabric....so much cheap fabric goodness!

This little stack was only $3.00 and it was at least 6 or 7 fat quarters!

This is all the quilting cotton.  I still need to go through it better but it looks like a lot of awesome stuff!!

All together for the grab bags and all that reproduction fabric it cost me a grand total of $31!!  And the even better thing is all the money raised is going to charity which made me want to go back and buy even more fabric!!!  ;)

I'll go through the 'stash' in the next few days and highlight my favourites. 

On another note we managed to hit one more park to add to our 150 park challenge bringing us up to 7 now.  I forgot to bring my camera but it was a brand new park and will be visited again very soon!  The girls loved it and I'm loving getting back outside with the kids now that its nice'ish again!  Come on Spring!!  

Eye Spy Progress - almost done!!!

Its been a while but I actually made some progress on the kids Eye Spy quilt!

I don't have it sewn together yet (the picture below is just me laying it out) but once I get the next 16 or so blocks cut up and sewn and put on the bottom I'll start playing with the fabric placement.  Unfortunatley for me that means attempting to do some 'random' pattern placement which I am HORRIBLE with!  Time to let go of my 'random' OCD and let the fabric falls where it will and get this awesome blanket pieced!

Don't you just love 'playroom' pictures with all the kids stuff in the corners of the pictures?!?!  ;) 

Oh well, no matter what happens with the fabric placement I know the kids are going to LOVE this quilt.  We have already spent a few hours looking at all the fabric together as I have been piecing the quilt top and they are really looking forward to being able to 'finding' all the different patterns, colors and animals when its all put together.

On a side note we've been able to hit 4 more parks bringing our total up to 5 parks for our 150 Park Challenge (and I'm quickly realizing that there is NO WAY we are going to be able to hit that many parks this summer - but I'll try to hit as many as we possibly can).  If it didn't snow all weekend we would have been able to hit a few more but thats ok its supposed to be +10C tomorrow!!  Hooray for Spring!  

My Family Challenge - 150 Parks by September 1!!!

Last summer a blog I followed did a challenge for her and her family to hit 100 parks over the summer while her kids were off school.  I thought this was a FABULOUS idea but since I was on bedrest the entire summer it was pretty much an impossible thing for me to do.  This year I'm off with the kids all summer but since Summer is still a few months away I thought I could up the challenge to 150 parks and start early (April 9th we officially started).  Mostly its a FREE activity to do with the kids and anything that I can do to help make them sleep better at night is good for me!!

Yesterday we hit our first park and of course I forgot my camera and I was all ready to hit a park today (camera in hand!) but we got sidetracked on the way to my sisters place.  So no park today!

Hopefully we can hit a park tomorrow and up our total park count to 2!!  ;)

Anyone up for a Challenge to hit 100 or 150 parks with their kids this summer?!?!