Long over Due Post

For those that have been wondering...I have NOT fallen off the face of the earth ;) I have been very busy quilting snow bird customers quilts. Spring is a very busy time for me business wise because the snowbirds are busy trying to finish up their quilt projects for their quilt shows and before they leave for the summer. So this blog post is one of a few that are long over due.

 

In this post I would like to show you my newest vintage machine. I bought for $100 last month. It is a 1959 Singer 404. It is all gear driven, slant needle, and has a drop in 66 class bobbin! It is a sweet heavy duty machine and is now officially my FAVORITE sewing machine for piecing quilts together...and boy is she fast!!!

 

Santas' Naughty List

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring... EXCEPT 2 naughty dogs! We have 3 dogs, well 2 and a grand-dog that is, and early this morning 1 of our dogs (Sandy) and my daughter's dog (Hossa) were up to no good. They found a couple of their Christmas gifts and decided to open them early!

 

 This is what I found when I woke up this morning

  

 When confronted this is what I got... presents, what presents, I don't see any presents.

 

  and from this one, I was here the whole time. At least they only took 1 each and it had their own names on the wrapping. I know my other dog had nothing to do with it because he needs to lifted into bed and he was still in bed at the time this was going on.

Anyways, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas! I have been told that we will be blessed with another grand-dog later today...Rachel & Zach will be picking up their new Husky puppy!

Stash-what inspires you to buy

Lately all I think about is my stash, or at least since I started re-organizing my studio last month. It got me thinking about why I bought certain fabrics and the amount I bought of each. It also made me start thinking about how I should start buying fabric from now on.

This is a group of fabrics that I bought this past spring for a project

I want to do. I bought most of the fabrics from one fabric line (penelope from lakehouse dry goods) because I wanted the fabrics to play nice together without me having to give it much thought. But most of the time I purchased fabrics whenever the mood hit me. My taste in fabrics have evolved over the years and my stash does reflect it. I have Thimbleberries (civil war repro), I have 30's repro, I have brights, I have batiks, I have Kona cotton solids, I have novilties. I also bought yardage of nearly complete fabric lines...mostly that of Moda, and Benartex Nancy Halvorsen's collections.

This one was from Moda Birchwood Lane That I purchased for a French Braid quilt a few years back. But lately I am debating if these should just be fed into my regular stash and forget about the french braid quilt, after all I already did one and although it was fun, and quick the excitement to do another is no longer there.    

When I first started longarming as a business, one of the first quilts I did for a local customer was "Jewel of the Prarie" that she found in a Fons & Porter mag. Wanted to do one ever since (one of the hazards of being a longarmer is that you end up wanting to make most of the quilts your customers bring to you to quilt). It took me several years to decide on my colorway for it, I wanted it to reflect where I live...the desert ;0) so when it ever gets finished (& there's no telling when that will be, lol) I will call it "Jewel of the Desert".

Then there are these fabrics...this was a fabric line (or what was left of one) that was dirt cheap... in the $3.98 a yard range at www.fabricshack.com

which I bought a few years back. Back then I had no clue what I was gonna do with them and to this day I still have no clue. Just know that I still want to keep them together for something.

These are only a glimpse of how I purchased fabric in the past. I also bought random yardage (mostly 1/2 yards or 1 yard cuts) of various fabrics when I found something I liked in the $3.98 a yard range at Fabric Shack.

But what I ended up with is alot of genres of fabric that I don't like much (for instance the 30 repros) thank goodness I don't have alot of them but enough of them that I don't ever want to purchase anymore of them. It also made me think about how I should purchase my stash in the future, which is why I am writing this post...to get you to think about it as well. 

Let's face it fabric is getting more and more expensive and I have never seen the cost of it (the new lines of the latest styles) go down in price, they only go up. So most of us quilters are starting to rely on our stash more and more to keep us afloat in are quilting advetures. So I decided that the best way for me is to shop the sales (on-line or local quilt stores) and to purchase mostly tonals, blenders, in brights/whimsy, traditional, baticks & solids with an occasional floral or stripe thrown in (I like the look of stripes for bindings). Stick to fat quarters, 1/2 yd, & 1 yd cuts so I have a wider variety in my stash for scrap quilts instead of getting stuck with multiple yards of fabric that I end up not liking in the future. 

Take a step back from your stash and really look at it...is it working for you?, Does it still inspire you? Or does it need to evolve like you have as a quilter. Ask yourself this one question...does your stash reflect how you quilt?    



Happy Easter!!!!

Ok, so I'm a day early but since DH, the kids and I are heading over to church tonight for the Easter vigile mass I figure I would share some Easter joy. Been in the kitchen all day baking/cooking and wanted to share some pics..

First I made a bunny cake, of course it had to be a carrot cake. Isn't he so cute? 

I also made this snack mix called "Bunny Bait" you can get the recipe here it is made with popcorn white chocolate candy coating/melts/chips, pretzels, Easter M&M's, and sprinkles. So easy to make and tastes awesome!

I also made a cheesecake, boiled 24 eggs for deviled eggs, made cucumber salad, and an orange dreamsicle jello mold. Tomorrow I will finish the deviled eggs, make mashed potatoes, crescent rolls, brown sugar glazed ham, and honey glazed carrots. My brother in-law is bringing a salad and my sister in-laws are bring apple pies and stuffed mushrooms. It's going to be a great Easter Feast tomorrow ;0)

I hope all of you have a happy Easter and that you will be enjoying it with family and friends. ((HUGS)) 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Just wanted to stop in and say it ;0) and post some of my favorite valentine images

Isn't funny how most holidays are associated with food, just saying...lol



Back To Work... Where Did the Summer Go?

Feeling much better, it helps to be on the right antibiotic that actually does kill the infection. However being on antibiotics for a month and a half did a number on my gut, by wiping out all the good bacteria in it so now I am eating extremely healthy, lots of fiber, fruits & veggies to restore the eco system within, LOL.

This week I have working on my backlog/customer quilts that need to be done, should be all caught up within a few weeks, then I can fit some of my own projects in here and there. Which brings me to this question...

WHERE DID THE SUMMER GO? I mean I had planned to work on ALOT of UFOs and work on the quilts for my bare walls and I have not even put a dent into anything I wanted to get done. :0(

Also when did fabric prices get so high? The last time I bought fabric was back in the spring and prices were still reasonable ($8-$9 per yard for regular quilt shop fabric and $10 for batiks, bali pops were $35). I got my Hancocks of Paducah catolog yesterday in the mail and almost fell over by how much prices went up! ($10.99-$11.99 per yard for regular quilt shop fabric, $10.99-$11.99 per yard for batiks and bali pops are now $39.99) YIKES!!! This is not good, 2 years ago I was joking around with my DH, he was concerned about me building up my stash of fabrics (which is still a work in progress BTW), wanting to know why I was buying so much. I told him that I was stocking up because when we retire and on a fixed income I wouldn't be able to buy fabric. Little did I know that I wouldn't have to wait until I was retired because that day is now. Wish I knew what was comming, because I would have bought a whole lot more!!! The bad thing with fabric prices going up, they will never go back down to the older prices. I guess I will be shopping the fabric sales from now on, no more new release fabric lines for me and I can see alot of scrap quilts in my future with pieced backs. It's a good thing I like scrap quilts, lol  

How Long Should a PC Last?

Hmmmmm.....about 6 years give or take ;0)

For the past year my DH has been trying to convince me that we needed to replace my PC (desk top computer) that I use for my business. I kept putting him off because I really didn't want to spend $ on a computer, I would rather spend it on fabric, quilting gadgets & tools etc...but last Friday was the last straw, I was fed up with the wackiness that my old computer was doing. Whenever you would open up a window/website it would try to open multiple ones and say the server was not reachable...huh? DH thought perhaps that their was a virus but when he sifted through all of my stuff he found nothing, even Norton said my PC was free from a virus, there was nothing that we could find that would be causing such craziness. So On Friday after screaming UNCLE! I called DH at work and told him that he could replace my computer.

My new monitor is 22" where as my old one was only 17". I now have windows 7 operating system vs windows XP. I couldn't use frontpage any longer for my website since the new sytem doesn't soppurt the old software so DH is trying out other software (currently microsoft office share) that hopefully will do the same thing as frontpage did before (time will tell). I also have to get use to Live Mail vs outlook express. Also needed to update my microsoft office since my old version was no longer able to run with the new system....:0( It ended up costing more than what I wanted to spend, but it had to be done.

Why is it that tech stuff is so expensive and has a very short shelf life? No wonder why Bill Gates is as rich as he is.

SNOW!!!

That's right I said snow in East Mesa! Just a light snow fall, melts as soon as it hits the ground but it started comming down around 1:48 PM 12/30/10 and it stopped about 1:54 PM.

Sorry no pics, there wasn't enough to bother. But this is the first time I have seen snow fall here in the past 13 years of living in Mesa, AZ. I have heard of snow falling in the valley back in the 80's but that could have been an urban legend.

Merry Christmas To All!

Just wanted to wish everyone in the blogger-sphere a Merry Christmas and hoping everyone has a merry and bright new year! 

Inspiration From a Blog

With the up comming move and a new quilt studio to decorate I have gone to cyber space to get some ideas on how to decorate and organize it to get the most out of the space I will have. My favorite place for ideas/inspiration was (well actually there are 2 places) the first is Sew Many Ways  check it out if you want to get inspired "tool time Tuesdays" are when she shows some crafty ideas using everyday stuff. My 2nd is Ikea. Chris & I decided to do some errands without the kids on Saturday and one of the places we went to was Ikea, it was our first trip to this super store. If I had to describe it, it would be Costco (or Sams Club) on steroids! Wow, was that place awesome. There will be several things from Ikea that will find there way into our new house and in the quilt studio. It's deffinately the way to go if you are on a budget. Oh and for my storage/organization in my studio I am planing on using some of the ideas from sew many ways using my left over moving boxes.     

Faster Than the Speed of Light-Reflection

Well my Liberty came back last week and is back up and running!

I am really loving the new edgerider wheels, no more drag, just smooth as silk. I have already started back to doing customer quilts after my month long vacation. All though it didn't seem that long, I mean I had a list of things I wanted to get done and only a small portion actually did :0(

I was able to paint the master bedroom but never got around to painting the master bath or the closet. I quilted 3 yards of fabric (prior to sending my machine off) so I could make covers for my serger and my sewing machine, this never got finished. I did make a professional tote and my oldest picked out fabrics/notions for hers, here it is....

  

The main fabric is the turquoise. But I haven't found time to make it for her yet, it needs to be done before she heads back to college in the fall.

I also didn't finish my french braid quilt for my bed yet, need to finish the center and then just add the borders so it can be quilted.

I did finish piecing the AccuquiltGo Tumbler quilt though, just need to squeeze it in between customer quilts to be quilted.

I didn't have time to organize my scraps, which I was hoping to do, or get some other projects finished. I just can't figure where all of my time went? Well scratch that some of it did go to reading 5 books, yes 5. They were the Percy Jackson series about greek mythology, two of my oldest daughters are reading them so I wanted to see what they were all about. They were good, the story line/plots were very simular to the Harry Poter books in that they were both about a boy about 12 that find they are very special (Harry a wizard and Percy a Halfblood or part greek god) they both go away to learn about their destinies (one a school and the other a summer camp) they both fight evil and with each book comes a new adventure that advances with their ages. However the Harry Potter series ended after 7 books, the Percy Jackson books have the potential to keep going, at least for now.

Also some time was spent going to BBQs, Confirmation parties and Blackhawk (hockey) parties, We have been invited to parties every weekend for the past month, some times even 2 per weekend. It's hard to get things done when time is not your own, plus with the kids home from school for the summer the first few weeks there is always some adjusting with time managing as well.

Oh I almost forgot, my copy of my EQ7 upgrade came yesterday!

 

At first glance there doesn't seem to be many changes to the basic program, the improvements are mostly with the digital pics you can now add to your quilt lay outs and more improvements to the advanced program, hmmmm I guess in order to feel like I got my moneys worth on this upgrade I will need to push myself to learn more of the EQ program than just the basic stuff, something that has been on my to do list for many years now. :0)  

A Little of This...

And a little of that.


Friday morning after dropping kids off at school Chris and I headed over to the UPS store to say my goodbyes to my machine...it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and it should arrive at the factory on Thursday but I will be without her 3 weeks or so, depending how many are before her. I talked to Kristy at APQS and told her when to expect it.


So without a quilt on my machine to keep me busy I baked some peach muffins and finished piecing a queen size tumbler quilt. I have a feeling I will be getting lots done piecing wise (like Shannon did when her beloved Nemo took a holiday) and I will probably end up gaining 10 lbs! ;0)


Was going to start painting my master bed/bath this week comming up but it has been pushed back a week do to scheduling conflicts with the hubby (he paints the ceilings). 


Saturday is Chris' B-day, he's heading to the golf course in the morning and I get to bake him a cake. I always bake the "Hershey's perfectly chocolate, chocolate cake" (the one on the Hershey's cocoa canister) for all of the B-days except my son's, he prefers a lemon cake over the chocolate. And I am hoping to work on a tote for my lap top.   

Blogging

I am new to this whole blogging thing, just started  last fall, thought it would be something fun to do. The more I learn about it the more I am intrigued. The more blogs I visit the more I want to add to my blogs, to make mine have more personality. Widgets, badges oh my! The things you can do can make your head dizzy. I have seen several blogs set up to look like scrapbooks, really cool and as soon as I figure out how to do that, my blogs will get an instant face lift, lol :0)

 However it might take a while since I am computer challenged....when I was in high school many years ago I had to take a computer class, it was so boring, we had those old Mac "dinosaurs" that only had the dreadful green text color and the only thing we were being taught was how to write code. At the time this seemed very boring to me, so much so that I use to sit in the back of the class drawing in my sketch book (my senior year every other class of mine was an art class ;0)). Who would have thought, that computer class would have actually come in handy now. 

It's a good thing my DH is a computer geek, except whenever I ask him to do something for me computer related he keeps telling me he doesn't write code :0(  But he has come in pretty handy, I mean he created my business website for me and hosts it and maitains it on our own server, saves us alot of $$ and I am able to have as much content on it that I want. If only I would have paid more attention in that high school computer class...that's the moral of this story kids, those classes in high school you think you will never put to use in your real life, well pay attention because you most likely will!!!!! 

Changes

Today is my birthday!
So of course like most people I didn't want to work on my birthday, which is why I wanted to get all my quilting jobs done by last night, which I did. So the only thing I had going for today was to do 1 customer drop off appointment. After that was over my day was pretty much wide open :0) 


My husband has been off work all week so I put him to work making changes to my website and I have been tweaking my new blog. Since Gecko Quilts will be 5 years old in just a few months (2010) I decided some updating is long over do. Of course the over all look to the website will still be the same but we are adding some new things to the site that I think will make it more fun. For instance a little change will be adding the new "customer quilts" pages for 2010, and while doing this we decided that we are going to condence the older years to 1 link (2005-2009) then when you click on that it will break out the individual years just like they are now. And the new year 2010 will be left as is, click on it and it will take you to the 2010 pages of quilts. Another little change was we centered the home page of the site better...it was driving me crazy for awhile.


For the big changes we are adding this blog. This will give an open journal of how one woman, wife, mother of 5 juggles life, family, and a home business. It will be amusing, chaotic at times, and definately interesting as I blog my random thoughts and personal projects with pictures and text.


Another big change is that we are adding a forum to the website...for now it won't be used for networking with each other but a place for me to share my personal recipes. Over the years I have given several customers copies of my recipes when the topic came in conversation during pick ups or drop offs. I love to cook and have a lot of great recipes that I would like to share.


I am also going to have my personal quilts on their own page so people can see what I myself am doing quilt wise.   

Customer Quilts/ Making Time to Quilt My Own

You can always tell when the snow birds come back to town, the phone rings constantly and my turn around time gets longer. This week I am taking in a dozen customer quilts and I am booked up through December now. I have 6 customer quilts scheduled to be done this week. It's Tuesday and I have 3 done and 3 more to do. I would like to get them all done by tomorrow so they can be picked up Friday or Monday next week. If I can stay on schedule I might be able to work on some of my own projects.

I get asked alot by my customers "Do you ever have time to do your own quilts?" Yes I do, sometimes it is hard to find time but if I don't try to squeeze time in for my own stuff I tend to get resentful. I look at quilting as a form of therapy, a stress release, a way to reconnect with my creativity and forget all the troubles in the world. I have always posted my personal quilts in the customer quilts and charity quilts sections on my gecko quilts website, but part of the changes/ updates that I have planned for 2010 for my website will be to have an area just for my quilts to be displayed.