I did it! I finished the baby quilt! I am so thrilled and I had to put to use some new skills to complete this quilt all by myself, but I did it and am very proud of myself!
There are a few things I did for the very first time in making this quilt. After piecing the top together, I had to figure out how to quilt it. I’ve quilted smaller projects, but nothing of this size.
I began by machine stitching in the ditch around all the small squares and then outlined the larger center squares. I did some free motion machine quilting around the characters and words. When it came to the borders though, I felt they needed something more than straight lines. So, while at the fabric store, I found a heart template and decided to go for it. I marked the borders with a water soluble marker and then began stitching.
I completed the bottom border first, but not without doing some major damage to my hand. I do not have a quilting machine, and trying to get all that fabric and batting through the machine everytime I had to turn the quilt to go another direction left my hands bleeding from catching on all the pins that were holding the quilt layers together.
After discussing it with my sister Grace, and then my mom, I pulled out my sewing machine manual and finally figured out a way to drop the feed dogs on the machine and, using my embroidery foot (I don’t have a quilting foot), I was able to glide the layers through, changing direction without having to turn the fabric. It was amazing! I can’t believe I did it!
Finally, after quilting the remaining borders, I seamed my binding together and machine stitched it to the front of the quilt. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I despise hand stitching. So, needless to say, I procrastinated for several days before working up the courage to sit down with needle and thread and hand stitch the binding to the back of the quilt.
It took me 2 days just to complete the binding, but I finally did it. The binding is on and the quilt is complete! I am so very happy with the results and am truly considering purchasing more of the same fabric to make a second one. I need to for gifts and I really do like the way it turned out. What do you think?
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Coldwell Banker. All opinions are 100% mine.
It’s that time of year again, the dreaded tax time! I don’t know about you, but we’ve been looking at all types of ways we can save money, particularly over the past year as we’ve watch the economy take a nose dive and drag our retirement funds right down with it. Thankfully my husband has been able to keep his job, while I did suffer a 2 month layoff, at least I was rehired. Next week I am actually even getting a promotion and a very small increase in salary! While we’ve made it our job to find ways to save money, it is my own personal New Year’s resolution to pay off debt as much as I can, and that includes our mortgage.
Looking at our mortgage and ways we can either save or get it paid off quicker, brings me back to tax time. I learned early on in my life that it’s important to plan ahead for taxes in order to take advantage of certain tax breaks. In fact, one particular tax credit available right now to current homeowners is the 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits. This federal tax credit is not only for first time homebuyers, but many current home owners who are thinking about moving up qualify if they’ve lived in their current home for 5 out of the last 8 years. Unfortunately, we’ve only been in our current home for 3 years so we can’t take advantage of this, but I know many people who can. If you’re even thinking about it, keep in mind that you must have a binding contract dated no later than April 30, 2010 and there are income limits that must be considered as well.
I don’t know about you but I have a very hard time throwing away greeting cards I’ve received, especially Christmas cards that are so beautiful! I have a bag full of cards I’ve received over the years that I just can’t bring myself to get rid of. I have no idea what I would do with them, but there they are, every year when I open up my bins to decorate for the holidays.
Well, on day while I was sitting reading my Better Homes and Gardens magazine, I ran across a small article that gave information on recycling holiday greeting cards. This isn’t any recycling program either. This is St Jude’s Ranch for Children and the kids actually remove the fronts of donated holiday cards and use them to make new cards! How awesome is that?!
You can actually learn more about the program at stjudesranch.org and I discovered that they not only accept holiday cards, but everyday greeting cards as well.
They accept donated cards only through the end of February and you can mail donated cards to:
St. Jude’s Ranch for Children
Recycled Card Program
100 St. Jude’s Street – Boulder City, NV 89005
877-977-SJRC (7572)
I’m off to clean out that bag of old cards and get them packaged and ready to mail!
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Wheat Food Council. All opinions are 100% mine.
My daughter is in 8th grade and is studying the nitrogen cycle in science. I wonder if they cover the food cycle as part of their studies. Really, have you ever thought about where our food comes from? Seriously, it can be a very interesting learning experience is you track back to the beginning. I think I may just have to email her science teacher and send him the link to How Wheat Works which is sponsored by the Wheat Foods Council and shows how wheat goes from being planted in the ground to being food on the table, with all the steps in between.
Wheat is in so many of our daily foods, whether we’re using flour for making gravy or baking cookies. Wheat is in our breads, tortillas, many chips, snack foods and cereals. Using the How Wheat Works interactive program, you can plant, harvest, mill, bake and then virtually eat the wheat you’ve grown! It’s fascinating to see the entire process and kids especially will enjoy the learning process and the online interactive activity. There are 4 programs, each taking just a few minutes to complete, and one can be completed each day.
As an added benefit, for each person that completes the 4 day cycle, the Wheat Foods Council will donate 2 pounds of flour to OperationHomeFront.net, a non-profit group that provides assistance to U.S. Troops and their families in need.
I’ve all ready started my farming activity, how about you?
Slowly but surely I’m making my way back! I spent 8-9 hours yesterday restoring my desktop computer, had to go all the way back to factory setting! Then, I spent most of the afternoon reinstalling and updating all the programs, including the antivirus software. Actually, I’m quite proud of myself that I did it on my own, saved myself the trouble of having to take it to a technician and the money of having to pay said technician!
Truthfully, I was just so angry that the computer had once again been attacked by a virus that I was very close to tossing the whole thing through the window! Instead, I sat down and, as it was booting up, I pressed F10, System Restore!
That computer is back up and running, I managed to drop EC today and now going to read my email. I still have to clean up my laptop, might wait until Saturday for that.
As for sewing, I have my baby quilt all put together, quilted and the binding is sewn to the front. I hope to spend Saturday sitting and hand stitching the binding to the back and it will then be completed!
