Grandmother's Flower Garden

I'm supposed to be cleaning out my garage.* There are still so many boxes out there, still, from our move 1 1/2 years ago. It's stuff that has been in boxes for years and years, and stuff from our old house that I have lived without for 1 1/2 years. When you go from a house 4,800 sq. ft. house, to a 2,800 sq. ft. house - there is excess stuff. And I have a very hard time getting rid of stuff.

Anyway, while I was out there cleaning I came across these.

I am totally digging these orange and blue ones.

I have a note on an envelope that I started this quilt in March of 1995. That was more than a year before my youngest was born. So, I'm assuming that I spent a lot of pregnancy and baby time working on these.

If you look close, you can see that some of the fabric is dated. I hadn't been quilting long at that point, and I think I went more for "thrift" rather than beauty and feel. But I think the overall look of it will still be okay. You can also see my stitches in some of them - white stitches, which are not all that attractive.

But, we know that we are our own worst critics. So, hopefully, I'll notice it more than others. And, once it's quilted and washed it might not be noticeable at all. Well, until I point it out to people. Which I'm bound to do.

I think I'm going to edge all of the flowers in white - like this one. I really like the way that looks.

I also need to figure out how to back the whole thing. The normal way? Boy, binding could be quite a challenge. Well, I won't worry myself about that little problem until I get closer to actually getting the thing done.

* This project is not going well at all. I just really don't want to be out there doing it. And then I just get so overwhelmed with all of the shit wonderful treasures that I just can't get rid of.

Tootsie Toasties

Following this tutorial, I made this foot warmer.

I love this thing. I love how my piping matches my fabric. I love how my flower pattern matches so well (which was done completely by accident). I love how warm it keeps my feet. It's a rice bag inside of a cover (in case you didn't look at the tutorial). I warm up the rice bag and put it in the cover, then I stick it in my bed where my feet go.

I've used rice bags to warm my feet before, but because this thing is in the cover (which has batting in it), it stays warm for MUCH longer than just a plain rice bag. It whips up really quick, too. If you have cold feet, you should definitely make one!

I made some for my girls, too. No piping for them!

I also used a tad bit more rice than she used - I used a pound and a half of rice (24 oz), instead of only 18 oz.

Jolly Jingle Runner

I had a charm pack that I got some time ago and decided to try Monica's Jingle Jolly Runner pattern.

Here's what I came up with:

While the colors are really cute, me and triangles get into such fights. The result of one such fight being this wonky part of the runner.

See the scottie square wrinkling up? I think it might have happened because I was being fanatical about having nice points, so I unstitched and then restitched quite a few blocks to get nice points. But, I only unstitched where the points were. Even though there was no way I could get that blue block above the scotties to have a point. *sigh*

I figured I'll quilt the heck out of the runner, then wash it, and see what happens with all of my wonkiness.