Uninspired

For the past three days I have been working on the binding on the baby quilts for my cousin (TWINS!!) and yesterday finished them. I have had several ideas running around in my head for other projects to work on and begin, but nothing is really sticking this week. I received word that a close friend had a miscarriage on Wednesday. I had just begun planning the cutest baby blanket for them, and now my creative juices are frozen. Hopefully, she and her husband will heal quickly, and I hope to be crafty this afternoon and evening.

Crayon Quilts

About a year ago, I did a "Surprise Swap" with a group from the online quilting board, and received a really neat kit from my partner. I didn't take "in-progress" pics, but it's pretty simple. For this you need:

Crayons

a large piece of white muslin

any coloring page image of your choice

masking tape

wax paper and iron

Simply tape the coloring page to a hard surface for you to color on, and tape the muslin on top of the coloring page. You should be able to see the coloring page lines through the material. Now, take your crayons to the muslin and have fun coloring it to your hearts content. (The directions I have say to use a high quality muslin and good crayons, Crayola are best).  You will need to press down pretty firmly to color on the fabric, but it's okay because you're going to heat set the crayon when complete. I have the telescoping tower of Crayola crayons, and so I really played with shading and blending to make my image look as close to realistic as it could, but this is your project, so make it look however you want it to!

When you have finished coloring, take your muslin to the ironing board along with the wax paper.  Lay the wax paper on top of your ironing board and the colored image and press with high heat, no steam. Press, do not rub. Lift and press, lift and press, all over your colored image, moving the wax paper as needed to keep the crayon from melting onto your iron. The crayon will melt into the fabric, becoming heat set so that it will not wash out or rub off over time.

Now all that's left is to finish in a quilt. I love my Eeyore, and know that eventually we will be planning a nursery, so I am on the lookout for the Winnie the Pooh large coloring book so I can make 3 more panels: Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet. They will be completed as wall hangings to decorate a nursery.

I find the awesome thing about this project is that it is so personal.  There are literally thousands of coloring designs available through your local superstore and online, and if you are an artistic person, you can draw your own image to color. Plus, everyone has such individual opinions on design and color, 20 people could color this exact image of Eeyore and we would have 20 different Eeyores. 

Have fun creating!

Binding and Finishing

Yesterday's snow day was beautiful but cold. I spent the day inside doing prep work for finishing and working on some UFOs.  I am pulling my crochet yarns out in preparation for making a friend a crocheted baby blanket. I wanted to see what I had, and try to figure out what I could do with them. I made some motifs for a scrap afghan in order to exercise my hand since I haven't crocheted in several years. I also rolled several skeins of yarn into balls for easier storage (and cat toys!)

Have you met the kitten? This fat-rat ball of fluff is Total. She loves eating her cat sister's food, attacking her dog brother's tail and getting in the middle of all of my craft projects.

Today I am going to redeem baby quilts from the quilter. My cousin is having twins in early February, a boy and a girl. Taking advantage of yesterday's cold stay-inside-cold-day, I made the continuous bias binding for both of them. Yes, I went with the cliche, and made a pink and a blue quilt. These beautiful stripes complement the quilt tops perfectly. Pictures of the baby quilts to come after they have been gifted.

(Don't you just love how yummy those stripes are? I love that the bias binding makes barber-poles out of the print!)

Here's to progess!

Snow and Computers

It is a cold somewhat snowy day in East Tennessee and this is all we have to show for it. About an inch of snow on the ground. Boo. But it is pretty while it lasts.

The biggest concern of my day is my computer. I downloaded the new iTunes update last night and when the computer went to restart, it wouldn't. It ran for a few minutes, and then would turn off without doing anything. Over and over again. When I called the Geek Squad this am, suddenly the computer decided to run a system restore. The threat of time in the repair shop apparently scared it into working! But it has made me realize how desperately we need to get a back-up account. I need to know that if it does this again, I won't lose all my pictures, music, and job application documents. Plus, it's time to renew the anti-virus protection. Guess what I'll be doing this afternoon...Yup. Saving my computer, one file at a time.

The Nest Effect January Challenge: Creeating Schedules

If you are following along in the hopes of becoming more organized this year, then you are just as much in love with The Nest Effect's January Challenge as I am! I have diligently been charting along with Tiffany as she organizes her new year; have you been doing the same? Yesterday's post was about creating schedules to help run your life more efficiently. I think the most powerful thing (IMHO) she said, though, was that schedules can be guidelines to help, or scaffolds to hang yourself on. Schedules can be flexible, twisting and turning the same way our lives do. As a substitute teacher, I know this quite well. I can have lists of things planned to do for any given day, but once that phone rings to call me in for a teacher, all plans are out the window. And to be quite honest, that puts a kink in my plans. Ok. I'll be even more honest. It derails them.

But if I remember to be flexible with my schedule, I can more easily make adjustments and still accomplish things. So hop on over to her blog and check out the newest printable, a chart to help us create our own schedules. In pencil (at least for me). Flexible schedules that can shift and bend with new events.

On other news, I have printed out and begun using my own organizing charts, and I leave them here so you can see that even if you can't make them as pretty as Tiffany does on The Nest Effect, you can still have functional lists, charts and checklists to help get your life in order!

One chart, two uses. Regular organizing To-Do as well as a Blog topic list. Yes, I marked it in Sharpie rather than  redesign/reprint.

Weekly cleaning. Your basic, mundane cleaning. Clean surfaces in each room, clean microwave in kitchen, take out trash, take trash to curb, clean mirrors, toilet, shower, clean out the car, etc. Tailor this to your own needs.

Monthly and seasonal cleaning checklists. This is for all those things you do on a montly, every-other-month, 2x and 4x a year. Pet meds, vacuum air vents, empty paper shredder (this might be a weekly item for some), flip and rotate mattresses, change air filters and smoke detector batteries, replace baking soda in fridge/freezer. And these are only a few of the things on my checklist.

Heres's to progress!!

January Challenge via The Nest Effect

I resolved to become more organized this year and to help with that I am following Tiffany at The Nest Effect in her January Challenge: Assessing & Prioritizing Time. It was embarrassing, to say the least, to see how much time I wasted last week. Granted, school is not in session and therefore I am not getting any sub jobs, but really! There was an awful lot of TV and internet, not to mention the sleeping in.

(Don't look too carefully at the chart!)

But yesterday's post is supposedly the beginning of the answer. It is a printable of how I want to spend my time. I still want to enjoy playing on the internet and watching TV via Netflix, I just need to make sure it stays at the bottom of my priorities list. And exercising myself and the dog is becoming a must. The dog is healthy and in shape (unlike me) but he is bored. He used to go to play camp for dogs when I was working, and he got regular exercise and was wonderfully well behaved. Now that I'm not working, he stays at home with me and has begun chewing on everything in sight again. I've already repaired one set of holes in my duvet cover, and now I have to fix another.  I also want to read more and finish more crafts! (And since finishing the crafts is the point of this blog, it is a high priority.) Number one, of course, is spending  more time with my husband and family.

So while I'm rather embarrassed to have posted the earlier chart, I feel like the sun is beginning to peek through the clouds. There is hope for people like me. Tiffany says to check back on Wednesday for the next installment, so that's where you'll see me!

Here's to progress!

A Progress Post

Almost a year ago, my husband's granny went into the hospital for a quadruple by-pass surgery, and I pulled out an old UFO to work on in the waiting room.  I found the best distraction to be my Christmas cross-stitch pattern. When I pulled it out of the bag, it looked like this....

I know the angle is bad on the picture, but I was only a little over a quarter of the way finished with this pattern. In the hospital that day, I worked on the tree beside the house, and slowly made my way to the sky to the left of the completed house. As beautiful as the sky is, all of those half-cross stitches really got to me after a while. And then I moved to the trees. I thought they would be Bob Ross-worthy "happy little trees". He lied.

They were not happy, and neither was I.

Months later, I finished the trees, the house on the right and began working on the lower right quadrant. It was really neat watching everything coming together, seeing the people emerge out of the snowbanks, looking as though they really will finish lacing their ice skates and take off any minute now.

This is the piece as of last night. My original goal for this piece was to have it finished by the end of 2011. Clearly, that did not happen. But I do have less than one-sixth of the pattern to complete.

It's really exciting to see it coming together. At my current pace, I hope to have all the cross stitch completed by the end of the month, with the back-stitch and final details finished by the end of January. And now that DH has begun to cross stitch as well (I KNOW!!) we can each spend the evenings on the couch, enjoying Netflix and working on projects.

Here's to progress!!