2016 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop

Hello, my name is Janice and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the final week of the 2016 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop.   Thank you to our hostesses Cheryl at Meadowmist Designs, Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl, and Stephanie at Late Night Quilter for sponsoring this learning experience for us new bloggers!  Be sure to visit their blogs for a chance at some great prizes!!

So I'll start off with a bit about me.  I am married with three children, only one of whom is left at home right now.  Currently, we are living with my husband's parents while we are remodeling an old farm house.  The original farmhouse is TINY, a shack, really.  Only about 800 square feet and built in the early 1900's.  Here it is . . .

We tore everything out and down to the studs.  Redid everything so it's basically going to be like a brand new house.

Next comes wall raising for extra rooms . . .

My middle son, my daughter, my nephew all push the wall up while my husband nails it into place.  And before you get all impressed that we are doing this all on our own, without any professionals,  you should probably know that my husband is a builder by trade!

So here is how it looks after all the new square footage is added so it is now a 3 bedroom, two bath house with a sun room!  One of the bedrooms used to be a root cellar under the house and is now a really nice sized bedroom which will probably be my sewing room until we move into our permanent home.  This will be a temporary house while we wait for our final home to be built.

And here is what it looks like now!

At the moment, the place we live is up in the mountains and the wifi is horrible up there so I drove down the mountain to the nearest town in a car with no AC.  I'm hot and windblown.  But I have to have wifi to get this post done!  Sorry, no pretty dressed up pictures of me this time.   This is me in all my messed up glory!  :D

OK, now lets get onto the quilting part of the story!  

I have been piecing quilt tops off and on (mostly off) for the last 15 years. It all started with a pack of 100 5-inch squares that I bought from ebay.  This would have been before they started calling them charm packs, I guess.

Much to my son's chagrin (it's his) it took me five years to finish just the piecing part and then paying what seemed like a small fortune for someone to quilt it for me meant that I kind of lost interest in quilting for a while . . . we're talking years.

Then just this past April 2016, my BFF (best quilty friend) taught me how to quilt on my Bernina (I did a post showing her wonderful talents here) and I just started gobbling up all the information I could find on FMQ and started practicing.  I LOVE FMQing!!!   That is Free Motion Quilting for those of you who don't quilt.  This is my first attempt.

Needs work, but I am hooked!

 I have been reading all the wonderful quilting blogs out there, (which is how I found this blog hop) and buying Craftsy classes, and watching everybody making the most gorgeous things!

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of quilts to show you because I've only made three . . .   all baby quilts.

Quilt #1

Quilt #2  Same quilt, only in in pink.

Quilt #3 was made for my neice's baby who was SUPPOSED to be a girl but he came out a boy!

And last but not least is a work in progress (WIP in quilt lingo!) and I really need some advice on this.  I've never quilted a big quilt and I'm very nervous about this.  It is a chevron pattern and usually, I think you're supposed to start quilting from the middle and work your way out, correct?  But since this is a chevron and I'm going to be attempting feathers in the white parts, wouldn't I start from the edge and work my way to the other side?  Any advice for me before I start this would be MOST appreciated! Also, this picture doesn't show it but I sewed an additional 2" strip between the bottom of every chevron and the top of the heart rows as the pattern called for.  It made it look a little more balanced but leaves kind of some odd spaces between each heart because that row is not a true chevron.  Not sure what to put there.

 Another snag I ran into is the amount of fabric the pattern said to purchase for the back was just BARELY enough to match the quilt top.  I have heard horror stories about people quilting a quilt and finding that the quilting caused the backing to be too small.  Yikes!  So to make sure I didn't run into that problem, I added this on the back using scraps from trimming the hearts.  So that presents a problem in that whatever I quilt on the front is not going to match this at all unless I do an allover pattern.  Should I care about that?  Or should I go ahead with my plan to do feathers in the chevrons?  I plan on using thread to match whatever color I'm quilting over so I'm not sure what is going to end up on this part of the back.  This is getting complicated!!  I didn't really know there were so many things to consider!

Our blog mentors asked that we share a blogging tip so here is my tip.  Make your pictures big!  I see these beautiful pictures but sometimes I can't see the detail very well.  Unfortunately, I can only advise those who use the Blogger platform.  When you insert your picture, click on your picture and then choose XLarge.  This will make your picture as large as it can be without flowing outside your post area.  If you click Original Size some of your picture won't show.

A quilting tip?  Make friends with people who know what they are doing!! Ha! Ha!  That is EXACTLY why I started this blog because I am hoping I can count on more experienced blogger/quilters out there to guide me in my journey.  I have SO MANY questions all the time!

Earlier in my blogging career (a month ago, hee! hee!)  I took an informal survey of other quilters who I had been talking with and asked them if they were a one-at-a-time project quilter or multiple.  My motivation for asking this question was to justify to myself having too many different projects going all at once.  You all came through with flying colors!  I only met ONE person who prefers to work on one project at a time.  The rest of you have anywhere from 5 to 10 projects in the works at all times.  And since I've read some of your goals since then I'm pretty sure there are bunches of out there with waaaaaay more than even that.  Some of you up in the 20's!   

So how many projects do you have going right now?  Let's see who has the most!

Last but not least is a random fact about me.  Before I got so interested in quilting, I collected antique perfume bottles and even created a website in 1997 called Passion for Perfume.  It still exists but unfortunately, that poor baby has been sadly neglected in favor of sewing. In fact, I probably could make my blog a little prettier and more professional than it is, but I prefer to spend my time sewing!   Trying to decide whether I want to keep the perfume site or not.  Here is an example of the kind I collect, er, used to collect:

Well, I have been having a WONDERFUL time with learning how to quilt and making new friends!  I love comments and suggestions and will always try to respond to every single one.  

There are three hives to visit and I belong to Miss Bee- Hivin' with the cutest logo made by the talented Amista from Hilltop Custom Designs. 

Please be sure to visit the other ladies in my hive and give them some comment love!!

Blog Hop Week 4 - July 18th

Hannah @ unsophisticated+jejune

Susan @ Sevenoaks Street Quilts

Amista @ Hilltop Custom Designs

Janice @ Color, Creating, and Quilting! (you're already here)  

Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you'll come again!

Linking to: 

Monday Making at Love, Laugh,  Quilt

Podunk Pretties

Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework