New Quilting Project

I am just about to finish up a new quilting project (even though my first quilt isn't quite finished yet) so I thought I'd post a picture of it here. My friend and I took the original quilting class together, and have been going into the quilt store quite often to work on our quilts. My friend told the teacher that she was interested in doing a Valentine's Day project so the teacher came up with a class to make a pretty heart wall hanging. The entire thing ended up being about 2 feet by 2 feet. Its a curved piecing project which I thought would be hard since I had only done straight lines up until now. It ended up not being hard, but it IS time consuming and it takes a little more concentration to make sure your curved lines line up straight. Its hard to see in this picture, but the entire project is actually made up of 10 rows of 10 small squares. Each heart is pieced together with 10 squares each (some of them overlap into other hearts) and in the end this is the result:

I still have to finish quilting it, which will involve outlining the hearts and putting a backing onto it, but I finished up the top piece tonight and I'm quite excited about it :-).

Mr. V actually picked out the fabric for me while I was having my surgery, and I'm pretty impressed with his choices. I like the way the colors accent each other, and I love the purple background. Its purple paisley (I love paisley), so I think he did a good job considering the fact that he wasn't all that thrilled to go pick out pink fabric for me :-).

I'll post the finished project when I make it back to the quilt shop to do the actual quilting part.

Quilting - My New Addiction...Part 2

I thought I'd post the pieces of my quilt as it gets put together. I'm really excited that its starting to actually look like a quilt! This is just the top part. All of my squares have been sewn together, and my border has been sewn on. The next step is adding the batting and backing and then actually quilting it together.

Quilting - My New Addiction

Last Christmas I got a sewing machine as a present from my in-laws. It was something that I wanted, but I hadn't gotten around to taking it out of the box, mainly because I had no idea how to use it. When I moved to Oak Harbor, a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to take a quilting class with her, and since I had nothing going on, I thought "sure, why not?". Granted, quilting had never really crossed my mind but I like attempting to be crafty so I thought it would be fun :-). The quilting teacher told us to bring sewing machines to class if we had one, so I was laughed at and lectured for being the only person who showed up with the sewing machine still in its unopened box :-). I thought quilting would be hard, but in reality its actually very easy. Its tedious work, that requires a lot of time and concentration, but once you get the hang of it, it is easy to do.

Last night I started putting my quilt together. Up until this point I had only made 12 different squares. Once the squares are binded together, I'll add the batting and backing and my quilt will be done! This was a beginner's quilt obviously, so we had picked a color scheme and then we were taught how to make different basic quilting squares. Each square is different, which isn't typical of a quilt, but I like the way this one will look. I love that it will always be the first quilt that I made and for some reason, I think its going to be kind of neat putting 12 different squares together. I thought I'd show you the squares that I've made and when I am done binding the quilt I'll post the finished project!

(Cat's Cradle)

(Loop the Loop - this one is my favorite)

(Hourglass)

(an applique fan)

(Spinner)

(Double Bow Tie)

(Friendship Star)

(Swamp Angel)

(I think this one was called a Bridge)

(Almamizer)

(Tea For Four)

(Weathervane)


(of course, this wouldn't be my house if I didn't receive some help from the cats...)

Weekend Fun

Now for the rest of my weekend:

I left you reading about the Oak Harbor tree lighting and the annual Holiday Stroll. Our stroll began at 4:00pm and the first place we went to was Paint Your World pottery shop, which has become my newest addiction. After 2 ladies nights at this store, I have decided that I love it, and love painting pottery, and I had a mission this time to paint something in remembrance of a special animal in my life.

Last Christmas, I was traumatized by the death of my beautiful, 8 month old kitten. Cledus had feline leukemia, which he had previously tested negative for, so we didn't know that he was sick. 5 days after Christmas, we were in the emergency vet's office, crying hysterically, and saying goodbye to the greatest pet that I have ever known. I still don't know what it was about Cledus, but he was truly a light in my life, and meant more to me than any of my other pets ever have. Its amazing how a tiny, sick little kitten had the ability to effect my life so much, but he did. Its because of Cledus that we have gone into our own version of animal rescue. I often find myself wondering if he was meant to come into our lives for a reason, and only for a short time period of 7 months. The cats we have now, wouldn't be in our lives if it wasn't for him, and for that I am grateful to him. When he died, Mr. V and I educated ourselves on feline leukemia, and began trapping and spaying/neutering outdoor feral cats. Cats that are spayed/neutered are not as likely to contract FeLv, so in the aftermath of Cledus' death, I set out on a "Save the cats of the world from feline leukemia" mission. We currently have another 8 month old kitten in our lives. He was born to a feral mother who tried to abandon him the moment he was born. I look back and realize that if Cledus hadn't died, we never would have trapped Velvet (who has been rehomed into another loving home.). Velvet would have given birth to Meepers outside in the swamps of Florida, and Meepers would have died within days, if not hours, of his birth. Instead, Meepers was born in our bathtub, and we bottle fed him to supplement the feedings that his mother wasn't giving him. Now we have a healthy, vibrant kitten living in our house, and I often think about the fact that he wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Cledus. Thoughts like that are what prevent me from crying, when I look back and think about Cledus and the shock of his death.

So back to pottery...
I had painted a cat ornament of my kitten Meepers, a few weeks ago. I wanted to go back and paint an ornament to remember Cledus by, especially now, when remembering his death has been taking its toll on me again. I remember his death being so close to Christmas, so it has been on my mind a lot in recent days. I ended up not painting an ornament of him, but a small bank instead. The bank is a small kitten, that I painted to resemble him in the best way that I could. It won't hold a lot of money, but we decided to put spare change into the bank, and when the bank is full, count the change and add it to an emergency animal fund, for future use. Mr. V wasn't going to sit there and just watch me paint my kitten bank, so he found himself a large moose holding a "welcome" sign and set out to paint that. The moose is so big, that it is still at the pottery shop, waiting for him to come back and finish painting it. I laughed at him for painting it, but I think it will be a nice addition to our home, especially here in the Northwest!

We ate dinner that night at a really good Thai restaurant in town and then came back home. Since I have been taking a quilting class I've become obsessed with fabric and quilts and now I want to make a quilt for every season and every event. Quilt making is very time consuming though, since many, many small pieces have to be sewn together to fit perfectly. On Black Friday, we went shopping at Joann's and I found this REALLY cute Christmas cats fabric. Its a very busy fabric, filled with several different cats. Since I decided that several of the cats on the fabric look similar to my own, I bought 7 1/2 yards of the fabric and decided to make a blanket, not a quilt with it. I thought I would just sew the 3 large pieces of fabric together, then add the batting and a backing fabric and I would have a blanket. Apparently, that is easier said than done. I mistakenly assumed that sewing 3 pieces of fabric together would be much easier and faster than sewing a bunch of small pieces of fabric together. However, I accounted for the fact that I would have to line up the design perfectly in order for the blanket to look good. What I didn't account for is the fact that that is easier said than done. After over an hour of pinning and re-pinning the fabric, I set out to sew it together. I made it about 1/4 of the way down the fabric before everything went wrong. Somehow I managed to keep the fabric lined up for the beginning of the sewing, but I managed to pull the fabric in several different random directions, leaving me with 2 pieces of fabric sewed partially correct, and the rest sewn like I just threw some fabric into the sewing machine and just stitched it up wherever I felt like it. Right now, the 2 rectangular pieces of fabric don't even resemble a rectangle or a square right now. Obviously this is going to be a much harder project than I thought it would be.

On Sunday, I woke up feeling pretty sick, which is when I realized that I must have been getting sick for a few days. I still managed to drag myself out of bed and get ready for our anual cat pictures with Santa!! Yes. I take the cats for pictures with Santa every year. Petsmart takes $5 of every picture purchased and donates it to local animal shelters, so my argument for harassing the cats is that its for a good cause. We packed up 8 of the 9 cats (cat #9 still won't come near us voluntarily), and headed off to Burlington. Usually, we just let Santa hold a cat and we stay out of the picture, but since we have aquired many more cats this year, Mr. V and I got in the picture with them, in an attempt to take only 3 pictures instead of 8, and save some money. Here is a link to my google picture site with a scanned version of the Santa pictures: (they are grainy but its the best I could do with low quality pictures and a scanner)
Petsmart Christmas 2008

And that brings me to the end of my weekend :-).

A Week of Updates

I definitely need to find more time....or motivation....to sit down and update this blog more often. So here's what life was like for Brooklet this past week :-).

The last time I posted was on December 2nd, which was the morning I woke up to pine needles and ornaments all over the floor. I've been battling it out with the cats all week and so far the score is Cats: 7, Brooklet: 0
We spent about 2 days ignoring the mess on the floor. In our logic we saw no need to clean anything up because the mess would just reappear almost instantly. Instead, we got a floor full of pine needles and Christmas ornaments, random Christmas ornaments all over the house, and a small branch from the Christmas tree in our bedroom. See, the part we didn't account for was the fact that once the ornaments were on the floor, they would become movable cat toys, and therefore end up all over the house. I can't remember which day Mr. V replaced all of the ornaments and vacuumed up the pine needles, but the serene beauty of our tree lasted only a few hours (the ornaments were replaced during daily cat nap time). Later on in the day we started to find a few ornaments on the ground, and Mr. V replaced those again. The battle of hanging ornaments up and knocking them down began again....

We did mange to capture a few more pictures of the cats hanging out under the tree:

Image #1: This is Moses. Note the pine needles ALL over the floor around him, the piece of my red and green garland and the random ornament in front of the camera.

Image #2: Meepers by the fireplace (the ash on the fireplace was a result of Mr. V cleaning out the fireplace just moments before this picture was taken). Note the random ornament that is sitting in front of Meepers.


Image#3: This one is dark, but this is Oreo taking his turn at napping under the tree.

Image #4: Sheena taking a cat nap under the tree.



Then in non-feline news, I had an eventful rest of the week.

On Wednesday I went to my friend Mugs house in Anacortes to try out her Cricut machine. I've been dying to get one of these wonderful machines for quite some time now, but I had never tried one out. She showed me how to use the machine and I am officially in love, and need one of my own. I made 2 small paper ornaments, and she created a gift tag out of a Christmas tree that I cut. She also made a small Christmas card that I took home with the rest of my items to attempt to convince Mr. V that I need a Cricut machine ASAP. The good news is that he was impressed by the items, and even humored me by looking on ebay for inexpensive machines with me. (We did manage to find one that was brand new, $450, and comes with 1 additional cartridge that you don't get to choose, and 2 more cartridges that you can choose, along with the 2 that come with the machine automatically. I'm currently watching this item, trying to convince Mr. V that we need to do more than just look, and actually buy it, since that seems to be the best deal that I can find.)

Image #1: This is the back of the 2 ornaments I made and the back of the gift tag that my friend made.


Image #2: This is the front of the ornaments and the gift tag.


Thursday afternoon was spent at the quilt shop working on my starter quilt for the class I have been taking, and waiting for the quilt lady (aka Debra - the shop owner) to alter my Christmas dress. Mr. V's squadron Christmas party is tonight, and I had bought a cute festive dress, that was too big on me. The quilt lady had told us that she can do simple dress alterations, so I took it to her. I expected to pay a small amount of money to have it altered, since it would have cost $25 or more had I taken it to an actual alteration place, but she ended up doing it entirely for free! I was a little surprised by that, but very greatful. I also discovered that she will sew on new Navy ranks for free, but not many people know this. She doesn't advertise it, but she and the lady that owns the yarn store across from her will sew ranks on for free so that these Navy boys won't have to pay to have them sewn on by the tailor on base. I'm sure some people are perfectly capable of sewing their new ranks on by themselves, but Mr. V doesn't trust me to do it, and since he loves saving money in any way possible, I'm going to have him take his uniforms to her when he gets promoted in May.

Thursday night was spent going out to dinner to a Mexican restaurant with one of my new friends and her husband. We went to El Cazador here in Oak Harbor and I was very impressed with their tacos. All I ever eat at Mexican restaurants is a plate of tacos, so they had to pass the Brooklet test of satisfaction, which they did. The Spanish rice was also very good, and I ate more food off of my plate than I usually do at a Mexican restaurant.

Friday I woke up feeling kind of weird. I chalked it up to allergies and went about my day. Nothing exciting happened during my day - just more cleaning and organizing and fighting with the cats about the Christmas tree.

Saturday night was date night for Mr. V and me. I woke up feeling tired, and just assumed that I was tired, nothing more. Mr. V slept in really late that morning, which was wonderful because he needed to catch up on sleep. (However a 5am flight this morning probably just erased all of the catching up he did over the weekend.) We spent the day lounging around, hanging Christmas ornaments back up, and then at night we went to the Oak Harbor Christmas tree lighting and the 4th annual Holiday Stroll. The tree was lit at 6:00 in a cute little ceremony. It was NOT the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree by any means, but it was a cute ceremony, which began when Santa Claus arrived on a pirate ship, then went on to the tree to light it. A large, scrawny tree with plain white lights on it was lit and then we continued the Holiday Stroll. Every year for Christmas, the local businesses in the area try to encourage buying from local people, and host this stroll. The stroll took place from 10am to 8pm. Every person was given a card to collect initials from 10 of the local businesses, then the card was entered into a drawing for $500. It was a great way for people to check out local shops that they never would have looked at otherwise.

We started our stroll at 4pm, but you are going to have to check back later to read about it and about the rest of my weekend :-). For now I am going to go be productive, and I will continue this in another post later on today.