My 2,000th Post Giveaway!!

When I started blogging on the quilt specific blogging site in July 2007, I had no idea that I would keep blogging for so many years and I know that I didn't even consider writing 2,000 posts! It's amazing to me that I have done it!

I have made some amazing friends from the blog and even meet some of them in person - Regina, Jennifer, Amy, Ruth and Judy L. are the ones that immediately come to mind!

Having the blog was also an ice breaker with Jean who announced that she had read my blog when I met her at a Guild meeting. When I went to the first Shipshewana retreat, I met Donna and Vera and they knew me from my blog and it was like we already knew each other.

Having the blog helped secure my turn as a quilter for the Scrap Squad and you can read all about my quilts here.

Documenting my quilts and quilting on the blog has been a fantastic way for me to keep track of how long I have been working on a project and how many UFOs I have. It has also helped me keep track of goals and lists of things to do occasionally.

I think it is going to be a great way for me to keep track of my vintage machine collection. :)  And knitting projects.

Enough of this sappy stuff! It's time to get to what everyone has been patiently waiting for.... THE GIVEAWAY!!!

I am giving away QUILTING! Yes, I am going to choose a winner from the comments and quilt a quilt for her (or him). There will be restrictions, of course.

1. Maximum quilt size of 65" square. 
2. Winner pays for all other expenses - shipping, batting, and anything else that might come up.
3. Quilting will not be a custom quilt design, but I have a wide range of pantographs and free hand designs available.
4. This quilting is only available to US residents only because I don't want to deal with international shipping of a quilt. Sorry. :(

For those that want to celebrate with me but don't want or need anything quilted, be patient because I already have a couple of things picked out for my blogiversary on July 28.

Also, depending on how popular this giveaway is, I might be inclined to sweeten the pot, so to speak, so feel free to share the giveaway on your blog or facebook or twitter pages. :)

And now for what you need to do to be entered... Leave me a comment and tell me how long it has been since you finished a quilt or a quilted project. :)

I will draw the winner on July 31 so you have almost 2 weeks to enter.

And the most important part... If you are a NO REPLY COMMENTER, you must leave your email address in the comment. If you don't and I have no way to get in touch with you, I will delete your comment from the post. If you have ever left a comment on my blog and have never gotten an email response, you are probably No Reply. I will be responding to each and every comment that is left so if you don't hear from me within a couple of days, you are probably marked as No Reply.
If you are unsure if you are no reply, just put your email in the comment.

I will modify this post as questions come up or if there is anything that I need to clarify.

Thanks for sharing in this journey with me and for celebrating my 2,000th post with me!

Faster binding technique

If you are looking for the Modern Designs for Classic Quilts book giveaway, it is in this post.

While reading through blog posts on the 100 blocks blog tour last week, I happened upon a post for hand stitching binding. Now, I love to hand stitch my binding and I thought that I had a few very handy tools to help speed the process along.

Sometime in the last couple of years, I read on a blog to use hand quilting thread. This thread is a little thicker than regular thread and there is a coating on it to help it slide through the fabric. Also, because the thread is thicker, you only have to use 1 thread where I had been using 2 of regular thread since it was thinner and I didn't want any stitches to break down the road.

When using the hand quilting thread, it is much easier to load up a few stitches before pulling the rest of the thread through. I like to use a pretty long length of thread and take up to 6 stitches pulling through just enough thread to manage the needle and then after the last stitch, I pull the end of the thread through all of the stitches at once.

The way that I had been stitching was to do roughly a 3/8" stitch through the binding fabric and then take a tiny bite of fabric on the quilt. Maybe 2 or 3 threads worth of fabric from the quilt. This is how I was taught and how I have always done my binding.

Well, after reading this post on the Relatively Creative Patterns blog, I decided to give their way a try. I was amazed at how quickly this method of stitching went!!

And it looks so much better! To the left of the needle is the new way of stitching and to the right is how I have always done my stitching. I'm just amazed at the difference.





I used this method to hand stitch the binding on this customer quilt. I got the binding done Saturday morning and shipped it back to the customer before the post office closed! To see better pictures of the quilting, see this post.



Lula is just shocked at this development!

A Whole Week?

I can't believe that it has been an entire week since I last posted! I know that I had been very busy, but am shocked that I just didn't take the time to post anything!

Since last Tuesday's post, I have finished the 2 bow tie quilts for the customer; returned the quilts to her; packed up the car with clothes, sewing projects, the dogs and granma; driven to Florida; and left the condo in the care of the dog sitter. :)

I have pictures to show of the bow tie quilts, but I haven't had a chance to download them from the camera yet. I should do that today so that I can start showing them today and tomorrow.

I did finish the binding on the cow quilt just before I left and it's nice to know that the quilt is complete.

I had a ton of emails to go through and I did a lot of that yesterday. And I had almost 200 blog posts to read on the blog reader, but I haven't done that yet. I think that it will be a slim chance that I actually comment on any of them either. :(

And no Tiny Tuesday posts for 2 weeks. I didn't get a chance to pull fabric together for the next 2 blocks. I am sure that you gals will survive! lol

And with that, I am off to get busy on blog posts.

A Revision and an Announcement

I am pleased to present my revised blog, Darling Jill Quilts!

After the renovations that I did in my condo over the summer, I feel like the blog needed a bit of a renovation as well. I feel like I am more focused in my crafting life than I was when I started the blog four and a half years ago and there are no more ‘ramblings.’ Or not as many as there used to be!

While doing the renovations – moving furniture, repairing walls and ceilings, painting, replacing hardware and, finally, reorganizing – I didn’t realize how strong I was to be able to do the majority of the work on my own. Not only was I physically strong and able to do all the moving and painting and manual labor in order to set up my studio and new bedroom, but I was mentally strong to get everything done with only one breakdown in spite of living with boxes of fabric and miscellaneous items strewn all over the rest of the condo for several weeks. I have to say that I impressed myself!

When I decided to give the blog a face lift, I enlisted the help of my bestie Regina to come up with a header and button that would suit my purpose and my changing quilting style. We started working on this back in September so it has taken a while for it to all come together.

In the midst of our discussions, I realized that I also want to upgrade my quilt frame. After discussions with several people, both quilters and business people, I decided to start my own quilting business to help me achieve this goal.

I am pleased to announce the creation of my own little quilting business – Darling Jill Quilts!

For the most part, my quilting will be limited to quilts up to queen size as my current frame has size limitations. I will also be doing mainly freehand quilting and pantographs to give all over designs. I only have limited throat space on the machine so I am limited in the amount of customized quilting I can do.

My prices are listed on a tab at the top. I have also set up a Facebook page for Darling Jill Quilts so if you are so inclined, please head over there and like it for updates!

I have been quilting for others for the last couple of months and have had great response to what I have done so I am very excited to be making the announcement now.

And rest assured! I will continue with my regular posting of what I am working on along with stash reports, book reviews, and design wall posts and I will add in posts of quilting when I have customer approval.

I hope that you all like the new blog look! And if you have any questions, feel free to send me an email!

Occupy Your Sewing Room

I occupied my sewing room A LOT between December 3 and 10! And a room at the Centennial Barn for a Sew In and Patrice's sewing room because we worked on the Guild's Raffle quilt last weekend.

Last weekend, Patrice and I assembled the Guild Quilt.



Tuesday night, I made a Midget Block.






Tuesday and Wednesday night, I quilted a lap quilt.



And Friday night, I quilted a baby quilt and then fixed a few things on my quilt frame.



A great week of Occupying! See how others did here.

Occupy Your Sewing Room

This is a great idea!




Just spend a day sewing between December 3 and 10 and you can split the time over multiple days. How easy is that?

Just go here to read about it!

Goodies received!

I got a few goodies in the last couple of weeks. I got notification that I won something else from Northcott Fabrics and was waiting for that to show up so that I could show it off in one post, but it's still not here.

I got a Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Volume 3 magazine from the Quiltmaker's site. WOO HOO!! I haven't taken the time to look through the magazine yet, but all of the blocks that I saw on the Blog Hop were very cool!



I also won a giveaway on Carol Fun's blog a couple of months ago. She is in my Guild and passed the goodies along to me at the last meeting. Check out her blog - she does lots of crafts and has great pics and ideas on her blog!



Lots of goodies for me to enjoy!

Busy Week!

I can't believe that I haven't posted since Monday! I'm only slightly behind on emails and blog reading, but I have no idea when I will get to it. So far, I have been running errands and working on house stuff every night this week and I still haven't gotten to sew much since Sunday. I even forgot to post on Tiny Tuesday - I have no new block to report, so there's your update!

Last night, my aunt and cousin came over to get help with an arts and crafts project for my cousin. I told them, "I better get an 'A,' dammit!" We had to cut a section of the poster board out and rig the Nemo fish to travel from behind the anemone to the shipwreck without touching it. It works and he spins his way around the scene! (Sorry for the dark pictures - they were taken with a camera phone and then text messaged to me.)

I have been meeting people this week to sell off the stamping and card stock as well. I also gave the totes that I had to my aunt for my cousin's half sister who scrapbooks. It's nice to get the stuff out of the house!

I also picked up a quilt tonight that I am quilting for a friend from the Modern Quilt Guild. I will be free motioning a design to look like water. It should go quickly and I am hoping to have it done this weekend.

Tomorrow night, I have plans to meet up with some old friends from high school for dinner and drinks. Saturday, I have to renew my tags for the car and get an estimate on repairing the car's bumper. After that, my neighbor is going to come over and do a walk through of the condo to see what he can help me fix to help me get closer to making the room change. He thinks that he can start working on things then, but we'll see what he says after the walk through. The dogs will be very excited because they love him!

So in between the errands and the cleaning and decluttering, I have managed to only sew 1 row together of the Split Decision. And I still haven't started cutting out the fabrics that I got last weekend. I'm not stressing about it though... There will be plenty of time to sew when I get the rooms changed and my sewing area set up perfectly in the new larger space!

Blog Comment Issue

Usually, I am able to catch up on blogs at work on my lunch or during breaks. I have had to use my cell phone in conjunction with my work computer in order to see pictures on some blogs because of the way that the work computer blocks some pictures on blogs. Not all pictures, just some. I can see the pictures on my blog and I post my pictures using WebShots and a link so I can only assume that pictures that are uploaded into Blogger are the ones that work doesn't like.

Anyway, the past couple of weeks, I haven't been able to post comments to blogs at work either. This means that I can read the posts and sometimes see pictures, but if there is something that I want to say, I can't do it at work. :'-(  <== is me crying in case you couldn't tell.

This is still all fine and dandy because I have my Blackberry and iPod Touch. I can still post comments on SOME blogs with my Blackberry. The ones that have their comments pop up in a second window (like mine does) or go to a new page are ones that I can comment on just fine.

It's the Other Ones that are the problem blogs. The Other Ones have their comments embedded into the page the post is on and it goes underneath the post. I can't see the box at work and I can't post any comments on those blogs from my Blackberry either.

I really hate to even bring this up because it seems a little nit picky and like I am trying to "run" blog land, but I really want to be able to comment back on blogs and sometimes it just isn't feasible when I have a witty or sassy comment. Then, when I have the time to comment, I can't remember my witty or sassy comment and that means that we all just miss out. *sigh*  (I also want to be able to clean up my blog reader when I actually am finished reading the blogs....)

And to everyone who has their comments embedded on their posts, please know that I am not singling anyone out! I'm just asking that you make it easier for me to be witty and sassy! I promise!

To change from the embedded comments to one of the other ways to comment, you need to go to the Settings tab in your design and then click on the Commenting section and pick pop up or full page.

Thanks to all for understanding and for making it a little easier for me to comment on what you are sharing!

Stampin' Up items for sale!

Since I fell a little short on my 2010 Goal of getting rid of all of my stamping things, I added it to my 2011 list. I finally got to work on this goal tonight!

I listed all of my stamping items on the Cincinnati Craigslist website under Arts and Crafts. It seems like it took forever to update the lists with items that I have already sold and marking down the prices a little more to try and move this all out. There may be a couple more things that I haven't listed yet, but I am not sure if I will list them right away or just wait a while. I think that I will have my hands full enough with the responses to the 10 ads that I listed tonight. I have a lot of stamp sets, PearlEx, Stampin' Spots, wheels, punches, brads, eyelets, etc and I listed them on separate ads.

If you would like to see what I have for sale, let me know and I can send you the links or you can search Craigslist for the Cincinnati area.

And hopefully, I will be able to get back to my sewing and quilting tomorrow! :)

Miscellany

This week is getting to be a bear at work. I have to get the depreciation budget for our 2012 fiscal year done this week and it will translate into a couple more late nights. And possibly some work over the weekend, but I am trying to avoid that.

In any event, I have some thoughts. Bear with me. It is my blog after all.

1. My mug rug was completed last night and taken to the Guild meeting tonight to swap out. I think it was well received. I also received mine (and Barb's, but that is another story) and I love it (well, both of them!). No pictures yet because I am being lazy after a long day at work and a Guild meeting.
2. I ordered 6 GO dies last week and they were delivered today. No pictures of those yet. They are actually still in the wrappers! I hope to get to cutting this weekend.
3. I finished reading U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton today. I haven't read one of her books in at least a year and it was so comforting to come back to an author that I know and love! Now, I am ready for V is for... whenever it may come out!
4. Since Regina is making great progress on reading Voyager by Diana Gabaldon (book 3), I can start reading Drums in Autumn which is book 4. Yahoo! How are the rest of you who started the Outlander series coming along?
5. I am thinking that I want one of those widgets that shows what books you are reading to put on my sidebar, but I am wondering if I will have to update it too much. Or even if people care about what I am reading. Or what is on my sidebar.
6. Today is Wednesday which makes me think of Year of the PIGS. If you haven't posted about how you store your PIGS and UFOs, there is still time to post and enter HERE. And if you haven't read the other posters answers, you can find their links in that post as well. I had thought about doing a motivational type post today, but it didn't materialize. How about this.......    YOU CAN DO IT!!! With the 'it' being whatever obstacle you are facing at this moment. Does that work?

OK, that is enough information for tonight. Maxie is giving me 'the look' that tells me it is time for bed. He said I can post pictures tomorrow night. :)

Should vs Want

What I should be doing....

1. Finish laundry and put it all away
2. Straighten up the bedroom so that I don't have to do it tomorrow and can therefore sew unimpeded 
3. Take pictures of my quilty Christmas presents to blog
4. Put Christmas presents away
5. Finish a Midget block
6. Clean up my sewing area
7. Catch up on blogs again

What I want to do....



What do you think is going to win out?

Goodies Received

A few weeks ago, I got a message on Facebook that I was picked for a giveaway on Pat Sloan's page. She sent me a pack of Aurifil thread and a couple of patterns. Very cool!!



If you are a quilter and on Facebook and you are not following Pat's page, you are missing some great opportunities!

Fabric Goodies

In the last couple of weeks, I have gotten new fabric that I haven't purchased. I have been putting off showing it because I hadn't added any of it to my Stash Report. Well, it has now been added so I must show it!

Several weeks ago, I got an email from Melinda asking for my address because she saw something that I just had to have. I believe that I got the envelope right around Thanksgiving so I totally spaced about even sending Melinda a thank you. (By the way, Melinda.... I got it! lol) Brand new doxie fabric!! It is sooo stinkin' cute!!! I have to see what I can make with it....



Then, I won a giveaway that Jean was having at her blog. I won the cutest set, I think! It's a bit out of my normal fabric tastes, but I am eager to find something that I can make with them!



Maxie, my 'princess,' is very picky about where he will eat his food. This morning, it was on the bed while he was covered up. He probably thinks that a doggie place mat is in order for his dining pleasure.




Won't he be very disappointed! lol

Tiny Tuesday (Midgets) 12/14

Well, another week is gone and another Midget block was not done in this house. I did print out the pages for the next few blocks so I will be ready to make a dent in them as soon as I can. Unfortunately, I think that it won't be until the end of the month at the earliest. I still have a lot of Christmas sewing to get done!

For those of you who have done another block or have something else Midget-wise to share, do so on your blog and post the ling to your post here. :)



Happy Tiny Tuesday!

Mid-week Update

I have gotten no sewing done this week for a variety of reasons. I am ready to get to my machine this evening and definitely tomorrow for the Friday Night Sew In.

Monday night, I was in charge of the Guild program which was a Guild Shop Hop. We had 8 quilt shops from the area come to our meeting and set up tables and displays to sell their wares. Other than some members taking way too long at the podium during Show and Tell, I think the night was a success. All of the shops were very happy with how the night went.

When I got home, my new iPod Touch was waiting for me and I spent a little too long setting it up and downloading a new iOS and putting all of the songs and books from my laptop onto it. I have been enjoying how easy it is to use, but there has been some getting used to it, too.

Tuesday, it was early to bed after staying up too late on Monday. I think I spent too much time online that night, too.

Last night, I had a Holiday dinner with my newest quilt guild, the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild. Of course, when I left work, I just had to stop at JoAnn's for some of the fleece that is on sale this week. My stash report is going to take a hit, but I am hoping to get it all used up in the next couple of weeks. It will all be used in Christmas gifts. The dinner was nice and relaxing and it was great to get to know a few more of the guild members a little better!

I have also been picking up Christmas gifts here and there and I think that I am just about ready to get some shipped out. I will have to worry about those early next week. I need to take a mental inventory to see what else needs to be done or picked up.

Today, a new adventure starts at the office. A few weeks ago, one of my co-workers took a new position in the company and I got a little anxious about the fact that I could be very pigeon holed in my job. This feeling translated into several discussions with my boss and her boss about different options that they will open up for me which will start with me helping in the hiring of the replacement for my co-worker. The long and the short of it is that this replacement will be taking over some easier parts of my job to free up my time for projects and for different job duties. We hope that this will give my job a bit more variety to help keep me from getting bored with the monotony of fixed assets.

This Saturday, the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild is having a mini-sew day at my library up the street and I have to decide what I am going to take. I would love to be able to have the witches ready to press and satin stitch along the edges, but in order to do that, I need to make some really good progress on my Granma's quilt before then. I may just end up taking the rest of Granma's quilt to finish. I lost my notes on the borders for the quilt so I have to try and glean what I was planning on from the fabric I bought and what the finished size should be. And I need to get the quilt done fast to get it to the quilter!

So this is what I have been up to. I haven't responded to emails this week and I am way behind on my blog reader. When it gets like this, it always makes me think that I need to re-visit my blog list and remove some from my list. As it is, I only comment regularly on about half of the blogs that I read, but part of this is because some of the blogs have their comments embedded in their post instead of having a pop up window or a second screen and I can't post on the embedded comments from work or my blackberry. I'm not going to make any changes right now, but they may be coming after the holidays.

Maisy thinks that everything will look much brighter after a nap!

December Friday Night Sew In

There will be 2 FNSI's this month! The first is next Friday, December 10th. I really hope that I have the energy when I get home from work to do something! lol

Go HERE to sign up!

Friday Night Sew In and other things

Tonight is Friday Night Sew In!! Have you signed up? If not, there is still time to SIGN UP and you can do anything crafty related to get a chance to win. I definitely plan on working on something... I have to test out my new TV with the sewing table set up!

Wednesday night, I took my quilting machine in for a cleaning and service. When I quilted on Sunday, I noticed that there were some skipped stitches when I was quilting and there were quite a few more that I didn't see. The machine should be ready for pick up on Saturday and I am hoping that the cleaning and oiling is all that it needs to fix the skipping.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the Outlander series that I have been enjoying. I started rereading Outlander because there were so many comments of readers who were going to look into the book. I hope that you all have had a chance to pick the book up and started in and that you are all agreeing with me on how good the book is!! In the Audible book, there are 4 parts to listen to and I am almost done with the second part. It is just as good as I remembered.

Since Sunday, I haven't done a lot of sewing, but I did get to spend one night knitting with the pups. I think that I have about 3" done on the socks. Yesterday, I was stuck in bed all day with a migraine and major headache. It was such a bummer to have to take the day off work and not be able to work on anything!

I'm going to make up for yesterday today and this weekend! I still have a huge list of things to do and I have just added a couple of more things to it. And I still have a video of Maxie playing that should be trimmed up and shared. And I have a ton of blogs to read because I wasn't able to do that too well yesterday...

And with all of that being said, let's get a move on with Friday!!

Another possible present?

I got some disappointing news from another blogger about the AccuQuilt GO giveaways. While I still haven't heard from the company since submitting my blog back in August to host a giveaway, I don't anticipate hearing from them after getting this news even though it would be nice to have the actual email saying, "Thanks, but no."

This week, while watching the Black Friday ads for TV's, I found the JoAnn's ad and information on what they would have as their specials. They are going to have the GO's for $199 as a door buster on Friday morning. I'm very tempted to go and pick one up. I shopped at JoAnn's last year and had a blast waiting at the door and talking to the other shoppers because they were worried that I wanted a Cricut which was the big thing then. I just wanted a bolt of batting!

Considering that the regular price of the GO's is $349, this is a great deal!

And for those of you who just don't know what to get me... Send money!! I will even do the hard part - my own shopping at 6AM on Black Friday!!! :-D

Even Maisy thinks is a great idea!

Christmas Quiltalong

I have decided to join the Christmas Quiltalong on Sue's blog.


"/>
If you saw this post from earlier this week, you know that I have a lot to get done. I think that most of my sewing from here until Christmas will be devoted to Christmas presents and Holiday sewing. Today, I plan to work on the 9 patches and the Radiant Star piecing. I may also get a block or 2 cut for the Super Secret Quilt.

And tomorrow I think that I will get a quilt quilted while I work on laundry. Woo hoo!!!

Sounds like a great plan and I just need to get started!