My first FINISHED quilt!

This is my first finished quilt! It's actually the third one that I started, but first done :) It was a present for Dave :) He worked really hard this year for his new job and I figured he deserved a bit of handmade love :)

It is a pattern called Opposites Attract by Anka's Treasures. You use 2.5" strips and a 60degree triangle ruler.

Picking fabric was really hard for this. I wanted blues and greens (his favorite colors) but no flowers or anything girly.

I even found him fabric that had fish on because he loves to fish!

I wanted a simple pattern for the quilting because my machine isn't really set up for quilting (mainly because I don't have a walking foot...) I did a hexagon shape inside the outer hexagon and a triangle inside the inner hexagon. Here it is from the front:

And also from the back:

The tricky part was the binding! Honestly there wasn't one single right angle on this entire thing. I am also not a fan of inner corners now! Not what you should try the first time you have to put binding on.

The hand stitching may not be the best, but for my first time hand stitching it should hold up pretty good. The night before I gave it to him I spent 7 hours hand stitching the binding to make sure that I got it done. My hand was definitely cramping by the end of those 7 hours. But now I know to not procrastinate for the next one! All in all I was really happy with how it turned out. Frustrating along the way at times, but I think he really liked it :) I'm proud of my work! :) And I am super proud of Dave and his accomplishments and I know he deserved this special gift :)

It's a good thing I'm not a professional blogger

Really it is. I cannot keep up with blogging to save my life despite the fact that I always think it's so cool and I have a million things I think about to write about.

Can I say that I really cannot believe that it's November already. I hear people say things like that all the time but I thought about it this week and I don't know where the last couple months have gone. I feel like it should still be September. Maybe it's the new AmeriCorps position keeping me super busy all the time or Dave's life keeping me super busy all the time but I really cannot believe it's Turkey Day next Thursday. Speaking of Dave - poor kid has to get his wisdom teeth out on Monday. I don't think he's going to have a fun Turkey Day :/

I guess things with my AC position are going ok. I know some medical things a little better now and I managed to pass the medical terminology class they made me take (not hard when you could basically do the test open note.) We had a big Open House/holiday party this week. Not happy that I had to be there for nearly 12 hours straight but I got to talk to a few awesome people. One of which was Janet who I guess used to run our program. I wish she still ran it! She's probably one of a few people that I've talked to since starting AC that actually understands where I'm coming from with my faith and bringing that into play for why I want to help people and work in nonprofits and stuff. It was really cool to talk to her and refreshing to find someone who understood me.

Kelly is coming home for a few days next week and I'm super excited! I hate not getting to see family a lot but it's good that she's finally got a full time job in Indy. I'm also excited that she's bringing her cat Max home! I'm not really a cat person but Max is a snuggly awesome ball of fur :)

Oh blog...

...sorry I forgot about you for a while. July is just turning into one crazy month!

I ended up working most of the first weekend and only getting home to celebrate the holiday at about midnight Saturday night. So of course no holiday celebrations until people woke up Sunday morning... We had a picnic at my aunt and uncle's in Indiana, PA, which was super awesome because I finally got to meet miss Adderley Blue! Adderley was born to my cousin and his wife in January and I've never gotten to meet her until that Sunday. She is such a cute pumpkin :) Monday for the 4th mom and dad drove me around Pgh looking for an apartment when I get to move home in September. This trip, and many since, have been fruitless. (Hopefully the last apartment I looked at this past weekend works out though!) Dave and I also got to head downtown with his parents to see the fireworks over the Point. I love fireworks almost as much as I love Dave :)

The next week was CAT Camp at Jumonville in which I got to be a counselor for some senior high girls. I will never do senior high again if I can help it. I don't care how much they say they loved me as a counselor, I felt so disrespected for most of the week that I will never be their counselor again. Not to mention I can't handle their drama. Granted some of it was above and beyond normal teenage drama - but I'm not dealing with that again. Although it was FANTASTIC to be back with some old friends again. I love these people :) And it was fun being an adopted counselor to Jenn's girls. I'm glad someone there liked me as a counselor...

July also brought the wedding of the always beautiful Megan. I have known this girl for 19 years! And I am so excited for her :) The wedding was beautiful and so cute and I'm so happy for them :) I hope they're having fun in Jamaica right now! I'm glad Dave was able to get a day off from work (finally!) to be able to come with me. I can't wait til we get to have our special day too :)

Ugh now I just need to get through the next 4.5 weeks so I can move HOME! Columbus is cool and all and I've meet some pretty awesome people here. But srsly, Columbus has nothing on Pittsburgh. Not to mention I cannot wait until I can see Dave every day of the week if I want to. Just about our entire relationship has been long distance and I'm ready for a break from that. Of course, if he gets a job that he's applying for we will have a long distance relationship again for a while. But I will take the 4 months of close distance relationship and cherish it :)

NQA Quilt Show

I've been wanting to make a blog for some time now but wasn't really sure what all to write about or how to start it. I figure what better way to start than to write about going to the NQA Quilt show!

My mom has always been a super crafty person and I've dabbled in things here and there with her. When I was in Africa in 2009 I bought some fabric not having a clue what I wanted to do with it but knowing that mom would help me with whatever I wanted to make. What I ended up making was a full size quilt using an adapted Pennsylvania Pavement pattern.


The Botswana fabric is this brown and white fabric:


So I headed to the NQA show today looking for some extra fabric for the backing (I'm using the rest of the Botswana brown for part of it) and some fabric for the binding. I didn't really find anything I liked for the backing but I found a cool fabric for the binding:


I also managed to find an awesome penguin quilt that I want to make.


It will end up a bit different that this pattern. One reason is that I have new penguin fabric to go with it :)


And some cute snowflake fabric to use in the background of the patches


In addition to this all I found some other cool fabrics. These two I'm saving for a Christmas quilt I want to make




And this one (from Indonesia!) I'm sure quite what I want to do with it. But for only $1 I couldn't pass up an awesome foreign fabric




My sisters both came to show too. We recently found out that we're 4th generation quilters. I knew mom quilted but I had NO idea that my Grandma Birkel or my Great-Grandma quilted. It's kind of awesome to say that we're all quilters now :) Kelly wants to work on a giraffe quilt. She spent most of the time not really finding anything she liked but almost at the end she found a cool pattern that she can do applique giraffes with and then found fabric that looked like giraffe skin! I'm pretty excited to see how her quilt turns out :) Allison found a pattern for a dragon quilt and started buying fabric for that. My mom had a list of fabric to buy so she could finish a few projects. She got some Civil War reprints that she wanted but nothing else on her list. Pretty sure I get my procrastination for finishing projects from my mom haha :)